Catalyst Award for Lessons Learned in Sustainability

The Macdonald Student-run Ecological Gardens (MSEG) won the Catalyst Award for Lessons Learned in Sustainability ! Read about it here. The MSEG project is, indeed, full of lessons to learn ! We would like to take this occasion to thank the Office of Sustainability and Lilith Wyatt in particular, as well as Caroline Begg for their amazing support.

Acid/Alkaline

I saw a cool documentary a few weeks ago called "Forks Over Knives":

http://www.forksoverknives.com/ (you can find it streaming online for free, but I think it's illegal so I won't post a link here)

Also, this summer I read a book called "The Thrive Diet" - it's by a triathlete who decided at a young age that he wanted to be an athlete who excelled on a totally plant-based diet. He started experimenting on himself with what works best, and his books/diet recommendations reflect his own personal experience. Despite it's 'slick'ness, I really liked the message and the information.

And, when I was a kid, I inexplicably was always convinced that lemons were the cure to cancer.

Where does this all lead? The basic linkage I'm making is in the message that our bodies function best when slightly alkaline. The ideal range is between 7.35-7.45 according to this website: http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm Check it out because it has a full list of different foods that fall to one side or the other, and it's pretty comprehensive.

The pH scale goes from 1 to 14, with 7.0 being absolutely neutral, anything lower being acidic, and anything above being alkaline. So, for example, vinegar is around 3, while your average soap is around pH 9.

Though the foods we eat will test at a certain pH before we eat them, once they're in our bodies the way that we digest them can change the total pH effect they have- so when talking about eating we describe alkaline-forming or acid-forming foods, not just 'acid food' or 'alkaline food'.

Anyway! I thought I'd share this because it really, really corresponds to my own life experience with food. And, we're the best guinea pigs! I'm learning how to feed myself and listen to my body. Over the past few months I've really seen how eating fruits and veggies for most of the day has SUCH a different mood, energy level, etc, than if I eat mainly chocolate, bread, or other treats/convenient food items that cause my body nutritional stress.

Nutritional stress? I heard about this from that thrive diet guy - some foods are easier to digest, and some are harder. The harder, longer and more energy it takes for our body to digest something, the more nutritional stress our body undergoes.

Why is this important? Because we already have a lot of other stressors in our lives... anything you stress about causes a stress reaction in your body - (by the way, chemicals released during our natural stress reaction make our bodies more acidic) - which is added on top of the nutritional stress caused when we don't take care of what we're feeding ourselves. If you don't think you have a lot of psychological stress in your daily life - why add nutritional stress?

I'm sure we all sometimes feel tired or irritable during the day, often we don't really know why or we think "ah, bad sleep last night" or "ah, stressed out about work/school/home.." in reality, a lot of this is connected to what we are or aren't eating.

Test it out! Try for a day, or a week, really planning your diet around things that are easily digestible, which are mainly alkaline-forming. See what happens!

Cheers :)

Good neighbours

I have been thinking a lot recently about how lucky we are to be working next to two established organic farms as we progress in this project. Not only for obvious reasons, like the privilege of working on certified organic land (even if we ourselves are not certified) and gaining access to machinery that we otherwise would not have, both farms being nice enough to till our fields and retill once weeds took over some beds.  Side note, last year we spent a good day turning over our soil with shovels and manpower in only two beds before asking to use the Hort Center’s tractor. What I am thinking about is the access to knowledge and support on a level that we probably wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. Getting advice, for example about how to make beets grow (stomp on them, they love good contact with the soil) and how to keep lettuce fresh on sweltering market days is certainly a plus. It’s great to share in the glory of the first summer squash, the first red tomato. I get the feeling that people are into this project and are happy to see us doing well. It’s interesting to think that in other types of work these farms would be our “opposition”. We sell our vegetables right across form Ferme Carya at the Ste Anne farmers’ market. Chances are if someone buys our carrots they won’t be going to Carya, and vice-versa. Where you would expect competitiveness there is instead a strong sense of community. It makes me think that even though technically we all need money to keep our businesses and projects afloat we are in this more for the movement toward more healthy land, food and people, first and foremost. 

Wikitrail

I went on a Wikitrail

/Wikitrail/: n. A haphazard path traced through the internet from subject to subject, with no particular aim in mind, mainly orchestrated by the phrases in a Wikipedia article which lead to other pages, and by the Google search engine

this morning, and I found out about a few things and people - best shared by sharing the links that lead me there:

Fukuoka Farming, "Natural Farming" or "Do-Nothing Farming": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka

The Soil and Health Library: http://www.soilandhealth.org/index.html This is an ONLINE library!!! You can get digital copies of books that are in the public domain, or out of print. I really hope you click this link and just see the kinds of books they're carrying.

