berries

Around this time two years ago I placed an order for several fruit trees with the Green Barn Nursery in Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot, Que. after hearing owner Ken Taylor speak at EcoFarm Day 2011.

I situated the orchard near the beehives to encourage cross-pollination. Unfortunately, before the bees could work their magic, a pack of marauding (or perhaps just hungry) deer chewed back all the new foliage on the young trees.

Last spring I installed what I lovingly call my redneck deer fencing, made cheaply with t-bars, chicken wire, baling twine and old CDs. Ugly but effective it keeps the deer away, and out of 10 trees planted and then mauled, nine recovered (one of the heartnuts is still under observation) and the mulberries even produced a wee harvest of juicy red fruits.

But the trees will take several years to yield any sizable harvest, and while the orchard is an important step towards self sufficiency, I want to diversify (and increase) fruit production on the farm. So this year I'm planting berries (and a few grapevines).

As the focus of the Green Barn Nursery is on cold hardy and disease-resistant plants and trees (you can source peaches, paw paws, kiwis and seedless grapes from these folks!) and they've done much of their extensive field testing in the same planting zone as the farm (zone 5a) I'm fairly confident that the cold weather won't kill off these plants. (However, I can't speak for the groundhog/deer/rose chafers that have been plaguing me for the last few years!)

It's been hard (really hard) to narrow down my choices because there are so many possibilities (currants and haskaps and seaberries, oh my!), but I'm trying to keep my workload manageable while getting a good cross-section of species established. I'm also trying to balance the initial upfront cost of the plantings against the eventual savings at the grocery store, both in dollars and food miles.

So in no particular order, here's this year's fruit order (with comments about the variety from the nursery):

Polar green seedless grape (2): "Our best and sweetest green table grape for northern climates. Mid-season".

Redliance seedless grape (2): "A mid-season variety that produces large pink seedless grapes that have excellent flavour. Good for eating fresh for for making juice or jellies Stores well."

Purple raspberries (Royalty, 25): "Late season purple raspberry with very large and firm fruit. Non-suckering."
 

Elderberry (2): "These disease and pest resistant plants are easy to grow. They tolerate wet areas and will form a berry thicket. In the spring an elderberry's magnificent flowers are edible. Its berries have a very high vitamin C content and are great to eat or make into wine, jams or pies."

Strawberries (Clés des Champs, 25): "A mid-season hardy variety that produces a good sized berry that is very firm and keeps very well. These shiny red berries have a very delightful taste and are a favourite for small market production."

Goji berries (4, for my dad): "Native to Tibet, this ‘superfood’ can grow in almost any soil type even depleted soils as long as it is well drained. The oblong bright orange-red fruit is most commonly dried, tasting like tart raisins but they can also be eaten raw or cooked."


While I'm excited to harvest the fruits from these plantings, taste isn't my only motive. Sure, I'm reducing our reliance on bought sources of food, especially berries, which can be cost prohibitive (though we love our local berry farm where the kids and I go to get strawberries for our annual jam making), but I'm also making an investment in this farm and my place in it.

While annuals, such as vegetables, grow and die in one season, it's going to take a lot of work for me to get these properly established this year (especially if faced with similar drought conditions as last), and I won't get to reap the benefits of this work for a full 12 months. It takes a certain faith to put the work in now for an uncertain reward in the future. Over the past year, since recognizing my tendency to get in over my head, I've taken to living within my safe little box, doing things only when I know they'll work out. But it can be horribly claustrophobic in there. And I think fresh berries are a good reason to climb out of my box, don't you?

All images courtesy of Green Barn Nursery (http://www.greenbarnnursery.ca/)

More strawberries!

Since Jack missed out on last week's picking adventure, we decided that for their first day of summer vacation the three of us would celebrate by going back to the strawberry farm. There is only a week of strawberry season left -- if that -- and the next few days are silly busy with Canada Day celebrations, a day trip to a friend's cottage and then a weekend of fishing with dad, his brother and the cousins.

And yes, I'm really looking forward to getting back to our slower pace of living next week.

What I love about trips like this is the opportunity to observe how different my kids are in the same situation and how their individual personalities and styles-of-being manifest.

Jack took a somewhat relaxed attitude towards picking, being completely at ease working close to the earth.

Ella, on the other hand, who's already done this picking thing before, decided that today would be a day of whirly-girly silliness. No armed picking? No problem. Goofy girl.


When placed in a new situation, Jack has always been my quiet observer; watching, assimilating information and then taking careful, purposeful action. I could see this today as he gently picked through the strawberry plants, looking for the "ruby red" berries, and asking several times, "Is this one okay, mum?"

Of course, it didn't take him long to get the hang of picking and he quickly filled his allotted basket with "nature's candy," as he called it.

Unfortunately, Ella's whirly-girly silliness quickly got a bit out of hand. Perhaps I'm a bit of a stickler here but a u-pick farm, in my humble opinion, is not a playground (or a race track or a hurdle course) and the picking area should be respected as a source of our food and of a farmer's livelihood. Ella didn't agree with my assessment and quickly deteriorated into a whiny, obstinate little creature.
Please tell me I'm not the only parent to ever order a time-out at a u-pick.

Thankfully, the sulkiness didn't last long and once again I had a crew of happy pickers.

It's a good thing too because we had a lot of strawberries to pick today!

Not a bad harvest -- just over 20 lbs.

Now all I need is an extra set of hands, or two, to help me make another three batches of jam. And then we need to prepare the berries for the freezer and the dehydrator and then we can make some fruit leather and...
What do you mean you're off duty? What do you think this is... summer vacation or something?
Oh, right.

Strawberries!

I had a lot of things to do around the farm this morning as well as some writing work. It was Ella's day off from school (she's home every other day) and like most "working" days lately, I was resigned to juggling chores and work while trying to fit in some time together.

But lurking in the back of my mind I knew that time was ticking on strawberry season. I mean, its June 22nd already! Last year, as we were still reeling from the trauma/drama of our first year on the farm, the season came and went without any berry picking.

So in the spirit of trying to reclaim some spontaneity while spending some quality time together -- no work, no chores -- I decided to make this a strawberry day. I even asked if Jack wanted to go into school late so he could come picking with us. I figured it would be like our own mini field trip. He hummed and hawed and decided that he wanted to go to school but he'd coming picking with us next week when he's done school for the year. Fair enough, though it's times like this that I really envy the flexibility of a homeschool schedule.

Even though the sky was starting to grey a bit and some grumpy looking clouds were rolling in, we hopped in the truck and drove 30 minutes to the next village, home our local u-pick place.

The owners said there was another week of picking left, but I'm not so sure. Jack may be playing hookie after all!

We decided that picking berries was kind of like looking for buried treasure.

Look, our first red jewel!

The original plan was to stop after we'd picked a flat of berries -- enough to make a big batch (or two) of freezer jam and have some for munching.

Ella's turn to take a snap of me: "Say, 'cheese' mama!"


After we'd paid (only $8.45 for the flat!), Ella asked if she could finally taste one.


The verdict?

"Mama, can we go pick some more please?"
Absolutely.