Monthly Subscriptions

Drumroll please…

Our Monthly Subscriptions are officially LIVE and available for purchase!

Subscribe now then rely on convenient, automatic payments processed every 4 weeks to secure a month’s worth of weekly deliveries. Plus, enjoy the ability to skip a month if necessary.

Choose from two subscriptions, or snag both!

  1. Our standard Market Box, a box full of seasonal produce grown right here on our farm delivered to your home once a week

  2. A Beef Subscription: one monthly delivery of a box full of beef.

*PLUS* order stand-alone delivery items such as baked goods, beef, and preserves to be delivered independently (no subscription required!) or as add-ons for subscribers.

Here’s an overview of how it works:

For 2024, the monthly subscriptions will once again be true subscriptions. When you sign up for the first month of delivery of the season, your credit card will be charged.

After that, your subscription will automatically renew every 4 weeks for 7 months, with an automatic payment being processed every 4 weeks. Please note that this automatic renewal date is based on your initial subscription date (i.e. If you register for May on April 15th your renewal for the month of June will be processed on May 13th).

However, if you wish to discontinue your subscription for a month, you can send us an email following your automatic renewal, and we can manually issue a refund for the month. That way your overall subscription will remain intact, and will continue to renew for future months without interruption.

Alternatively, you can head to the subscription tab, and click “cancel subscription.” Want to join in again? Head back to the 2024 Subscriptions tab on our website and purchase the subscription again. You will then be charged every 4 weeks for the remainder of the Market Box season.

Stand-Alone Deliveries

Each month we will also offer a variety of items for delivery either as add-ons for Market Box customers or as stand-alone deliveries for non-subscribers — we can do both!

These items will be available according to the season, and will include things like bulk produce, preserves, our frozen Black Angus Beef, and baked goods from our Farm Kitchen.

Orders for stand-alone delivery items for the following week close each Friday at midnight. This ensures we have time to create detailed harvest and pack lists for our team. Please be mindful of this timeline when planning your orders!

  • For 2024, preserves & honey will be available for delivery weekly

  • Baked goods & Black Angus Beef are also available weekly

  • Bulk produce for May: cases of asparagus and rhubarb, for anyone who wants to stock up their freezer

    • 11lb Case of Asparagus: $47

    • 4 Bunches of Asparagus: $24

    • 10lb Case of Rhubarb: $47

    • 4 Bunches of Rhubarb: $24

If you are a subscriber, place your stand-alone delivery orders separately and we will automatically pair them with your Market Box.

May Schedule

Month 1: Weeks 1 - 4

Registration Deadline for Month 1: Thursday May 2nd  

  • Week 1: May 6 – 10

  • Week 2: May 13 – 17

  • Week 3: May 20 – 24

  • Week 4: May 27 – 31

Delivery Area

Below is an overview of our delivery area. Exact days of delivery will be determined and announced the week before deliveries start.

April 11 2024 Farm Updates

Hey there friends of the farm! We have some exciting updates for you:

🛻 Monthly Subscriptions and stand-alone deliveries for the month of May will be launching on Monday April 15th. Stay tuned for a wide range of options for home delivery!

🧀 Our Farm Market will be reopening for the season on Saturday May 4th. We are participating in Big Cheese Days again, a partnership with Tourism Oxford and the Cheese Trail. Check out details here!

👩🏻‍🌾We will also begin to attend a variety of farmers’ markets on Saturday May 4th. Find us at the Galt, Guelph, St. Jacob’s, St. Lawrence, Stratford, and Woodstock Farmers’ Markets!

🐝 Our 2024 On-Farm Experiences continue to be available for booking. Spend some time behind the beehives with Beekeeper Nathan and our brand-new experience Meet the Bees or join Registered Dietitian & Farmer Alex for a Harvest Brunch – a morning of harvest, cooking, and tasting!

🥬 We have greens in the greenhouse, asparagus, rhubarb, and green garlic beginning to re-awaken for the season, and overwintered potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and sweet potatoes tucked away in storage ready to be pulled out in just a few weeks.

🍯 We have a great stock of our Melon Blossom Honey on hand! If you are interested in snagging a jar or two (or a full case!) email alex.trmelons@gmail.com to arrange a pickup day and time. We are also able to ship across Canada via Canada Post (this goes for our full lineup of preserves, actually!). Shipping is a bit pricey, typically starting at $15-$20, but is a great option if you can’t make it out to the farm.

Overwinter(ed)

This past week kicked off with some gorgeous sunny days! Monday through Wednesday saw temperatures upwards of 18°C!