Lady Eve Balfour & her Haughley Experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haughley_Experiment

The book "The Value of Voluntary Simplicity" by Richard B Gregg. (you can access it through the soil and health library for free, or buy a lifetime membership, which I did today :P)

Looks like I've got to go catch my ride (visiting some farms in Arundel today), even though my zucchini bread is still in the oven and has the dampest center I've ever seen! (I added too much zucchini, so it has too much water) What happens when you leave a half-baked bread in the oven and finish cooking it later? ..... I guess I'll find out this afternoon!

Cheers

Ahhhh

Such a nice week, so much sunshine. And Thursday morning was the perfect weather to harvest - clouds keeping us from burning up, air not too cool. Keeps the vegetables from getting soft while we clean them since our wash station has no roof.

Found out how to make a donate button using a secure payment carrier! Now on our website we can receive donations through Paypal. We also have a call out for ongoing donations of rubber bands, wicker baskets, and reusable grocery bags.

Also, found out about a family that's in the business of individual composting toilets - if you check out the Humanure Handbook (there's a link to it in the right side of our blog) you can see what they're all about.

Since the first time I ever used a composting toilet inside a building (not an outhouse, the Ecolodge in Moose Factory in northern Ontario: Cree Village Ecolodge) I've been imagining ways to retrofit all our buildings to allow for composting toilets. The experience of learning about composting toilet systems, combined with my first visit to a large scale water treatment plant in a typical city a few years ago, has made me yearn to live somewhere long enough or conscious enough to have composting toilets, or greywater systems, and stop using anywhere from 8-20 litres of FRESH water when nature calls.

An intermediate option is to modify existing toilets to have the 2-flush setting, which I bet you've seen at least once before. I was cruising the web and found a provider of a DIY (do-it-yourself) toilet adaptation to make your toilet have adjustable flushes. Great! See The Twoflush website. There are probably a lot of other ones out there. I've never known someone who changes a typical toilet so I don't know if it's 100% successful. If you try it out or have an idea of whether these modifications work, please comment!

When reading about the adjustable flush systems it seemed there were a lot of comments about how these systems are more common abroad than in North America. What exactly is it about our lifestyle, our social environment, the way we're taught and live, that we keep building and installing the less sustainable options?

Bye for now!

Midsummer update...whew!

If there is one thing I have learned this summer it is that time flies when you are farming. We had said we would be doing weekly blog updates but so far things are happening so quickly that putting it all into writing seems impossible. I will try. Here goes!

The main field has absolutely exploded with plant life. Our first summer squashes are appearing and all of our lettuces are either big and juicy or have bolted (made a crazy-looking upward spiralling mass in the heat, kind of a stress response "ah I'm boiling alive must make seeds!"). The peas came for two sweet weeks and are now yellowing, with the beans in full flower ready to be picked in the next week. I'm a little nervous about the upcoming cucumber explosion, there are thousands of beautiful yellow flowers that will soon be producing fruits as fast as we can pick them. We were a little late pruning and trellising the tomatoes, so those had to be cut to 1/3 their original size and strung up, a job that took a couple of us pretty much all week. But now instead of lying pathetically on the ground they are swaying in the July breeze. Everything looks great!

We have started selling at the Ste Anne's Market, which has been wonderful. We get up at 5 am, harvest and clean everything and make it to the market by 8:30 am (ideally, and usually). This experience may sound hellish to any non-morning person but most of us actually like it a lot. I myself am definitely anti-waking-up-early but at 5 it doesn't feel like an early morning, it feels like some other-worldy adventure. Being out in the deserted streets, getting to the field in the first light of the day, is actually quite pleasant. It's also really great talking to the other farmers at the market, commiserating over deer predation of lettuce and, of course, this crazy heat wave. This market helps to link us to the community and we already have people asking us about our produce, like our awesome candycane beets, and everyone seems to be into trading recipes and gardening advice. Definitely one of the perks of this project.

On a more personal note, we are all learning a lot about how to do this kind of work. When you are working with your friends and live close to the field it's hard to separate work time from down time. Maybe backyard barbeques aren't the most socially acceptable place to fret about how to suppress weeds, and maybe if you have already worked seven hours in the heat it isn't wise to keep going even if you physically can.

Farming is this infinite challenge in that there will never be a time when there is nothing left to do. You can be leaving the field and spot a patch of nefarious-looking weeds and spend the next two hours trying to get rid of them. You can always improve, always do something else, but sometimes it's a good idea to just take a break and take care of yourself. We're learning, but it's hard to just say enough is enough when you are passionate about what you are doing.

Okay enough about us, happy July and thanks for reading!

Rose, Bud, Thorn

Hey veggie-lovers!

