Sunday, July 25, 2010

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.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

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.