For the most part, seed starting is easy if seeds are given the right conditions. Seeds want to grow! Seedlings can be grown in very small space, even on your kitchen counter or a sunny window ledge. If you are able, it’s helpful to set up heat mats, a grow rack & grow lights, but these are not a necessity to get started.

In our short season Canadian Prairies (growing zone 3) many seeds need to be started indoors because the outdoor growing season just isn’t long enough to grow plants from seed to fruit. Examples of plants that always need an indoor head start are the heat-loving ones: tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. If you wanted to grow something like the very long season globe artichoke (120 days to maturity) here in Manitoba, it would need even more time indoors! You may realize certain plants just aren’t meant to be grown here, at least not very easily.

Many other plants can benefit from an indoor head start too, for example long season cabbage, broccoli, melons, squash, and cucumbers. Slow growing herbs (e.g. lavender, thyme, echinacea) and many flowers are also usually started indoors in order to get a harvest that year. Some annuals (e.g. rosemary) can be brought back indoors over winter, then grown outdoors again the following year.

The basic requirements for starting your own garden seeds are viable seeds, starter soil, heat, light, moisture, containers, and proper timing.  Some seeds need a cold stratification period or scarification ahead of planting. You may have heard about soil blocking, which works well with local wool pellets like these from our friends at Longway Homestead. We also recommend organic all-purpose starter soil (now available as “soil in a box” to avoid plastic!), Ecotea and eco worm castings, produced locally and sold at Sage Garden Greenhouse in Winnipeg.

Let's go into a bit more detail on each seed starting requirement:

VIABLE SEEDS
It's important to know the seeds you are starting are still viable.  If seeds have been stored in cool, dry, dark conditions, they should be viable for several years.  Smaller seeds tend to have a shorter lifespan but that is not always true.  Tomato and cucumber seeds can be viable for up to 10 years!  If you are not sure, either perform a germination test ahead of planting, OR seed heavily assuming not all seeds will come up.

Here are some ideas of lifespan of garden veggie seeds (credit to FedCo Seeds for this information):

Beans 2-3 years
Beets 3-5 years
Brassicas 3-5 years
Carrots 2-3 years
Celery 2-3 years
Corn 2-3 years
Cucumbers 5-10 years
Eggplant 2-3 years
Leeks 2 years
Melons 5-10 years
Mustard 3-5 years
Onions 1 year
Parsnip 1 year
Peas 2 years
Peppers 2-3 years
Radish 3-5 years
Spinach 2-3 years
Squash & Pumpkins 2-5 years
Tomatoes 5-10 years

STARTER SOIL
Not all soil is alike.  To give small seeds a head start indoors, generally seed starting soil is used (not garden soil). Garden soil has weed seeds that will also germinate, and is also usually heavier than starter soil.  Sterilized starter soil gives your indoor seeds a clean head-start.  Starter soil can be mixed with wool pellets (slow release fertilizer), compost (e.g. worm castings), and something to lighten it (e.g. peat or coconut coir).  Many starter soils are available, a ready-made one can be purchased if you don't want to mix your own.

HEAT
Seeds need heat, light and moisture to germinate properly.  In fact, some seeds need an extended period of warmth at a consistent temperature in order to germinate (e.g. peppers, celery).  Heat mats are useful as they keep the soil warmed from below, especially helpful if your house is on the cold side.  Some people build heated sand tables, but that is something you will want to get into if you are growing on a larger scale.  Setting plants under grow lights also offers some heat to the seedlings.  Heat is important, but it can also dry out the soil faster than without added heat.  Keep an eye on watering if you are using heat mats.

LIGHT
Seeds are interesting.  Some need light to germinate, and some need darkness.  Read your seed packages carefully to determine what your seeds need, and how much soil they should be covered in when planting.  A general rule of thumb is that seeds are usually covered with about 2 x the amount of soil as the thickness of the seed.  Seeds that need light to germinate as lightly pressed onto the surface of the soil, but not covered.  After seeds have germinated, light is needed by all.  This can come in the form of grow lights, or setting plants in a sunny window.  The lights may be an expense, but they allow for uniform upright growth, whereas plants set in a window may become "leggy" as they stretch toward the light.  Trays of seedlings can be rotated so they take turns under best light conditions.

MOISTURE / AIR FLOW
Seeds and seedlings need both adequate moisture and proper air circulation.  It is important not to let seeds dry out as they are germinating, however they can also get too wet causing mold to grow.  Seed trays are often covered with plastic dome lids to create a mini "greenhouse" effect while seeds are germinating.  Keep a watch that these don't get too humid (they are called "humidity domes" for a reason).  If the domes are getting humid, remove them or allow a bit of airflow in.  Once seedlings are up, they need regular watering.  If they are set into solid trays, the plants can be under-watered which helps avoid the dreaded "damping off".  A small fan can be set near the seedlings to bring air flow into the room (be careful not to damage the fragile seedlings with too strong a fan), and seedlings can be gently brushed with your hands to stimulate growth and provide movement.  This strengthens the seedlings for when they move outdoors into the wind.

