Welcome to the 2020 Growing Season

Another season on the farm is in the books and all eyes are forward to the next season of exciting plans. Our farm’s location in the Okanagan gives us a clear four seasons most years and the fall and winter give us time to reflect on everything accomplished and not. It also gives us time to prepare and develop a plan for the upcoming season.

It was a year of transition as Russ and Bre moved onto the farm with their boys in May. The season was already well under way in what was an historically dry spring as per our records. Despite a busy spring we managed to get everything planted on time, thanks to help from many great people, which will reflect on a lot of great seed varieties being offered for 2020 in this catalogue.

Many selected tomato varieties were sown and performed very well as July provided a lot of moisture to invigorate their vegetation. “Yellow brandywine” and “Delicious” were a few tomato varieties which stood out. We had great success with an ancient anasazi corn variety which was colourful and sweet in it’s “milk stage”. This variety was discovered in a cave in New Mexico where the Anasazi people resided. It was found inside a ceramic pot which was sealed with pine sap. We will be offering this variety for 2020. Another crop which was a farm favorite this year was “Shungiku” which has delicious, succulent foliage when young and matures with a beautiful edible daisy like flower which can also be used for tea.

We resurrected an old farm favorite with the Romanesco zucchini as well, it is a sweet and nutty summer squash at any stage. We would like to thank you for supporting our farm and may your 2020 growing season be fruitful.

Russell Alcock

Ode to the Organic Radish Harvest

Late afternoon October sunlight bathes the radish patch as I approach with the wheelbarrow.

I lift the row cover from the lush radish greens and slide it across the old wrought iron hoops.

The Blauer Daikon shoulders lift from the chocolate brown soil, white innocent Miyashige show translucence where the sunlight filters through, or

Rossa Ostergruss joyfully stand in their rows and their long scarlet roots slide as effortlessly as imperator carrots from the fertile mineral soil.

Moist

Eathy

Subtle musk pervades the air, escaping as the brightly coloured roots expose their beauty,

Plump neon red Cina Rose happily jump into my laden arms as several dozen crisp bunches of turgid succulent red and pink stems and leaves.

Feathery green leaves and red stems of the Sichuan Red Beauty hide their slightly below ground deep cherry red fleshed package of delicious alchemy.

White skinned Watermelon radish globes of sweet spicy crunchy orbs display leaves as rugose deep green rosettes like the lavender coloured, egg shaped Bora King.

Buckskin coloured Suncrisp sit elegantly in their row with their blue green

scalloped leaves delicately fused to the root.

I pull the row cover back onto the crop thwarting the cabbage fly and gather the piles of radish to the wheelbarrow.

At the washstand, trimming leaves, the colours jump from the greens and soil at the stream of clear cool water.

The deep red, mauve, buckskin, creamy white, scarlet, cumulus cloud white, purple and green and pink skins of these

sweet, crunchy, spicy, juicy morsels sit proudly on the washstand licked with cold mountain water glowing in the long rays of

late day autumn sunlight as the gibbous moon rises above the blue hills of the Okanagan highlands.

Jon Alcock