Sent: August 29, 2011
A Tour of the Mid-Summer Farm
A couple months ago I received a call from one of our good customers, Frank Selg. He is Executive Chef at Casino Rama, one of North America’s most successful casinos. He likes to credit excellent food as being a key element of their recognition. He told me he had made the winning bid for the farm tour and picnic we had offered at last April’s Ontario Hostelry Institute (OHI) Award Ceremony.
Since we have received the OHI Supplier of the Year Award, I feel good about doing what we can to support culinary scholarships. I would provide a tour for a party of eight; and Deb and her crew would prepare an elegant alfresco luncheon. So we were very pleased to create an extraordinary day for Frank and his family, friends, and his mother who had just arrived from Germany.
As seems to be the norm this August, the tour started dark and drizzly. But before we got too wet, the sun came through the clouds to create an absolutely magnificent summer day. We first went by the flowering Buckwheat (buzzing with eager bees) preparing the soil for next year’s early crops. Then we went by recently planted fields with glistening green Sweet Clover and Timothy starting their growth for adding all-important organic matter for crops three years from now. Then they amazed by the six-week old tall green jungle of Sorghum, Sunflowers and Forage Peas adding even more organic matter to feed our soil life for next summer’s main crops. They spotted our attendant hawk as he searched for a stray mouse. And they got to see our Wild-Flower strips which provide blossoms to supply nectar for our friendly predator insects.
They were intrigued by the potato plants from which we could “steal” a few potatoes before they sized up. Walking past this season’s first beet and carrot beds, they were surprised to find quite a number of plants remaining in the field. I described how these were the “runts” that had succumbed to July’s blazing heat and never would become sweet and tender. We will turn them in to fertilize a future crop. [Prior to our practice of growing plough-down crops to increase water-retaining organic matter, we lost many beets and carrots in hot, dry summers.]
Frank’s three year old daughter was proud of pulling out a bright red Torpedo Onion. Everyone got to nibble on freshly plucked Sugar Snap Peas, Radish Pods, sweet juicy Husk Cherries, and various colours of Cherry Tomatoes. They did not want to stop until someone noticed we were already late for lunch. A glass of refreshing Ontario Sauvignon Blanc or sparkling water cleared our palates for some fine fresh-from-the-garden food – a Rainbow of Tomato Salad, corn bread, vibrant platters of roasted beets and carrots, a tender pork roll, a bowl of Baby Salad Greens, and stuffed baby Summer Nugget Squash. Yum!
Frank Selg toasts his family and friends after a tour of our farm.
Dear Dave & Deb and entire staff ~
On behalf of my family, friends and myself, I wish to thank you for a fabulous afternoon on your farm, the feast of the fields was amazing and we so appreciated your having us.
Your outstanding hospitality was second to none, Thanks so much for providing such a great afternoon for everyone. People will be talking about it for some time!
It is wonderful to know that local farming by you is taken so serious and that you can deliver a true organic experience - I am looking forward to be back in the near future to learn more about your passion.
Best personal regards,
Frank Selg, Executive Chef
Sent: August 22, 2011
A Topsy-Turvy Summer
Now that the Canadian National Exhibition has begun, this is a good to time to review our nearly finished summer. The new season started with an unusually early arrival of most of our birds; then most of them left just as unusually early. This was early July. We began fearing that the long-expected hot summer we were being promised might once again turn into yet another cool and wet one. It sure didn’t turn cool; it became exceptionally hot and windy and dry for the remainder of the month. We suddenly had quite a scramble to keep many of our newly planted fields sufficiently irrigated to assure good starts.
The hot/dry weather was great for the field tomatoes and the squash. They love hot and dry days, especially when they are followed by sultry evenings. This makes for uncomfortable sleeping; but brings on lots of amazingly scrumptious Rainbow of Cherry Tomatoes. It also provided us with good supplies of Summer Nugget Squash and aromatic Squash Blossoms. The heat brought on early crops of pineapply Husk Cherries and gorgeous Rainbows of Mini Bell Peppers. It has also allowed us to provide you with extra early Dried Tomatoes and Smoked Tomatoes.
On the other hand, all the heat caused some problems. Our Edible Flower Mix has been disrupted to the point we have had difficulty filling orders beyond our standing orders. Soon after I bragged about how well our new hot-weather tolerant Shelling Peas were doing, they suddenly stopped producing. The same happened with our sweet Radish Pods. Two popular summer specialties – Summer Leeks and Baby Fennel – have been exceptionally slow in reaching harvest size. The good news is that in a couple of weeks all these should have recovered from the stress and become properly plentiful. Baby Arugula has already recovered from its heat stress!
