Hops and Worms

Spring has sprung in Lillooet. Hops are up and in order to direct growth up the 18 foot trellis and into  4 mains stems per plant, for a couple of weeks Sam Quinlan of Bittervine Hop Farm in Lillooet will be picking hops shoots for you.  North Arm Farm hops shoots should overlap with the Lillooet picking which could make for a 3 to 4 week season and an alternative to asparagus, fiddleheads and the eastern ramp.   

Hops or “Humulus lupulus”  are, according to Wikipedia “part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genera Cannabis (hemp)”. More importantly to us they are a delicious spring green, similar in taste to asparagus, which can be eaten steamed, braised or fried. The male flowers can also be eaten in salads and of course the female flowers flavour my favourite beverage.    

This week Sam has picked Cascade, Chinook, Galena, and Nugget (purple shoots).  When blanched, if anything the colours become even more vibrant and they are a delicious complement to a meal.  Try them out during this short season when fresh local greens are scarce.

Despite the cold weather we have got some farming done lately.  The first planting of beets, peas, green onions, shallots and carrots are in the ground.  The raspberry pruning will be done by Wednesday and then we will get started on the blueberries.  The garlic is up 3 or 4 inches and I have chisel ploughed around the beds and will put in the potatoes next to them in a piece of ground that had a heavy oat cover crop last year.    I hope to have the potatoes planted today and the Sunchokes and Crosnes, hilled and fed as well. 

On the other side of the field next to the river and where the ground is very sandy the current plan is to seed with mustard as a green manure which has biocidal properties, scavenges nitrogen, builds organic matter and can drill through hardpan with its tap root.  The biocide consideration is interesting in that research has been done which shows a significant decrease in nematodes and wireworms in fields that have ploughed down mustard crops.  The wireworms especially are real problems in sandy soils so all that we can do to build organic matter and make life unpleasant for these ugly little pests the better.

Gotta go, sorry to be so terse but I’m “burning daylight”, more next week and eat Hops!

Jordan

Fresh Sheet Post April 11th "Harbingers of Spring"

Its official.  It must be spring.   The hummers have arrived or more specifically a single hummer. One Rufous male who does appear rather plump if not happy came to the feeder on Sunday in absolutely atrocious weather, had a sip and left, came back for another, and again flew off and upon a third return, stayed.  So the familiar zip and zoom and bob and weave are back, abet only one so far, to bask in this year’s dismal spring.  Follow the migration at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/humm_rufous_spring2011.html

The garlic is up.  The shoots are pale, as though they have been resisting pushing through the recently frozen earth, emerging into a cold wind that smacks and slaps with flakes of snow and rain. Not all of each the bed has emerged, the variables being; different planting  depths that hand planting with a crew of people can create, soil types with part of the beds being lighter, sandier and hence warmer or heavier and thus cooler,  slow melting snow drifts as these beds are 700 feet long and the snow settles across them in its own particular and lazy way,  fertility variations as the plants root during the fall and winter and as some may be more robust than others as a result, or shear obstinacy for either pushing out into near winter conditions or refusing to emerge into those small condition.  All I can say with certainty is that there are these and other variables that I haven’t considered which need to be factored in and only then you will still never really know.

On a brighter note,  soon to be announced in the Farm Bakery and Café is a new culinary partnership with North Arm Farm and the opening of the best darn patio in Pemberton resplendent under a grape and wisteria trellis looking over the fields of vegetables and flowers, up and away 8000 feet to a majestic and immense  Mount Currie.  Visit us and experience it all this summer.

The sheet hasn’t changed this week and as usual we are delivering in Vancouver on Wednesday and Whistler on Thursday.  I was optimistic on the Hops shoots but will keep you informed.

Have a great week.

Jordan and Trish

Fresh Sheet Post April 4th "Spring?"

New in a week or two will be bunches of Hop shoots as the first sign of spring. Let me know if you are interested as it will be first come first served and we will try to be consistent with a limited supply. We are out of red carrots and all other potatoes but a few red nuggets.
The Marechal Fochand the Himrod grapes were pruned in the last few days but there is still too much snow in the Raspberries and Blueberries to even consider stepping off the road or you are sure to be ankle deep in the muck. That said, it sure is nice working out in the sun. I put out my rain gauge which had come inside for fear of hard freezing and cracking over the winter and although we have a month more of frost potential I am optimistic enough to think that we are finally on the way into spring.
I put up our first hummingbird feeder of the year as the first week of April is when we usually see the pathfinders. With all the snow I suspect it will be later than usual but the Rufous Hummingbird is a hardy little guy that arrives in ones and twos and proceeds to fight and chirp and dive bomb and argue about territory until late spring. The females and juveniles arrive at the beginning of May in large numbers and if the Chilcotin Plateau weather forces them to muster in Pemberton before heading north we have seen a hundred or more Hummers fighting for space at our bank of feeders. We will try and post a video on the shenanigans on our blog this May.
We hope to be joining the social media world starting soon with blog posts and twitter feeds. The links will be available on our website. twitter.com/northarmfarm blog at www.northarmfarm.com We are just getting going in time for the growing season so keep an eye out.

Have a great week.
Jordan and Trish