Sourcing Great Seed

Sourcing great seed can make the difference between enjoying growing veggies and finding it to be a frustrating experience. As an organic farm, our certification process requires that we try to source seeds that are certified organic before considering conventional options. That can make our seed purchasing a bit tricky at time. Here are some of the sources we use on our farm.

2011 Variety Reviews: Part I

In his book The Winter Harvest Handbook Eliot Coleman states that farmers have a responsibility to share their knowledge and experiments with each other to improve organic growing. In this spirit, I offer the following variety reviews from our trials this season. This is the first installment of reviews -- I have other varieties to note, plus reviews shared by other growers.

War, Agriculture and Remembrance

It has often occurred to me that November is an appropriate time for Remembrance Day. The days are generally bleak and the natural world is in a hasty decline as frost kills plants and trees shed their leaves. In short, the world around is a reminder of death.

This past week I have been thinking about the relationship between war and agriculture. More precisely, I've been considering the impact of war on agriculture.

The connection between war and agriculture is relatively new to me. My family has no history of veterans since most who were of service age during the world wars were farmers and thus exempt from military service. At the same time, I understand that war and political instability were motivating factors for some of my ancestors to leave their homes and travel to what they hoped would be a more stable future in Canada. War is at the root of many global migrations, particularly concerning rural peasants.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From left to right: Barb, Nirmal, Kiran, Jeremy, Sheila, Paige (Roxie on shoulders, Julia in carrier), Uncle, Chris, Kate, Sean, Clara and Tricia.

One behalf of the entire Farm Team at Glen Valley Organic Farm, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of our friends, family, customers, suppliers and neighbours for your continued support. It makes our work very worthwhile to know that we share a common vision of sustainable, small-scale agricultural enterprises with a larger community.

Variety reviews wanted

I'm looking for feedback on varieties everyone grew this year for a blog post. Since we (farmers, gardeners, lovers of food) all trial new varieties every season, it would seem to make sense to share some of our experiences. Did the new carrot a catalogue promised would be a winner end up being a stinker? Did someone find the organic alternative to Big Beef? Are you sticking to tried and true varieties? If you're willing to share, I would love to pool together our experiences and share online. 

Interested? Write to me, making sure to include the variety name, whether the seed was organic or conventional, whether it was open pollinated or a hybrid, where you purchased the seed from, any observations from growing and the region where you farm. Also, indicate if you're growing commercially or for your own use (and anything else of note about your growing: field or coldframe, etc). What did you like about the variety (vigour, colour, flavour, yield, etc.) or what wasn't up to par? Did the variety mature in the number of days suggested by the catalogue?

You can send your reviews to me at glenvalleychris (at) gmail (dot) com. Everything will be posted here when I have finished compiling responses.

Salmon and Agriculture: Making the Link

These salmon and a carrot from our farm might have more in common than you would expect.

I'll admit that when I started farming, I didn't expect that it would lead me to involvement in a salmon conservation initiative.

At the same time, when I received a call asking our farm to participate in a salmon-related certification project last fall, something clicked.

The pitch went like this: The Pacific Salmon Foundation and the Fraser Basin Council were bringing an agricultural certification program to BC called Salmon-Safe. It already exists in Washington, Oregon and California. They need to see if the standards are applicable in a Canadian context. Would we agree to an inspection with the potential of being an early program participant?

Images of the season

This is a slideshow featuring images of the season, courtesy of Fire & Light Media Group. These images were taken on the farm last year. They show a lot of the produce we're harvesting at the moment this season.