Archive | June, 2022

Spring 2022 Farm Relaunch!

14 Jun
Some of our first crops on the new land in Havelock, Ontario. Heirloom head lettuce like Freckles and May Queen are coming along nicely.
Our 50-feet beds are filling up quickly. Japanese Fushimi peppers, Japanese water and Kamo eggplant, colorful bell peppers, head lettuce, sugar snap peas, Nappa cabbage and arugula are all in this image.

Spring 2022 will go down in the records as being Hello Farm’s first growing season in Ontario, Canada. As we relaunch our market garden here in Havelock, we are busy building soil, planting seedlings, building infrastructure, setting up garden plans and weeding schedules, and prepping for our first farmers market. To say we are busy is an understatement. But we are delighted to have access to land, access to water, access to farm equipment, a roof over our heads, and amazing landlords and neighbors, Ian and Tanya. Ian has been diligently helping us set up some of the much needed farm infrastructure like the greenhouse, deer fencing, irrigation, farm machinery, etc. There is no question that we would not have been able to start our market garden on this fallow land so quickly this spring without their support. We are counting our lucky stars!

Ian, our landlord, building the beautiful end walls of the new greenhouse using mostly wood from the farm forest. Ian has long had a vision of hosting resident farmers on his land. So this is a win-win situation 🙂
Ian and Zenryu building our mega tall deer fencing.

Our first sales will happen this week at the Havelock Farmers and Artisan Market. We will be selling every Friday from 1-7pm from June 17 until late October. We also have plans to build a farm gate veggie stand and will be selling to a few restaurants. We are currently seeking more customers and buyers so please pass the word and contact us any time.

Check out the market link! http://www.havelockmarket.ca/about.html

A juvenile Eastern Garter Snake about to molt (note the smoky eye). Our landlords built a snake hybernaculum on-site, which has proven to be very helpful in controlling the rodent population.
We brought our rescue cat, Hinata-chan with us from Japan. He makes a great garden helper. He follows Zenryu around like a puppy dog.