Old 99 Farm, Wedding week

Yes the store is open this week, place your orders, come after 4 friday or on Saturday/Sunday.

I’m pretty well booked with Climate events this week, as you know it’s the international movement of Fridays4theFuture. Come to Gore Park tomorrow friday noon onwards with all your friends to be in solidarity with students who know their future is jeopardized by carbon fueled growth economics. See more below. Watch the news and online for Extinction Rebellion mass mobilizations of everyday people protesting government duplicity and inaction.
Climate Emergency has begun.

healthy eating,
Ian and Camelia Graham

From Hamilton 350:
Last Friday over four million people in over 150 countries marched for climate action, including a contingent in Hamilton. But the big Canadian push is for this coming Friday including a noon rally at Gore Park. Even McMaster University is formally promoting it and local employers like Mountain Equipment Coop, Coffee Ecology and Green Venture will close their doors so their staff can attend.

Swedish teen Greta Thunberg who launched the Friday student strikes a year ago will join marchers in Montreal on Friday. On Monday she set the tone with a blunt speech (video and transcript) to world leaders at the United Nations that has already been viewed by millions.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” declared Thunberg. “And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Old 99 Farm, Week of Sept 15 2019

Hello everyone, (there’s over 250 families on this list!)
We harvested the sweet corn and have lots for pick up this week. Great price! 50c/cob. Also lots of spaghetti squash that you can use instead of pasta or eat right out of the shell.
Liberty apples are now ripe for eating; a crispy tart apple like the Macintosh.

And all the rest: celeriac, basil, carrots, radicchio, onions, beets and tops, beans, kale, collards, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant and peppers.

Meats: beef: ground, stew, steaks, roasts, soup bones; Pork: chops, roasts, hams, lard.

Various: compost, asian pears, coffee (roasted here by Vintage Coffee.

September is the global awakening of climate emergency! Millions of students, thousands of cities and towns organizing massive demonstrations, walkouts, strikes to drive home the message: we are out of time. It Has Begun.
Hamilton has ClimateScience talk at Unitarian Church Sept 20 noon to 3pm
Students Friday4Future striking assembly at Gore Park Sept 27, noon
See the Hamilton Climate Events calendar at http://bit.ly/ClimateEvents

addendum: Sept 5 Old 99

We have sweet corn, squashes and celeriac. Compost aged from 2019 still available for putting your beds in shape for winter (feeding those soil microbes).
We have coffee roasted on site for next few months. Fair trade organic, roasted by Vintage Coffee Roaster, Hamilton. example Kokowagayo from Sumatra, by Gayo Women’s Coffee Cooperative, dark roast. $15 per 3/4lb. Ask for it on market day or place order here.

Old 99 Farm, week of Sept 8 2019

What’s special here this week, that you can’t get at the supermarket or farm market? hmm, organic peaches, asian pears, aronia berries, New Zealand spinach.

And the garden has basil, carrots, zukes, radicchio, onions, beets and tops, beans, kale, collards, potatoes and tomatoes, and eggplant and peppers.

Eggs, special buy two dozen, get third one free.
Meats: beef steaks, roasts, ground, bones for broth and pork: chops, roasts, hams, lard and more.

September 20 to 27 Student Strike for Climate days, Oct 7: International Extinction Rebellion day of action
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Old 99 Farm, week of Aug 25, 2019

i was out in the orchards this weekend past, the 100 yr orchard and the 2008 orchard I planted. They suffered (enjoyed?) horticultural neglect this season. Not pruned as they should have been, not sprayed with biological nutrients, not mulched raminal wood chips. So there is some insect damage on the peaches, pears, apples mainly. But what a bountiful harvest it will be! Trees just loaded with apples, including my fav in the 100yr orchard on the hill: it was hit by lightning in 2007 just before I came on this land. Really gobsmacked it was, right in two, and the old trunk was already hollowed out to a mere shell. But I let it be, encouraged certain new shoots, pruned away others. Now a whole new trunk is growing up from the base of the old. But wonder of it all, both new and old decimated tree are bearing a bumper crop of beautiful apples. I can hardly wait, well, I haven’t really, I’ve already been tasting them! Pretty tart just yet, but wait till they redden (and I’ve pruned way some of the excess watershoots so the sunlight can stimulate the colour and the flavour). We’ll have a harvest to be grateful for.

New this week: freshly dug potatoes to go along with the onions last week. Tomatoes of various sizes and varieties are now ripened. Aronia berries for the savant connaisseurs of natural immune booster berries are ripe to pick.

The rest is the same as last week. By the way I usually don’t wash our vegetables. Even washing removes nutritional value I believe.

