Old 99 Farm, week of Feb 14 2016

What a lovely drive up Hwy 86 to Wingham area, through prosperous farmland and small towns. We went last thurs and returned Saturday for a weekend at a farm B&B called MeetingPlace Farm, to participate in a course on Holistic (farm)Management. Very inspiring. The snow up there is way more than here! And we picked the coldest weekend of the year to get away! Thanks to Kazlyn for holding the fort here at home. Even had a power outage to contend with.

One of many ideas for our farm was to make regular offering of chicken broth and chicken stew meat, ready to eat. Would you be interested? Broth at $8/L and stew meat at $12/kg. It is tender flavourful and ready to use for casseroles, soups, even sandwiches.

Our greens this week survived the cold: napa cabbage is the handsdown winner followed by the perpetual green chard.
Root vegs still available: sweet and reg potatoes, onions, fresh dug carrots. Cooking apples for apple sauce or making your own apple butter are on hand. Lots of squash too.

Easter is approaching: have you thought about a leg of lamb or roast? I’ll need advance notice this week or next. Am putting lamb on special, 10% off, for the next two weeks. Whole lamb $13/kg or $5.90/lb hanging weight usually about 60lb.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm week of Feb 7 2016

Really gotta be quick tonite, still have to go do the chores!
Cami and I are away attending a course in holistic farm management this weekend starting thurs. Kazlyn will be here handling everything. No prepared foods this week.

Special on steaks repeated this week. 10% off rib, tbone and sirloin.
As of Feb 7th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, spaghetti and turban squash, red skin and purple potatoes.

Get ready for a cold spell coming at the weekend; supposed to drop to -17degC.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 30, 2016

We came back from the Guelph Organic Conference full of ideas and inspiration for the coming season. It was jam packed with people, some with kids in strollers, some with a bit of wobble to their walk, Amish and Mennonite, urban and rural. Well worth going.

Special this week: soup hens and beef steaks (rib, sirloin and T-bone), both 10% off.

We’re planting in the greenhouse this week, another step closer to the new season. New spinach, lettuce and arugula that we planted a month ago is healthy, waiting patiently for the longer days to really put on a growth spurt.

This week we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, chard, collards, spaghetti and turban squash, red skin and purple potatoes.

Camelia is cooking prepared foods from our produce: apple sauce, stuffed peppers, cucumber relish, quiches (on order).

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 23 2016

Eggs are back to regular price of $6.75/doz for extra large, $6.25 for large. Please bring in egg cartons, I’ve had to buy new cartons recently because we were sending out so many.

Special on ‘Bonny Red’ Chicken roasters, $1 off the per kg price.

As of Jan 24th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, chard, collards, spaghetti and turban squash, whole wheat flour, red skin and purple potatoes.

Camelia is cooking prepared foods from our produce: apple sauce, stuffed peppers, cucumber relish, quiches (on order).

Why is the energy/climate consensus so durable, even in the face of compelling facts or logic? A persuasive analysis of this social phenomenon by Irish systems thinker, physicist and human systems ecologist David Korowicz can be found here.

He writes, “We are trying to comprehend our world within the world-views and economic orthodoxies developed over an extra-ordinary, two-hundred year period of compound economic growth. This growth was coincident with increasing wealth, complexity and globalized integration. Part of our dominant consensus is that this trend will continue. Much of what is important to us, how we live, our expectations, what we value and hold dear, was shaped by this process. And we, the global 10%, have done well out of it.”

“When the conditions that underpinned the consensus change, it can be very difficult to acknowledge and let go of our attachment. For acknowledgement means rejecting not only the familiar but something that may have embodied our status, past efforts, our hopes and even our collective mythology.

Defending the dominant consensus is always reasonable, confident and considered, for it is born out of the cosmology or world-view of the age. But world-views shape their own perceptions and contain the narratives of their own defence."

What consensus views do you share or refute? Where do you stand on the fringe (of conventional wisdom) looking in? Organic food? Limits to Growth? Grassroots democracy? Population overshoot?

Healthy eating,
Ian Cami and Kazlyn.

Unpaid Political Announcement!

Stop Pipeline Approvals: Stop Making Climate Change Worse

(I am hopeful you will appreciate the concern that I share will many people about a the moral dilemna we face between climate and lifestyle: energy and ecology: fossil fuels and growth.)

Hamilton 350 Committee invites you to a RALLY on Tuesday, January 26 at 11 am at the Federal Building (55 Bay Street, near York Blvd) in Hamilton. We are calling on the Trudeau government to keep its election promises and halt the broken National Energy Board pipeline hearings.

