vancouver visit - sole food farm in the fall

In late October, after our farmer's market finished up for the season, I got to head out west to spend time with Andrew in Vancouver. First stop was Sole Food, the farm I apprenticed at in 2012. I spent a day helping at the pacific site, then Lissa and I drove around to the other sites to see how they look. These farm sites will always be some favourite spots of mine. It's interesting to feel so tied to this city land - to feel so at home in a parking lot or old gas station. They mean a whole lot to me. The spaces and the people.

Artichokes were a new crop at the Hastings Site this season. Lissa gave
me these two to take home and they were completely delicious.

Visiting the four high tunnels we built at Vernon Drive. Memories of our
rag-tag crew trying to install these monsters in a month straight of pouring rain. 

The new orchard that was installed at the Main & Terminal site. I helped write
the grant for this so it was extra special to see it live and in person.
Meyer lemons, unreal.

View of the Pacific site from up on the bridge -
memories of laying out 2,000+ pallet boxes for weeks on end.

I owe a lot to Sole Food - not only did they teach me so much while I was there farming, but Seann and Lissa answered my constant questions when I was trying to put together the farm plan for School Grown last winter. I still call Seann on the regular with questions about irrigation or low tunnels. They are good people.

And on the subject of Sole Food, here is a recent short film about the farm's work. Pretty great. There's a shot of me too! 

farm trucks.

Early Sunday mornings pre-farmer's market in Vancouver usually meant trying to jump one novelty sized farm truck with another.  Only the finest. 

September, 2012.

High Tunnels

This season we built 4 high tunnels at our farm site on Vernon Drive. The site is a brownfield - a former gas station that is still under remediation contracts with the former tenant. The soil is contaminated and we grew everything off of the ground in raised beds. The above photo is a panoramic shot of the site after we had cleaned it up and before we started building. There were a few folks living on this sits over the past few years, so there was quite a bit to clean up. 

Assembly

We got our high tunnels from B&W Greenhouses. They come in hundreds of parts - lots of assembly required. It took us a few days just to assemble all of the arches. We then mapped out where all the posts had to go, drove in the posts with sledgehammers (and the help of a jackhammer on the pavement parts) and then started to put up the arches and attach all the purling. Big lesson here: rent a laser level, measure everything at least three times and pay attention to the details. The tunnels all work but there are certainly some wonky parts. Also - we built these in the month of may and it rained most every day, cold and pouring rain. 

But I really learned a lot. I've used a drill growing up but never really felt like I knew what I was doing. But two weeks into this process I was saying things like "let's use the impact driver with the 3/4 inch self tapping screws." My father was impressed!

Up, Up and Away!

Once we got all of the pieces together we had to pull the plastic onto the greenhouse. We pulled the plastic on one of Michael's strawberry houses at Foxglove Farm but we had a team of people who knew what they were doing AND no wind. When we tried them at Vernon we had two folks who had done it before and knew what to expect and a team of exhausted farmers that weren't sure what we were doing. And some light wind.

To pull the poly up you lay it out accordion-folded along the length of the house. You wrap a rock in the corner of the plastic and tie a rope around the rock, leaving lots of rope length to pull on. We tied rocks at both ends and also 2-3 throughout the length of the plastic. We had around 6-8 people helping to pull the poly. Starting on one end you can toss the corner with the rock in up and over the arches (the rock just gives some weight to the corner so that you can toss it.) Someone on the other side should grab the rope and start pulling the corner down on the other side. Someone should be inside the house with a long stick (a broom works well) and they push up on the plastic from inside the house to move it over and down towards the other side. As the plastic starts to slide down you throw over the next rope. Most of the people helping should be on the opposite side, pulling down on the plastic. Be sure to grab it in bunches rather than just pulling on a bit of it - it's really easy to put your finger right through the plastic and you are really pulling hard to get the plastic down.

As you pull more plastic you are getting yourself into dangerous territory - this 200 ft sheet of plastic is essentially a gigantic sail. Just a small gust of wind can catch the plastic and really create a dangerous situation. 

