CSA 2020

Photo from facebook.com/RootsDownFarm/

When we lived in Toronto, we were a part of Plan B Organic Farms CSA, and loved it so much we ended up hosting a pickup spot on our porch. It was heartbreaking to give that up, but we have more space to garden here, which is great. I am no green-thumb, although each year I add a little more to the garden (last year it was kale, arugula, chard, and broccoli, and a failed attempt at cauliflower, the year before it was onions and peppers, and the year before we started with all of the tomatoes and herbs, and the rhubarb that came with the place).

However, we don’t grow enough to sustain us, so when my neighbour asked me earlier this year if we wanted to split a CSA the year, we went for it. Why? I’m sure I’ve talked about it before, but I like that the money is going directly to the farmer, that you are paying them in advance so they can buy seeds and pay bills when there is generally no/little income from farming, it forced us out of our comfort zone and made us try many new things, and you just can’t beat fresh food.

My neighbour has never done a CSA before, and if you’ve never done it, but you’re going to give it a try (and I highly recommend it), it takes a little getting used to. Last night I went looking for some resources. So, this is really just a note to say that I updated the CSA Online Resources page. Check it out.

Also, I can’t do a post right now without mentioning “these weird times” so I just want to say I love two things about this situation we are in:

1. People seem to be gardening. With an extra 1-3 hours every day due to the fact that there’s no commute, we have more time on our hands. Also, if you’re like us, your income has dropped, and you are using the garden as a cheap food option. Our friends and neighbours at Topsy Farms are encouraging people to build a “Victory Garden” as we did during the wars and posting tips on gardening and foraging on their social media and youtube.
2. People are getting creative about doing business, including farmers. The local farmers market in Kingston had to close due to Covid-19, but they quickly set up online ordering and contactless pickup instead. They open it up Tues-Thu and you pick up on Sunday. Amazing! Check it out: https://www.memorialcentrefarmersmarket.ca/online/

30 x 30 Nature Challenge

It’s that time of year again! And I felt so great last year at the end of May that I signed up to do the 30×30 Nature Challenge from the David Suzuki Foundation once again.

Day 1 (Thursday, May 1): We met up with 2 other families just after lunch down at the Ashbridges Bay Skate Park. I had a great time taking photos of our kids and of the older guys skating, like this one:

Doing #30x30Challenge again as it was great last yr. Day1 down at Ashbridges Bay skate park! http://t.co/dZRQx5O5kj pic.twitter.com/uJlQ9AD1sL

— Lynn W (@greenmeup) May 1, 2014

There’s more at http://lynnslids.com/skate/ – I posted them just in case the guys I talked to wanted to take a look. They were pretty sick out there, and a total joy to watch.

Day 2: I had some errands to run, to which I took the bus and subway, but on my way home instead of hopping right back on the TTC, despite the light rain, I decided to take an hour’s walk through the neighbourhood I was in, including Kensington Market, which is always fun. I spotted the well organized gardening neighbours taking advantage of the free compost pile:

Day 3: Not much outside time, but the required 30 minutes walking around the ‘hood with the family doing errands and shopping local. A quick note on that: we went to the new Pantry, which is a cheese shop in our hood and they have the most amazing Canadian cheeses. I highly recommend it if you’re in for a cow/sheep/goat treat. They also sell other local treats like Kozlik’s mustards, local soup mixes and other great stuff.

Day 4: Today we made up for lost time. I meant to get outside for my morning physiotherapy routine, but I never got to it, so late morning I hung the laundry out on the line and we decided to have brunch out on the deck (first time this year!) and didn’t go back in until around 4:45pm. It was excellent. Reading, playing, gardening, working on my other blog and my feedback page, all outside. And we needed this day. All of us. It was perfect.

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Happy Earth Day!

Just a quick post to pass on a few things on this lovely Earth Day.

I started my day on public transit, and later saw this on Facebook. It’s a good point:

Post by Conscious Consumers.

Later I went for a bike ride with my youngest (he’s moved up to gears and hand brakes, which is exciting for him!) and saw the newest local community garden, with folks in it prepping for growing season!

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Last year, as you may know, I partook in the David Suzuki Foundation 30×30 nature challenge. They are on it again this year! Check it out. I highly recommend being a part of it. It made me feel spectacular. It’s geared for Canadians, but really, just join. Their daily tips are great and you will feel so much better for it!

