Happy Solstice from ALM Farm!

Best winter wishes and all the best for the new year!

Summer on The Farm

Summer finds us busy on the farm; seeding, weeding, seed collecting, planning, harvesting, watering and watching the days go whizzing by. To find us at this busy time of year, come say "hello" at Sooke Country Market or Moss Street Market in Victoria, both markets run through the season, Saturdays 10-2.

Winter

Early Summer

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There's so much good food coming from our farm with lots of "firsts" coming from the field, squash & their lovely blossoms, potatoes, berries, cukes, shelling peas, tomatoes and beans really soon- enjoy the bounty of early summer. Come see us at Sooke Country Market or Moss Street Market- come out for the Moss Street Paint in this Saturday 10-4

Strawberry Balsamic Jam

• 4 ½ cup crushed berries
• 1 box pectin
• 7 cups sugar
• 3 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• Stir together fruit and pectin
• Bring to a boil over high heat
• Add all the sugar- stir
• Return to a hard boil for 1 minute
• Remove from the heat, stir and skim for 5 minute. Add pepper and balsamic, stir
• Pour into sterilized jars, process or seal with paraffin wax

A Sure Sign

We did it- we've seen winter through to spring.

It's here in all it's flowering, mucky, sunny, hopeful glory. We're busy and happy and only getting busier. We had excellent Seedy Saturdays this year and was happy to see familiar faces, meet new growers and talk about our seed collection. Our workshops are underway, box program holding steady and first Moss Street half market this weekend.

Welcome spring to our little farm.

Not Quite Spring

We had a little weather throwback recently. After retiring for the evening we all awoke to the brightness that filled our rooms from the reflection of fresh snow. Such a beautiful blanket covered the farm, hushed the world a bit and gently reminded us it's not quite spring yet. It was a good chance to finish inside jobs, and be very thankful for the wonderful greenhouses we have. Here's to daylight savings and spring just around the corner.[gallery]

A New Season

Spring is sneaking up on us, day by day we're getting busier as the days are getting longer. It's a great time to ready for the season cleaning tools, amending rhubarb, pruning, starting seeds and spending our weekends at Seedy Saturdays. Some of my favorite tasks have been collecting seaweed and cleaning up areas that we usually don't have time for- it's a great sense of accomplishment and good way for my body to warm up to more and more physical work after a winter of seed work inside.[gallery]

Spring In The Garden

Spring in the Garden   Green is the color of spring.  At ALM we keep our box program going year-round, our customers get a good sense of the movement of the seasons by the food that shows up in their box each week.  Right now the salad and braising greens are growing strong (still mostly over-wintered greens), the brassicacea’s (kale, cabbage, br.sprouts, purple sprouting brocolli, etc) are making florets, which are highly nutritious and can be cooked like broccoli.  The root vegetables are on their way out, they will be starting to raise up flower stalks to make seed, which compromises their flavour.  If you still have over-wintered carrots, parsnips, leeks, etc in the garden it is time to eat them up.  We have been harvesting rhubarb for the last 3 weeks, the first dessert crop of spring. 

It is a busy time at the farm right now.  We have countless tomatoes that we have been babying along since Feb, they are starting to get big and are becoming more demanding in terms of water and nutrition.  We have planted our first tomatoes into whatever ground we had ready in our greenhouses.  This will continue into May as space becomes available.  We also have lots of lettuce, kale, and other seedlings that want transplanting into the ground.  This wet weather has made it difficult to get onto the soil to till and so we are ready and waiting for our window to till and get beds prepped to seed and transplant. 

Now is the time to start thinking about the heat loving crops.  We are choosing and prepping beds for corn, beans, cukes and squash right now.  We will plant them out by early May to get a jump on the season.  Often we get beds prepped and then cover them with old greenhouse plastic to help warm the soil before we plant the crop.  Both beans and corn will not germinate in the soil if it is too cold, but instead rot. 

Seed into trays/pots to transplant: lettuces, chard, kales, brocolli, cauliflower, cabbage, basil, green onions.

Direct seed outside: potatoes, peas, spinach, radish, carrots, beets, runner beans, parsnips.

Everything in blossom

Today we got the movable ready for tomatoes, tilling in aged compost, ashes, lime, alfalfa, phosphate, kelp and potassium.

Marika transplanted beets into the hot house and Jordan direct seeded maxigolt peas.  At the end of the day I took a quick walk around the farm with the camera to try to catch how much is in bloom.

The oriental pear, maples, and sweet cherry trees are beautiful.