farming
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Our First Cover Crop: Update
It’s been about 5 weeks since we seeded our first cover crop. The initial post is here, if you want to review our installation. We got the rain overnight following the seeding, and the cover crop germinated. Here’s a before/after: It’s pretty exciting to go through this process for the first time and have such Continue reading
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Lettuce Protector
One of the things I love most about our no-till permanent beds is the abundance of life that is embedded in the field. While harvesting lettuce this week, baby Gray Treefrogs were jumping from Romaine to Romaine. I was lucky enough to get a really amazing photo at about 7:30AM. These little Lettuce Protectors and Continue reading
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Under The Canopy
This week I was able to get away from farming for two days and went camping in Nopiming Provincial Park. The heat had finally arrived and after going non-stop since the end of April, with the cool season we’ve had the heat hit hard and fast. There’s no point to getting heat exhaustion this early Continue reading
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Why Are New Generations Leaving Farming?
This morning I was asked to be on local CBC Radio One to speak about the higher than average rainfall and how it affects vegetable growers. At the end of the brief interview, I was asked by the broadcaster why I wanted to farm, despite the broad trend of young people leaving the farm behind. Continue reading
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Our First Cover Crop
Today was the day we installed our first-ever cover crop. We’ve been talking about it for years but today was the day. It is likely to rain soon, and as such we were able to prepare an unused field for seeding. After numerous seasons of drought (and as farmers who largely farm without irrigation ), Continue reading
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Why don’t we want to be close to where our food is grown?
Agriculture and innovation have always gone hand in hand. Indigenous American Three Sisters methods with corn, squash and beans. Incan terraces and potato cultivation. Anishinaabe food forests. Many people not only don’t grow their own food, but food comes exclusively from the store. Land is a prospective real estate development, not for farming. And farms Continue reading
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Journal Your Garden
For four years (going on five) I have been intensely journalling all the things on the farm. This is invaluable to all farmers, but also to hobby gardeners, backyard gardeners or plant nerds in general. It is useful for many reasons…but most useful is that in my pocket field journal, it is full of emotional Continue reading
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Lots of Ground to Cover
This season will be our first year implementing and experimenting with the use of cover crops. We aren’t really sure what to expect or how they will work with our system, but there’s only one way to find out. The idea behind cover crops is simple enough: farmers go to great lengths to maintain empty Continue reading
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Underwater Photosynthesis
In underwater plants observed in a planted aquarium, it is possible to see oxygen pooling on the leaves and releasing a mosaic of bubbles into the water column. Even underwater, we can literally see that plants use light to drive the splitting of Carbon from Oxygen, and even underwater, plants harness microbial communities to survive Continue reading
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4th Time Is a Charm: Growing Parsnips
Once upon a time I had a grand idea to grow Parnsips in a no-dig system. The first attempt I used some old seeds lying around, and none came up. I would learn later that to get good Parsnip germination you need fresh seeds. The second attempt I succeeded at germination, however our hard, thick Continue reading
About Graham
Graham is an ecologist-farmer from Canada working on educating about the wonders and beauty of the natural world, and how we can design biodiverse food production systems.
Complimentary Blueberry Juice 