My word to summarize the week is “diversity”.

Diversity is a familiar word these days, often used to represent respect, inclusion and appreciation of our differences. Diverse cultures, genders, ages, abilities, education, workplace hiring, and religions, are just some examples in our society where diversity is something to strive for, celebrate and embrace. Having diversity around us offers opportunities for learning, and generally enriches our lives and experiences.

Why has this word stuck with me this week, and why is diversity important in the gardens at our small farmstead here?

When we planned our market garden, we intentionally planned for multiple varieties of each vegetable that we were planting. For example, we planted 20 varieties of heirloom tomatoes (in diverse shapes, colours, sizes, flavours, days to maturity, histories), rather than one big red standard grocery store variety. We grow over 30 types of vegetables, including garlic, asparagus, pumpkins, broccoli, beans, peas, squashes, greens, corn, eggplant, cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet potatoes, melons, with multiple varieties within each category. Doesn’t this make a whole lot more work for us, having to keep track of all these different varieties, harvest dates, and growth patterns?

For us, the benefits of diversity in the garden far outweigh any extra effort needed to tend multiple varieties of crops. Here are just a few reasons why we actively promote and celebrate diversity in our market garden:

Weather: by planting a diversity of crops that favour various growing conditions and ripen a different times throughout the season, we have a greater chance of withstanding storms, hail, frost, drought and other unexpected weather challenges presented to us. In light of climate change and unpredictable weather patterns, diversity allows us the best chance to have a decent harvest from our gardens.

Pests: in any garden pests will be an issue. We try to use a plant-positive approach, rather than a pest-negative approach. By planting a diversity of crops instead of one large swath, rotating our crops to different rows each year, including decoy plants, using cover crops, building up soil health, and interplanting pollinator strips to attract beneficial insects, we hope to create healthier soil and better deal with pests in ecological ways.

Plant health: indigenous cultures long ago already understood the importance of diversity in the garden. The “3 sisters” planting of corn, beans and squash, is a perfect example of diversity creating abundance. The corn grows tall and supports the beans, the squash grows underneath to provide ground cover and keep raccoons away with the prickling leaves, the beans add nitrogen back into the soil. We are also adding this type of diversity into our garden through intentional companion plantings and polycultures (complimentary groupings of tree-berries-herbs-flowers-veggies).

Food histories: diversity in the garden gives us a chance to access unique food histories, and keep these stories, flavours and seeds alive. Our farmstead is participating in the Seeds of Diversity “community grow out project”, a volunteer program where growers plant specific rare varieties of seeds in order to help keep them alive. This year we are growing several types of heirloom tomatoes, beans and ground cherries for this program. We take notes during the growing season, save seeds, and share these seeds with our community (if you want any let us know!). If you got a veggie box last week you tasted the “Aunt Edna” ground cherries.

Food sovereignity: seed saving is becoming even more important than every before. We take it for granted that we can save whichever farm/garden seeds we want, but in some parts of the world seed saving is a political act of resistance and even illegal. It seems unbelievable, but in some countries there are seed laws that criminalize farmers for saving diverse seeds that are better adapted to local growing conditions and climate change! We grow a diversity of vegetables and save seeds, so we can help educate about seed saving and promote the right for all people to access seeds and seed saving. Farmers and gardeners all around the world should have the right to take food production and food security into their own hands.

Taste: we strive to eat local all year round, and hope we can offer you a chance to do this too. By growing a diversity of flavours in our gardens, we have a wonderful variety of food for eating fresh, as well as canning, preserving, fermenting, drying for the colder months ahead.

Beauty: we can’t deny, having a diversity in our fields is beautiful. There is a rainbow of colours in the August and September gardens, with orange pumpkins and blue winter squash, next to red & green striped tomatoes, purple kale, yellow beans, and pink popcorn! Mix in a medley of flowers and herbs and you have a full compliment of colours (see photo below of last week’s veggie box).

We hope you will enjoy the diversity in our veggie boxes!  What does diversity mean to you?

Well, it looks like we are heading into the (extra) busy season on the farm!  

We thought May was busy with seedlings to plant and garden beds to prepare.  But then we came to mid August!  Not only are the gardens bursting with daily harvests needed on beans, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs and flowers, we also need to dry, preserve, bake, freeze and ferment the harvests.  Weeds have multiplied and still need attending to; last plantings are being done for late fall harvests; winter hoop house gardens are being planned; chickens need daily attention (they will be starting to lay any day now!); cover crops are being planted and straw mulch needs to put down as we prepare for winter; we are starting to save seeds for next year.  Then there is firewood to order; our hoop house end walls to build so we can close it in for winter; maybe a new roof to put on our house; and of course the regular list of daily chores and household maintenance…

The days are full, and my word this week has been “gather”. 