This sunshine inspired our clever little email title here — overwinter(ed). In many ways, it feels like we are over winter, and it’s full steam ahead to spring. There’s action in the fields already, and our heated greenhouse is starting to fill up with seedlings! Looking ahead at next week the temperatures will be dipping back down, but either way we are getting so excited for what’s to come.

As we look ahead and prepare, we are also excited to have a good number of overwintered crops stashed away, which will help bulk up our spring Market Box and Farmers’ Market offerings. More on those overwintered items in a bit!

Pictured above are some shots from our heated greenhouse. As you may remember from our updates last March, we start many of our crops in trays, in a greenhouse (either our small heated one, or our larger glass one). Right now we have a patchwork quilt looking mix of Swiss Chard, spinach, mustard green, onions, and shallots in our heated greenhouse. It’s a lovely view! And it’s very exciting to know that all of these fresh goodies will soon be heading our way.

Out in the fields, we are already seeing the first sign of growth.  To be honest, it’s pretty early for temperatures like this! We were looking through our records, and typically the first sign of rhubarb (the photo on the right just above) isn’t poking up through the soil until closer to the last week of March. But, we’re rolling with it! We are no strangers to unpredictable and strange weather patterns; it’s pretty much a given in farming. We will make it work! We are also seeing signs of the first green garlic (aka baby garlic). If you aren’t familiar, take a peek at some of these recipes for some early inspiration.

We also successfully overwintered some carrots for the first time, and are so thrilled to have an extra pop of colour and flavour on hand for one of our May Market Boxes. We’ve been test-tasting and can confirm that they are still delicious!

Speaking of overwintered crops, we are delighted to have some onions and potatoes on hand, along with cabbage (not pictured). Once again, these will pair well with our freshly harvested asparagus, rhubarb, greens, and herbs in our May Market Boxes.

2024 On Farm Experiences

As the season start is fast approaching, we wanted to update you on farm experiences for 2024!

We are thrilled to announce the addition of one brand-new experience: Meet the Bees! Keep reading to learn more.

We are also excited to announce more Harvest Brunch dates, as well as a Pick-Your-Own update.

Meet the Bees

Beekeeping activities will vary depending on weather and season. We’ll provide beekeeping suits, veils, and gloves for you to wear. All ages are welcome!

Keep in mind that while bees are friendly, and we’ll do our best to keep them calm, stings are possible. We have medical supplies available in case of unexpected emergencies, but please don’t sign up if you have had reactions or have a known allergy to bee venom. We will also have a waiver that must be signed upon arrival.

Harvest Brunch

Join Registered Dietitian & Farmer Alex Chesney for some time in the fields at Thames River Melons. Harvest your own fruits and vegetables, visit the chickens, gather eggs, and explore the farm. Slow down and enjoy the beauty of one of Ontario’s most bountiful agricultural areas as you learn more about where your food comes from, how it is grown, the nourishment it offers you, and the benefits of supporting your local producers.

Head back to the brand-new Farm Kitchen where you’ll spend time together creating a beautiful long table brunch crafted around the season’s freshest finds. Cook a delicious & simple frittata and roasted potatoes, learning kitchen tips and tricks as you go and enjoying the company of others. Finally, enjoy the fruits of your labour paired with a selection of other farm goods and local flavours as you sit down together for a social brunch on the farm. Experience how food inspires connection and taste the difference local makes.

In addition to our traditional morning brunches, we will be offering the occasional Harvest Dinner, taking place in the evening. The menu will be adjusted to suit this meal, making it perfect for a date night or a girls night out!

Pick Your Own

Our Farm Market and Pick Your Own (PYO) Patch is set to re-open for the season on Saturday May 4th!

We will start off the year with asparagus & rhubarb (both pre-picked and a limited amount of PYO!) as well as our full lineup of preserves, merch, baked goods, and more.

We are once again participating in Tourism Oxford’s Big Cheese Days event in May 2024 - more details for this will be launching soon, so stay tuned!

Once June rolls around, our PYO strawberries and vegetables will start to be in season. July will bring raspberries and blueberries, and blueberries will continue throughout August and into early September. The veggie patch expands throughout the summer, and lasts all the way into November, so there’s lots of time to harvest your greens, carrots, cauliflower, and more! Finally, once the leaves begin to turn, our Pick Your Own options will transition to include apples and pumpkins.

Keep an eye on our social media channels for PYO Updates, as well as our PYO webpage (linked below!).

If you can’t make it to the farm — we deliver!

Although we would love to welcome you here in person on the farm, we realize that’s not possible for everyone. If that’s the case for you, we may be able to deliver! Check out our map below, as well as a list of delivery options.

