Prepping the Soil

 

 Once we had Ken rip up the ground with his tractor, we saw the sorry state that the soil was in. It was such dense clay that shovels were no match. Despite the great nutrient content it had, we knew we needed a better growing medium for the delicate roots of our seedlings.

Highline Mushrooms came upon the scene with an enormous compost donation, and our team of volunteers set to work spreading out the compost by hand across the first field. We took everything step by step, trying not to look at the entire enormous field but just at the task at hand. First first, field row: Let's do this.

The field looked awesome. We were finally ready to plant. I don't think we had anticipated that the most challenging aspect was going to be preparing the soil, but that it certainly was.

Once again, we set out with our rototiller and shovels and this time the soil turned over almost weightlessly. In went the flowers and herbs in the first few rows, then peppers, kale, and bok choy, among countless others.  It was finally starting to look like a garden.

Improper storage of the water barrel (whoops)

Proper water barrel storage. (Thanks for the repairs John!)

Young basil

Lyndon working on hand-planting the first 2 rows

Seedlings

Awaken, Little Leafies!

 

I've always loved the process of watching a seed sprout. From the childhood wonderment at that first kindergarden bean plant, it seemed like magic to make a plant sprout from virtually nothing.

The act of propagation is to become a mother.
Until you make that conscious decision,
the seed is just potential.
---
You have many needy little children now.
Beans, tomatoes, eggplant, cauliflower, chamomile, cucumber.
I'll sustain them so that they can sustain me.

Standing in the endless field that is one entire acre, I realized how dauntingly few plants I was actually able to propagate. Beloved though they are, my little plant babies were hardly enough to fill 1 of the 4 plots.

That's when the Allie Sunshine Project appeared (http://www.thealliesunshineproject.com/#!blog/ncj4i).

The Allie Sunshine Project is in memory of a woman I never had the pleasure of meeting. Her vibrancy and love I have only heard about through the people she left behind. I can tell from the legacy that Lynn and Dan and Jeremy Hayes have built in her name that she must have been a really wonderful person. They provided Our First Acre with a huge, incredible donation of seedlings. We have planted 2 full rows in our first plot already and we've hardly put a dent in the donation! Thank you all so much.

Plow Progress

Toward the end of May we got to plowin'.

Here's some plow progress.

There's something really satisfying about seeing that grass all chewed up. Just brimming with potential!!

The Community Garden of Hope

Unbeknownst to me, at the same time that I was diving in head-first into this realm of sustainable agriculture, a person named Troy Maleyko started looking for a farmer.

Troy Maleyko and Angela Demarse standing around while Ken Ryles drives the tractor

Troy belongs to the congregation at St Andrew's Church in Lakeshore. He attended a meeting of the Essex County Community Garden Collective, and that's where Lyndon and I first met him. Troy and his wife Neviana run a restaurant in Windsor called Carrots N' Dates (http://carrotsndates.com/) which is this excellent health-food restaurant right next door to Walkerville Brewery (your night is pretty much planned for you).

As restaurateurs and health food advocates, farm-fresh local food is what they're all about.
As an unsolicited piece of advice, their pad thai is ridiculously tasty.

Upon meeting, the three of us were brimming with excitement about what could come from our collaboration over the coming season. Being in a room full of successful community garden leaders, it seemed like this would be a great place to put on our boots and learn what it's like to farm first hand.

Ken Ryles, gettin' riled up on his tractor.

For years, the hardworking people from the St. Andrews Church have been donating their time, and subsequently the tonnes of food they've grown on their acre of land. It's powerful to just imagine how many families they've probably impacted by now.

Lyndon and I set about meeting some of these more experienced people who had been donating their time to this land. Among them was Ken Ryles, who has been plowing the land almost ceaselessly since we told him we were initiating the farm project this year. We came to learn that Ken is a tractor enthusiast, who has spent time buying and selling collector's tractors, as well as competing in local tractor pulls! He has even left one at the farm for us to use at the church property. If you're reading this, Ken, you're an incredible person and we're lucky to have you around.

That satisfaction that comes from tearing up the ground.

