Potato expo

After breakfast this morning we headed over to the Potato Technology Expo. Here all technology related to spud production is displayed for farmers to take in and lots of people to talk to.


Here is a large potato harvester. The equipment here is large. This is the current reality of producing enough fries, hashbrowns and fresh potatoes for the current demand.



Here is Josh learning about a new organic product.

We are the OYF outstanding farmers

For Atlantic 2010

Thanks so much!

Afternoon tour

We have just finished our OYF tour. We've been to the Cows creamery and River Country Market. They


make wheat grass juice and other veggie juices.


I tried the wheat grass and zesty zinger ( beets, carrots, Ginger, lemon & orange. Yum!


- Farmer on the go!

In PEI

We are on our way to our interview. We ran over a dead deer on the highway and had a flat. It has been an interesting morning but we are here now safe and sound and ready to go

Yarmouth bound

I am enroute to Yarmouth for our 5th public meeting for the NS Ag Land Review. Bill Swetnam and I are fortunate to have my dad driving us. We were in Lunenburg last night. It is a good thing too as this AM my computer crashed while I was putting the finishing touches on our presentation for tomorrow. So now I am redoing it while dad drives.
This week ours seeds arrived. We got three large boxes from johnnys, williams dam and high mowing seeds. So members, your seeds are here:)

Have a great night! If you haven't done so yet please check out www.nsaglandreview.ca to attend a meeting or send in your comments.

- Your Farmer on the go!

Van stuck

Valarie had a hard time getting out of our driveway today. The mud ruts are deep. Fun, fun, fun:)

Lorrie at the Grainery

The grainery was hopping tonight during share pickup. Lorrie and Oscar are the friendly faces each week at the Grainery. Often Amy is there too:)



Thanks al!

Share day activity

We've been running today but we've got all the squash peeled and sprouts bagged. Nickle and Conall are great and we are able to get a lot completed together. We are loading the van now for the city. See you soon

a 'not so great' experience

I got this email message from a CSA member today. Did anyone else experience this?

'I wanted you to know that the greens were full of little green bugs (probably more than 30 in the small bag). When I dumped the greens out the bugs scurried around and that is why I noticed.

I don’t mind bugs, but I ended up throwing out the greens because I just could not get them rinsed off.'

Thanks for keeping us posted. I guess it is fair to say the aphids are back. Halifax Seed here we come for some beneficials.

Warm sunny day

Today has been a delightful day. We starting cleaning up in the basement getting ready for the new season. We are hooking up a computer in the basement for our farm records and we are establishing a place for people to house their things when they come to work. Our tools are also in desperate need of order and the plan will be to have them all organized, marked for where they belong and then we will all hopefully be inspired to put them back.

The kids played outside most of the morning. Izaak built a fort, Frank worked away at things and Lily was looking after various things.

This afternoon I went out to walk up to Fox Hill Cheese House to get some bread for supper. As I was walking up the drive way I was aware of the softness under my feet. It made me think of the book, Walk in a Relaxed Manner. I was walking up the drive way in a relaxed manner and then when I got to the end of the drive way I was thinking about balancing the cortisol and decided I would do the opposite of relaxed manner walking and I would run as fast as I possible could. Have you done this lately? Ran as fast as you could? That of course led my thoughts to the Olympics. All of those athletes working their bodies as hard as they possibly can. It really is inspiring. I ran for about 30 seconds twice and my lungs are still feeling it now an hour later.

I would like to sort out exercising more regularly. I forget that it feels so good.

Enjoy the evening.

TGIF

I am constantly amazed at how fast a week passes. Today is my sister Carolyn's birthday. She came over to join us for lunch.
Josh and Beth are ordering seeds for his Canard farm today.
The greenhouse is full of trays again full of seeds to produce lots of greens to come in 4 weeks. The onions, romaine and pac choi have popped up in their pots.
I need to get to the basement and start the bean sprouts for next week.
The driveway is messy with these wonderful warm conditions.
Enjoy the weekend!

