Hay Party Saturday with bbq

The weather has been favourable and the hay looks lovely. I’ll be baling saturday midday and would love some company.
We’ll take it easy and spent sat afternoon picking up bales and taking to the barn.
Then we’ll have a lamb shishkebab bbq and relax.

I’m hoping you’ll come, at least for a couple hours, then come back for supper.

Pls RSVP

Old 99 Farm, Week of May 29 2016

Lots of growing things these days with the warmth in the soil; you can see some plants grow just watching them (not quite). Have green garlic and asparagus, rhubarb and lettuces as well as kale, chard and and a new carrot crop.
Special on eggs for next couple weeks, this is your occasion to introduce them to friends. All sizes $2 off, so XL $4, Jumbo $4.75, Large $3.50. Our hens are really prospering on the free range grass, organic feed and fresh air. Happy hens. I’m not quite so happy cuz they eat a pile of feed!

We’ll be doing a first cut of hay this week and I’d really appreciate any offers of help for a few hours. Will likely be thurs and/or friday. Let me know if you’d like to come along, so i can keep you posted. Small chance of rain on thurs is only glitch at the moment.

Now taking orders for roasting chickens, beef and pork sides.

Reminder: I sharpen your chef’s knives with proper equipment so you can really enjoy them. I mill hard red wheat on demand by the kilo, unsifted, wheat germ and all. We have comfrey transplants ready to go and the tree seedlings (red oak, chestnut and black locust) are healthy in the nursery waiting for a new home. I have a few Fredonia grapes I started from slips that may be of interest to you. Good juice and jelly grapes, disease resistant, a cultivar from the Concord.

Healthy Eating,
Ian and Cami

Old 99 farm, week of May 22 2016

Thanks Norma, Lawrence and Jennifer for you orders already in. I got variously distracted this week and neglected the weekly reminder memo.

I will have your orders ready but I will be away from 4pm attending an orcharding workshop. This Apple and Small Fruit study group meets every other thursday during the summer from 4:30 in Freelton.

Some feedback would be helpful: better to switch market to another day, like friday, for these weeks,or for all weeks till end summer, or, let people schedule own pickups?

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Leap or Not to Leap

Ever heard of “This Changes Everything: the movie” or the LEAP Manifesto? Here’s the guy, engagingly witty and witted, who had much to do with making them happen (along with his wife Naomi Klein in case of the book and about 60 other social activists, leaders and visionaries in the case of the LEAP document, “A call for a Canada based on caring for the earth and for one another”.

Avi Lewis (49), spars with Steve Paikin on The Agenda about the overwhelming necessity to shift off fossil fuel rollercoaster, the impetus from creating political space that leans against the moneyed class on the right with it’s growthism ethos, impoverished as it is. It’s a fun watch, they really seem equally matched! If Lewis is right (I think so) that we have an impoverished political imagination and incrementalism is so inadequate to the task, we need to take a LEAP, which requires being inspired. The sense of the possible, like I posted here last, active skepticism, that makes the job of our life to make the impossible, possible.

Old 99 Farm, week of May 15 2016

We harvested the first asparagus this weekend so there will be some for thursday, a few lucky people will get the order in early!

The greenhouse has had some hot days which has triggered the ‘bolting’ of the brassicas and spinach and chard too. Pity really, the crop was large and mostly not consumed. Still have lots of kale and lettuces but not as much choice.

Hope is an intractable (as in difficult to manage, deal with, or change to an acceptable condition) but indispensible element in our worldview to cope with every day life, especially now when we are obliged to face widening evidence of climate disruption and habitat destruction. But I found a useful approach by Susanne Moser in her keynote lecture (Conference on Communication and Environment), Hope: A Bridge without Railing. Hope (the word) can be used to describe a continuum from passive optimism (pollyannism)thru active heroic, passive skeptical to active skepticism or grounded hope. If we live in a stuck place between the impossible and the unthinkable, hope of the grounded variety gets us out of bed to do our utmost in spite of great odds.

Glen Murray, Ontario climate Commissioner recently spoke at McMaster about the supreme challenges of climate upset. Hope of the active skeptical kind is what he championed. Read the transcript of his talk here courtesy of Hamilton CATCH.