As you read above, we are in gathering mode every day, taking buckets and our garden cart with us to the fields and hoop house, never coming back to the house empty handed.  We have enjoyed sharing what we gathered in our gardens at local markets this past week, and in the veggie boxes that we bring to Winnipeg each Thursday.  We are also excited to try out the idea of putting up a NEW MINI FARM STAND on our driveway (starting this week or next), to further share what we have gathered from our fields with the local community who drives by.   The farm stand will be open Friday afternoons, featuring our garden veggies and upcoming pumpkin/winter squash harvest in Sept-October, along with other farm goodies. 

This weekend we also had the opportunity to gather with a community of people to help with a cob oven building project on our friends’ farm.  This gathering reminded us of the importance of community in our life.  Despite being busy (we all are), it’s important to take time to slow down and gather with friends and family.  Our farm-life goals are not only to cultivate gardens, but also to cultivate friendships.  Taking time to gather together in person, doing hands-on projects together, builds these relationships where we can share our skills, share meaningful conversations, share ideas and resources, and support each other in a variety of ways.

In light of all this “gathering”, we are planning a few exciting on-farm Field-to-Table workshops in September!  If you want to come gather with us to learn about veggie fermentation, making fire cider, or soap making, please check the workshops out here.  We would love to have you gather with us at Swallowtail Farmstead for these hands-on skill-sharing afternoons.

The word that has been in my mind this week is pollinate.

All week I have been watching the bees in our gardens.  I am mesmerized by their activity.  I could watch them for hours as they move through our flowering calendula and borage in the herb gardens,or quietly buzz in and out of the cucumber flowers in our hoop house (under construction, see photo above). 

Today I saw the bees busy around me as I weeded the pumpkin patch.  Pumpkin and squash flowers only open for one day, usually in the morning.  If they are not pollinated at the right time (by bees, or wind, or birds, or other insects), the flowers wither and will not form fruit.  It always feels like a celebration when the bees arrive. 

Some gardeners pollinate their squash or even fruit trees by hand, to ensure consistent pollination.  We have hopes for local insect pollinators to be available to do the job for us.  In order to help, we planted “pollinator strips” on the edges of our gardens and throughout the vegetable field.  These long rows of flowering pollinator-friendly perennials help to attract pollinators.  The orchard we started will also be interplanted with flowers, herbs and vegetables in the coming years, to increase pollination and create a thriving “food forest'“.  The mix of flowers and herbs in with our vegetables and orchard makes the garden an extra lively, beautiful and colourful place.  We laid the groundwork, and are now starting to see the results.

In a similar way, we have also been laying the groundwork for this farmstead.  For many years we dreamed about a rural property where we could tend the land and grow healthy food for our community.  We were inspired by reading gardening books, taking courses, working on organic farms, attending conferences, talking to other farmers.  When we arrived here we immediately started mapping out the gardens, preparing beds for growing, planting trees, and seedling garlic.  Over the winter we studied crop plans, wrote a business plan, and ordered seeds.  In early spring we started seedlings, brought in compost, built a chicken coop.  And now we weed, tend, harvest and share what the gardens are producing. 

The groundwork was prepared when we started our farm dream many years ago, and those ideas were pollinated when we actually put our farm dream into action.  Now we patiently wait for the delicious beautiful fruits to come.  Fruits like the community that we hope will form around this farmstead.  Fruits like physical health and mental well-being that come from being outdoors every day, having meaningful work, and eating good food.  Fruits like a small farm business that can provide a livelihood for our family and offer our children a place to thrive.

What are you pollinating in your life?  What fruits do you hope will come of it?

Upon reflecting on this past week, the word that best encompasses these days is “fullness”.  

Full moon: At the start of the week we had a beautiful full moon, keeping us awake and encouraging late-night sky gazing from our porch.  We noticed the days are getting shorter, as it was dark by the time we were done our garden chores, our chickens were put into the coop for night, and we could finally settle on the porch.  

Full days: We attended 3 different markets during the week, meaning our days felt extremely full.  Between harvesting, washing, preparing vegetables, and baking bread for market in advance, to setting up our booth and spending hours at the markets themselves, the days seemed to fly by.  It also meant there was not a lot of extra time left for chores back here at the farm, so the gardens now have a fullness of weeds among the vegetables.  We hope to catch up a bit this week.

Full kitchen: We have a bounty coming in our gardens, including new this week: new varieties of zucchini (including the gorgeous ribbed Italian heirloom Romanescu), green and yellow beans, bucket loads of cucumbers, newly dug potatoes, hot peppers, cucamelons, berries, edible flowers, zinnias and more!  This has meant a fullness in our bellies from the wonderful meals we are eating, and fullness in the kitchen as we preserve, dehydrate, pickle, and ferment much of this bounty to fill our pantry and root cellar for winter eating.  We hope you can share this bounty with us through our farm store or market booth!  In our weekly newsletter we include recipes to get your excited about this week’s food offerings.