At one point I was holding down the plastic on one side and the when the wind came I was lifted fully off of the ground. Make sure - If the wind comes - just let go! I have heard horror stories of folks not letting go and getting lifted and thrown 20 feet up and away.

The first day we tried to pull it up we had two unsuccessful attempts. The following day we had less wind and more people and got two houses pulled before planting our tomatoes. 

These hoop houses are one of the things I am most proud of this season. They were physically and mentally exhausting, but to look back at what our team did is pretty amazing. And they add such value to our operation - we dry farmed our tomatoes and are able to do some serious season extension at this site.

Soil Testing Guidelines for Urban Agriculture

Toronto Public Health has done an amazing job of creating guiding practices for soil testing for urban growers. I went to a workshop organized by Black Creek Community Farm as they are about to get their 8 acre site tested and are deciding how best to go about it.

Having worked at Sole Food, where the majority of our farms are located on former gas stations or parking lots, I was really interested in the soil testing standards that TPH came up with.

Originally they intended to do a literature review and see what guidelines existed in other major cities for urban agriculture. What they discovered is that most guiding practices for urban food growing were either non-existent or purely anecdotal and not evidenced based. And so they took on the project – reviewing all the literature and coming up with a framework that communities can use.

Soil testing can be very expensive – to do a full test of toxins can run you upwards of $3,000 per sample! And for a community garden, backyard grower, school food garden or urban farm – that can be a non-starter right there. Most groups couldn’t even afford one sample – and then consider that one sample wouldn’t even give you the information that you need.

The TPH guidelines have done a really great job of making the process less costly, trusting community groups to do the testing themselves (and not requiring a soil consultant to interpret the results), identifying what tests you can leave out and telling you when to not even bother testing your soil.

There is a general movement in this work away from the Safe/Not Safe dichotomy, which I totally love. In reality, we may go with worst case scenario and call a plot of soil “unsafe”, but in not growing on that soil we may be eliminating a lot of healthy behaviours and outcomes – someone growing in their backyard may mean their only access to fresh produce in their neighbourhood, a way to get exercise and physical mobility built into their day, the development of pollinator habitat, improved air quality, etc. Instead, we can inform someone of the risks, give them the tools to analyze the information and then make a decision for themselves. Someone’s need to eat may outweigh the risk of growing food in soils that are near a major arterial road.

And so, some soil testing basics that I love:

• Low Risk: If your land has always been residential, school, parkland, farm land or a child care centre and is not within 30 m of a major arterial road – don’t even test it. You will be ok. Wash your hands and wash your produce.

•  Medium Risk: if your land is within 30 m of a major road, or was ever part of a hydro corridor, commercial land, former landfill or in a lead reduction zone – you should get it tested. Unless – you land is really small (13 ft x 13 ft), then raised bed gardening will cost you less than getting your soil tested will.

• High Risk: If your land was ever industrial use, a gas station, a dry cleaner, an auto body shop, etc. then don’t even get it tested. Isn’t this one a revelation! You know already that it is going to be laden with heavy metals and lots of other nasty stuff – so you will pay $2000 (minimum) to get all your tests and find out that it is full of nasty stuff (which you already know!) So TPH recommends – just do raised beds.

And the ultimate thing to remember: do what makes you feel comfortable. We talked about how the Black Creek Farm is probably medium risk as it has always been farmland (meaning its safe) but it’s right up against Jane St (a major road.) So you as an individual could choose not to get it tested if you feel comfortable with those risks. But the farm will be selling its produce to the community and hosting lots of school groups for educational tours – and to feel comfortable, they are getting the soil tested. Point is, folks should be informed and then act based on the knowledge they have and their own comfort with risk.

What to test for?

Heavy metals and PHA’s. That’s it! The research shows that these are the things to be concerned about when considering produce nutrient uptake vs. other vegetation you may grow. You do not need to test for the whole sweet of toxins ($3,000 per sample), instead just ask for heavy metals and PHA’s and you should be able to find a $150-$200 price per sample.

