The Season Has Begun!

Our asparagus is coming up, the rhubarb is growing fast, and we are planting strawberries; spring has sprung at Fair Fields.  Despite that wacky warm week at the beginning of April, the last couple of weeks have been wet and cool, so we are a little bit behind in our first offerings.  Nonetheless, we expect to have both asparagus and rhubarb for sale at the farm starting Wednesday, May 17th and strawberries by mid-June.
Like last year, we will be open Wednesday through Sunday, 9:30 am – 7:30 pm.
We will post on facebook.com/fairfieldsorganics and update voicemail at (519) 665-7982, if we have a lull in production and are running out of produce.

 

We hope to have a more consistent supply of corn this year.  Our ground preparation is better, and we are starting more seedlings in the greenhouse to try and start with a bang!  We have also learned our lesson on using old seeds, don’t do it!  Corn germination is a little more finicky, especially in organic production, so it is good to have new seeds and plant lots of it…

 

We are slowly expanding our tree fruit offerings this year.  Last year was our first successful tree fruit year, with apples and some pears surprising us in their abundance.  Our first trees are old enough, and my dad, Donald, has been caring for them well, so the trees are starting to bear fruit!  We have also planted plums, cherries and smattering of others that will hopefully produce fruit in the next few years.  Check-in with us closer to late summer to see how this year’s crop is shaping up.

 

This spring, we will also plant a few short rows of July raspberries and haskaps, as a trial to see if there is enough demand to add those to our list of fruit.   For those who haven’t heard of them, haskaps are a great northern fruit, native to Canada and very productive and winter hearty.  They are packed with antioxidants and have a flavour somewhere between a blueberry and a mild currant.

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Winter, real winter, is finally upon us

Cold weather helps kill pests

Winter, real winter, is finally upon us. We hope it is a good one with cold temperatures and lots of snow. I know this won’t make us popular with everyone, but it is important for a good growing season! Cold weather helps kill pests, breaking their reproductive cycles and setting them back for the start of the coming season. A good snowpack, especially one that melts slowly and sticks around for a while, helps with spring and early summer soil moisture, really important with the drought conditions we seem to have most years nowadays.

Through the cold weather, we are enjoying frozen strawberries, corn and rhubarb as well as cider pressed from apples on our and surrounding farms.  We hope to have enough asparagus production this coming year to pickle and freeze some of it as well.  In the coming season we would be happy to share our tips for putting these delicious foods away and ideas for using them throughout the winter.

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Besides eating, we are busy getting our plant and seed orders ready.  We are taking a pause on planting more asparagus, as we feel the plot we have (just under 1 acre) will be plenty to keep up with this coming season.  Strawberries we plant every year and like the asparagus, we will not be growing the size of our patch (also just under 1 acre). 

We will be reducing the number of corn varieties we grow this coming season, as we have identified our favourites and want to make it easier to manage pollination.  Normally you are supposed to separate different varieties by 500’ and we found this to be a challenge when growing 7-8 varieties!

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In addition to our crop plants and seeds, we have been busy ordering trees and shrubs to plant in hedgerows and our home orchard.  Some of these are food for us, some are food for animals, as well as windbreaks, habitat, nitrogen-fixing, and a host of other ecosystem services.  We are hoping that eventually some of these will produce enough that we can sell them fresh and as value-added products like jams, juice, and dried fruit, to our local community.

Like many others during the pandemic, we have been juggling off-farm work, farm planning, childcare, and online schooling.  This has added stress, but also provide some opportunities, like hanging out with my daughter Lillian and building a treehouse with her.

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We hope this note finds you well!  Please check in with us in early May, when we will start to harvest asparagus.   Mmmmm… can’t wait!

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Sweet & delicious corn harvest

2021 Sweet corn harvest season

Wonderful bountiful sweet harvest!!

This year’s varieties included:
Fisher’s Earliest and Xtra Tender. They are both a little smaller than the main season varieties, Fisher’s is all yellow and Xtra Tender is bicolour.

Natural Bright:  a white variety that is super sweet.

Alure: succulent
Honey Select: delicate sweetness
Mirage

As our corn season is in the final stages place your order before we run out or come by the farmgate on weekends to pick your favourites.

Corn Pricing

Our farmgate price this year is $11/dozen or $6/ ½ dozen. For 5 dozen, the price falls to $50. We have separate pricing for wholesale, so please be in touch if you are looking for large quantities regularly. We hope to have it available 7 days a week from 11 am onward, but we will update our Facebook page and voicemail if we have any gaps in availability.

Farmgate prices:
½ dozen for $6.00
1 dozen for $11.00
5 dozen for $50.00
Wholesale prices
$10.50/dozen for first 4 dozen
$10/dozen for 5 or more dozen

Alure

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Honey Select

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Natural Bright

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Our Sweet Corn is Ready

Our sweet corn is finally coming ready!

The late frosts and unseasonable cool weather stunted our early plantings and generally held them back. Now they are coming all at once… Our later plantings are looking great.

This coming week we will have two varieties, Fisher’s Earliest and Xtra Tender. They are both a little smaller than the main season varieties, Fisher’s is all yellow and Xtra Tender is bicolour. Next week we will start to get Natural Bright, a white variety that is super sweet. After that Alure, Honey Select and Mirage.

Our farmgate price this year is $11/dozen or $6/ ½ dozen. For 5 dozen, the price falls to $50. We have separate pricing for wholesale, so please be in touch if you are looking for large quantities regularly. We hope to have it available 7 days a week from 11 am onward, but we will update our Facebook page and voicemail if we have any gaps in availability.

Corn Pricing

Farmgate prices:
½ dozen for $6.00
1 dozen for $11.00
5 dozen for $50.00

Wholesale prices
$10.50/dozen for first 4 dozen
$10/dozen for 5 or more dozen

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