Welcome Newcomers

Hello Everybody!

If this is the first time you are reading my blog, WELCOME!

My name is Peter, and this blog is about me, documenting my efforts to start my own farm! I also use this blog to share news (good and bad), announce events, and anything else that I find interesting while working in the field every day.

I just thought I would share with you what I am about:

Mission: My eventual goal is to run a fully functioning farm, made of various vegetable varieties, fruit, and mini orchard. I also would LOVE to raise my own poultry, pigs, and cows (right now I raise only chickens and turkeys). I try to avoid using gas-guzzling machines as much as possible, and I believe in hand picking all of my produce. This is because I feel proud of what I grow, and can attest to its quality. I want to be able to tell all of my customers what kind of soil it grew in, how much water it was fed, and when it was picked. Most of all, I aim to never use any chemical pesticides, herbicides, and anything that ends in “-cide”!!!

If you have already visited my farm-gate, first of all THANK YOU for your support. We aim to sell only what we grow. Our product selection is variable with the weather and growing conditions, and we only want to put out the best. So the selection varies everyday.

RIGHT NOW: I am selling at my farm-gate, in Uxbridge, at the northwest corner of Main and Wagg. We are open Fridays and Saturdays. I am selling strawberries, raspberries, and a selection of vegetables including corn. I also have available various pies, jams, and baked goods. These are always made with the products from the farm, using local ingredients wherever possible. Even all the vegetables and chicken in our chicken pot-pie are all from my farm!
I also sell free-range chicken. My chickens are fed a whole-grain diet, and are never given any hormones and antibiotics. For Christmas, I am also raising free-range turkey, again I never feed them any hormones or antibiotics.

BELIEFS: I want to eat food that is as natural as possible. To me, this means that I want to feel like my food is safe to eat. I want to know where my food comes from, and to be able to eat food that has not been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, and has not been fed antibiotics and hormones. I believe in supporting local business, and I want to sell my products to those who share these beliefs.

Contact Me: send me an email or give me a call if you have any questions. You might be surprised to find out some of the things we offer (like year-round frozen fruit and vegetables!). I also hope to expand on my fruit and vegetable boxes, and deliver more chickens, turkey and produce for the next season.

Email: oakridgesfinest@gmail.com

Phone: 647-833-6360

Facebook: Find me on Facebook at “Oakridges Finest”. Please “like” my page!

Thanks for reading, and check back here for more news!

best berries of the year

Hello again i am back it has been a really busy last half of the summer i cant believe its almost fall already i am definitely not ready to even think about winter yet. In the last month a number of really good things happened. The biggest was that i have my first wholesale account for my strawberries and i am getting a great price for them. The strawberries have really come into there own in the last month i am now averaging about 20-25 quarts every two days for my customer while still have more than enough to meet for myself to eat. I hope that my peak production for the season will be 30 quarts which is a lot higher than i though i would manage in my first season but is still small potatoes in the long run. The strawberry patch has definitely been my star performer of the season and because of this i have begun to realize that expanding the amount of strawberries and raspberry i am growing will be the most profitable area for me to focus on as the foundation for the business. I do not know how much i will expand them by yet it will depend on a few different factors but i hope to at least triple the amount of plants i have growing. The great thing is that even if i manage to expand more than that next year i will not have to buy a lot more plants. This is because i can subdivide and spread out all the strawberry runners that have grown off of the ones i planted this spring and transplant all the tiny raspberry canes that have begun to pop up like weeds in the raspberry rows. The raspberries have also produced better than i thought for how many i planted. The raspberries i am picking now are the nicest, firmest and largest ones i have ever seen in my life hands down the photos don't really show it but believe me they are. Well that's it for now lets hope the beginning of fall will bring one last round of nice weather so that the berries will keep on fruiting.

Its a little jump into a big ocean

So This last Friday i officially began my farm-gate market at my parents farm. The name that i finally decided on after a few weeks of wavering and debating in my head about what kind of message i wanted it to convey to customers is Oak Ridges Finest Fruits and Vegetables . While i still feel a little uncertain about the name i think that over time it will be begin to grow on me as it is easy to remember for customers to hopefully associate it with high quality locally produced fruits and vegetables. For right now i will be doing the market on Friday afternoon from 2-7pm and if the first few weeks go well i hope to sell on Saturday mornings also. The first market day was ill be honest pretty slow and i only had three customers and only one wasn't related to me. I did have a few neighbors that stopped in and said they were interested and that they will be back this Friday While i still did manage to sell a small amount of product i am still very optimistic as many of the cars driving by were slowing down and looking. While i know it will take time to develop a customers base i do not feel that i am wasting my time or resources as i know that the level of interest in my area for locally produced produce and preserves is quite high and still has lots of room to grow. Over the next few weeks i am planning on trying different things to attract attention to my farm-gate in one of my next few posts i will show you all some of the signs i have had produced for advertising and how successful they are in getting the attention of the traffic passing by. Well that is it for now hopefully this week i will begin to get more customers and traffic stopping by.