CONTAINERS
Seeds can be started in almost any type of container, as long as it has some drainage and enough room for roots to spread.  The most common are black plastic seed starter trays and nursery pots, which should be sanitized from one season to the next so they can be reused.  They can be washed, or set outside in the sun to solarize.  If you want to avoid plastic, look for ceramic containers, or start seeds in wooden boxes.  Wooden boxes work well with soil blocking too, as the boxes can be built to fit soil block sizes perfectly.  Wood is a great choice for long lasting seed trays.

PROPER TIMING
If you check your seed packages, you will notice "days to maturity".  This generally means how many days a plant takes to grow from seed to harvest.  Packages will also usually say how many weeks ahead of last frost that seeds need to be started indoors (e.g. 4-6 weeks indoors).  Depending on the growing zone, many plants need to be started indoors in order to have a long enough growing period.  Understand the last frost date for your region, then work back from that date to know how many weeks in advance you need to start your seeds.  Here in Manitoba the last frost date is commonly regarded as being around May 24, so work back from that date when you are starting seeds.  All the heat loving plants like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, cukes, squash and many herbs & flowers need to be started indoors ahead of time for best harvest results!  Sometime we start seeds like sunflowers indoors to avoid the seeds being eaten by wildlife, even though they could be grown out as a short season annual. 

Of course, before any seedlings get transplanted outdoors into the garden they need to be hardened off (i.e. prepared for the wind and sun), and it's good to get a weather report for the coming weeks to know if your tender seedlings will need any protection.  More on growing seedlings in another post.

Happy seed starting!

Happy February!  This is Year 2 here at Swallowtail Farmstead and we have some exciting plans ahead. 

For small-scale market gardeners like us, this month of February is all about seeds. Seed orders that we placed in Dec & Jan are arriving in the mail, old seeds from previous years are being organized and tested for germination rates, field charts are being made as we do our crop planning, two new seedling racks built, our seed starting room (currently our sunroom) is prepared, and seeds are being planted. 

In February, we start our first seeds – the earliest slow-growing flowers, perennials, and slow germinating herbs (e.g. oregano, lavender, thyme), as well onions and leeks.  We also start ginger root and turmeric root, propagated by fresh cuttings, at this early time of year.  Our fridge and freezer have held seed packages for the past few months, as certain seeds (e.g. native grasses and prairie flowers, berry seeds like sea buckthorn and elderberry) need to be“cold stratified” before they can be germinated. 

Seeds are also about community connections.  We joined the Canada Seed Swap, which connected us in a “pod” with 10 other growers across Canada to share our favourite flower & veg seeds through the mail.  We are participating in the Community Grow-Out program, to again grow rare varieties of beans, tomatoes and ground cherries for the Seeds of Diversity seed bank.  Seedy Saturdays are coming up, another way to meet local seed savers, find unique seeds and support Canadian seed companies.  Seedy Saturday in Winnipeg is March (check the Seedy Saturday list here for seedy events across Canada).

February is also a time for finalizing the plans for new infrastructure projects.  Still being fairly new to our farmstead, there seem to be no end of infrastructure needs!  We are designing a simple affordable drip tape irrigation system.  Last year we mainly watered our gardens by hand, hoses, and lucky rainfall, but this is definitely not reliable enough in the long run for vegetable gardens of this scale (especially if we have a dry year!).

We are building a small walk-in cooler / wash & pack station beside our garage, to keep our veggies, flowers and herbs fresh and beautiful for you.  This will hopefully also streamline our vegetable preparation and storage.  In our hoop house we have made counters and shelving to organize our potting supplies, and built a series of racks to hold more 100+ seedling trays that we will have this spring.  Soon the hoop house will be filled with hundreds and hundreds of our seedling babies, which we will diligently care for, and worry about on hot days and cold nights!

We are looking forward to a few more quiet weeks of planning, before the daily seedling tending begins, along with spring!

This morning the sunrise was beautiful, sending long shadows across the sparkling snow covered fields.  On these mid-December days, as we near the very shortest day, our family takes time to reflect on the year.  What has been positive?  What can we let go of?  We dream of new opportunities and make plans for the coming year.  We slowly begin to set things in motion. 

When the situations in the world seem despairing, planting seeds is a good place to find some hope.  In this newsletter we share a few previews of new projects we are planning for 2024.  We are planting more flowers.  And lots of greens.  And more veggies too!  We hope to have seedlings ready for your gardens this spring, so you can plant more too. 

