Corn Is Here!

Our first planting of our early variety, Solstice, is in full production right now.  A smaller bi-colour variety (think peaches and cream), it has a nice delicate sweet flavour.  As the season continues, we should have 5 more varieties, Natural Sweet, Natural Bright, Allure, Enchanted, and Mirage.  We love the names…

We have been eating it grilled, boiled, in tacos, risotto, pasta salad, you name it.  In the case of Fiona, our daughter, even raw off the cob! (We don’t recommend this as too much can upset the stomach…)

Corn will be available Wednesday through Sunday at the farm as supplies last.  If we run out, we will post on facebook.com/fairfieldsorganics/ and voicemail.  Call 519-665-7982 or email devanpenney@gmail.com, ahead of time for bulk orders.

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Strawberries are done, corn is just around the corner

STRAWBERRIES

Our strawberry season was a little early this year, which caught us completely by surprise.  With the cold winter and late spring, we expected to not be picking till the third week of June, but we started doing our first major picking by June 9th.  The weather was fairly good to us, with no late frosts or prolonged heat waves and lots of dry picking conditions.  We had many happy u-pickers through the patch, more than ever before.

Our one challenge this year was pest and disease pressure.  Our mid-season varieties got hit fairly hard by verticillium wilt, a fungal disease that becomes obvious the week before the berries are ready…  It was a little heartbreaking to see large parts of the patch wither and die, just before we were starting to pick them.  We will be changing some of our practices to try to avoid this wilt in the future, however, a big contributing factor was the damp cool weather we had last summer through till Christmas, not something we could have done anything about.  Our late-season varieties had a lot of insect pressure, leading to scarring on the fruits that deform them and make them leathery and bitter.  Thankfully our earliest variety was a powerhouse and carried on producing for 2.5 weeks!

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SWEET CORN

The next crop we will have available is sweet corn, hopefully by the last week of July.  It is looking very nice and our first variety, Solstice, has small cobs fattening up as we speak!  As with our strawberries, we will be open for sales to the public from Wednesday through Sunday 9:30 am till 7:30 pm, as supplies last.  If we are out, we will update on Facebook and voicemail.

Our price is $7 for 6, $12 for a dozen, or $10.50 per dozen if you buy 5 dozen or more.
We take cash, cheque (made out to Devan Penney) or eTransfer (send to devanpenney@gmail.com).  The price may seem high to some, but growing sweet corn at this latitude organically is challenging.  When you buy certified organic sweet corn from us, you know you are not getting any GMOs, insecticides, seed treatments, or chemical fertilizers, used heavily on most conventional corn on the market.  It is also picked fresh, so it is sweet and tender whenever you come by.

Thanks for a great season thus far, we hope to see you out for sweet corn shortly,

Devan and the team at Fair Fields

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