TIP: The more samples you send in, the lower the per sample cost. So, find some other farmers, growers, community groups that will gather samples on the same day as you. Label them all well and send them in as one test.

So good! Here is the link to the TPH report. They are looking for feedback on their work and are hoping to develop a “train the trainer” model so that community members can get this information out to growers. Such good stuff. 

Strawberries

Vertical strawberry planters in April.

We grew strawberries at two of our sites this summer at Sole Food. At Hastings, we have a half-acre site in the parking lot of the Astoria hotel. This is the original site and therefore has a really efficient use of space. When they could no longer go out – they went up! Our strawberries are planted in vertical PVC tubes. The tubes have 2 inch holes drilled into the sides about 12 inches apart in staggered rows. To install them, we stand up the tube and attach it to the side of the wooden raised beds. We then fill with soil from the top of the tube, tamping to make sure it’s good and full. We set up a drip irrigation line running along the top of each tube.  We also placed a pie plate below each tube so that there is some wicking action happening below. These vertical tubes run along side the perimeter of the farm and our main walkway – they go wherever they can fit!

At our pacific site the strawberries are planted in staggered rows, filling up one whole section with these two-year plants. Strawberries will continue to produce after two years, but their production will often slow way down which means most farmers replace them after two years. Keeping them together in one section just makes crop planning easier. This section also got drip irrigation.

Planting:

To plant the strawberries we trimmed the end of the roots so that they were about 4 inches long. We then dipped the plant into a kelp solution full of micronutrients that will give the plant a jump-start. You want to dig a hole deep enough to accommodate the roots – you want the roots straight and not forced to turn upwards at the end with the crown of the plant flush with the soil level. With most plantings, ensure that you aren’t relying on mounding up the dirt around the plant to ensure it’s covered. That dirt will simply wash away and leave the plant bare.  

Runners:

The runners of the strawberry plant are the plant’s way of reproducing. The runner, or stolon, is a long, leafless branch that grows horizontally out of the plant in search of new space, soil, water and light. If left alone, the runner will develop a node that will root itself and form a new strawberry plant. Lissa told me the runner acts like a placenta – feeding the new plant until it is able to live fully on its own. At that point the runner will die off and the plants will no longer be connected. So- if you want new plants in your strawberry patch, let your runners go!

Staple marking a runner we want to keep.

Runners do function like suckers though- when they are putting energy into their reproductive efforts they are not putting that energy into their fruit production. So if your goal is to harvest lots of good strawberries, you want to remove those runners to refocus that energy. I would pull off the runners by hand. Some folks on the farm preferred to use a harvest knife – sometimes this helps if the runners get really big. We would go through and pull off the runners at least once a week. When we were harvesting, we would also bring a small tote/bucket for compost and pull out any bad fruit or runners while harvesting and then the job is always being done.

There were some plants that didn’t take at the start of the season (or were pulled out by the crows…) and so we had some empty spots in our rows. To fill in these spots, we would use a soil staple to mark out a runner that we wanted to leave so that it wouldn’t get picked off by a farmer and the runner would then become a new plant in that empty hole.

Harvesting:

You want to pick your strawberries when they are fully all the way around deep red – no white tips or almost red spots. We could always notice a difference in flavour between almost red and red. Make sure that you keep some of the stem and all of the hull still on the fruit (also known as the peduncle and calyx – such good names!) They look better and keep better that way. I used my fingers to pinch off the stem and harvest, some choose to use a knife. We would not sell anything that had any soft spots or rain damage, but would harvest those to save for staff to eat.

With the strawberries in rows we would just harvest right into the flats. For the strawberries in the vertical tubes we would use a fashionable yogurt tub necklace so that you could reach up above you and harvest with both hands without having to hold on to a flat. We never washed strawberries as they keep much longer that way.

Strawberries are amazing to have at markets! We would always offer samples – a sure fire way to get folks coming back for more.