Meet us in the Middle

Finally, a happy medium between visiting the farm and receiving a home delivery is a farmers’ market! Market season will slowly begin in May, with more and more markets joining the lineup as our season progresses. Typically all markets are up and running by strawberry season in mid-June!

If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to send us an email. We can’t wait to connect with you soon!

Farm and Food Care Partnership

Now, I know I said in our Meet the Family blog post that we’re all pretty camera-shy, and that’s true! However, we did step outside of our comfort zone this past summer when an opportunity to work with with Farm and Food Care arose.

Farm and Food Care is a whole-sector coalition made up of representatives from all farming types and associated businesses, and positions itself as the helpful expert on Ontario agriculture. The common goal is to build public trust in food and farming in Ontario and across Canada. Farm & Food Care Ontario is active in promotion, education, program development and consumer research.

This past summer, Farm and Food Care partnered with Berry Growers of Ontario (aka BGO, an organization that represents - you guessed it - berry growers in Ontario!) to create some videos featuring berry farms. I’m the Chair of BGO and when they were looking for a blueberry farm to film on, I offered up our patch.

Fast forward to July 2023, and a film crew rolled onto the farm. It was quite the experience, but in the end we had a wonderful time sharing and showing off our farm, and the Farm and Food Care team put together a beautiful video. Check it out below!

Meet the Family

Hey there friends of the farm! This is Alex here, reaching out to you from the barn office. We’ve had another taste of winter the a couple of weeks ago, and are now back to some unseasonably warm weather today. Despite all the up and down, one thing remains certain: the season of fresh fruits and veggies will be here before you know it!

While we wait, we thought it may be time for us to reintroduce ourselves. We don’t really do that often around here: we’re a pretty camera-shy bunch, and prefer to hang out behind the scenes most days. But we also know that we frequently refer to ourselves as a family farm, so we thought it was time for you to (electronically, at least!) meet the family.

Family is also top of mind for me right now as my brother Luke is getting married next week! We can’t wait to celebrate with him and his soon-to-be wife Amy, and officially welcome her to the family.

Pictured in the above photo from left to right are Nathan, myself (Alex), Maria, Rob, and Ella. This photo was taken summer of 2023, during a visit from Farm and Food Care. More on that visit later!

Pictured above is Grant, from summer 2021. He’s out on wagon helping with melon harvest!

Pictured above are Luke and Amy, from November 2022. This photo was taken at our Farm Market & Pick Your Own.

Last but not least? Our four-legged family members! The top photo includes our dogs Flagler, Blueberry, and Luna (from left to right), while the bottom features our barn cat Pumpkin.

Who Does What?

Now that you can put faces to names, I’ll fill you in a bit more on everyone’s roles here on the farm. I also asked everyone what their favourite farm fresh food is, so I’m including that too!

Rob is our head farmer, and the reason we’re all here today! He grew up on my grandparents’ tobacco farm, and branched out to growing melons in the early 80s. He is a visionary, the hardest worker you’ll ever meet, and incredibly passionate about growing food and connecting with people. If you’ve ever called the farm, Rob more than likely answered the phone. He oversees all things production, as well as the wholesale side of things.

Rob says he’s anticipating our newly planted peach crop to be fantastic, and therefore his favourite. Peaches will be ready for harvest in 2026!

Maria is an elementary-school teacher (she teaches outdoor education - how perfect is that!), and helps on the farm with a variety of administrative tasks and at the Saturday Stratford Farmers' Market. If you’re ever in the Stratford area, be sure to stop by and say hello to her!

Maria’s favourite farm fresh crop is muskmelon. A classic! She loves to enjoy it by the slice, or cubed up in a bowl.

Grant and Ella are full-time students, and help on the farm on weekends and all summer long with invoicing, filing, farmers' markets, feeding our Black Angus Beef and chickens, and more. Grant is currently in grade 11 and Ella is in grade 9!

Grant’s farm favourite comes from our Farm Kitchen - the soft pretzels! We sell these here on the farm, and they are available for delivery!

Ella’s farm favourite is a Farm Market delight - raspberry frozen yogurt! We serve this up seasonally and it makes for the perfect snack after an afternoon of berry or veggie picking.

Flagler keeps the family entertained with his playful energy and snuggly-sweet nature.

Flagler’s favourite farm treat is fresh raw asparagus!

Alex (it’s me, hi!) works on the farm full-time as a Registered Dietitian and Manager, and oversees farmers' markets, the On-Farm Market (and it’s connected Farm Kitchen & Farm Food Truck!), market box deliveries, marketing (social media/website/blog), recipe development, and staff hiring and training. She loves creating opportunities for experiencing agriculture, whether here on the farm in a Pick Your Own Patch, or via an email newsletter.

