Last Monday afternoon we welcomed 11 visitors from GERTIE’s fall farm tour! As we Gabriolans all know, GERTIE is Gabriola’s community bus service, connecting various places all around Gabriola. We showed off our garden, talked about our history, joy and struggle, and at the end of the tour we all enjoyed miso soup featuring our own and local veggies and Onigiri! It is a real honour for us to run our farm in this tight-knit community.

We are still busy running farmers’ markets twice a week, and at the same time started to prepare for next season. Last Thursday morning we had a tree service company on our farm to thin out some trees and branches along south side of our garden in order to get more sunlight especially in early spring and late fall.

We removed smaller trees that were already losing competition to bigger ones and only a few tall trees that were really blocking sunlight. Other than that, we just thinned out branches instead of cutting down trees. We worked non-stop for 4 hours in the rain. “We” means including myself dragging cut branches and tree trunks to a chipper! The difference may not be so obvious in the before-and-after photos, but we are hoping that more sunlight will come through and warm up the soil, which would help earlier planting in spring, and longer harvest of lettuce in fall with drier soil. As a bonus, we now have a lot of fresh wood chips for our garden walkways and some more firewood for winter.

One of the most widely available and popular dishes in Japan is Korokke (コロッケ).

This is a Japanese derivative of French croquettes.  The French version often includes a creamy béchamel sauce, but the ingredients of basic Japanese korokke are mashed potatoes, sautéed onion and minced meat.  Korokke was a very popular “Youshoku” or western cuisine during the Taisho Era (1912~1926) along with pork cutlets and curry rice.  Nowadays in Japan you can buy ready-to-eat korokke at convenience stores, supermarkets, local meat shops and department store underground food sections with ever increasing number of different ingredients and flavours. However, just like any other food, the homemade version is the healthiest and most satisfying. Since we have lots of potatoes both harvested and still in the ground at our farm, I decided to make some after a long market day last Saturday. I am sharing this simple, healthy and quick Korokke recipe. I hope you will try and like it, too.

– What you need (serving for 2 people)

Potatoes (about 200g), one medium sized carrot, one can of tuna, half of medium sized onion, Panko or bread crumbs, flour, one egg, oil for deep frying

1. Cut potatoes into approx. 1 inch cubes. Cut the carrot into 1/4” cubes. Thinly slice the onion. Drain canned tuna.

2. Boil potatoes until it is almost done, add carrots and continue to cook until both potatoes and carrots are cooked.

3. Drain water from the pan, move cooked potatoes and carrots into a bowl and mash them roughly with some chunks left.

4. Add sliced onions and tuna, mix them together.

5. Make small flat balls with the potato mixture.

6. Heat oil in a pan, cover potato balls with flour, egg and panko (in this order).

7. Fry potato balls in a pan until both sides are golden brown, about 7~8 min. Drain excess oil on a kitchen paper.

8. Enjoy korokke with your favourite sauce, such as worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, mayo, etc.

I finished 7 korokkes (out of eight that I made) on Saturday. I believe I deserved them after late night baking, early morning veggie harvesting and winter market outside!

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 – 1pm on Saturday

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