Environment Hamilton is spearheading efforts to get public hearings on climate action; the first organizing meeting happened last Monday. The PM has called on all MPs to host People’s Climate Plan forums this summer.
Some MPs have committed to host a town hall in their riding to listen to their constituents, but most haven’t. To ensure everyone across Canada has a chance to attend an in-person town hall, we need to encourage individual MPs to host a town hall in their ridings. You can use LeadNow.ca to get a reply from your MP on just what they are doing about this.

Yes we have a market this week, please pop over for fresh greens, eggs, pasture meats and some home cooked goodies by Cami.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Old99 Farm week of May 8 2016

Just a quick reminder this week showcasing our produce, meats and eggs.
Market time is the usual 4 to 6 Thurs or by arrangement.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Old 99 farm week of May 1st 2016

This thursday I am attending a climate conference in Guelph and would like to hold the market on Friday. if this doesn’t work for you, and you would rather come thurs I can leave your order for pick up in the store fridge, labelled with amount. I’ll be out of here by 8am so no last minute orders please!

It means you have to get your orders in by Wed noon for me to pick on wed and assemble orders being picked up thurs.

Friday orders don’t have to be in before Friday noon.

Lots of greens, you should SSEEE the greenhouse, is it ever pretty. Green from wall to wall.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Old99 Farm, week of Apr 23 2016

As of Apr 23rd , we can offer the following crops: mixed greens, kale, chard, spinach, cilantro, and several kinds of lettuce, two kinds of arugula, chives, and herbs sweet cicely and lovage.

Special this week on lamb: all cuts 10% off.

In the US, Costco has become the largest retailer of organic produce according to this report in Huffington Post. I don’t know about here in Canada?

When you buy local, you build resiliency in the local foodshed, see the way we build up soil nutrients and care for our animals. How can Costco offer that!

Healthy Eating,
Ian and Cami

Old 99 farm, week of Apr 17 2016

It’s wednesday already, the loyal regulars have their orders in even without my bulletin arriving in their inboxes. thank you.

Greens greens greens (not golf type) are luscious. Have at it for next couple weeks. Mixed salad greens especially prime right now.

Lots of eggs, lamb, beef and chicken.

Did you know…

In Romania’s Apuseni Mountain’s, the historic community of Rosia Montana (20 minutes from Cami’s home town) have been resisting plans to build Europe’s largest gold mine for over a decade. If built, the mine would level four mountains, raze 900 homes, displace 2,000 subsistence farmers and produce 196.4 million tonnes of cyanide polluted waste. Following the community’s struggle to stop the plans of Canadian multinational Gabriel Resources, In Defence of Life takes us behind the scenes of a landmark European struggle and a globally significant victory for civil society. Having admitted defeat, Gabriel Resources is filing to sue the Romanian Government for over $4billion in damages.

See this video called In Defence of Life about this and several other places on the planet where Canadian and Australian mining cos are making life very difficult for local peoples. The Romanian piece starts at 16:30 or so.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Old 99 Farm, week of Apr10 2016

Check this documentary, The Cross of the Moment, just out on vimeo, about the absolute uniqueness of Earth, from atmosphere to gravity to tides to sex. It is "A deep-green/deep-time, highly cerebral discussion of the environmental crisis, The Cross of the Moment attempts to connect the dots between Fermi’s Paradox, climate change, capitalism, and collapse. Interviews with top scientists and public intellectuals are woven together into a narrative that is challenging, exhausting, and often depressing as it refuses to accept the easy answers posited by other overly-simplistic climate change documentaries.

The film takes its title from a stanza of W. H. Auden’s poem The Age of Anxiety, published in 1947.
We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

And for grounds for optimism about replacing fossil energy see LowTech website, lots of carefully researched profiles of past energy sources, this link is actually about growing mediterranean fruit in Paris, and keeping the Prussian invaders out too!
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html

We have greens. lots. Mixed greens, collard greens, kale, spinach and chard.
Also, cilantro, leek, green onion and chickweed (just kidding).

Eggs and meats are in good supply.
Stuffed peppers, quiche, or say what would you like Cami to cook for you?

Healthy eating,
Ian and Cami