My favourite farm flavour is seedless watermelon. I love cubing it up and eating a big bowl as a snack or an addition to lunch. It’s refreshing & delicious, and never gets old!

Nathan is an English professor, and spends his winters writing, researching, and teaching. During the summer months, he oversees our beekeeping activities (we have over 100 hives!), ensuring the ladies are healthy for pollination and extracting honey for sale on the farm. Nathan also manages our food safety program and helps with market box delivery coordination.

m favourites came down to a tie between honey and sweet potato. Bonus if they are served together! Sweet potato casserole, anyone?

Blueberry is the Pick Your Own mascot, and loves meeting new people when they come visit the farm.

Blueberry loves to chomp on carrots and cucumber, and occasionally even eats her namesake — blueberries!

Luke is an e-commerce expert, working on building his company CREO Cards from the ground up. CREO creates custom illustrated, limited-edition, collectible creator merchandise.  They work with a wide variety of incredibly talented Artists to create beautiful, hand-drawn representations of iconic moments. Luke frequently lends an ear and offers up advice for our online sales and marketing. He always has the best insights!

Luke’s farm favourite is blueberries. The perfect snack for eating on the go!

Amy works side by side with Luke at CREO, handling all things finance, accounts, and coordination. She is exceptionally organized, and an expert at Excel! She’s our go to for advice on spreadsheets, and also has experience with event planning. Luke and Amy live with their pup Luna in Windsor.

Amy’s favourite comes from the Farm Food Truck: our fresh cut fries! They are hot, deliciously crispy, and perfectly salted. We’ll reopen for the season in May!

Luna’s favourite farm snack is bell pepper. She loves ‘em!

Above left: a photo from our 2023 Long Table Dinner

Above centre: an event in fall 2022, where the whole family helped out!

Above right: Nathan giving a curious customer a peek inside some hives!

Updates from Week 4 of April

Can you believe we’ve reached the end of April already? This month has been a whirlwind, and all over the place weather-wise. We are looking forward to May and are hopeful for a bit more predictability coming our way soon. It may becalling for rain today, but the sun was shining nicely yesterday, so I ran out to snap a few photos to help fill you in on what we’ve been up to in the past week!

First up, our raspberry patch is looking all spruced up thanks to a thorough pruning and trellis reinforcement with baler twine. These raspberries are located at our Pick-Your-Own Patch and will be ready for harvest in mid-July. This crop was planted in 2020, so this will mark year 3 of harvest. We had quite a significant crop last year (their second year of growth) so we anticipate this season being even bigger and better!

Next, we’ve been hard at work out in the fields this week, preparing for planting. The specific process varies slightly depending on the crop, but the overall steps are the same.

  1. First, we mark out “strips” using a tractor enabled with a GPS system. This system keeps the tractor driving straight, and helps ensure the strips are evenly spaced. The strips are 60 feet apart and mark where the path between rows of beds will be. This path is where the tractors drive in between the beds of produce.

  2. Next, we lay the beds. There’s an attachment that goes on the back of our tractor, and it forms the soil into beds that are slightly raised, and are 33 inches wide. These beds have 6-foot centres (6feet from the centre of one bed to the centre of its’ neighbour). This allowsfor space between the beds where we can walk and where a tractor’s wheels cango for planting and weeding purposes.

  3. Third, we cover the beds. These bed covers are weighed down on the sides using soil, and they will help trap moisture and heat and suppress weeds, all things that contribute to a more successful growing season!

  4. Fourth, we punch holes in the bed covers and add either a seed or a transplant, depending on the crop.

  5. Next, we add wire hoops, which will help support an additional layer of cover, pictured below.

  6. Finally, we lay the row covers, which trap even more heat, and speed up the growing process significantly. These row covers have holes punched into them, to allow for air flow. They will be removed once the plants reach a certain point in their growing stage (flowering for many, as the bees will need access for pollination!) Additionally, if they are left on for too long it can “cook” the plants, so we have to be careful!

In the top left photo you can see a tractor in the background. You can’t really tell, but this tractor has a planter on the back of it, and our crew is seeding the first sweet corn of the season. Sweet corn is planted from seed directly into the soil, as it is a crop that is fairly cold-tolerant and doesn’t require as much help to grow when compared to a crop like melons.

Pictured above are our overwintered June strawberries. They were covered with straw last fall, which helped to insulate them and protect them from cold temperatures. Now that it’s starting to warm up though, we raked the straw off to allow the plants to have access to sunshine again! Soon these plants will blossom, and these blossoms will turn into sweet berries. The straw will stay between the rows, as it also helps with weed suppression and moisture retention, as well as helping to minimize transfer of dirt and bugs from the soil to the berries.

