Last week I harvested our last eggplants and shishito peppers for this season. Eggplants produced better than I had expected considering they were outside. Probably wool mulch worked! Next year I will remove side shoots more diligently so that they will produce more. Shishito peppers…. I kinda neglected them…. I did not even tied them to stakes and some of them fell to the ground…. Sorry, shishito peppers! I will treat you better next year.

With heavy rain, dwindling sunlight and dump weather, many of my lettuce got fungus disease and are dying.  I can see white spores at the bottom of their main stem and once it’s infected, the stems rot and whole plant dies overnight.  It happens every year but I feel this year is worse.  Our garden is surrounded by trees which block sunlight as they grow taller.  We love our trees but our veggies need sunlight. I feel it it time to do something about it. Maybe trim some and cut some… It is a fine balance between maintaining trees and productivity of our farm.

Do you remember our experiment of planting F1 and open pollinated Komatsuna plants? I harvested both and tested their taste.

Right side is open pollinated variety and left side is F1.  Open pollinated Komatsuna has paler green colour and both leaves and stems are softer. While they grow, because their stems are tender, they can be knocked down easily with wind and heavy rain so they may need some protection until they grow tall and strong enough. Regarding the taste, F1 variety has a little tang in it, just like spinach, but open pollinated one does not, so it has more pronounced sweetness.  After I remove eggplants and shishito peppers, I will plant more Komatsuna for fall and hopefully winter harvest.

One of the farmers at Nanaimo’s Island Roots Farmer’s Market has a slogan posted on their canopy, saying “Become a hardcore Locavore”.  According to the Cambridge dictionary, Locavore means a person who tries to eat only food that is grown, produced, or harvested close to their home.  Other web-search says it is ideally within 100 miles from your community.  I think it is worth a try to become one because it will help making thriving local farming and food production businesses, especially here on Gabriola Island or most part of costal BC where winter temperature for most part mild enough to support year round vegetable production.  Now, for me personally I may have three big challenges to become hardcore one.  The first and second are coffee and chocolate, both of them are not locally grown.  The third difficulty is, well I have a confession to make.  For me the best chocolate chip cookie is this one…  

Yes,  it is Presidents Choice, The Decadent chocolate chip cookie…. Having Loblaw store in 5 min walking distance for more then 20 years before I moved here on Gabriola did not help.  Just last week when I went to Real Canadian Superstore in Nanaimo, I gave in to the temptation and almost finished the package in 3 days by myself (I think one package contains 15 cookies).  It is made in Kitchener, Ontario, so if I consider Canada as local, I am saved!  For me this is the best.  When this cookie was being developed back in 1987, they say the main challenge was to include as many chocolate chips as possible into a cookie made with real butter while it still maintains the shape after baked (chocolate becomes a structural weak point and cookie crumbles to pieces especially during transportation).  To become a hardcore locavore, I need to make my own cookies with this one as my benchmark.  What is your favourite cookie? 
Aside from these three challenges, I think we are doing a fine job eating local food.  We either grow vegetables on our farm or buy from fellow farmers at the weekly market.  We bake bread using grains grown in BC and milled on Vancouver Island.  We are sourcing most of our baking ingredients through Gabriola’s local store.  I plan to buy seeds more from local seed companies next year.  What will be your challenges to become a locavore?

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 newsletter. Have a wonderful fall week!