We believe that growing food is important work.  The seeds we choose, the soil we are building, the way the plants are cared for, the larger ecosystems we are tending, the community that comes together over shared food.  What our family eats is important.  What you eat is important.  And this work of growing food feeds our minds and spirits too, that is important as well.

We hope our small farmstead can nourish you in both body and soul.  We plan to offer some new opportunities for you to come out to the farm in 2024.  Not everyone has a garden, or time to grow food, but we hope we can share what we are growing with you. If you are able, we invite you to come experience our small farmstead as a place to slow down, breathe deeply, and be nourished by the land.

Joining our CSA guarantees you will eat delicious and ultra-fresh vegetables every week, and reduces your ecological footprint.  Come tour our cut flower and culinary herb gardens and take home a bouquet.  Drop by our weekend farm stand to load up on veggies and other locally made goods.  Participate in a workshop, and meet other people in the community while learning new skills together.  Maybe help us build a cob oven and learn about using natural materials to create structures that are functional and beautiful.   Take part in a fall farm dinner to celebrate the bounty.

Thank you for your support during our first farm season, and we look forward to feeding you in a myriad of ways in the coming year.

- Karin, Greg, Maya & Finley at Swallowtail Farmstead

A seed is not just the source of life.  It is the very foundation of our being. - Vandana Shiva

Since moving onto this land one year ago, much of our focus has been on seeds.  Many hours of many days have been filled with reading seed catalogues, ordering seeds, making crop plans, planting seeds, and saving seeds.  We are talking literal seeds, like the annual vegetables, herbs and flowers that we started in late winter, which grew into an incredibly abundant, colourful and delicious harvest in the first season on this land.  Also seeds of perennial plants, that may take a little longer but will root deeply and stay with us for many seasons, producing bounty year after year and growing more familiar and beautiful to us as time goes on.  The potential encapsulated in one small seed never ceases to amaze me.

We are also talking about metaphorical seeds, planting seeds of community.  We believe that strong vibrant community, just like healthy food, is necessary for our sustenance and well-being.  Equal to planting seeds in the garden, important work of our small farm is to grow community.  This year we worked at planting the seeds of community, hoping this will take root and flourish, leading to deeper and more meaningful relationships of mutual support where we can trust and lean on each other.  This is what community supported agriculture means for us, growing both good food and strong community. 

Seeding community included connecting with new neighbours, sharing meals, trading hands-on work, offering our vegetables and herbs, volunteering, visiting other small local farms, building relationships with customers at market week after week, offering hands-on learning opportunities here.  To create a sense of place we must also understand it’s history and so we have been learning the stories of this land: the waterways, the wildlife, the birds, the native plants, the trees, the soil, the weather.  We are also acknowledging the indigenous peoples who have long had history here, asking ourselves how can we respectfully tend this land now and what is our place.  A good starting place is gratitude.

We hope this small farm can be a catalyst to “seed” positive change.  We are excited to be part of a larger network of small ecological farms in Manitoba and across Canada who are each working to enhance their communities by providing ecologically grown food, working at land restoration, wildlife diversity, protecting watersheds, offering educational opportunities, and finding other ways to create strong resilient communities where they live. 

We welcome you to be part of our farm’s journey as we keep on seeding.

Choose Ecological Seed Companies
It’s time to start looking at seed catalogues and ordering seeds for the 2024 garden! 

NEW!  WE HAVE 6 HEIRLOOM BEAN SEED VARIETIES AVAILABLE FROM SWALLOWTAIL FARMSTEAD

Support local & small - If possible, support small seed companies that are local as they will have seeds that are better adapted to your climate and growing conditions.  Regionally adapted varieties add resilience to your local food system.

Save your own - If you can, save some seeds yourself.  Seeds of Diversity is a wonderful Canadian non-profit organization that offers helpful instructions about how to properly save all types of seeds!

Participate in a seed swap - What a great way to connect with other growers, find unique varieties, and share what you have saved.  Join a local seed swap group, or participate on a national scale through the Seeds of Diversity seed exchange program.

Some favourite seed companies - Here is a list of some of our favourite small seed companies, specializing in organic/ecologically grown, non-GMO, open-pollinated and/or heirloom seeds.  There are many other great seed companies, this is just a start…

LOCAL/MANITOBA/PRAIRIES SEED COMPANIES
Heritage Harvest
Tiny Monster Garden
T & T Seeds
Wildrose Heritage Seed Co
Prairie Garden Seeds
Prairie Originals

CANADIAN SEED COMPANIES
Incredible Seeds
Annapolis Seeds
Hawthorn Farm
BC Eco Seed Co-op
Hope Seeds
Northern Seeds
Aimers Seeds
Vesey’s
West Coast Seeds

HERB SEEDS
Richter’s Seeds
Ravensong Seeds

A FEW OTHER FAVOURITES
High Mowing
Fruition Seeds
Johnny’s Select Seeds

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?

“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!