In the above photo there are more strawberries. These ones are our everbearing variety, though! Everbearing strawberries are a variety that responds to sunlight differently. Traditional June strawberries produce for around 6 weeks each season, from early June through to mid-July, while everbearing varieties start to produce berries in July, and continue until we experience frost in the fall. Typically everbearing strawberries are a one-season crop, but you can overwinter them and with the help of row covers, produce an early spring crop. That’s what we’re doing here! We realize it doesn’t really look like a field of strawberries at the moment, but once those row covers are pulled off, we will be treated to an early taste of spring strawberries.

And finally, pictured above are the beginning stages of two delicious vegetables, which also happen to pair well in a culinary sense, too: potatoes and garlic. The potatoes were just planted this week, while the garlic was planted last fall and is just now beginning to pop up out of the soil. We will start to harvest some of the garlic within the next week or so. At this stage it will be ‘green garlic’ aka baby garlic, and is deliciously tender and sweet. The greens are tender too, which means the whole plant can be used and enjoyed at this stage, much like green onions.

Updates from Week 2 of April

Hello from the farm! Unlike last week, it has been all sunshine and blue-skies the past few days! This gorgeous weather has allowed us to get lots of work done outside and in the fields, and we are definitely making the most of it. Here’s a little peak at what we’ve been up to:

First up, it’s all about the seedlings right now. The glass greenhouse on our home farm is now officially full of trays! From now on, new trays will be transported just down the road to an additional greenhouse space located on our family’s property. We share several resources with them — this greenhouse, tractors, land, and more!

Pictured below are the first of our melon seedlings!

Next, we’ve been continuing to work on pruning our blueberries. We’re finishing up the final rows today, and will then be moving on to our raspberries. The photo on the left below shows just how many branches are removed during a pruning. It’s quite a lot! While out in the blueberry fields we were delighted to see that they are starting to bud! Check out the photo on the right to see where they are at.

Next, we’re trying something new this year, and wanted to share a little teaser. Stay tuned to find out what’s under the row covers next week! In the meantime, any guesses?

And finally, we’ve been hard at work tidying, organizing, and cleaning up our Farm Market. We will be re-opening for the season on Saturday May 6th!

Updates from Week 1 of April

Hello from the farm! It has been one wet week around here, and I’m sure it’s been the same for a lot of you as well! Fortunately, we have very sandy soil, so water drains pretty quickly. It’s handy when we have an abundance of water that needs to get moving, but as we talked about in some previous newsletters, it can pose a problem later in the season when we inevitably run into dry spells.

There’s quite a bit of activity on the go this week, and I thought I’d fill you in on some of it!

We were busy baking and sorting preserves earlier this week, and then dropped off all Spring/Easter orders yesterday, direct to the doorsteps of those who ordered. Thanks so much to everyone who supported our Farm Kitchen, and we hope you enjoy your pies, pretzels, and more!

Meanwhile, our seeding and field crews have also had lots on the go. Keep scrolling for a sneak peek at what they’ve been up to!

First up, as requested by our youngest reader (a 6-year-old from Toronto!) here are some photos of our germination trailer. Several of our crops hang out in here after being seeded into trays, and before heading out into the greenhouse. The germination trailer is heated to 85°F and has a humidity of 90%. The humidity is actually just thanks to the moisture found in the trays themselves, which are wetted down after being seeded. The trays stay in the germination trailer for anywhere from 24 – 72 hours: muskmelon for 24 hours, watermelon for 48 hours, and tomatoes for 72 hours. This time in the germination trailer allows for the emergence of 1/8 of an inch of the radical root (primary root) and sets the plant up for success throughout the season.

Next, two of our earliest crops (rhubarb and asparagus) are in their beginning stages of the season. Our asparagus fields are being mowed: the previous season’s plants grow up and go to fern after we finish harvesting, and we leave them out in the field over the fall and winter to act as a natural windbreak. Meanwhile, the rhubarb is starting to push its way up out of the soil for another year.

The first of our two cold frame greenhouses is officially full! We’ve got red, green, and Boston lettuce in there, along with spinach, Swiss chard, and potted chives and basil.

Our beekeeper Nathan was out checking on the beehives earlier this week, and we are thrilled to report that they are looking great! Check out this packed hive!

Finally, (not pictured) our blueberry bushes are being pruned this week! It may seem counterintuitive to cut off parts of a plant, but cutting back the older canes on the bush encourages more productive growth of new canes for future seasons. We will repeat the same process with our raspberry crop!

