It’s been a busy week at our little farmstead! We had first frost, hosted a family gathering for Thanksgiving, held an elderberry syrup making workshop, had a huge pile of firewood delivered, and had a new roof put on the house.

Savouring the last warm days: With first frost comes the bittersweet feeling of the garden season ending, while anticipating a much needed time of rest ahead. In these last warm days of autumn we are putting the garden beds to rest, mulching garlic that has been planted, cleaning up the hoop house and planting winter greens. We are collecting seeds for saving, drying herbs, and putting storage veggies like squash, carrots, beets, garlic and potatoes into our cold room. It is soup season, so we are warming our hands and bellies with squash soup, roasted tomato soup, creamy potato soup, feeling much appreciation for the abundance of our gardens this year and the many meals they have provided.

Savouring flavours: Is it a coincidence that savour rhymes with flavour? At our family gathering we decided to have a “tomato tasting” before the meal. We set out plates with ten varieties of our heirloom tomatoes, and enjoyed sharing these unique flavours, with plenty of tomatoes and seeds for our relatives to take home. We also harvested our heirloom popcorn this week - blue, black, pink and multi-coloured cobs. Growing popcorn is something we have been wanting to trial, and although we planted far too late we grew three varieties with some success. As we understand it, popcorn is closer in genetic make-up to flint corn, so does not cross with all the other corn being grown around us, so gives us the chance to grow it out to what it should look like. We look forward to enjoying our rainbow of homegrown popcorn this winter! If you drop by for a visit you just might get some.

Savouring community: Hosting workshops, such as our recent Elderberry Syrup making session, at Swallowtail has been important to us as it is a way to bring community together around shared interests and skills. We want to be more than just a farm business, but rather a social enterprise that helps create a resilient thriving community by sharing healthy food experiences and hands-on learning of practical skills. We attended a lovely Field-to-Fork anniversary dinner at a friend’s farm last night where our farm had contributed pumpkins and potatoes for the meal. As we sat around the beautiful dinner table we were surprised by how many people we knew in the crowd. In the course of this year, our projects at Swallowtail Farmstead have allowed us to start to build a nice network of friends and colleagues through mutual interests in good food, ecological farming, and grassroots community initiatives.

Savouring the cold season ahead: We are feeling grateful for a fully stocked woodshed, a cozy woodstove, and a solid new roof on our old farmhouse! Heading into the colder months we look forward to a time for evaluating this year, with visioning and dreaming for the new year ahead.

What are you savouring at this time of year?

Any of you with a garden will know this is the busiest time of the year!  Not only is the garden harvest still going strong (no frost over here yet), but it is also the time for food preserving, drying herbs, pressing flowers, and wild foraging for nuts and roots.  Our front porch has become a daily staging centre for moving the harvests in from the fields, and into our kitchen, root cellar, pantry, dehydrator, drying shed, or outdoor wash station!

It is also the time for seed saving, finishing cover crops, fixing fences, mulching the garden for winter, and planting winter greens in the hoop house or cold frame.  And it is time to plant garlic.

The beloved garlic!  This was the first crop we planted in our new-to-us field last year, only weeks after moving into this house.  We grow only hardneck garlic varieties because these are best for cold climates.  Last fall we planted 3 hardneck varieties (Music, Chesnok Red, and Russian Red), chosen for their flavour, storage capability, and cold hardiness.  Many of you have received our garlic and are hopefully enjoying it in your kitchens.  It is truly our favourite food as medicine! 

This year we are planting our own saved seed from these three varieties, as well as adding 5 new varieties.  You will know by now that we like to experiment in our gardens, and as grow a wide selection of colourful vegetables and heirloom types so that our market stand and CSA veggie boxes are interesting and unique.

Our new garlic additions include the famous Legacy (an heirloom from dating back to the 1800’s, known for it’s long storage and full rich flavour), Persian Star (originally from Uzbekistan, with above average excellent storage capability), and Rootdown (an extra cold hardy variety, reliable storer, and full flavour!).  We are excited to get these into the ground, and share them with your next summer!

Garlic planting is a process.  The ground needs to be prepared, including a weed-free bed and rich compost added because garlic is a “heavy feeder”.  Since we are practicing no-till farming we use our handy broadfork to aerate the soil, then spread compost by wheel barrow, and plant each clove by hand.  Garlic is planted in the fall because it needs a long period of cold before plant growth takes off in the spring.  This is called “vernalization”.  We plant garlic in the last warm days of fall to let roots begin, before the plant goes dormant for winter.  After planting, the garlic is tucked under a thick blanket of straw mulch as it rests over winter.

This rooting of the garlic before it rests and gathers it’s energy offers nice symbolism for us to remember.  Big plans and projects take time, first starting with small roots, often needing to percolate and rest, before bursting into bloom.

What are you rooting this fall?  Where are you letting roots take hold?

REFLECT
Over the past week several events happened that gave me reasons to reflect.  I had my birthday; a friend from long ago stopped by to visit our farmstead; and we experienced the turn of the season with the fall equinox. 

My birthday was not an especially significant number, but was still an annual time for me to consider how my year has been and where I see myself heading in the next.  A good annual chance for reflection.

The visit from a long-lost friend was a surprise, and since there was much catching up to do it meant discussing why we have ended up here in Manitoba establishing this small farmstead.  Another time for reflection.

And finally, the fall equinox.  The turn of the season, the balance between equal length of day and night.  A symbolic reminder to re-find our own balance after a busy summer season, and prepare ourselves to head toward the colder months and slower season of reflecting and dreaming that lies ahead.

Much of this reflecting related to practical questions like how to improve our gardens, how to create efficiency in certain tasks, what varieties we want to continue to grow, how to organize our fresh vegetable box program next year, online store improvements, and farmers markets we might want to attend next year. 

However, I also find myself reflecting on a more philosophical level of WHY we are creating this farmstead.  I recently started to watch a documentary series that looks at cultures around the world that are living long healthy lives (with whole communities consistently aging gracefully past 90 and 100).  The key factors that researchers found which contributed to a long healthy life in these cultures included:

• moving the body frequently
  
• having meaningful relationships
  
• having a sense of purpose
• eating a plant-based locally grown whole foods diet
  

This documentary is allowing me to reflect on some of the key reasons why we are establishing this farmstead and growing healthy food with organic methods for the local community.   Promoting physical health, building community, creating resilience, finding ecological balance, establishing emotional well-being, working at meaningful daily tasks as a family, sharing this sense of purpose with others.  And of course finding great joy in growing loads and loads of beautiful colourful vegetables and herbs so that our food can be our medicine.

What are you reflecting on at this turn of the season?