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.