Seeding Situation

The weather around here continues to be pretty wild. One minute the ground is covered in snow, the next it’s pouring rain, and then the sun is shining. And now? It’s snowing again! Thankfully it seems like this snow isn’t going to stick around for long, but it certainly makes our day to day a little less enjoyable.

As we mentioned last week, our heated greenhouse has been slowly filling up with trays of seedlings. And as of today, it’s at capacity! So that means it’s time for transplanting. We’ll be shifting the furthest-along greens and herbs out to the cold frame greenhouses within the next day or so. After that, new trays filled with soil and seeds will take their place. This process of seeding a few trays at a time, on a regular basis, is called succession planting. It helps ensure we will have a steady supply of crops throughout the season.

In the meantime, we have also started to seed the first of the season peppers, tomatoes, and… (drumroll, please!) melons! That’s right, muskmelon and yellow watermelon, our earliest melons of the season, are making their way into soil as we speak.

While the herbs and greens will be transplanted to the cold frame and then continue to grow there until they are harvested, the peppers, tomatoes, and melons go through a slightly different process.

Peppers, tomatoes, and melons are also transplant crops, but they will eventually be transplanted outdoors, not into another greenhouse setting. The greenhouse these crops will hang out in while they get established is pictured above. It’s a traditional glass greenhouse and is heated by the sun. Fans at either end of the structure help regulate temperatures by controlling access to fresh air and cycling out hot air from inside

Before heading to the greenhouse though, the trays of pepper, tomato, and melon seeds have to make one more stop — a germination trailer! This is a dark space that slowly warms the soil and helps the seeds ‘wake up’ before heading into the greenhouse.

Blog post written & photographed by Alex Chesney, RD

Transition to the Cold Frames

Our heated greenhouse is full of seedlings, and they’re getting big enough that it’s officially time to transition them out to our cold frame greenhouses! We’ve got lettuce (green, red, and Boston), Swiss Chard, spinach, and a variety of herbs that will be making the move. The herbs will be transplanted into pots which will then hang out in the cold frames, while the greens will be transplanted directly into the soil. We will begin the transplant process next week and are hard at work preparing the cold frames this week so that they’re ready to go in time.

Most of these preparations already took place last fall. We removed last season’s landscape fabric, prepared the soil (removed all remnants of last season’s plants and added a dose of fertilizer) formed the soil beds for planting, left spaces for pathways, added rows of trickle tape irrigation tubes, and then laid down new landscape fabric. Gravel stones were placed on top of the landscape fabric along the walking pathways to make for easier movement up and down the rows.

This week we set up the watering system and have begun to run water through the trickle tape to start to rehydrate the soil. We have a handy probe that helps monitor moisture levels. Right now it’s reading 5%, and our goal is 18%, so it’s well on the way!

The greens will be included in our May and June Market Boxes, as well as sent out to some of our farmers’ markets. We can’t wait to have these fresh veggies available again! They will pair nicely with our spring field crops (asparagus, rhubarb, and green garlic) as well as our overwintered vegetables -- cabbage, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. As always, our preserves, baked goods, and merch will also be available as add-ons each week to help round out your grocery delivery.

Blog post written & photographed by Alex Chesney, RD

Irrigation Education

Happy Friday! All this rain today has us thinking about water, and the essential role it plays here on the farm. And although it feels like the rain is never-ending right now, by the time summer rolls around there are no guarantees! We’ve been known to experience some very hot and very dry seasons, and our crops can’t survive without a consistent water source. One way around this? Irrigation! We utilize both overhead and trickle irrigation, but today we wanted to teach you a little bit about our trickle tape system.

Trickle irrigation works by sending water from pipes through lines of tape – essentially small, flat, plastic tubing that has built in pressure-compensating emitters. These emitters are located 16-inches apart, and they ensure that water is evenly distributed (within 15% or so) all along the tape. In general, trickle irrigation uses 1/10th of the amount of water used by overhead irrigation, so it’s much more efficient!

We use trickle irrigation on high-value crops like strawberries, raspberries, zucchini, and tomatoes. There are certain instances where overhead irrigation is required (like for frost protection) but when trickle irrigation is an option we try to use it!

Right now, our team is hard at work preparing the trickle tape for another season of use. To back up, at the end of last season we worked our way through the fields, picking up the trickle tape and wrapping it onto spools for storage over the winter. Each row in the field has its own section of trickle tape, and we tied them together for easy storage on the spool.

Now, we are working to put them back together into a single strand, for use again this coming season. And the way we do this is pretty interesting, so we thought we’d fill you in!

The spools of old trickle tape are set on a stand on one end of the workspace and the tape is then strung along to a second stand about 20 feet away. This second spool is controlled by a small motor that turns it round and round. In the middle there’s a nifty machine used to seal the tied ends of tape back together, as well as an old wringer washing machine that’s been converted to create tension and ensure the tape wraps onto the second spool neatly.

