Winter is Closing In...

For the first time EVER, we are going to sell vegetables throughout the winter, both at a farmers market and with CSA vegetable Share Deliveries. We have about 5 tones of veggies in the shed, which should be enough for about 100 Families in our CSA program and 8 weeks of markets, hopefully we still have product in February.  For more information on our CSA or markets check out our website. www.eaglecreekfarms.ca


As usual there are plenty of projects lined up for the winter months.  First is to take down our old greenhouse.  It was a great temporary solution to serve our greenhouse needs over the past 2 years, but we now need a to step up.  Plans are to build it off the North side of our chicken coop.  We will install a better ventilation system along with an enhanced heating system.  A set of solar thermal panels have been in a shed unused for the past couple years, but will soon be placed on the roof of the chicken coop.  Between utilizing Passive Solar heat retention in the greenhouse, we will be able to warm water with the stove & solar thermal panels that can be used to heat the building at night.  If all goes to plan we should be able to start germinating plants in February, then take our last harvest the end of November...

I took a stroll through the Christmas Trees this past week. Next summer it will be time to learn how to prune a christmas tree, some of the trees in our first planting are nearly 2 feet tall.   It has taken them 3 years to get to this point, so I don't expect any will be ready for cutting for another until 2016 at the earliest.  Each year we are planting more trees, so once we do open, I am hoping for a fairly consistent supply of christmas trees every year.

Octover Events

Summer has come to an end, although this past weekend of 30 degree weather made us think otherwise...  But it has, however, that doesn't mean it is the end of the season here at the farm.  October is a great time to visit the farm in Fall Harvest Fashion.  Our U-pick will be closing this week, however, we will have a great selection of vegetables in our farm store.

Pumpkin Festival - Weekends in October 


Until the 16th of October we will be hosting our fall harvest activities.  Of course the highlight is always our corn and sunflower maze.  Without a hard frost the corn is still green and the sunflowers have just finished their bloom.  Sunflowers are great this time of year because you can snack on the seeds as you navigate the maze.In addition to the mazes your families can enjoy wagon rides, our farm animals and face painting.  Don't forget we will have tones of pumpkins for you.

Harvesttime Country Drive www.countrydrive.ca

Also this coming weekend 7 Country Drive operations will be open for our fall Showcase weekend.  The  Country Drive is a collection of over 25 rural operations who open their doors to the public through out the year.  The harvest drive will showcase fall farm activities & harvest along with shopping at our unique rural stores.  The Drive runs from 11-5 October 1st & 2nd.

We look forward to seeing you all out this fall.

Preparing for winter

We have had our first couple frosts on the farm, which calls the end for many veggies, but not everything.  Now before the snow starts falling it is now time to get a few things in the freezer.  Last night we blanched and froze a bunch of swiss chard.  Really easy, we boiled the chard for
1-2 min, then cooled it freezing water for 5min.  We then froze it in round picks to be used over the next few months... Plans are to use it in soups, meat loafs and what ever else we may have traditionally used frozen spinach.

Straw Bale Chicken Coop, Day 1 & 2

 We have been planning to build a chicken coop all summer.  Well actually the initial plan was to have it started in June, but as long as we can get it up before the cold fall weather sets in we will be alright.

The coop is situated on an existing concrete pad, so we had to create a level foundation to set the bales on.  I think we started about 3 weeks ago with the foundation, creating the windows, rafters and top plate.  

Saturday morning we set in place the first bales.  Surprisingly for a straw bale building, there is very little straw bale work to do.  The bales go up just like legos, only a little heavier.

By 6:00 all the bales, windows and top plate were in place, one of the walls was braced and the tarps went up..


All was great until sunday afternoon when the winds picked up and blew over the north facing unsupported wall..   Fortunately no people or chickens were inside at the time.  Also the north wall was the most basic, no windows or doors, so it only took us 2 hours to but back up..

Wind Storm

Last night we had some pretty crazy weather on the farm.  After the storm had cleared I knew there would be some damage, but I had no idea what was in store until I went on a tour of the farm. The corner of our machinery shed was ripped off and tossed 500 m to the west.  This shed has withstood storms for the past 40 years, so last nights winds were far above normal.