Marketing Caravan

Today I am attending a seminar that has been put on by the Canadian Farm Business Management Council , the NS Department of Agriculture and a bunch of others called Hop on Board the Marketing Caravan: Success. I am up at the Old Orchard, it has a great view of Greenwich and the Cornwallis River.

Jolene Brown was the main presenter this morning. She spent to morning teaching us that the pace, people, process and products have all changed. And that we need to be able to get on board with the changes if we want to be "in the game". One thing that she mentioned is Google. She asked us what our top three words would be to find ourselves on google. I don't know really. What words would you type into Google to find us?

Then we talked about customers and that basically people are looking for time, youth, health, safety and an experience. If we are able to provide these 5 things then we have more chances of gaining and retaining happy customers.

This afternoon we are hearing about how to connect with the media and get them talking about our agribusinesses.

Just a noontime update. Hey - do any of you use Twitter? Do you like it?

Snow day & Missing Items

For those of us in Kings County - we will do the pick up and deliveries tomorrow - Thursday.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

For those in Halifax and Dartmouth - I understand that there were a few missing items in some shares. Please let me know if you were missing something and next week we can add it in. I am really sorry about that. We have a new(wonderful) person helping out a bit and I have learned a valuable lesson in having procedures in place. I always double and triple check the boxes but I didn't explain that I do that. I now have a CSA box procedure typed up so we can be sure to have consistently full boxes.

Enjoy the snow.

The Market Song - Woman of Wolfville

February 15

Last week was another wild week of driving about. There was a public meeting for the NS Ag Land Review in Stewiacke on Wednesday evening and one with the council of leaders of the NS Federation of Agriculture on Thursday in Debert. There was a great turn out of nearly 100 people in Stewiacke. Although I am still here working and then driving about for meetings I begin to feel disconnected to what is happening here. It can happen so fast - I guess because things grow and change so fast on the farm.

The chicks are bigger and their fluff is quickly being replaced by not as cute feathers.

The sprouts have grown for another week and are ready to be bagged up this AM.

The greens in the greenhouse are ready to be harvested.

The new plantings of mizuna, pac choi, romaine and swiss chard have all popped up through the soil.

Josh and I went on a fun date Friday night. We were invited to the Joel Plaskett concert in Windsor. We had a lovely meal at the Cocoa Pesto Woodshire Inn and then heard some great tunes.

We headed out to the pond and skated on Saturday and Sunday. The ice is still very nice. My back is aching the morning from skating so much.

I hope you have a great day! I am off this morning to help out in Izaak's classroom for an hour and then back here to get ready for share day tomorrow:)

Mid February - whoa - we are on the home stretch.

skating, chickens and brussels sprouts

Yesterday the chicks didn't make it to Enfield until 6 PM so I left the Dartmouth pickup and booted it to Enfield to meet the large transport truck of chicks. They would have hatch within the past 24 hours. Brand New. I got home at 8:30PM and the kids ran down to the basement to help settle them into the bins we have in the greenhouse.

It was a really neat feeling to be pulling up behind a transport truck and being passed two cardboard boxes of chicks. They peeped all the way home.

Josh reports that this morning they are running all around happy as can be. If you want to see them while they are still cute - you might like to come over in the next few days.

Izaak is helping to the shell the popcorn. We purchased this corn sheller and walnut hauler from Pleasant Hill Grain.
Malcolm is washing and bagging the brussels sprouts over in Canard. These are the last of the brussels sprouts.

We had a fun time on the ice on Sunday. The kids are enjoying some hot cocoa.



Josh took this of the Canard River. This is the view as your drive across the Wellington Dyke Rd. The river is magnificent most of the time.

Loving You

It is 8:40PM on Sunday night. I have just come upstairs after rinsing the sprouts and placing them in the cooler. I am joining Josh in watching the Super Bowl (except he has fallen asleep with Frank). While I was down stairs I had a moment when I looked at the sprouts as I placed them on the shelf, a moment of why I do this. Often we are asked to explain why we do what we do, why do we farm? At this conference I just returned from we were challenged in some seminars to be sure we know why we are doing what we are doing. Tonight I had a nice moment where it was again very clear to me why I do this. I love working hard to produce food that is healthy for us (you). It feels great to work hard to produce something that is so healthy and to share it with others.
Have a wonderful night and thanks for providing a home for our labours of love.