The nifty machine we mentioned is the real hero here. As the tubes of tape run from the old spool to the new one, our team is watching for the tied-together sections. When one is reached, they stop the motor and cut the tied section out. Now it’s time to meld them back together, to create that single strand we talked about earlier.

To do this, we pop the tube open and insert a small piece of plastic inside it, then slide the other end of tubing over top. We then place this recreated tube into the machine, and it presses down, applying heat - the heating panels are powered by a 12-volt battery! This heat application essentially melts the two sections of tubing together, creating a single unit, and the small piece of plastic keeps the tubing open, and prevents it from being sealed together. The heat is applied for 20 seconds or so, and then the tube is transferred into a water dish for about 10 seconds. From there, the motor is turned back on and the tubing continues to be fed through the old wringer washing machine and onto the new spool.

And that’s it! The new spools of trickle tape will then be taken out to the field and laid down on the rows for use for another season. We typically get 2 – 3 seasons of use out of these tubes. After that, the small emitters start to get plugged up, and don’t work anymore. Overall though it really reduces how much plastic we have to use, and how often we have to buy replacement tape.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading! This is fairly niche information, but it’s an important step in the complicated process of preparing for the upcoming season, and thought you may find it interesting!

Blog post written & photographed by Alex Chesney, RD

An Update from the Heated Greenhouse

Hey there, friends of the farm! As I write this from my office in the barn, snow is falling steadily outside. It seems like Fridays are snow days lately, hey? We’re happy to report it’s not affecting us or our crops too much at this point, though! We did have one more repair to make on the greenhouse plastic, but we’ve otherwise managed to survive it all unscathed. In fact, snow actually adds a nice layer of insulation on top of our strawberries, which helps them survive colder weather more successfully.

All this white stuff does make it hard to believe that asparagus will be popping up through the soil in just two months or so from now, though! Time is starting to move awfully quickly.

In the meantime, we wanted to fill you in on a few more updates. Our heated greenhouse continues to get a little fuller each week, with more and more seeded trays making their way into the warmth. We now have onions, shallots, Swiss chard, spinach, and mustard greens on the go, and it’s so fun to see them develop each week!

Remember a few weeks ago I mentioned how our onions and shallots would eventually need a haircut? Well, the time has come! Over the next few days we will be trimming these little guys down so that they don’t get too top-heavy and start to topple over. This process is made possible thanks to a modified tobacco trimmer.

Rob grew up on a farm, and his parents (my grandparents!) first grew tobacco. Our family has since transitioned out of this crop production, but we still have a lot of the equipment and supplies around here, so we decided to put some to use!

It’s really quite simple, albeit time-consuming: we set the trays on the tabletop (fashioned out of a wooden skid placed on some sawhorses) on which the trimmer is built and slide them through one at a time. The top parts of the onions are trimmed off and swept out of the way, and then we return the trays to their position in the greenhouse. We then use a battery-powered leaf blower to blow all remaining onion tops off of the trays, and sweep them up off of the floor. This trimming process ensures the plants stay upright and strong and continues to promote healthy root production.

Blog post written and photographed by Alex Chesney, RD

More Onion Updates!

We’re seeing seedlings in all directions! This is Alex writing to you, by the way — farmer, dietitian, and the one behind most of these emails & social media posts. I’ve been so excited to see these little onions popping up through the soil that I figured I’d share some of that with you and include a rare photo with me in it :)

I was away from the farm for a few days at the annual Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Convention. It’s an opportunity for folks from across the province (and in some cases the country!) who work in the horticultural field to come together and learn, explore the trade show, and connect.

My dad (Farmer Rob) joined for a couple of day as well, but had to head back a bit early. It was a good thing he did, because it turns out we had a bit of unwelcome excitement this week as well! The ice storm overnight Wednesday and into Thursday left our heated greenhouses covered with sheets of ice. As things started to shift around in the wind some of the ice broke, slid on its’ side, and cut a whole through the plastic! This let valuable heat out, and also disrupted the insulation layer — more details on that later on. Fortunately he caught it early, and was able to patch it up with help from one of our team members Gord. In the meantime, the furnace was running continuously to keep the temperature up! There are some photos below (the first two below me!), though it’s a bit hard to tell exactly where the patch is, and you may need to zoom in to get a good look. I guess that means Rob & Gord did a great job patching it up!

Last week I told you about how we monitor temperatures and humidity within the greenhouse, and I thought I’d get into a few more details this time around.

