Our farm is brimming in summer warmth and sunlight. Yes, it is sometimes too hot, like a few days in last week, and you feel sick of it (in fact, I became literally sick since I did not drink enough water while working outside in the morning and then baking bread in the afternoon), but plant life just blooms now. Our burdocks continue to grow. So do cucumbers in both greenhouse and out in the field. 

So do bees.  They flock to the flowers of arugula and collard that I still need to cleanup for fall and winter crops.  I was worried about lack of bees last year, but this year it seems they are back and flourish whenever our veggies left flowers.  One of our neighbours on the same street said they started bee hive at their property, so our flowers may be helping their life easier.

Talking about life of creatures, the other day I heard the rustling sound just in front of me when I was adjusting irrigation timer in our garden.  Looking up, I wondered if there were two of irrigation lines to the timer or one….   One of them was not a hose, but a body of a snake!!!!😨. I am glad most of snakes around here are harmless (as far as I know) unlike in Okanagan where I spent a summer as a WWOOFER and heard horror stories about rattle snakes over there.  When our garden started, there were neither snakes nor other little creatures.  Now we have variety of little birds, reptiles, mice, insects and the top of their food chain, this giant snake.  By the way, there are shrines with snake god in Japan.  Hers is the one I visited in past January when I was in Tokyo.  This shrine is said to be built around 13th century and known to help your prosperity!!

About far more little creatures, Sunday is the day I start my sourdough starter with raisin water for our Wednesday market. Our sourdough bread of cinnamon raisin, farmer’s brioche and classic boule is made with wild yeast I harvest from organic raisin. I mix 100g of organic raisin with 500g of water in a sterilized glass jar, keep in ambient temperature for a few days until there are bubbles in the jar, which is a sign of wild yeast became active! Then, I make our sourdough starter by mixing this yeast water with spelt flour. I learned this method from various YouTube videos by Japanese bakers. Please get one of these bread and enjoy their light and slightly sweet flavour.

This week to the market, we will bring romaine and red leaf lettuce, salad mix, collard green, kales, mizuna and if any, zucchinis, micro green from “Little Greens Micro Greens” and garlic from “Swallowfield Garlic”. We will take a break on Komatsuna while we figure out how to grow them in summer heat.

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!