Full drying shed: In the past week we dug up all our garlic.  It was a bit of a milestone, as garlic was the very first thing we planted when we moved here last fall (getting it in just before the first frost came).  We had planted over 1000 garlic, three different hard-neck varieties that are good for storage.  Greg built a series of large wire drying racks, which we completely filled with garlic and set up in our quonset to dry over the course of this month.  Cured garlic, and seed garlic, will be ready at the end of August and it’s looking beautiful!

Full life: We are noting the fullness of life every day, as we observe the landscape and ecology we are surrounded by.  We hear coyotes at night, watch birds on the river bank behind our house, the bald eagles regularly fly over at dusk, the purple martins sing in the trees near the garden, a swallowtail butterfly hatched on our fennel this week.  Our 8 year old son rescued a dozen tadpoles and raised them in our rainbarrel - over the course of the week they grew legs and climbed out as tiny frogs.  We try to find moments of stillness to just be with the land, listen, wonder and observe.  There is much to learn.

Full hearts: Finally, we have the fullness of our hearts as we continue to work hard every day to make our farmstead dream into a reality.  Thanks for joining us on our new farm journey!

Hello from Swallowtail Farmstead (Greg, Karin, Maya & Finley)!

We wanted to share a few updates about our new small farmstead with you, our friends/family/neighbours.  As you probably know, we moved to Manitoba last summer, searched for several months & found our property in the fall, then started our farm business this spring. We have met many lovely people here, and have had the help of various other local farmers as "mentors" to all our start-up questions, delivering loads of strawbales, local wool and more (thank you: Almost Urban, Longway Homestead, Awaken Herbs, Ferme Fiola Farm, Seine River Shepherds, Big Oak Farm, and Direct Farm, also Fertile Ground Farm back in Ontario!)

We have new weekly CSA food box subscriptions!  Please feel free to share our website with others and help spread the word!

About the Farmstead
We are on 7 acres, along the winding Seine River, about 30 minutes SE of Winnipeg.  We are just outside the town of Ste. Anne, not far from the TransCanada Highway. 

The land has already given us many nice surprises:

• abundant wildlife (we regularly see foxes, deer, coyotes, bald eagles);
• beautiful soil for growing vegetables (we believe this land has not been sprayed or treated with chemicals in over 25 years+); 
• the river brings many birds (we see herons, sandpipers, ducks, geese, eagles, hawks);  We can canoe on the river, or skate/walk/ski on the frozen river in winter. 
• the forest has wild berries, wild plums & apples, mushrooms and herbs for foraging.  Trails for walking, logs for sitting and contemplating.  Wood for firewood.  Maple trees for tapping.  Oaks, ash, maple, poplar, willow, spruce, pine, tamarack.
• friendly neighbours who are very supportive and generous.  Dropping by to say hello, bringing us raspberries, inviting us over.
• beautiful landscape where we are not far from the Whiteshell area, with boreal forests, trails, provincial parks and hiking spots.  It is a beautiful spot!  We invite you to come visit us sometime, on what we think is a pretty magical little place.

About Swallowtail Farmstead - What are we growing?

We are establishing an ecological small-scale medicinal herb & market garden farm business.  We are currently growing 40+ varieties of herbs, and many types of vegetables in our gardens.  We will be offering a short CSA food box program this summer, and planning a more extended version next year.  We use only organic and non-GMO seeds, organic growing methods, soil regenerating practices.  If you need ecologically grown veggies (either food box subscriptions, or bulk things like garlic, basil, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, pumpkins etc) please get in touch or join our newsletter to get weekly farm store updates!  We also hope to create a small outdoor teaching space next year, so we can host hands-on workshops and events here at our farmstead.  In the spring we will have organic/heirloom vegetable seedlings available by pre-order.

With the amazing help of friends and our extended family we have been able to accomplish quite a bit in this first spring/summer: we put up deer fencing around 2 acres of our gardens; we built a hoop house (unheated greenhouse) to grow vegetables year-round; we built a chicken coop for our 30 hens; created 50 permanent raised bed garden rows; planted a 100' pollinator strip with perennial flower seeds; planted nearly 100 trees as shelter belt; started an orchard with over a hundred berries, fruit trees, and nut trees for the longer term.  Thank you so much to all of you who have come out to help us with farm projects so far! 

The name Swallowtail represents for us "hope & new beginnings", as well as being symbolic of the community we want to foster with this farm.  We have many swallowtail birds here, we see purple martins and barn swallows in the skies every day.  They are natural pest control since they eat insects.  They represent community for us, because they live in groups.  Read more about why we chose our farm name here.