Learnin' time

Steve Green could've just introduced me to Lesley and left it there. But he didn't. He awarded Lyndon and myself with a scholarship into the FarmStart workshop, (http://www.farmstart.ca/) run by an organization whose mandate is to help people (like Lyndon and I) who are completely foreign to farming get their foot in the door. They taught us about the challenges of farming, the importance of keeping your pillars and morals intact, recognizing your weaknesses and strengths, the best ways to gain practical experience, working out financials, the importance of marketing, and so much other great stuff. I feel like I really wrapped my head around the immensity of the project I had taken on, and I was more excited than ever to get started. The people I met there were equally as inspiring.

After that, we found ourselves at the Guelph Organic Conference. We attended lectures about worm compost (worms take your garbage and turn it into fertile soil), compost tea (take those worm droppings and propagate the good microbes in it, and pour that on your plants), biodynamic agriculture (having a flow of energy move throughout your farm to minimize external inputs, as far as I've understood it anyway), fruit tree care, greenhouse selection, and honey beekeeping. There's just so much fascinating stuff to learn about.

Steve also lent me Eliot Coleman's "The New Organic Grower", which I promptly started reading as though I were about to write a final exam. I would also highly recommend binge-watching his nostalgia-inducing 90's TV series "Gardening Naturally" if you can find some time.

Can't even start to explain how much I appreciate everything I've learned in the last few months.

Our First Acre

Our First Acre

The Community Garden of Hope

I didn't grow up on a farm. To my advantage, I admit, I grew up in an area where cars share the road with tractors, where little wooden structures line the road boasting modest harvests of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers; a place where corn and bean fields were a common location of mischievous teenage "bush-parties". For a large part of my life, this was the extent of my interaction with the world of agriculture.

I went to school for biology, wanting to learn about different plants and living organisms that decorate this planet. One of the major lessons I learned was the dire state of conservation due to cultural attitudes toward nature. Nature is viewed as a resource, rather than the source of all things. I knew that whatever I decided to do with my life, it would have to involve preserving some part of a traditional life that works in accordance with nature and in close contact with it. The hope is to gain a greater understanding of how the world works.

Over time I came to an overwhelming realization that traditional mass-production agriculture wasn't living up to my expectations.

Food, managed like a commodity on assembly line, necessitated harsh chemicals without question or thought of how this could impact the invisible web of life including the microbes on the plant, the consumers, or the natural environment. This attitude plays out logically from a system that promotes material wealth at all costs. 

We can all do better as citizens of this planet.

We can make conscious choices of what we eat. We can take greater responsibility for finding a trustworthy farmer and supporting them, or by transforming your lawn into a food garden.

Community

Diving Into Windsor's Organic Community

Steve Green, coordinator for the Downtown Windsor Farmer's Market
(http://downtownwindsorfarmersmarket.blogspot.ca/)
Photo Credit: Metro News

I came to the sudden realization that I had been suppressing my desire to be a farmer. When I decided to start communicating to people my dream of becoming a farmer, I was received with concern and sympathy. It seems like there's this cultural attitude depicting farming as the last possible resort lifestyle, as if the people doing it today only do it because they have no other choice. Maybe the amount of work involved is more than any of us are up to in modern Western society. If this is the attitude we perpetuate toward agriculture, we are going to lose touch with the very thing that is responsible for the formation of communities in early human civilization.

Lesley Labbe, operator of Our Farm Organics
(http://ourfarmorganicsontario.com/)
Photo credit: Windsor Star

Shortly following this revelation, I contacted the Downtown Windsor Farmer's Market coordinator, Steve Green. He sat and listened knowingly while I poured my heart out about my concerns for the overuse of pesticides, the loss of small-scale local agriculture, and the calling of a rural life. Immediately, he set to work setting me up with organic farmers in the area, one of which was Lesley Labbe. Although I never got the chance to work on her farm, seeing the lineups at her vegetable stand was all the evidence I needed that there was real demand (even in Windsor!) for locally grown organics. She's since given me invaluable guidance and moral support. It's encouraging for me to see another woman taking charge of such a successful organic farming business.





These people are just one part of a growing community in Windsor-Essex, a community I'm just now becoming aware of. I'm rediscovering this city, and people like these two have given me hope that I don't have to move to the coast to find these attitudes and world views that I find so refreshing.