We have basil, carrots, zukes, spinach, radicchio, onions, beets and tops, beans, kale, collards, potatoes and tomatoes, and eggplant and peppers. Limited peaches for those of you eager for organic. (peaches are one of the ‘dirty dozen’ with high pesticide residues)

Climate Quote of the week:
Roger Hallam, co-founder Extinction Rebellion: Roger emphasizes that now is the time for all of us to unite, to put any ideological differences between us into their proper context and to suspend any animosity towards others with different points of view. Or as Roger puts it, “We don’t have time to be snotty”. Solidarity, unity in diversity, compassion and love for all life… these are our antidotes to the massive climate and ecological crisis that confronts us. Watch this youtube for the whole 17 minute talk.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Old 99 Farm, week of Aug 20 2019

Tomorrow Friday is market day here, so Ican pick your veggies and fruit fresh. The real meaning of fresh, not as in Tim’s Always Fresh etc. Not too late now to order, I"ll check in the morning.
We have basil, carrots, zukes, spinach, radicchio, onions, beets and tops, beans, kale, collards, potatoes and tomatoes, and eggplant and peppers. Pretty good eh! Aronia berries are the next fruit to harvest: you use them to make juice or syrup and then mix as cordials and cold remedy (high in antioxidants). Peaches will be ready next week I expect.
Also Compost still available.

Also meats: beef, lots of steaks and burger; pork, chops and roasts, and stewing hens.

Climate News
Next public talk for Extinction Rebellion is Aug 29th 7pm at Aberdeen Gardens,330 Dundurn St. South, just north of Aberdeen. Come get the facts, not to be shy about it, we’re in an emergency situation. “Headed for extinction, what to do about it”. I do the talk, we have discussion and sharing ways Hamilton can should respond.

Watch XR co-founder, Roger Hallam, organic farmer and PhD in social change give a lecture, Time to Act, Now! this month in Devon England.

My footer from now on is
International Day of Rebellion: Oct 7

Healthy eating and living
Ian and Cami

Old 99 Farm, week of Aug 11, 2019

The harvest of beans, cukes, zukes, and greens continues to be lush as it is for carrots, spinach, radicchio, onions, beets and tops, kale, collards.

Please place your order by Thurs evening so I can pick it early Friday before the day gets hot. Produce picked cool and refrigerated soon thereafter keeps longer in your fridge at home.

Who would like to buy homemade burger patties? We had a great response to our recipe at last Friday’s Old Hwy 99 street party. These would be refrigerated not frozen. Price is $4 per patty (1/4lb).

Climate News this week:]
IPCC report IPCC Report Shows Food System Overhaul Needed to Save the Climate

SOURCE: Inside Climate News
DATE: August 8, 2019

SNIP: Negotiators for the world’s governments signed off on a report Wednesday that describes in alarming detail how agriculture, deforestation and other human impacts on lands are transforming the climate.

From the BBC
DATE: August 9, 2019

SNIP: Increasingly frequent marine heatwaves can lead to the almost instant death of corals, scientists working on the Great Barrier Reef have found. These episodes of unusually high water temperatures are – like heatwaves on land – associated with climate change.

from Science Daily
DATE: August 8, 2019

SNIP: Rivers and lakes cover just about one percent of Earth’s surface, but are home to one third of all vertebrate species worldwide. At the same time, freshwater life is highly threatened. Scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and international colleagues have now quantified the global decline of big freshwater animals: From 1970 to 2012, global populations of freshwater megafauna declined by 88 percent – twice the loss of vertebrate populations on land or in the ocean.

Potluck BBQ August 18th

Please join us with our local farming friends, this coming sunday Aug 18 at noon for a potluck BBQ.

Old 99 Farm will provide burgers, hand made with our own grass fed LynchLineback beef.
Cami and I are hosting the Local 351 NFU (National Farmers Union – Ontario) Social BBQ at Old 99 Farm & Permaculture Site. The NFU is the only farm organization that seeks to build relations between farm and urban neighbours and has the most progressive agricultural and ecological policy.

1580 Old Hwy 99,
Dundas, ON
L9H 5E3.

Sunday August 18th, 12pm

Ian will do a tour that will highlight: Rotational grazing, home dairy, inground greenhouse.

Potluck lunch, please bring your own dishes, chairs and cutlery. Rain or shine! BYOB.

Hope to see you here! RSVP will help us plan.

Aug 9 - 11 weekend

We have good crop of cukes this year, picking daily to keep size small for pickling. Come by, call cell first. Away sunday after 11.
Also carrots, zukes, spinach radicchio, onions, currants picked, beets and tops, beans, kale, collards.
As always, beef, pork, eggs.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Old 99 Farm, week of July28 2019

It’s the bountiful season! Cukes for pickling, zukes for barbeuing, lots of greens, onions, raspberries, currants. Soon will be apples, peaches, aronia berries, and then the root vegetables and squashes.

We can offer veggies: carrots, chicory, cukes, zukes, green onions, beet root and greens, NZ spinach, lovage, collards, kale, chard, rhubarb.
More coming: celeriac, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, string beans, potatoes, lettuce.

Meats: beef by the cut or 20lb mixed lot for $187, Pork good selection but the cut or side.
Eggs; buy 2 get three dozen.

If you are wondering how to make the case for climate emergency to friends and relations, this link is a good way to learn what is really happening with extreme weather and climate research. It it gives you a snapshop of mainstream news from around the world. It’s happening. IT HAS BEGUN.

Healthy eating,
Cami and Ian