These next pictures are of our plastic and fabric hoop houses that we use to cover broccoli, Cauliflower, Peppers, Basil, Tomatoes & lilies.  The wind bent the hoops right to the ground on one tunnel and tore the plastic clean off 4 more. 

It took the better part of a day to clean up all the plastic, cut up a number of trees which fell down.  Now we are left with re-building all the structures  before hail comes and ruins all the delicate plants. 

I would like to thank our neighbours Doug and Elna Edgar for coming over with a crew to help with the clean up.  Their farm which is only 2 miles away was spared from any damage.

Greenhouse Extension

For 3 weeks now we have desperately needed a more room in our greenhouse. The original 25x25ft of growing space was excellent to start the season off through the cool nights, however, we have hundreds of tomatoes outgrowing their 4" pots and even more pepper plants needing potting up. So a couple weeks later that we would have liked it was time to build an additional 30ftx30ft of growing space. To make this happen on a small budget we decided to build the greenhouse from scratch.

Earlier this week was spent preparing all the metal. The hoops of the house are comprised of 2 - 20ft lengths of pipe welded together, which are bent and drilled. To bend the hoops we set up a jig on one of our flat deck trailers. The jig is made of 2x4's screwed into the deck creating an arc that will give the metal an arc as we pull around the 2x4's.

Next we stood all the hoops upright and screwed them together, starting at the end of our existing greenhouse. Plans are to cut the wall out between the two sections when we start potting up all the plants this week, so you can walk right through both structures. The new sections is 5 ft taller than the previous which will allow more height for the tomatoes vines in the summer.

To attache the plastic to the metal hoops we use wiggle wire & wiggle wire strips.. It is a pretty cool system that will secures the plastic firmly to the metal, yet allows us to take the plastic off with ease at a later date if needed.

All in all creating the structure was quite easy. It took half a day to prepare the metal, half a day to bolt everything together. Next all we needed was a calm day to put up the plastic. If you can picture the plastic, it is a 40ftx60ft kite under the right conditions. Because of this there is generally one rule and only one rule to putting up greenhouse plastic. Never Put Up Greenhouse Plastic In The Wind. As it happened the day we wanted to put up the plastic was a bit breezy, much stronger wind than I would have liked. But with so many plants needing more room we gathered a good crew and took our chances. We were able to pull the plastic over in 15 minutes and get it secured before the wind blew it into the trees.

So the home made extension seems to be a success. The only issue now will be heating the new structure. Our wood stove was only just able to keep the smaller space warm on some of our cool spring nights. The goal is to heat the greenhouse without natural gas which will pose some challenges. Plans are to implement a number of passive solar techniques to capture heat during the day to be released throughout the night. Once we get everything set up I will take some more pics.

Potatoes, Plants & Chickens

Work is really starting to pick up on the farm now. There is still tones of snow on the ground, which means we are busy in the sheds packing seed potatoes, in the greenhouse starting thousands of seedlings and in the chicken coop with our first batch of chicks.

I know I have talked about our potatoes before, they happen to be one of my favorite vegetables. Also we grow quite a few, over 30 varieties and this year nearly 30 acres. We package our potatoes in small to large bags and ship them across the country to home gardeners, market gardeners and garden centres. You can find our catalogue online at seedpotatoes.ca

This is our second year on the farm with a greenhouse and the second year growing tones of vegetables. Right now it is packed full of tomatoes, peppers, onions, herbs & a few flowers. Last week we brought in a bunch of metal for an expansion. Due to the increased interest in our CSA Community Shared Agriculture vegetable delivery program we need to double the growing room. Unfortunately we ran out of room last week so the expansion is needed in a bad way.

The newest project on the farm this year is our Chickens. I have been raising a dozen laying hens for the past couple years to lay eggs for my family and a few friends. But this year we have decided to take it to the next level and bring on a total of 299 laying hens so that we can sell eggs through our CSA Shares on farm and at farmers markets.

Just this past week we received our first 35 chicks and so far they are doing fantastic. Before the summer is over we will have to build a new chicken coop to house them throughout the cold winter months. Plans are to build a coop out of straw bales. I will post pictures when we start building and will also be looking for help in the process if anyone is interested.

You can find out more about our CSA Vegetable Delivery Program on our website at eaglecreekfarms.ca