As much of my life revolves around Etsy these days, I thought I’d pass on their Earth Day workplace initiative:

http://blog.etsy.com/news/2014/etsy-cup-exchange-for-earth-day/

Cup exchange at Etsy HQ

Happy Earth Day, folks!

Edible Neighbourhood

I went for an early morning walk one day last month and noticed a plum tree around the corner. Then I saw an apple tree across the road. I remembered my neighbour’s crabapple tree. So I decided to make it a walk in search of front garden foods. Here’s what I found in various front yards within a block of my house:

apples

tomatoes

strawberries (these are ours!)

plums

mulberries

mint

our herb garden!

grapes

echinacea

cranberries

(unripe) blackberries

… And crabapples (the photo didn’t turn out). It’s an amazing edible neighbourhood we have around us, and I never noticed it! Thanks to Not Far From The Tree for helping open my eyes to it!

My new favourite TED talk

… is by Ron Finley from South Central LA. Give Ron 10 minutes of your time:

More harvesting, wildlife, and car donation

So the strawberries were so good that we went back a week later and got another 8 litres. I made freezer jam (“spread”) since I’m not sure it had enough sweetness (I just used apple juice) for canning.

My eldest and I have also been on 2 more Not Far From The Tree (NFFTT) picks. They were both sour cherry picks: one in the pouring rain (which makes tree climbing difficult) and they were so good that we signed up for another one yesterday (mostly because it was around the corner from our house).

Sour Cherries – picked with Not Far From The Tree

We did a little foraging in the city last week as well. We dropped by the nearby civic centre and gathered a bunch of serviceberries (also known as Saskatoon berries, among other things), which were yummy.

Serviceberries at the civic centre

My own garden is coming along. We have gooseberries this year! And I know now that they are ripe because we had to come and get a ladder for the NFFTT pick around the corner and Dan, the very knowledgeable guy helping me carry the ladder, was telling me about gooseberries so I had him try one and he said they were ripe! And there are some raspberries coming along as well. The squirrels aren’t interested in the gooseberries (hurrah!) and hopefully we will get to the raspberries before they do. We have also had a few strawberries from our Alpine Strawberry plant which are unique and delicious.

Ripe gooseberries in the backyard

Not yet ripe raspberries in the backyard

We’ve had a lot of rain this year so everything is growing well, and if it goes a few days without rain, the rain barrel (with water from the eaves troughs) is always full so I can water them with recycled water. I also read that tomatoes like acid and a good way to use up whey (we drain our homemade yogurt and make it Greek style) is to dilute it with some water and water your tomatoes with it. My cherry tomato plants seem to like it.

On Saturday we went out for a family walk out at the Scarborough Bluffs and saw lots of birds, some people fishing for large mouth bass, turtles, but the big sighting was an otter! It was too quick for me to get a good shot, but I did catch it:

Otter spotting in Lake Ontario at Bluffers Park!

We also stopped by the beach and took a quick look at the American Toad tadpoles which still have their tails but most now have legs! (If you recall, we saw the toads mating nearly 2 months ago).

Nearly 2 month old American Toad tadpoles at Bluffers beach

Today we went for a walk at Highland Creek and saw several mulberry trees, which I never would have recognized if we hadn’t gone on that mulberry pick with NFFTT. Yet another reason to love our experiences with that great organization. Later in the walk we saw people on the side collecting leaves from vines. Bags full of leaves. Since they were vines, and since I went on a NFFTT pick last year that was grapes, I guessed that they were grapes, and confirmed it by asking them when we passed them on the way back. It was good to see other foragers out in the green spaces of the city. Somebody’s having dolmades soon!

grape leaves wild in the city

And, last but certainly not least, we have gotten rid of our old gas guzzler. We used it about once a week, and it turns out that’s actually not great because stuff gets caked underneath and sits there. It was rusting out from the bottom. So although it only had 150,000 km/93,200 miles on it, that 16 year old car was barely keeping together. Things were falling off the bottom.

We weren’t sure what to do with it, but my husband (how awesome is he?) found an organization that takes your car and either auctions it off or sells off the parts and gives the money to the charity of your choice. We have chosen Rethink Breast Cancer, who have been a great help during my treatment and recovery from breast cancer. The organization is charitycar.ca (they are also in the US). It was picked up on Saturday:

First berries of the season

I love June! We’ve already had one rhubarb harvest from our back yard patch, which we made into a rhubarb and apple crumble. I may post that recipe on the food blog at some point, but I forgot to take a photo.