Deb has been a real trooper in maintaining good supplies of Baby Salad Greens, Simply Cookstown and Asian Greens. Thanks Deb! A lot of this has to do with continually planting in a timely fashion – even if this means getting the beds planted on a Sunday just prior to a rain storm. She also has sees to it that everything is harvested prior to the mid-morning heat wilting any of the leaves.
In hot summers a few years ago we found our beets and carrots often became so tough and bitter we chose to plough them in rather than sell inferior produce. We have now found that after 10 years of steadily building healthier soil, not only were this year’s Beets and Carrots ready earlier than ever, they were also nearly as sweet and tender as fall harvested beets and carrots. (Of course there was no need to plough any of them down.)
Baby Salad Greens after a thunderstorm – but no rainbow this time.
Under the blankets are mustards and arugulas protected from hungry flea beetles.
Some Good Summer Reading
Before the busy autumn rush gets started, hopefully you can make some time to learn more about Canadian Cuisine. This is bound to help you better understand our seasonal ingredients. Take a look at Cuizine: The Journal of Canadian Food Cultures for fascinating articles, interviews, and poems from McGill University.
Sent: August 15, 2011
So what do you do for Nitrogen?
I am asked this question more than any other. My answer may seem curt, but it’s the truth. “I make every effort to avoid it.” Organic matter is the basis of organic farming; and organic matter provides sufficient (but not excessive) amounts of nitrogen. Excess nitrogen is an open invitation for pests of all sorts – insects, fungus, bacteria, and weeds.
The big attraction of extra nitrogen is higher yields. This brings more profits to the farmer; and it provides cheaper food for shoppers. If the nitrogen fertilizers and the companion pesticides are cheap enough, farmers will continue this practice. If there is little fear of residual pesticides and general acceptance of bland ingredients that require fat, sugar and salt to provide sufficient flavour, distributors will continue supplying this stuff.
Cheap nitrogen began as a German wartime substitute for Chilean Nitrate which was being blockaded during WWI. 100 years ago Fritz Haber became a young hero for inventing a process for generating nitrogen-rich ammonia from plain air. This could be easily converted into gunpowder. After the war it could be easily converted into fertilizer. This was so cheap and easy that the world’s population could quadruple! (And to think you’ve never heard of Fritz Haber.)
In the longer term, farmers are discovering that their soil “burns out” and requires ever more fertilizers and pesticides. Consumers are discovering that obesity, diabetes, and hypertension have become the major health concerns. Now experts are starting to observe even more serious concerns. The European Nitrogen Assessment has produced an informative introductory video. This Article from the Alabama Extension explains the upcoming problem in more detail. To understand more implications of this looming crisis Summary for Policy Makers is not too difficult an 11 page read.
Some farmers still know how to provide quality food without cheap nitrogen fertilizer. If the process is banned, there need not be great starvation. The nitrogen can be produced naturally just as it has for millennia. We just need make sure these practices remain viable. In the US, certified organic farmers are still permitted to use Chilean Nitrate fertilizer. This is not permitted in Canada. This is one important reason Canadian organic produce usually tastes better than its American counterpart.
Our Husk Cherries are plentiful (and delicious) without added any nitrogen.
And if you have the time on August 18
In the 1970’s, New York City started having serious problems with their water quality. It was going to cost $billions to install and maintain new filtration systems. But an alternative was to pay farmers to plant buffer zones to keep the water clean in the first place. This cost the city considerably less than to have to cleaned it after it was fouled.
Norfolk County Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) is conducting a tour of the farms that are now being paid to purify water for downstream communities. And the communities save money by supporting their farmers for this work.
Sent: August 8, 2011
But isn’t all food Organic?
In 1990 I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Bob Rodale, publisher of Rodale Press and director of a non-profit agricultural research association. In the 1930’s, his father had coined the word “organic”. So I asked him what he thought about the growing interest in organic foods. He was encouraged by the interest; but he was discouraged by the popular misunderstanding of the word. It has come to mean what farmers do not do, rather than what they do do.
Originally the term Organic meant the farmer would feed his soil-life with organic (carbon containing) material. Well-fed soil-life would in turn properly feed the plants and these healthy plants would in turn provide balanced nutrition for people and their societies. Healthy soil does not require herbicides and synthetic fertilizers and healthy plants do not require poisonous insecticides. In other words, a good farmer need not choose to use no pesticides – there is simply no need to use them.
I was excited to see an article about organic farming in the highly respected Scientific American. What a surprise, it was the least rigorous article I have ever seen in this publication. Don’t even bother reading it! However, I suggest you read responses to this article in Mother Jones and in the Grist. Actually, the very best summary of what this is all about has been written by Margaret Webb in Diabetes Dialogue. Do take time to read this one!
