We sowed pole beans on June 8th. It was a bit late, but they sprouted quickly and are now growing fast! Before long, we will bring delicious beans to the market.

When I started farming, I was expecting that plants will grow as per the instructions on seed packets or books, at least to some degree, and with some experience, we can plan sowing and harvesting and marketing. Well, sometimes they meet or exceed our expectations, other times not at all…

After 3 years of farming in our place (and 2 years at other places) I learned to ditch the desire to control (to some extent) and enjoy the surprises.

Here are some of the crops growing beautifully on their own at our farm:

Looking forward to harvesting these potatoes.

Dills are co-existing with Pilgrim Cabbage.

We are enjoying these refreshing Red Shiso growing unexpected locations and a beautiful Merveille Des Quatre Saisons lettuce.

Or, here is the most amazing example. Heritage tomatoes dumped in our compost pile in the fall when cleaned up in the green house, survived a long composting process (it was not a hot compost pile but cold long composting) and now are growing among cilantro after the compost with survived seeds were applied to the bed!

On Sunday, we had an excursion to Chemainus, which we call an “R&D activity.” During the last Saturday market, a German gentleman stopped at our booth and told us that our German Country bread was very close to “real German” bread, but a German bakery in Chumainus has better bread and we are No.2. So, we visited the bakery on Sunday to find out how different their bread is from ours! In the photo below, the one at the centre is our German Country Bread, and those on the left and right are from the German bakery in Chemainus.

Their bread has slightly different flavor from ours but we think both are delicious. Our conclusion is that it is only personal preference, and for us, our bread is still our number 1 choice!!  It is always nice to experience different bread and get inspiration for new taste.

To the market this week, we will bring more romaine lettuce, pilgrim cabbage collard green, kales, cilantro, dill, mizuna, Shungiku, and salad mix. 

Our market schedule is as follows

• Island Roots Farmers’ Market: Beban Park, 2300 Bowen Road, Nanaimo, 3 – 6pm on Wednesday
• AGI Market: AGI Hall, Gabriola, 10am – 2pm on Saturday

Thank you for reading our weekly newsletter. Have a wonderful summer week!