It has been a very busy month here at MSEG! “How to summarize it all?” I asked myself.

Then, some wonderful friends of mine, John and Ryan, introduced me to “Rose, Bud, Thorn”, an appropriately botanical form of appreciative inquiry/general reflection:

Roses (highlights):

Rose: We have a tool shed (with tools in it!), and an irrigation system! We are finally starting to feel like a real farm, instead of just kids scratching around in the dirt. Thank you Alison for your kind donations. And well done Kourosh for setting up the irrigation, with the help of Stephen of Ferme du Zephyr.

Rose: Things are growing!

Pauline and Sophie transplanting onions

In the main field the carrots, beets, peas, beans, arugula, and mesclun that we direct seeded have emerged (in almost straight lines!), and are doing well. We were a little worried about the little carrot seedlings. The cotyledons (first leaves) of carrots are almost impossible to differentiate from grass, so we weren’t sure if the carrots had germinated at all. Then, over the last couple of days, they finally grew their true leaves, which are feathery and easy to identify… go little carrots go! Some of the beet seeds did not end up germinating though, perhaps because we didn’t ‘tuck them in’…beet seeds need good soil contact to germinate.

We have also transplanted a number of crops that were started in the greenhouse, including onions, lettuces, and cucumbers. It seems that onions need to be started in the greenhouse, as our direct seeded onions did not germinate.

In our Hort. Center plot, we seeded beets, turnips, kale, broccoli, squash, and pumpkins, and transplanted onions, scallions, sunberries, aubergine, and lettuce.

Rose: We have started to seed some of the herbs and flowers that will be companion plants for the cash crops. On Friday we seeded nasturtiums, orange flowers that you can eat, and which are good companions for cucurbits (squashes, melons, cucumbers, etc) and brassicas (broccoli, kale, cabbage, etc), because they deter a number of pests that target these crops, and also attract beneficial insects that eat or parasitize pests. They also attract pollinators and function as a ‘trap crop’ for aphids, which means they distract the aphids away from the saleable crops.

Rose: There are blueberries growing in the meditation garden! We thought it would be at least another year before the bushes would produce fruit.

Rose: Newspaper pots. They really work! Reduce, reuse, recycle...
http://www.ehow.com/video_1745_create-seed-starting.html

Rose: We experimented with a biodynamic rooting agent recipe for propagating sweet potatoes from cuttings, and it worked! Here is the recipe we used:

http://naturallyspeakingwithcordi.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/rooting-hormone/

Pauline making cuttings of sweet potato plants

Rose: Volunteers we love you! Thank you Sam (the mosquito army appears discouraged now that they no longer have you to feast on), and beautiful John, Salma, Molly, and Jeff.

Thorns (low points):

It seems that all thorns boil down to three things…Bugs, weeds, and weather.

Lady beetle used for white fly control

Thorn: Early in May, we had a white fly problem in the greenhouse. We decided to experiment with biological control (using living organisms such as natural predators to control pest species). We ordered native lady beetles from natural-insect-control.com, and released them in the greenhouse. They didn’t stick around very long, but they did take care of the white flies before they went…success!

Thorn: Flea beetles are eating our arugula! We bought floating row covers to keep them off, but the covers were soon ripped up and deposited in a tree by some spiteful thunder-storm winds. Plan B involves better anchorage of row covers, planting trap crops adjacent to arugula and, if worst comes to worst, a botanical insecticide of some sort.

Thorn: Rain, rain go away! It’s not just MSEG that has been set back by the cold, rainy spring we have had this year. It seems that all farmers and gardeners in the area are a little behind schedule. Farming depends so heavily on the state of the soil, that nothing can be seeded, weeded, or worked until the earth is sufficiently dry.

And the biggest THORN of all: Weeds! More specifically - nut sedges. And I quote “the world’s worst weed” http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/pg_cyro.pdf

This weed got out of control so quickly in the main field that we have had to spend much more time and energy than we anticipated fighting it back.

Buds (things to look forward to!):

Bud: The lower half of the field has finally dried out. Alex from Les Jardins Carya has prepared the beds for us and we can put in our tomato and tomatillo transplants this week.

Bud: We are beginning to realize that, as a demonstration farm, it is not just our growing practices that need to function as a model, but also our governance structure and working performance. We plan on making visits to other farms with alternative management systems, to learn about what might be the best option for MSEG now, and in future years. Starting this week, we have adopted an experimental cyclic governance structure, consisting of two-person management teams that rotate on a weekly basis. Exciting stuff!

Bud: At the end of this month we will be starting to sell our produce from our farm stand in the MS Lobby on Macdonald Campus. Thursdays 11am-2pm BYOBag!!

Beans and greens,

Sophie