The potential of an acorn...

What is it about acorns that I find so fascinating?  They are beautiful - intricately designed, sturdy yet delicate, each with their own markings, a compact food source, and, most importantly holding the potential to grow into an enormous oak tree given just the right conditions.  That's almost magical.  So at this time of year we collect acorns on our walks, and have a bowl of them on our table celebrating the harvest, the turn of the season, and the hopes we have for all the potential in a new growing season the next year.  This seems to be what thanksgiving should be about.  Happy harvest season everyone!

Grape Harvest

This year's grapes have proven to be bountiful - both the tiny tangy wild grapes we have growing through a tangle of hops vines on the back porch, and the large sweet dark blue garden grapes that are clinging from the arbour at the back of our main garden.  The heavy pruning seemed to do the trick, offering both light and air circulation to our grape arbours.  I am trying to save most of the grapes for making jelly and juice, but it's next to impossible to walk past the vines without sampling a few of the tantelizing grapes, hoping that maybe this time they will be perfectly ripe.  And any grapes that fall to the ground do not go to waste, as the hens love these fresh sweet treats.

July garden colours

The fruit, berries, and flowers are gorgeous in the garden right now.  Purple bean flowers, red currants, yellow calendula, orange rudbeckia, crimson bee balm...and bees are buzzing everywhere we turn!

Our apples, grapes and fig are all looking full and we are crossing our fingers for a plentiful harvest this year.  We've been learning more about grape pruning (we like the Rodale organic gardener's guide), giving the fruit lots of air and light, and trying to trust our best instincts.  The next projects for this property (besides the regular weeding, mulching, harvesting, drying, preserving frenzy of this season) are the new greywater pond and the living green roof.  Hopefully these are projects that can be completed in August-September (oh, the summer is flying by)!

Biodynamic & permaculture approaches to backyard chicken care

We love our hens...they tap on the back door each morning letting us know they are awake and ready for attention.  We've been trying to give special care during the past weeks, as the weather has been especially cold around here.  We've piled up mounds of clean straw in sunny spots in the yard where they like to hang out on warm days, and yes, we admit we even let them sneak in the house to warm up for a few minutes on occasion.  We try to bring them special food treats each day, like sprouts or carrot peelings, oats soaked in warm water, and extra grains and seeds, but it's certainly not the naturally healthful diet they get when foraging in the yard for bugs, greens and grass in the warmer months.  A friend mentioned she sprouted oats for her hens in winter, which seemed like a simple yet effective thing to do.  I am currently researching biodynamic chicken care, and in general biodynamic principles that can be applied to the small farm/urban farm and garden.  I found some useful articles about chickens here, and the site Backyard Biodynamics looks promising (but the part I really wanted to learn about was just in point form as it's the outline for a sustainable gardening course they are leading - in Australia!), as well as the Small Farm Permaculture & Sustainable Living website.  This page, Pasture Restoration of Heirloom Chickens looks really great, on the Permaculture Institute (New Mexico) site.  They offer ideas such as introducing perennial woody plantings, poultry forage and groundcovers like chicory, various brassicas (radishes, mustards), comfrey, alfalfa, vetches and clovers in the pastures where the hens roam.  The plant list for the permaculture approach to chicken pasturing also includes Nanking cherry, sand cherry, siberian pea shrub, day lilies, apples, plums, raspberries, mulberries, sea buckthorn, apricot, and comfrey.  On a small scale property at least some of these plants could be included in the layout, offering forage food for free roaming hens...ah, planning for the new season ahead.

Speaking of permaculture plants like these, a friend just loaned me her catalogue from Windmill Point Farm, an organic permaculture farm in Quebec (near Montreal) that also operates Green Barn Nursery that we've mentioned on this blog before.  They offer a staggering list of berries, fruits, nut trees and other permaculture varieties that grow hardy in our zone - incredible - and I wanted to order one of everything!  Check out this website if you are thinking of adding a forest garden or any permaculture plants to your yard.

Neighourhood fruit gleaning

This week we have been processing apples and pears, gleaned from the backyards of neighbours.  The pears arrived on our doorstep without us even needing to search for them!  Already picked, perfectly ripened, they were grown in the yard of a 70+ year old neighbour who has been pruning and tending his pear trees for decades.  He preferred to pick them himself, but needed to find homes for them to be used. We were more than happy to welcome the bushel into our home, in exchange for freshly baked bread and the promise to bring him a taste of something we make with the pears.  Seemed more than fair to us!  There are many urban fruit tree gleaning/harvesting projects across North America, some of which we've written about before.  These are wonderful ways to use up the bountiful often abandoned fruits that are available throughout our cities.  Check out: 
Not Far From the Tree (Toronto, ON)
Life Cycles Fruit Tree Project (Victoria, BC)
Portland Fruit Tree Project (Portland, OR)
Community Fruit Tree Project (Berkeley, CA)

Our fruitful fig

Some of you reading here will remember the purchase we made last spring (2009) of a Chicago Hardy Fig.  We bought this tiny seedling from Richters Herbs, and were told we were guarunteed to see it bearing fruit by the second season.  True to their word, this summer our fig has been sprouting numerous fruits, and this past week the first ones finally ripened to a deep gorgeous purple skin, and were soft and sweet enough to eat!  I've never had a fresh fig before, given that they are not a common tree in these parts of North America.  Dried figs are already a delicacy in my books, but fresh ones are a whole other story!  Granted, we didn't have enough to make fig jam or preserves for the winter, but we have savoured every little bite.  Hopefully our fig will survive another winter, buried under mounds of straw in our greenhouse, and we'll see another crop of fresh beautiful figs next season.