My own take on all this is that if the food actually has heavenly flavour, this is what you should eat. Why else did God give you such a sophisticated tongue and nose? As a grower attempting to provide the most divine food, it has become increasingly clear to me that feeding organic matter to the soil life not only provides thorough satisfaction, it might even be a cure for some contemporary diseases. This concept of the importance of soil-life is nothing new. It has long been understood by ancient cultures.
This Huichol yarn painting shows their understanding of the importance of soil life.
New This Week
It used to be that with a summer as hot as this one, the early beets and carrots were too tough and bitter to sell to our discriminating chefs. We therefore chose to plough them in (to feed future crops). But with more biologically active soil, they are now always sweet and tender – even in a year as hot as this one. The Yellow, White and Orange Nantes Carrots are now ready. Purple are coming soon, but we must wait for cooler weather before the black and the red carrots take on their distinctive colours. All of our beets, Golden, Candy Cane, Red Cylinder, and White Beets are now plentiful (and absolutely delicious). You may now start putting them back onto your menus. Jerusalem Artichokes will also remain plentiful for the rest of the year. Beautiful and delicious pineappley flavoured Husk Cherries are now ready and will remain available for several months.
August Farmer/Chef Festivals are Coming
These have proliferated across Canada ever since Jamie Kennedy and Michael Stadtlander first brought together their chef friends with my farmer friends at the first annual Feast of Fields. That was 22 years ago. The concept continues:
Farmers Feed Cities, an organization devoted to increasing the urban understanding of the needs of farmers, is holding its first fundraising event on August 11 at Evergreen Brick Works. Brad Long is hosting this from his newly opened Brick Works restaurant. If you are up north on August 14, Savour Muskoka is hosting their annual Field-to-Fork Tasting Event at Ken and Katya’s historic Brooklands Farm. On August 28 you need not travel so far north. The fourth annual Savour Simcoe event is being held on the beautiful wooded grounds of the Simcoe County Museum just west of Barrie. On the same day, just a little north of Toronto is the McVean Farm Harvest Table hosted by chef Yasser Qahawish who will be using ingredients from and to benefit this fascinating Farm Start incubator farm. More events are scheduled for September and October.
Sent: August 2, 2011
Promoting Toronto
Last week we took the opportunity to boast about Ontario to some very special visitors. A number of key food writers were invited to our fascinating food city by the good people at Tourism Toronto. They came up with the idea to not only let them experience some of our most celebrated restaurants and hotels; they also took them to taste wines in Niagara and tour some of the farms the chefs work with. I am pleased to say that they found their rural experiences greatly added to their overall impression of the city.
It was easy to say YES to host the tour and serve them some of our harvest. Nearly all the meals they enjoyed in Toronto were at restaurants we work closely with. So they already knew about us. We are of course always delighted to promote our customers.
The writers came from as far away as London England, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Boston, Baltimore and New York. On the way to Cookstown Greens (our virtual tour page), they visited with Hanna Jacobs at Matchbox Garden and learned about Dennis Harrison’s natural meats at Dingo Farms.
I led our guests on a question-filled tour of the farm to demonstrate all the extra crop rotations we go through to assure exceptional flavour. Then we provided them with a snack of Rainbow of Tomato slices with Arugula Leaves topped with Monforte Dairy’s spicy aged pecorino sheep cheese. They also quickly finished off a plate of our new season Rainbow of Beets drizzled with deliciously nutty Nature's Way Organics sunflower oil. (With the amazing cold-pressed sunflower oils we can produce right here in Ontario, why import olive oil?) We are pleased to endorse unique ingredients which make our region such an extraordinary place to write about. Working together makes an appealing story!
Our worldly guests tasting Ontario specialties at Cookstown Greens.
Unprecedented Standing Orders mean Sold Out
During Summerlicious (when cheap reigns) we had too much supply and too few sales of the special summer produce we worked so hard to bring you early in the season. What a shame. Produce we guessed wrong at how much you would be wanting are suddenly in short supply. For many items this situation has been worsened by this summer’s extraordinary heat. (High temperatures slow plant growth just as much as cool temperatures.) Another source of the problem is poor quality seeds. This is primarily caused by production shortcuts by the multi-national companies which have been purchasing so many of the world’s smaller seed production houses. The effects of global warming aggravate the poorer quality.
We do honour Standing Orders – many of which were made several months ago. Thank you for the heads-up. In the past when we knew we could only supply standing orders, we took items off the availability list. But just to let everyone be aware we still have some Peas and Tomatoes, we are marking them as SOLD OUT. [If you are desperate for our premium tomatoes, we do seem to have sufficient Rainbow of Tomato 3rds (overripe but preferable for bruchettas, soups, and uncooked salsas). Or you can switch to Rainbow of Cherry Tomatoes.] Thank you for your understanding. Just remember that it is just as stressful for us to say NO as it is for you to hear NO.
New this Week
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