Week 14: Fermented

This week in the pack we expect to have tomatoes; spinach; fennel; chard; peppers; eggplants; melons; beans or small salad mix; small parsley; zucchini or cucumber; and hopefully peaches.

**On Monday we begin a new quarter, so for those of you who wish to make quarterly payments, please send them in before your pick up this week. For those who gave me post-dated cheques, I will be depositing them this week.**

Benjamin has started to offer his fantastic fermented vegetables at the city pick-ups. Please be aware that although they are in mason jars, they have not been canned. Keep them in the fridge. Lacto-fermentation is a fantastic, traditional, low-energy way to preserve vegetables. Eating them will help with gut health. Please see this week’s email for more details.

On the farm, David is feeling stoked about the latest spinach crop. We are also encouraged by many of the warm season crops. At the same time, a lot of the fall crops have been planted and carefully weeded.

A spontaneous sunflower blooming right outside Bruce’s door. It is so welcoming.

We’ve had a lot of raptors flying above us as we work, red-tailed hawks, eagles, and osprey. The diversity of smaller birds always goes up at this time too as they feast on berries and bugs. Marshall and Benjamin have been super encouraging to David and I because they both want to come back to work here. We couldn’t be happier! Bruce and Nadege are getting ready for their wedding on September 6 so David and I will take over some distribution work while they have their honeymoon. We are also working on improvements to Bruce’s shack and hope everything will be ready for them when they return.

On Monday we went to see Jean-Martin Fortier speak in Sackville NB while the rain poured down at home. He is a young Quebec farmer who is setting the market garden community on fire with his inspiring example of profitable farming. Because it rained all day Monday, Todd Huntley needed help picking blueberries so David and I went over on Tuesday. What a pleasure it was to spend time with Todd, and hear his wealth of knowledge. On Wednesday Todd was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery. We all went over to pick blueberries and kept him, along with his family, lifted in prayer. Todd is ok but won’t be too active for a while.