No Lily Festival This Year

Why No Lily Festival?

We have always tried to grow our flowers and vegetables in our U-pick without chemicals. It was 5 years that we sprayed our last herbicide in the U-pick Gardens. As a result the perennial weeds were beginning to take over the gardens in the past few years and especially thrived in last years cool wet spring.

To combat the perennial weeds we fallowed a new patch of ground last summer and this spring dug up and moved 90% of our perennial flowers, which included all but one tunnel of lilies a row of iris and 4 rows of monkshood. The lilies that we moved grew very short this year and bloomed much earlier than we had expected.

As a result of all this we just will not have enough lilies to run the festival as we had in the past. There are still many flowers and vegetables to pick in the gardens, so we will still be open for U-pick 7 days a week once we open August 4th. We will have a limited number of lilies, lots of sunflowers & other annuals and perennials for picking. There will also be a great selection of potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, peas and a few summer squash.

Our goal long term goal on the farm is, in 2014, to have Canada's only Certified Organic U-pick Flower, Vegetable, Strawberry Patch & Sunflower + Corn Maze all in one farm. The road to reach this goal has not been easy, but we believe it is important to ensure a sustainable farm for future years to come.

We appreciate your patience and understanding, and believe that we still have a fantastic experience awaiting your family at the farm this year.  After this year of re-building our plants plans are to start the lily festival again next summer.