Skating Party This Weekend

We are hosting the farm skating party this weekend - Sunday 2PM
Josh was out with the kids on Thursday afternoon for a great afternoon of skating.

See you then!

Overload

At the end of day two my brain and energy have entered into overload. I am just busting with new thoughts and ideas. I've met a bunch of really interesting people who I can contact now in the future as ideas morph into realities.

I have been really inspired by Bryan Gilvesy. He is working on really innovative things and I am pumped to work towards positive change in this regard at home. http://www.norfolkalus.com/ I think it would be great if the Federation of Agriculture or a partnership of people brought him to NS to speak.

Also Gwen Simpson of Inspired Market Garden was full of excellent information, ideas and strategies for Small Scale Agriculture. http://www.inspiredmarketgardens.com/ She is going to be speaking at the ACORN conference the first week of March.

Tonight we are headed out to dinner at a restaurant that is workings of a local family meat farm (pigs, cattle, chickens, lamb). I met the farmers and have had a great chat about what they are doing. I can't wait to experience it. http://www.souleio.com/
http://www.caloriesrestaurants.com/

Our presentation went well. Dad did a wonderful job. It is always far less painful than one anticipates it to be.

check these out

http://www.maplemist.ca/ - local, wonderful and created by two wonderful woman. I have tried it and it is wonderful!

learned about these today : http://www.woodanchor.com/ and http://www.gorpbar.com/

Lessons learned today

First we heard from Rob Napier. His title was No Straight Road How can family farm businesses seize the opportunities from volatility & change?
Here are some snippets I picked out - I do not agree or feel comfortable with everything but here is what I wrote jotted:

• We need to reinvent our family farms
• need people on our businesses who love looking at the next opportunities
• How do we skill ourselves to handle unpredictability
• that agriculture and the environment are linked
• that agriculture and health are linked
• we are losing opportunities in not recognizing the value of our land and we need to learn how to maximize rewards from land business (I have some conflicting thoughts on this one)
• that we need to have a multifunctional farm approach
• people are looking for trust
• we need to change how we talk to ourselves - we are families with a farm business not family farms
• written goals and business plans should drive everything we do
• farmers are weak in generic business skills we need a massive effort to scale up skills
• wants to take the word farmer and farm family out of the equation. Redefine farmer and farm business inject the word entrepreneur
• travel is mandatory

We are off to dinner now - we had a great lunch - lots of cabbage!!! I was so excited to see cabbage as a main part of the meal.

First day - Travel

Well it was one of the most challenging days in my travelling life. Our plane left late from Halifax so we missed our connections in Toronto. I couldn't find my father for a time at the Toronto airport but since we both knew where we were flying out from it didn't much matter. Then our bags didn't make it. They arrived this morning at 1 AM which was wonderful!

Last evening we heard Dr. Lowell Catlett from New Mexico State University. His speech was titled Smart is Beautiful. He spoke about Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs and how we have entered into the middle part of the triangle the love and acceptance place. He explained that was or is a luxury to one generation is a necessity to the next. That people are doing things smarter. That we need to open our minds and pay attention to what is around us as we more head into the next generation. And, I like this one, it is a multiple objective world.

He suggested we look up www.heartmath.com.

He also repeated that healthy humans can not be separated from plants, animals and people.

It was a great way to begin to two day conference openning our minds and basically awakening to what is around us and the possibility of what may lay ahead.

I hope you all have a wonderful day. Today I will take in No Straight Road: how can family farm businesses seize the opportunities from volatility and change? and Maximizing the Profitability of Each Production Unit Through Scenario Analysis (I might need some extra strong green tea for this one:)) and that is all before break.

up, upand away

I am up and ready to be picked up for an adventure to Saskatoon. Four days in total, two travel days and two conference days. If you are interested in looking at the program here is it.

2010 Managing Excellence in Agriculutre Conference

Take Care