During the recent federal election campaign, Prime Minister Trudeau and his party promised to include climate change in pipeline reviews and to respect community voices – especially First Nations. Their election platform promised to “replace Mr. Harper’s changes to the environmental assessment process” including a pledge to “modernize and rebuild trust in the National Energy Board” and “move towards a system where federal environmental assessments of projects include an analysis of upstream impacts and the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the projects being assessed”. Events in the past week indicate those promises are being broken.

The Kinder Morgan (Trans Mountain) NEB hearings resumed last Tuesday despite multiple protests, including civil disobedience, by First Nations, the mayor of Burnaby and other British Columbians. We stand in solidarity with those demanding suspension of these hearings. The Trans Mountain project would triple bitumen flows across southern BC and out through Vancouver harbour.

Last week also brought the proposed 4600 km Energy East pipeline back into the public eye. The City of Montreal and municipal governments representing over half the people of Quebec declared their opposition to this scheme to ship bitumen across Ontario and five other provinces to be exported through Saint John, New Brunswick. Elected officials in Alberta and Saskatchewan are attacking the principled stand of Montreal.

Fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change and our poisoned atmosphere, and their extraction and spills devastate the land. Why is anyone trying to increase the extraction, transportation and use of materials that must be phased out? Please join us on Tuesday morning to demand the Trudeau government keeps its promises and suspends NEB pipeline reviews. Stand in solidarity with First Nations and all those threatened by the Trans Mountain and Energy East pipelines.

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 17 2016

I got excited this week with a post by Rob Hopkins (he of Transition Towns movement) raving about a new book on Urban Farming, by a young Canadian musician, Curtis Stone. Says Hopkins, " Curtis Stone’s brilliant new book ‘The Urban Farmer’, is one of the most important contributions to Transition thinking over the last 10 years, and sets out in great depth and detail what that could look like."

Contrast this with this: Corporate Farming!

As of Jan 17th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, chard, collards, spaghetti and red october squash, red skin and purple potatoes.

Camelia is cooking prepared foods from our produce: apple sauce, stuffed peppers, cucumber relish, quiches (on order).

Meats SPECIAL THIS WEEK: GROUND BEEF 10% OFF
I have pork, beef lamb and chicken in the freezer. I have Bonny’s Big Red roasting chickens, ducks, geese and stewing hens.

Eggs SPECIAL CONTINUES THIS WEEK: 3 for 2 Please bring in recycled cartons.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Eggs and chicken this week on special

I forgot to put this in the memo just out.

Eggs: 3 doz for price of 2, that’s $4.50 average.

Roasting chicken, stew hens: 10% off.

Make this the week for chicken.

Ian

Old 99 farm week of Jan 10 2016

Come and get your eggs, meats, root vegetables. We’re open. Eggs on special 3doz for price of 2, that works out to $4.50/doz.

There is a growing interest in getting ready for climate upset happening in Hamilton. We won’t see fire storms or hurricanes, but we might see floods, and we’ll certainly experience the results of climate upsets elsewhere. Think: california drought, florida freezeups, etc affecting price of food. The coalition that coming together is Hamilton 350; focused on enhancing the local capacity to cope with climate change and reduce its causes. The next meeting is on Wed Jan 27, 630pm at 294 James St North (parking available). Come on out and see whether this is for you!

Healthy eating
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 3 2016

Here we are in a new year and our first days of historical winter. It’s minus 15 this am, but only a few degrees below zero in the green house by the door. The greens are snug in cool soil under the row cover.

We need people to help us even out supply and demand for eggs. I can help by lowering the price, and give you that sort of incentive. The intangible is that you have to want to have local eggs available, you want the hens to be fed organic grain and greens, and to be well treated: free ranging, access to outside, comfy. If my hens could talk they would be your best source of confidence that they have a good life!

So I’ll put eggs on special again at 3 doz for the price of two, all at the XL price, which works out to $4.50 a doz. Keep me wanting to be a locally grown organic egg farmer.

We have a good supply of meats: chicken, stew hens, goose, duck, lamb, beef and pork.

I think 2016 is going to be the climate news year as the global scientific community ramps up with more and better data on weather, ocean temps and salinity/acidity, precipation, glacial melt, winds etc. I hope more will try make the point sink in that this is the crisis of our time, no holds barred.
Here’s a link to 10 food impacts that could make you pause. Here’s one on apples that will likely lose their crunch.

Local food becomes more relevant all the time.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm, week of Dec 27 2015

Last market of the 2015 year. We had a salad with freshly harvested lettuce and shelf ripened tomato yesterday. very tasty.
Hope to see you for you weekly greens and root crops, meat and eggs.

Have you ever heard of Burkina Faso, country in Africa? no/ well w hat about farmer Jacoub Sawadogo, famous in the last 10 years for greening the desert. See this youtube and get inspired about reversing desertification and drought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpLJIM7JgoU

healthy eating
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn