“People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always “plant a garden”. It’s good for the health of the earth and it’s good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate - once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer from Braiding Sweetgrass

This little farmstead we are co-creating all about connection.

Land acknowledgement: Upon arriving we started to research the local history to understand a respectful land acknowledgement specific to this area. We live on Treaty 1 territory, traditional territory of the Anishanaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and the National Homeland of the Red River Metis. We are grateful for all those who have saved seeds, tended land, and passed on plant knowledge before us. We hope we can create meaningful relationships that are respectful of the local histories. Sharing seeds, carefully tending the land, and growing healthy food for the community are some of the ways we want to do this.

Ancestral connections: Although Greg and I (Karin) mainly grew up in cities, we both have gardeners, farmers and homesteaders in our not-so-distant family histories. Setting up a farmstead, with daily tasks of planting, tending, harvesting, and preserving, is giving us the chance to reflect on the lives of these ancestors who did this work before us. It is allowing our children to tap into their family histories of generations past.

Local farm connections: In this first year here, this farmstead has allowed us to connect with a variety of other local farmers in the community. Some who have become mentors that we can call on to help answer our many farming questions. Some who provide our strawbales or firewood and stay to chat after the delivery is done. Others who have generously gifted us extra berries, plants and other resources from their more established gardens. Without this farmstead-in-the-making we would not have met any of these new friends. Interestingly, social media has been a wonderful connector in this realm as well, initially allowing us to discover other Manitoba CSA farms and market gardeners which then has led to in-person friendships.

Cycles, seasons and weather: With our hands in the soil, we have never felt so connected to the weather on a daily basis as we do now that our work is closely linked to the natural elements around us. The cloud formations that bring rain, the cold clear starry nights that could allow first frost, the northern lights that surprise us at midnight, the overhead bird migrations signalling spring and fall.

Soil Food Web connections: Farming is the perfect opportunity for both practical hands-on learning and research. This year have been taking Jean-Martin Fortier’s market gardener masterclass, practicing permaculture plantings, and reading about the Soil Food Web to improve how we grow and generate abundance. In all these studies we are learning about intricate connections between worms, nematodes, bacteria and fungi that create healthy soil as the foundation for growing healthy food. Healthy soil = healthy food = healthy people.

Community connections: We hope to nurture connections in the community through skills-sharing opportunities in what we are calling our Farm School/Folk School. We are starting to offer a few immersive farm-based classes and events focused on practical topics related to food preservation, health, growing food, and ecological living, to help create a resilient empowered community. Check out our upcoming classes here, and if you have a topic you think would be a good fit please let us know!

What kinds of connections are important in your life?

The abundance of our September gardens has led to a flurry of activity in our kitchen: canning, pickling, dehydrating, baking and freezing are some of the ways we are preserving the harvest so we can enjoy all this bounty in the colder months ahead. Consequently, the word on my mind this week has been preserve.

Preserving & sustainability: Although we are not an off-grid homestead, we do strive to be have a low carbon footprint. We enjoy using hand crank appliances (e.g. food mill, grain grinder, apple turner, oat roller) in our daily kitchen practices, and so when it comes to preserving food we are always experimenting with non-electric methods for preserving food. Salt, oil, brine, vinegar, sugar and alcohol can all be used to preserve colour, flavour and texture safely and beautifully. Curing, smoking, fermenting, and root cellaring are other ways foods can be saved and stored for long-keeping over winter. We hope to build an outdoor solar dehydrator next year so that we can dry foods without running electricity. Having all these wonderful foods preserved in our pantry and cellar also means we can eat locally all year round, our “food miles” are reduced, and we are less reliant on the grocery store.

Preserving skills: Recently we held a workshop here at our farmstead on the art of vegetable fermentation. Together the workshop participants made a huge cabbage-vegetable medley using our fresh garden vegetables, salt brine and lactic acid fermentation. Fermentation is ecologically sound (it doesn’t require any electricity), and it is also extremely simple, quick, cost effective, can be done in small batches, and does not heat up the house! Fermentation creates unique flavourful probiotic foods that have enhanced nutrition and promote healthy gut flora. Fermentation is also an age-old method that has been used around the world in all cultures as an effective way to preserve food, and in this way connects us with past generations. Not only did participants take home their own jars of fresh veggie ferment, but they also took home new skills and confidence in this way of food preserving.

Preserving means sharing: Preserving goes hand-in-hand with sharing. In the fermentation class we were sharing skills so the households of each participant could become more self-reliant, but we were also creating community as we shared the work together around the tables. When our family cans dozens of jars of berry jam or salsa, we are looking forward to sharing these during meals with friends and family. The photo above shows an abundance of apples that were shared with us by a neighbour, which we transformed into applesauce to be shared with others in return.

Preserving seeds, stories & plant diversity: At Swallowtail Farmstead we are preserving seeds from many of the heirloom vegetables and medicinal herbs that we grow. The preserving of these varieties gives us the assurance that we can grow these wonderful varieties again next year, but also helps to keep these seed stories/varieties alive. We are volunteering in a Community Grow Out project with Seeds of Diversity (a Canadian non-profit seed saving organization). As part of this program we grow out unique heirloom seed varieties that have been selected for being “at risk” (of being lost), and actively share them with our community. This year we grew an old variety of ground cherries, two types of cherry tomatoes, and two types of bush beans. If you get our weekly veggie boxes you will already have seen and tasted some of these varieties. If you would like any of these seeds to grow yourself we are happy to share what we have preserved.

What stories, seeds or foods are you preserving this season?

As you may know by now, I like to focus our newsletter around one key word that summarizes our week.  This week it was hard to choose just one word.   Refresh…root…observe…plenty…preserve.  This is an extremely abundant season right now and there are many words that could express what the week has been about. 

However, in the end beauty was the word for this week.  I set myself the goal of “finding beauty every day”.   I keep a daily 5-year farm journal where I record our planting dates, harvest notes, weather patterns, lists of things our farm can improve on, and other observations that will hopefully help us improve what we are doing here.  These notes can be compared and tracked over 5 years  with this journal.  I have also started to add little notes about beauty that I discover around us every day.  Looking for beauty gives me moments of pause during our busy days, and provides a daily practice of gratitude and appreciation (often for small and simple things that could easily be overlooked).

We intentionally plant a wide array of flowers and herbs throughout our farmstead and gardens, to attract pollinators, companion plant, and encourage diversity.  We cut some of these as fresh flower bouquets and aromatic bunches of herbs to bring to the farmer’s market.  Although we have noticed that flowers and herbs don’t tend to sell very well at our small-town market, we include them at our booth each time anyway.  We completely understand that flowers and herbs are not in everyone’s budget.  However, it makes us smile when we hear comments from customers about how beautiful our booth looks and smells (and we even sold a few bunches!).   The flowers and herbs enhance the vegetables we are selling, and make people feel happy when they come into our booth. 

One of our farmstead goals is to get people excited about eating locally grown food.  We want our food to be nourishing for the body, but also a feast for the senses.  We grow many heirloom vegetables that aren’t usually found at the grocery store, chosen by us for their outstanding flavours and rainbow of colours.  Our market customers and veggie box members notice the care we put into our food, not only in how we grow and harvest it, but also the varieties we choose and how we display it.  Many have reminisced about how their grandparents grew striped tomatoes or purple beans like ours, made ground cherry jam (that you can’t find in the store), and pickled dilly beans.  Food connects us to each other, but also to our past and our histories.  If we are to be “your farmer” we want you to feel cared for, nourished and appreciated with our foods, including the beauty they add to your table.

Where do you find beauty in your life?  Let us add beauty to your plate!