Yesterday we drove up to Markham with friends and picked strawberries at Organics Family Farm.  It was the perfect sunny morning for it, and we got about 8 litres (2 large baskets) of strawberries (my 8 year old picked one large basket himself!). They were delicious.

Afterwards we went to a friend’s place  nearby and had a picnic on their front lawn and said hello to the lambs, chickens, and the rabbit. We were alerted to the fact that there was a wild strawberry patch in the corner of the lawn, and even with the huge cultivated strawberries in the car we couldn’t resist the call of the wild ones. They are teeny tiny but they are so much more complex and flavourful. Wow.

When we got home later I made a batch of preserves  (1 kg of strawberries/5 cups), flash froze another kilo, and couldn’t resist dipping a few in chocolate as well. This morning it was a delicious strawberry nut shake for me and later pancakes and strawberry sauce for brunch. I have one more batch (1 kg) of preserves to make, but it was a busy day so I didn’t get to it today.

In my inbox when I got home yesterday was an email from Not Far From The Tree (NFFTT) about a mulberry pick this afternoon. (Note: for more on NFFTT, read the other posts I’ve written on them.) And I managed to get in on the pick! Of course I replied before I looked into the weather, which I was later informed by the coordinator was calling for rain, but I figured I’d get out there and go for it anyone, dragging along one of my children.

This afternoon came and sure enough, the sky was dark as the time drew near. I would usually ride or take transit, but I bailed and drove (did I tell you we replaced the gas guzzler with a super efficient and much smaller car?) with my eldest to the pick. We were there 10 minutes early and just as I was pulling into the parking space it started absolutely pouring. But it let up a bit in the 10 minutes. It was still raining but everyone showed up (that’s rare) and we decided to go for it despite the rain.

So it turns out that mulberry picking is done easiest by spreading a tarp out and shaking the tree. How fun is that?! We picked nearly 13 pounds of mulberries and barely made a dent as there are a ton of berries on there that are not yet ripe. They also have a cherry tree so they figure NFFTT will be back in a week or so to do the cherries and the rest of the mulberries.

I’ve never eaten mulberries. They are interesting, and look and even taste a bit like a blackberry. Or maybe blackcurrant. Because every time I ate one I thought of cassis.

They are delicate and don’t last long, so I made them into a crumble this evening (vaguely based on this recipe), but not in time to eat tonight (besides, we had the delicious chocolate covered strawberries to eat!). It will be delicious for tomorrow, I’m sure.

Have I mentioned this year how much I love NFFTT? What a great little community organization. The supreme gleaner (leading the pick) was a mulberry enthusiast, and there was at least one newbie there who I’m sure will be back on more picks (even the rainy ones), as well as another mom and child, and the home owners came out and joined us with their children. They actually use the fruit, but it is too much for them so they also get help from NFFTT, which is also giving to the community because 1/3 (actually 1/2, because the homeowners didn’t take their 1/3 today) of the pickings go to a community organization like food banks, shelters, and community kitchens. And we get to learn about fruit that grows abundantly in this climate, and have new experiences picking at eating new things. Brilliant. Oh, and I learned later that today was the first pick of the season. How fun!

LEAF’s Edible Garden Kits

This Saturday is LEAF’s Leslieville Tree Festival, which is always good fun.

Leslieville Tree Festival (click for source link)

So I was checking out LEAF’s (Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests) website and saw that they sell garden kits, including a couple of Edible Garden Kits, which I would totally buy for myself and to support them, except our little postage stamp just doesn’t get enough sun. They also have a Native Garden Kits, which I may get for our backyard, as there is a shade option (there’s shade, butterfly, beautiful border, and songbird options). How cool is that?

Speaking of gardening, I was out last weekend and cleaned up my new front yard herb garden and put a border on it, in an attempt to get my boys to stop trampling it. I also labelled them. Mostly so I can send the boys out for various herbs when I’m cooking. I’m totally excited about it. Eventually I hope to remove the shrubs in front of the porch and replace them with raspberry bushes. Big job, but I’ll get there…

I’d post a photo, but I have yet to take a half decent shot.

30×30 Challenge: Days 20-27

Day 20: The Toronto International Circus Festival down at Harbourfront was such a blast that we went back again the next day and caught the big finale show. My husband joined us this time and he managed to get a great shot of two of the women on the ring. It was stunning. And outdoors! On the lake! And did I mention it was free? (Yes, I was inspired to drop a few bucks into the Harbourfront donation box so that we can keep seeing fantastic free programming like this.) The photo above was taken down there. The seagulls were clearly enjoying the day down at Harbourfront as well.

