Monday, February 28, 2011

From the City to the Farm

I have always been a city person.  For eleven years I lived in downtown Vancouver and loved it.  I never imagined myself living in the suburbs, let alone the country.  But after ten years of being with my partner, we both suddenly found ourselves wanting a quieter lifestyle.  We also wanted to do something good for the environment, and to start living much more sustainably than we could in the city.  Suddenly, a house with a yard seemed appealing.  We had also just bought a big dog, and we wanted to give him a piece of outdoors that was his.  So we started looking at the various suburban areas surrounding Vancouver.  None of them appealed.  I planned on keeping my city job, and wanted to take public transit to work.  So it would have to either be near a sky train station (subway) or a train station.  We finally decided on the upper area of the Fraser Valley.  We found a 5.5 acre property that we both fell in love with immediately.  The house was run down, but the property had great potential.  Not really knowing what that potential was yet, we decided to buy it.

The first summer we decided to put in a vegetable garden, as we’d both dabbled in gardening before.  We loved the idea of growing our own food.  We also decided we were going to do everything organically.  We didn’t know much about it though.  Because of this lack of knowledge, we didn’t test the soil in the designated garden area.  We did have a truck of topsoil delivered, but unfortunately it was full of wood chunks and nothing we planted grew.  We didn’t understand why.

So we decided to start educating ourselves.  We bought stacks of books and started reading.  We found out that the wood chunks, while breaking down, were locking all available nitrogen and not allowing any into the soil.   We learned that we needed to test our soil to find out which nutrients were lacking.  We started composting. 

The second summer we brought in mushroom manure, proper top soil and necessary  organic nutrients.  We added our compost, created raised beds and planted some vegetables.  That year we did pretty well, but found that the raised beds were causing water to drain away too quickly.  Although we had put in a self-watering system, the veggies were always too thirsty. 

The third summer, which was this past year, we added sand to the soil mixture and did not use raised beds.  We created sand paths between all the beds, and bought cloches for our tomato plants.  We laid down fabric so we wouldn’t have to weed very much.  Fabric also helps as an insulator to keep the soil warm.  We interplanted flowers to detract pests, and herbs and more flowers to attract beneficial insects.  And we had a very successful garden. 

We’ve learned a lot.  But there is always so much more to know.  So we keep reading and experimenting, and each year I’m sure we will get better and better.

One of the things we found we could grow very well was garlic.  The first year, our only success was garlic and herbs, which were grown in a separate area from the vegetable garden.  I only planted 30 garlic plants the first time.  It was shockingly easy.  That July when I pulled them from the earth, I was so excited by the size of them and the fact that I had done this.  I brushed off the dirt, and crisscrossed them over a screen on our back deck to cure.  Two weeks later we were eating the best garlic I’ve ever tasted. 

The next summer we grew 300 bulbs.  You can never have too much garlic!  We gave some away to friends, and ate the rest over the next four months.  Our friends too, were astonished at the spicy, sexy flavor of fresh garlic.  We’d found our niche! 

After doing some research, we found that organically grown garlic is fairly hard to find.  Also, there aren’t many local growers in our area, and those that are doing it will retire soon.  So there is a need for organically grown garlic.  We found out that there are hundreds of varietals also.  Each one with its own unique flavor and personality.  So this fall we decided to try something new.  We planted 2,000 garlic plants.  We have four varieties for now.  And we’re going to sell them!  We’ve discovered our potential, and are slowly moving toward a small working farm. 

The plan is to eventually start selling our herbs and vegetables as well.  We’ll specialize in unique, heirloom and organic garlic and vegetables.  As we learn and grow, we will share our journey with others, and along the way will be posting photos and recipes, and sharing our gardening knowledge.  We encourage you to start thinking more seriously about buying local, eating seasonally and organic and taking better care of our earth. 

Janet

Planting Garlic

1 comment:

  1. A great start!! I've just started farming myself, but am helping with an already-established place. Best of luck!
    -gaijinfarmer, http://gaijinfarmer.com

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