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.

Honey Harvest

We collected our honey in late July - we had a total of 9 full frames from two different hives. Both honey and brood cells are capped, but the capped honey has a waxier, shiny look and the capped brood has a papery, dull look to it. We looked for frames that were full of the waxier capped honey.

Lots of beekeepers use a super on the top of their brood box with a queen excluder in between. The excluder keeps the queen from entering the super which means she won't be able to lay any eggs in the super - keeping it for honey only. Our hives were set up with two brood boxes and no super, so we had to look for frames that had the least amount of brood. Typically, the brood is towards the centre-bottom of the box so the frames that are closer to the outside of the box were full of honey. 

It's important to only take what is surplus honey for the hive. The honey they are producing is meant to keep them through the winter. They will continue to produce honey and it's ok to take this surplus, but you need to make sure they will have enough food source to over winter successfully. Lots of beekeepers that sell their honey may prioritize harvesting honey and then supplementing their bee's food source with sugar water. I would prefer they have the more nutritious honey for their food. One thing I learned is if you are anticipating a cold winter the bees will actually require less honey since they will be less active, if it's a warmer winter they will be more active and will require greater energy. 

Also, if you do harvest honey it's a good idea to keep some to be able to feed to the bees if they need it. Instead of feeding sugar water you could feed the bees some of their own honey which would be more nutritious (and less processed.) If you are collecting from multiple hives, be sure to label since you should feed the bees only honey from their own hive. 

The Harvest

We pulled out each frame to see how much honey it had, we took frames that had about 95% capped honey. If you decide to take that frame, make sure you brush off (with a bee brush or a soft brush) the bees on the frame back into the hive. We then put each frame into a large plastic tote with a lid to keep the bees off of it and also any wasps that may be interested in the honey. When we brought them inside, we made sure we didn't have the windows open since we would most likely get some panicked bees concerned we were robbing. 

To start we scrapped all of the wax off of the frame with a uncapping scratcher. We put all the wax into an old ice cream pale to make lip balm with later. We were sure to do this work over some baking trays to collects any sticky drips. 

Once the wax was scraped off we placed the frames inside a honey extractor. The extractor holds two frames at a time - you insert them vertically and then close the lid. A hand crank causes the frames to spin quickly and the centrifugal force pulls out the honey from the frame and flows down to the bottom of the extractor. There is a valve at the bottom that can be opened and allows the honey to flow out into a container.

We transfered our honey to a collection of glass jars and we had tons! 

Afterwards we returned the empty frames back to the hive to be filled again by the busy bees. 

The two hives we harvested from were only 2 km away and look at the colour difference! The one on the left is from the Strathcona community garden and the one on the right was from the Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood.

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. 

Corporate CSA

A traditional CSA model usually has a member purchase a full share of the harvest for the season - they have to pay up front and then get a set box of produce each week throughout the season. Some CSA programs provide more options for their members - sometimes providing a core list of produce and then some options on top of that, some allowing members to choose all of their items each week, some even partner with other producers being able to provide meat, dairy and baked good options.

One of the CSA's we offered at Sole Food was a Corporate CSA option. A local business is able to help subsidize the cost of a CSA share for their staff. We worked with Vancity to provide CSA shares to 6 of their staff. Vancity helps to pay for the share and we drop off a box to their work place each week. Above is an example of a weekly Corporate CSA share. Included: beets, carrots, cucumbers, dill, eggplant, radishes, strawberries and zucchini - all organically grown! 

Zucchini

Costata Romanesco Zucchini - an Italian heirloom variety with a delicious nutty flavour and firm texture. We would harvest them fairly small so that they maintained that firmness and not be too watery or spongy. We would sell them at the market with the blossom still attached - a way for us to distinguish ourselves and also a great way to chat with market goers about different ways of preparing and cooking parts of the zucchini plant. One of our regulars told me about a Mexican dish of slicing up the blossoms, cooking them with onions and lots of cilantro and serving with fresh corn tortillas, yum! This variety also has ridges along the side of the fruit which makes for a beautiful shape when you slice it up. Once they got too big (if you leave zucchini - it will get bigger than your head, folks) then they make some delicious zucchini bread!

French Filet Beans

French Filet beans are meant to be picked when they are still pretty small and thin. The ones in this picture are even a little on the big size. If you pick them small, you can charge quite a bit more since it is more labour intensive. They are a big hit at the market and with restaurant chefs. Since they are so tender they are delicious raw or in a real quick pickle. The purple will lose its colour if you cook it. We grew were velour, concador and tavera varieties.

Arugula

We could hardly grow enough arugula! Always first of the greens to sell out at a market - that is if we even had any left after putting together restaurant orders.  Delicious!

When harvesting, we'd be sure to make sure we trimmed off any long stems as they are more bitter and more tough. We'd also be sure to pick out any cotyledons as they are the first to go yellow.