small beginnings

Well this past week i managed to fill and sell my first vegetable box orders. I currently have only two customers but after this week i should start having enough produce to fill a few more baskets and still have what i need to sell at my farm-gate on the weekends. These baskets cost thirty dollars each and included quart of wild blackberries, quart of strawberries, half pint of raspberries, quart of peas, a bunch of radish and two yellow and green zucchini in each basket. As the summer progresses and other things come into season the composition of my box will change but i hope that within a few weeks i will be able to offer different combinations and price points depending on how much produce my customers want. While i know these boxes dont add up to much so far it does feel great to take that first baby step towards becoming a fulling functioning farm that is able to provide customers with high quality food that is both locally produced, organic and last but not least incredibly delicious as that is the key goal of all my efforts. These pictures provide a birds eye view of my boxes. I don't know whether Levon was more curious than hungry but he enjoyed watching me put together the boxes.

a Little something extra

Here i am again i finally have gotten around to taking some pictures of a LITTLE side project i embarked upon this spring. As those of you that have been following my blog know that i planted and bought enough strawberries and raspberries this spring to start a little berry patch for selling at the farmers market. After i planted that initial patch back in April i had an opportunity arise after a friend told me about an orchard being developed closer to the city and that plants there were free for the taking as they were just being bulldozed. So to make a long story short after a few weeks of digging and ripping a few thousand extra raspberry canes out i managed to plant about an extra 14 rows of berries that i hadn't planned on. While they did suffer during the very dry spring in Ontario they have survived and are now thriving while these pictures don't show the whole patch it does cover a large area and hopefully within one or two years these thin rows will look a lot fuller. I also at the same time managed to dig out 18 dwarf apple trees from the same orchard which will hopefully allow me in a year or two to be able to start selling some of my own apples. While it took a lot of energy and time to do this i think that it will be great boost to the amount of raspberries i will have for sale next season and even by this fall i should be getting a respectable amount off them. While i know i didnt pay for these plants i like to think of it as a plant rescue as the effort and time i put into them more than makes up for not paying for them.

Now it tastes like summer

Well it is amazing what a difference six weeks makes for a newly planted berry patch. It seems just like yesterday i was planting my strawberries and now i am already enjoying the first trickle of sweet berries. So far they taste great and taste sweeter ever day as the sun ripens them to a nice shade of red. Right now i am getting just about a quart a day while that is small i should be getting a much higher output within weeks as i planted day neutral plants which grow and flower all summer an fall. By mid summer i hope to be getting anywhere from 15 to 30 quarts if the weather is good and the plants keep growing at the same pace. I will post further on the strawberries as they continue to come fully into season. The non strawberry pictures in this post have more to do with my last one but i digress. The first pic is of some beans which are doing quite well so far. The second is of pak choi and the last is a Chinese variety of radish called daikon it is white and more similar to a carrot than radish. I will post further on the garden and its progress next time and as my camera has come back to life don't ask how it just did i will have plenty of photo evidence. I hope you all enjoy the longest days of the year and have a great solstice next week i will try to have sunrise pictures of it for those who are less inclined to celebrate it and be awake for the whole day.

Just a little update but not to little

Well its has been a long time since my last post but i am back now into blogging mode again. I somehow managed to survive the more than six week marathon of planting that i undertook this spring lets just say it was more rewarding and frustrating at the same time than i thought it could ever be. I have managed so far to dodge a bullet so far weather wise while we did have a dry early spring in southern ontario it has been much wetter in the last few weeks and this has recharged the soil with water. I was cutting it close but i managed to keep all the tree and berry seedlings wet enough during the dry spell and the vast majority have survived and seem to be thriving quite well. I should be able to taste my first strawberry tonight as the first ripe berries are beggining to appear. I wont be able to post any pictures for the next little while as my camera has finally given out on me after almost five years but it didnt owe me anything it was a good camera for someone as clumsy as me. Well i hope to post again soon and with pictures as i should be able to start taking some good pictures of the gardens process over the next few weeks once i get a replacement enjoy the last weeks of spring.

