It's Seedy Saturday Season!

You know it's spring for sure when communities begin gathering for Seedy Saturdays! For the uninitiated, Seedy Saturdays are community events for trading seeds, sharing knowledge and sometimes hearing some good gardening speakers, they're always a blast! They started in BC in the 80's and are really starting to catch on in the Maritimes. I'll be attending five around Nova Scotia this spring:

Bridgewater, March 20

Wolfville, April 10

Halifax, April 17

Truro, April 24

Middleton, April 30

(Check out Seeds of Diversity for more info on them)

I'm organizing the first ever Middleton event this year, it's tying in with the farmers' market on April 30th. Hope to see you there (whether you have seeds to trade or are looking to get some seeds, it should be fun!).

ACORN 2010

I'm back recovering my energy and catching up on orders after a very busy three days in Charlottetown! There never seems to be enough time to catch up with everyone, it's quite a feat to gather the entire maritime organic community in one place so it's often the only chance in the year we all get to see each other. Here're a few photos I thought I'd share!

(Two very seedy people. Check out Andrea's company Hope Seeds if you haven't already!)

(Contra Dance with the Smokin' Contra Band)

(The Seedy Saturday swap table)

Spring is Almost Here!

As this winter's deep snow begins to recede and the streams flow swiftly with cold meltwater we're reminded just how close spring is now. The maple trees are nearly flowing with sap and I saw the first starling singing sweet songs of spring in his usual place at the corner of the barn roof.

I started my first seeds in trays the other day; leeks, onions and celery as well as fennel, angelica, nettle and a bunch of other herbs sent to me by my friend Dan Jason on the west coast (www.saltspringseeds.com). Some exciting news to report... I have a greenhouse on the way! I just bought a 20' x 36' greenhouse from Ontario, unheated with double-poly and roll up sides. It arrives in April (I expect in a million pieces) and with some luck should be assembled in time for next year's seedlings (hopefully sooner though!). In any case this will be the last year where I'll have to hijack the entire sunny kitchen for seedlings, soon I'll have a whole greenhouse in which to propagate things! I'll also grow peanuts, sweetpotatoes and peppers during the summer months (plants that are somewhat borderline in the field), I'll be experimenting with okra too... stay tuned.

Another ritual of spring comes up on Thursday, the ACORN Conference! In Charlottetown this year, I'll have a table in the trade show for the three days. There are lots of great workshops I hope to catch if I can get away from my table, as well a contra dance with the Smokin' Contra Band!

Farm Artwork

Local artist Shasta Grant recently made these beautiful paintings of scenes of our farm, they're on display in the Vegetarian Lunchbox restaurant in Wolfville!

Yurt Update pt. 2 (building the wheel)

Last month I finally got the long awaited yurt wheel built! It was the final piece of the frame, and by far the most complicated to construct. It took 2 and 1/2 days of work with some generous guidance from Alex Cole (www.lfy.ca) and lots of help from Rabanus (who was wwoofing with Alex) to turn our initial ash log into the beautiful and structurally crucial crown of my yurt-to-be.

After selecting a knot-free ash tree that was about 5" across and as staight grained as possible (there's always some variability) I cut an eight foot length to be cleaved. Cleaving with a froe is definitely a valueable skill, and a process that's inspiringly easy. You secure your log in a brake, pound the froe blade into the end of the log (as close to centre as possible), and then use the levering effect of the froe to almost effortlessly split the log. The going is so easy you really have to keep a careful eye on the split, and to guide it back towards centre if it begins to go off. Having multiple people on hand was really helpful at this stage, the log wasn't quite as straight grained as it could have been but Alex was able to guide the split towards centre by pulling down on the log, against the direction of the split. The split wants to go in the direction of the pulling force, so it can guided either up or down this way. Even with all this shuffling around of people the cleaving only took a few minutes to accomplish.

Much more time consuming (and harder on the arms!) was the step of shaving down these two halves into flat planks. Because we essentially ended up with two semi-circles I had to shave the bottom sides flat with a drawknife. A pretty intense upper body workout!

Next was the process of steaming the plank and bending it into the wheel. After a couple hours in the steambox (quite a simple contraption of plywood and plastic liner, with a pipe attached to a boiler) the planks were taken out and while still flexible were quickly clamped around a metal cartwheel (although any other similar frame would work). Time was of the essence here, we had about 30 seconds to get them in place and clamped before the wood cooled too much to bend and risks cracking. So out of the steambox they came and with almost military precision we wrestled them around the frame one by one. Between the three of us and our prerehersed roles it went fairly smoothly. We now had a wheel!

We let it set for a few days before attempting the last major step; drilling and burning the holes for the roof poles. This is where quite a bit of math and geometry came into play, we had to decide the angles and to mark and drill each hole. Although a round hole (and therefore a round roof pole) could work, there would be no way of keeping the roof poles from sliding around once in place. It's way better to have square holes and to square off the poles to fit, that way you can select the "top" side of the pole (the straightest side and the side that just feels right being the top) and have it stay there. Chiseling is possible here but burning the hole with a red-hot steel rod is far easier and produces a much nicer edge. We heated the rod in the forge (seen below next to Rabanus there) before driving it steadily into the round (soon to be square) hole. As this work went on it developed an almost intoxicating rythme... The fire, the glowing hot steel, the dense smoke from the wheel, and then back to the fire again... there was some pretty intense energy involved.

Update, Jan. 21:

It's finished! I just added the dome made from whippy ash sticks, the purpose of which is to support the canvas (otherwise there would be an indent at the top of the yurt, quickly becoming a birdbath in our climate!). The next step now is finishing the roof poles by draw knifing the top ends into tapered squares, and afterwards drilling and attaching a twine bridle to the lower ends (to connect to the wall). To be continued...

2010 Catalogue!

Just a quick post to announce that I've released the 2010 Annapolis Seeds catalogue! I have more than double last year's listings, check it out: www.annapolisseeds.com

I'm pretty excited to finally start sending these seeds out to people! I've been filling packets and printing catalogues and writing seed profiles like crazy lately, it's all coming together now.

Seed Packing and the New Name

The harvest is in, the seeds are dried and sorted and tallied, now it's just a matter of filling as many packets as I can before the 2010 catalogue is released! For the last week my main activity has been filling packets, as boring as that might sound it's actually very exciting work (for me) thinking about the huge potential of these seeds and the many gardens they will sow all over the world. This is the debut of my 2010 packet design, I was working with a local printer (Integrity Printing of Bridgetown) to design a slightly snazzier packet, I'm pretty pleased with the result:

I should also announce that I've decided to shorten the name slightly from Annapolis Valley Heritage Seeds to simply Annapolis Seeds, it's less of a mouthful and just seems...better. I'm in the process of completing the 2010 catalogue, and the plan is to update the website later this month. So far I have 140 varieties lined up for the online catalogue, with more coming soon from my only other seed grower Windhorse Farm. That's about double the selection over last year's catalogue, with way more in stock. Overall I have at least six or seven times last year's seed stock, I hope there's enough of the popular varieties to go around this year.

Also check out the Nov.-Dec. issue of Small Farm Canada (the seed issue), Emily McGiffin did a great write-up of what I'm doing that has already generated a lot of buzz.

So keep an eye on the website for updates!