FARM NEWS

THANK YOU! ❤️❤️❤️

Last week we broke the news that the property where we’re currently farming is being sold and that we’ll need a new place to farm. We asked our community for help and the response has been incredible!

We’ve had a TON of offers which made us feel so grateful and supported. We’ve found a few very promising opportunities and over the next few weeks we’ll be meeting with our potential new land partners. We’re feeling confident that we’ll be able to transition our farm to a new property and continue doing what we love - growing good food for our community.

Learning that you have to uproot your farm and move is a difficult reality to face. One that many young farmers have to go through. But seeing all of the support and words of encouragement from the community has been a truly heart-warming experience for us. An enormous thanks to everyone who has reached out!!

Experiments in sustainable agriculture 👩‍🔬

Our hoop house peppers have been under attack by aphids. When a plant is being eaten by bugs it means that your plant isn’t strong enough to defend itself. We have learned that one way to thwart pests is to give your plants a short-term nutritional boost. We’ve been applying a homemade dandelion amendment that we made back in the spring, which was made from dandelions and brown sugar that was fermented for 1 week.

Dandelions are super nutritious and act as an all-purpose mineral amendment. We started applying the dandelion amendment by diluting it in water and spraying it on the leaves of the pepper plants. The minerals are then absorbed through the leaves.

Apparently when a plant is at peak health bugs won’t be able to eat them. The reason is because bugs can’t digest sugar. And when a plant is in peak health, it’s leaves are loaded with sugar (mind blowing right? 🤯) By giving a plant that is under attack a quick absorbing natural amendment, you can boost the levels of sugar in its leaves and the pests will scurry off. You can even test this out if you have what is known as a Brix refractometer, which can tell you the sugar content of a leaf.

We’ve been too exhausted to do a proper experiment but here’s our anecdotal evidence: After a few days of spraying our peppers plants every other day the aphid population has decreased significantly and our peppers plants seem greener and perkier. We’re just starting to experiment with these new methods but we feel like this is the future of sustainable agriculture!

It’s interesting to compare these ideas to the ideas in industrial agriculture. When industrial agriculture encounters a pest, it tries to defend its crops by killing the pests with pesticides. When regenerative agriculture encounters a pest, it tries to boost the health of the plant, so that the plant can defend itself. No pesticides required at all.

NEW PRODUCTS

Calendula

Description: Calendula is an edible medicinal flower known to have antifungal, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial properties that might make it useful in healing wounds, eczema, rashes, as well as chapped and cracked skin, sunburn and insect bites.

Uses: Calendula flower petals can be eaten raw and added to salads, pasta, pizza or pretty such any dish. It can be steeped and used to make a herbal tea. It can be used to make a soothing salve or balm. They can also be added to a warm bath.

Details: Sold in 8 oz bag (1 cup)

Genovese Basil Pesto 

NOT CANNED. Keep in the fridge or freeze for long-term storage.

Description: For this pesto we plucked fragrant Genovese basil leaves from our basil patch and then blended it all up with Italian Parmesan, walnuts and extra virgin olive oil. Genovese Basil Pesto has that classis pesto flavour that everyone loves!

Ingredients: Extra virgin olive oil, freshly picked basil (from Confluence Farms), walnuts, Parmesan cheese, pink Himalayan salt.

Details: sold in a 250 ml jar

Some browning will occur due to the basil oxidizing.
 

Green Cabbage

Description: Delicious crisp green cabbages grown by our friend and fellow farmer Kate, of Hoe Down CSA, Pass Creek.

Details: Each cabbage weighs 2 lbs.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 🍎

Here is an article by the Guardian that came out recently. Apparently 80% of us have glyphosate circulating through our bodies right now. If you’re not aware of what glyphosate is, it’s currently the worlds most popular weed killer which is manufactured by Monsanto. And if you’re thinking “I only eat organic food, so I won’t have glyphosate in my body”), unfortunately it’s not a simple as what you eat or don’t eat.

Just in the United States alone over 100 billion pounds (yes, billion with a B) are sprayed on fields PER YEAR. I’m not sure what the statistics are for Canada but glyphosate is the number one herbicide here as well. And with that much glyphosate being dowsed all over the country each year, it’s not hard to imagine that it’s made its way into all of our drinking water.

In 2015 the CDC classified glyphosate as a “probable cancer causing carcinogen”. Not only is glyphosate linked to cancer, it also damages soil health, bees and I’m sure hundreds of other things we haven’t discovered yet.

It’s pretty wild to think that we’ve become test subjects in a mass experiment run by these corporations that we didn’t consent to or even realize we’re in. The system has failed us and so we need a new system. We don’t want mass produced food anymore, we want food produced by the masses.