Trees on the brain

So here is my other major project of the spring 2000 evergreen seedlings. I decided that it would be a good idea to start planting evergreens with an eye towards a long term goal of selling them as nursury stock and as christmas trees. This is more of a long term plan right now but i hope that i can continue to add to them over the next few years and try for about 10000 trees it sounds like a lot but it really doesnt take up much land and over the years i will thin the rows and sell trees for planting. I bought 1000 blue spruce which are a high end tree and is usually a highly sought after tree for both planting and christmas trees. The other 1000 is white spruce these are cheaper but still provide a high quality tree for every need. All i can say is that planting 2000 trees was not as hard as it sounds but it definitly wears you right out even when you have help. The pictures show some of the aspects of planting. The tree shown is the size of the majority of them but there are some that are quite large that i could start selling in a year or two. The finished result of my planting is in the upper left corner i know my lines are a little of but hopefully the trees will fill in the gaps in the next few years. On a final note the trees are adjusting to their new soil well and are growing well the last few weeks have seen good rain hopefully it will continue when the weather warms up or i will soon be blogging on the joys of watering 2000 trees. So i hope you all think rain and dont forget to go for a spider when you see one.

the berry patch

So the last few weeks have been incredibly hectic and busy which is why i havent posted in ages. I recieved my berry order two weeks ago and have been planting berries and trees since then. I planted 1000 day neutral strawberry plants and 500 raspberry canes of a few different varieties. These pictures show the slow progression from freshly tilled soil to the end result of 10 fully planted beds. The first top pictures shows a close up of the soil here and how the berry patch looked before i mulched and planted it. The next ones show some of the raspberry canes soaking before planting which helps to reduce the show shock of transplantation and my self tilling the last row. The last three pictures show the boxes the berries were deleivered in and then myself planting raspberry canes the last shows the finished rows of strawberries. The strawberries seem to be doing great and are showing a lot of growth so far as they begin to settle into the soil. The raspberries will take a few more weeks to begin to show new growth as they grow much slower than strawberries as each grows over the spring and summer i will post further on there progress. My next post will show the other main project project of the last few weeks and detail a surprise opportunity that i recently had.

Lesson Learned

So last week i made one of my most neccessary purchases for the coming summer i bought a greenhouse. As this was the first large greenhouse i have ever bought i decided against going with a proper greenhouse in the tradtional sense and opted to use a garage shelter instead as the price was much lower for the amount of space that i have available in comparison to most greenhouses. It is 11 by 16 feet so it more than meets my space needs for starting my seeds till there ready to be transplanted outside for good. I learned a valuable lesson though after i finished setting it up as the day after we had a very strong an unexpexted wind storm that managed to rip the anchors out of the ground like they were nothing and threw off the extra bricks i had stacked on the legs to keep it weighed down. The legs actually snapped right in half from the wind. The good news though is that the damage was much less than i intially feared and other than the fact that my tomatoes and peppers are all now mixed up i fared rather well an lost only a handful of plants. So i think i have learned my lesson about the power of wind and before i put the greenhouse back up i will reinforcing it much more than before as the wind does blow strong around here since my parents farm is located on a ridge. The pictures show the greenhouse after i managed to pull it down during the wind storm. I will add more on this once i get the greenhouse up and running during the week,

A Little Box Of Joy

Nothing says spring like a box of day old chicks. I bought forty White rock to start off with this spring and will be hopefully ordering a few more batches in the summer and fall if i am able to find enough customers for them. This breed is the most common for meat production as they grow rapdily and are ready for market within six weeks in most cases. The weather has been on my side so far as the chicks are very vulernable to cold there first week which made it inevitable that the day i got them had to be the coldest in weeks. But other than keeping them in the basement for their first night they have been doing great as it can be very easy to lose a whole batch of them to disease, predators or cold if you arent extremely protective in their first weeks. I have them under two heat lamps to insure more than enough heat as they need it be at least 90F for their first week. Raising chickens can seem daunting to most people but it is actually not that hard once you get the hang of it. All it takes really is to properly understand an provide the conditions essential to their proper health, growth and space needs as this is the best way to insure a better tasting chicken. Unlike battery chickens which is how most chickens are grown in intensive farming these chicks will enjoy more space and more frequent coop cleaning than they would on a large scale farm. If your squeamish and like to know that the chicken you eat is well provided for then these would be the chickens for you. While their life isn't perfect it is definitely better than being raised for the deep fryer.

In this race to the sky who will be the tortoise and who will be the hare

So it is that special time of year again when seeds are beginning to sprout and tree buds begin to swell. I have begun to plant my seeds for this summer and i thought it was time to show you the first sprouts of the year which are a tray of Roma Tomato's. Peppers and Tomatoes are the first seeds that must be started indoors in early April so that they can be well established when they are transplanted out at the end of may early June. Once these seedlings which are growing rapidly are taken out of the seedling tray i will replace them with Broccoli seeds which need less time indoors and can be transplanted slightly earlier in may since they can better tolerate cool temperatures. Over the next few weeks i will be posting further on my planting and the progress of the plants as they graduate into my greenhouse. The other pictures are of the buds of my plum tree on top, pear tree second and my peach tree above the seedlings. which barely survived the winter but will hopefully do better this summer as they are a very difficult fruit to grow in Ontario unless your in the far south of the province.