After the big show we walked around the area a bit, and the boys had fun on the Simcoe Wave Deck down there, which is great fun for kids, and just lovely to look at:

Before we went downtown I managed to clean up the yard and mow the lawn. And eat a meal or two outdoors. So… pretty much the whole day was outside. And I felt great for it.

Day 21: A lovely morning walk/run and yoga to start the day. Later that morning my eldest and I went up to the Farmers’ Market, then a quick trip to the nearby library there with friends, and afterwards the kids played outdoors for an hour or so before the rain came.

Day 22: Another early morning walk. It was misty and quite lovely, and the lilacs are fully in bloom now. I love this spot (below) in a nearby park that is lined with 6 different shades (white, light purple, mid purple, light pink, mid pink, dark pink) of lilacs. Turns out they smell slightly different, too. Mid pink is the strongest.

I noticed that someone has planted some delicious looking lettuce in their front yard, making me think I’m not so crazy to plant edibles out front.

I had to get downtown for some thyroid tests so I took the streetcar. I had the chance to check on the progress of the Saskatoon berries down by the hospital. Hopefully they’ll be ripe for my follow-up appointments in a week.

Later that day I drove out of town with the kids to visit family and had a walk in the woods by the river, which is always a treat.

Day 23: The only outside time I managed that day was walking to do errands after driving home, so probably I only had the required 30 (or maybe 45) minutes.

Day 24:  Another day where the only thing that got me out was walking to errands in the neighbourhood, so I was limited to about 30 minutes outside. After 2 days of this, I was feeling pretty low, to be honest.

Day 25: I made sure to get up early and go for a good walk. I felt like I had to make up for lost time since I was so grumpy after a few days of not enough outside time and I sought out all of the little hidden green spaces in the neighbourhood (there are many within 3 or 4 blocks). Not official parks, but little woodsy areas that grow wild like this one:

In the afternoon I rallied the troops and we hopped on the streetcar to Riverdale Farm, because it’s  nettle season. I had my thick canvas bag and some thick rubber work gloves for picking, and my pruning shears. I remembered to avoid the stinging nettles that have gone to seed, and brought home a good amount of nettles for soup. Delicious!

We also walked around the farm taking lots of photographs. Hubby got a good one of a sheep shown here on his photo blog. I think I had the most fun watching the painted turtles sunning. There were the 3 adults to start, and eventually the 2 smaller ones joined them as well.

It was a wonderful day. I was feeling good again and fully made up for those lost 2 days.

Day 26: Another great early morning walk/run and yoga. It was also the first day of our local farmers’ market! I took my youngest to see who was selling what and meet a friend and her daughter for a little outside time. Later it was time (again, after lots of rain this week) to mow the grass again and putter around filling the watering can from the overflowing rain bucket to water the new and old plants, which include onions, chives, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, coral bells, sage, spearmint, “mojito” mint (that’s what the label said!), tarragon, cherry tomatoes, flat leaf parsley, cilantro/coriander (I’ve finally learned that the trick to keeping these going is keeping them well trimmed – i.e. make sure I use some every week and they’ll just keep sprouting and not go to seed), curly parsley, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, English lavender, and Provencal lavender. All still alive despite the crazy weather we’ve had in the past week. Another perfect day to make up for those two indoorsy and down days.

Day 27: Today it was time to deal with the winter woolies and do my hand washing. Which brought me outside for the drying.

I also took the boys outside to do their studies in the afternoon, which was a real treat. The weather was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, and no bugs yet.

Some tidbits to share

I’ve been getting some interesting links on my various feeds and I wanted to share them with you.

The first one is timely, as it is coming up on the official planting weekend in this neck of the woods (er… country). Our backyard is small, and there’s a big old cottonwood in it. Which means it doesn’t get a lot of sun in the summer. If you’ve got the same sort of situation, and you’re into edible gardents, here’s a list of shade-tolerant vegetables you can grow (3-4 hours of sun).

Next is a cool how-to on regrowing your own celery from the celery base. I haven’t tried this yet, but fully plan to.

If you have kids and are looking for a fun sidewalk activity with them, this DIY sidewalk chalk spray looks fun.

If you live in Toronto, it’s market season again! And the east side’s newest market is near Coxwell and Upper Gerrard at Fairmount Park on Wednesday afternoons from 3-7, starting the last week of May! They don’t appear to have a web page yet, but they are on Facebook and Twitter.