Lovely fig tree

Our Chicago Hardy Fig is bearing fruit!  We can't believe the gorgeous figs sprouting all over the little lovely tree, and hopefully, if the squirrels don't discover them, we'll be enjoying fresh figs in a few weeks!  This was the tree we bought as a wee seedling from Richters Herbs last spring (it's now about 4 feet tall).

* Note about the fig tree - we wrote about this tree last year and talked about how to care for it during the winter months.  To recap, these trees are not winter hardy outdoors - they lose all they leaves in the fall and need to be brought indoors, in our case into the greenhouse, and covered with a thick layer of straw mulch until spring.  

Greenhouse back in action

We posted a request for a power washer a few weeks ago on this blog, and were incredibly grateful to one of our local readers for loaning us one - in exchange for some chickenkeeping advice, and fresh eggs from our hens! What a deal! The greenhouse panels, as well as the interior of the chicken coop, have been given a thorough spring cleaning, and are hospitable again. We can actually get maximum solar gain in the greenhouse again, just in time for seedling season.

It seems like all my seedling photos recently have been basil, but we are certainly growing a lot of basil, amidst everything else! I transplanted 50 basil today and they are having their first night out in the greenhouse, hopefully not in too much shock. It is actually quite warm in there, and the heat of the sunny mid-day (over 35C if the door does not get opened) will probably be worse for the basil at first then the cold evenings. We have two solar-powered fans that run when the sun is out, and help to ventilate the greenhouse a little. Greg likes the synergy of this arrangement - they are small RV fans, hooked directly to the solar panel on our southern exposure barn roof - when the greenhouse is hottest and needs air movement, they will surely be running. Very efficient and convenient.

Here's also a photo of our Chicago Hardy Fig, which is indeed proving to be hardy as it's over-wintered the first year in the greenhouse having been buried in a mound of straw. We've unearthed it, and it's sprouting many new shoots and leaves. We were told we would have our first harvest of figs this second year, and we are eagerly awaiting to see if this will really be the case! Our hazelnut tree, and the pear tree that was damaged last year (by a falling branch), are making amazing comebacks - both in full leaf already. We noticed one of our apple trees is not doing well, no leaves or buds at all, and it may have gotten a blight last year (I remember the leaves withering and falling off, just after apple season but too early for regular fall season). We were planning to plant a few more fruit trees this year anyway, but may have to look at replacing this one too. Sadly, this apple was actually already bearing nice fruit for a few years - it's about seven years old. There's so much more to learn about fruit trees.

Then there is the wild fruit harvest, which we are anticipating again this year. What a joy to discover forgotten gems of berry bushes, abandoned fruit trees, and wild greens all across the city (many in our own neighbourhood). Nettles are ready for harvest, as are dandelion greens of course. Wild leeks have almost come and gone, and soon it's time for other wonderful wild foods like mulberries...

100-Mile Desserts: Mixed Berry Pie

I recently did some catering for a friend who was having all her grad students over for a start of term barbecue. The menu was local and seasonal, and featured locally made tamales, fresh corn on the cob, sangria with local fruit, and I added in dolmades made with wild grape leaves, a colourful heirloom tomato, basil & mozzarella salad, a roasted red pepper feta dip, and homemade aioli with seasonal vegetable platter.

For dessert the host had requested fruit tarts, which included rhubarb-raspberry, blueberry and cherry, and were served with whipped cream, edible flowers and mint sprigs. I made this fruit pie for our household with the leftover fruit mixture - this was our 100-mile dessert for the weekend!

Bloodroot blossoms end, red trilliums open, fruit trees, berries, rain & rubber boots...

We've been making the most of our woodland (shady) areas of the yard - of which we have quite a bit. It's the perfect habitat for native plants, woodland flowers (we are so fortunate to have the red trillium and bloodroot grace us as a harbinger of spring each year), wild rose, wild leeks, wild ginger, trout lilies, day lilies, and our shiitake mushroom logs - and we learn a little more about woodland gardening each year. Mainly it takes care of itself, as nature does.

Planted out the willow, red dogwood, and forsythia which I've been rooting in jars of water in our house. I hope these plants will take to the soil, and have visions of slowly establishing a small tree nursery here in future (still have a large jar of acorns, walnuts, hazelnuts and heartnuts in our fridge). I've ordered a Chicago Fig tree from Richters, which should be arriving any week, and this will be added to our growing nut/fruit orchard dispersed throughout our property - the pears, plum, apples, and cherries are all blossoming now, and the hazelnut is budding, small though it still is. I love the idea of leaving this property filled with food sources for future owners. We also have the red & black currents, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, strawberries (more Alpine strawberries coming shortly for the front yard), and I'm looking for a good source of elderberries.