The greenhouse is heated by a small furnace, and the temperature is set to 72°F. I know we’re in Canada and typically operate in Celsius, but my dad is old-school and insists on Fahrenheit for all things on the farm, so that’s why I’m using those terms!

The large fan in the greenhouse (pictured in the first photo on the left below) is programmed to turn on once the temperature reaches 85°F. The sensor for this fan hangs from one of the bars along the top of the greenhouse. The large fan helps circulate in fresh air, and brings the temperature back down to the 72°F range.

The first year we grew our onions from seeds (this is only the third season we’ve done that, we used to purchase seedlings from a nursery) we didn’t have this system quite figured out. We had the furnace temperature set a bit higher, which meant the furnace and fan were constantly competing. We’ve found that lowering the furnace slightly gives us a better result in the end.

Another change we’ve made since Year 1 is the way we circulate the hot air. During our first go at growing onions from seed, we had a set of bag-like tunnels running below the trays of seeds, in a u-shape around the greenhouse. The hot air from the furnace blew into these bags and they inflated. The bags had holes to let the air out all along the ‘U’. The problem was, this system concentrated the heat more than we expected, and the trays right below the bag tunnels grew very quickly and also dried out very quickly. Meanwhile, the trays on either side that were further away from the bag tunnels did not grow so quickly, and the soil stayed wet for longer.

We learned from this, and made adjustments. We now rely on the large fan to circulate the air as well as a secondary fan at the opposite end of the greenhouse. This secondary fan deals more with the humidity, and basically runs continuously to keep the humidity around 60%.

Finally, in addition to the furnace, we also rely on insulation to maintain the temperature. The greenhouse is made up of a double poly-layer (aka 2 layers of plastic). In addition to sucking air into the greenhouse interior, the fan also has a pipe that blows air in between the layers of plastic, which inflates a small space between them and creates an insulating layer. This is why the ice cutting through the plastic caused such a big problem — heat was being released and the insulating layer was compromised!

Although we monitor the greenhouses daily and manually check the temperatures, humidity, and moisture, as mentioned last week we also have a monitoring system installed. We input parameters, and the system lets us know if things go outside of them. For example, we are alerted via text message, phone call, and email if the temperature dips below 50°F or goes above 100°F.

Well, that’s all for now! If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoy these fun farm updates!

Blog post written and photographed by Alex Chesney, RD

An Update on Our Onion Seedlings

It’s been one week since our first onions of the season were sown into soil-filled trays. Since then they’ve been transferred to our heated greenhouse, where they’ve been cozying up and germinating.

Typically we don’t see much growth until Day 10, but because it’s been unusually warm outside, the seeds have gotten a bit of a boost, and we’re seeing signs of shoots already!

Right now the onions are in what’s called the pre-bulb growth stage. This is a vegetative growth stage, meaning the plant is focused on growing ‘roots and shoots’. What you can see here, poking up through the soil, are radical and flag leaves of the plant. Later on additional leaves will emerge before the plant begins to focus growth on the bulb.

We have been checking on these seedlings daily, monitoring temperatures and moisture level, and keeping track of both in our record log. In addition to our manual checks, we have an alarm system installed that will alert us should the temperatures drop below or exceed our programmed limitations.

Blog post written and photographed by Alex Chesney, RD

Day 1 of 2023 Seeding

The season has officially kicked off around here, with the first seeds of the year making their way into trays. Today we’re working on red, white, and yellow Spanish onions!

The seeding process is quite intricate, with many steps required:

  1. Trays are filled with potting soil.

  2. Next, they are wetted down with water, by running them through a line with overhead nozzles.

  3. The filled and wetted trays are then transferred to our seeders, who carefully place one seed at a time (by hand!) into the individual cells in the trays.

  4. The seeded trays are then topped with more soil and marked with a popsicle stick with a number that corresponds with the planting. That number is recorded in our seeding binder with a reference to the date and seeds sowed.

This system is carefully supervised by arguably everyone’s favourite team member, Pumpkin Spice Latte, or Pumpkin for short.

The seeded trays are then transferred to our heated greenhouse (pictured below!) where they will hang out for the next 12 weeks. Onions take quite some time to grow from seed, which is why we’re starting them so early.

Throughout the next 3 months they will be watered daily, and will receive a couple of “haircuts” while they grow, also known as trims. Trimming is required because as the onions start to shoot up they get too tall and top-heavy, and can topple over if left unattended.

By Week 10 or 11 we will begin to let the seedlings spend some time outside, to get them used to the elements before being formally transplanted into the field. This process is called “hardening off” and it’s something we do with all of our greenhouse-started seedlings. It ensures a better chance of survival!

Blog post written and photographed by Alex Chesney, RD