Spring is Here! A bit early.

Another busy and exciting week has passed.  Our days have been full and rewarding with work and visits from friends.  Here are some of the things we have been up to in our life, our 3-Thirds lifestyle, as we prepare for our Sunday open house for Perennial Edible Plants (10am -2pm):

• Potting up bare root shipments of some new food forestry plants.  We also have had great success starting Meyer lemons from cuttings.  Good news as we just sold our last lemon plant.
• For those that have already purchased their blight resistant hazelnuts – LUCKY YOU.  We tried to order some more and there is 2 year waiting list.  Thankfully we still have a few left in stock.
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  Gord with an impressive asparagus crown on his head

  Planning on where to plant our 2 asparagus beds (50 crowns for us) and lots of ever-bearing strawberries for ground cover.  We have lots of bare root Sweet Purple Asparagus crowns for sale as our shipment had an extra 100 plants.  $2 each.  Here is an excellent article on planting and growing asparagus.

• Gord spent a great deal of time this week sourcing out replacement stock for the items we have not yet propagated (or are too small to sell).  Holy smokes these plants are hard to find…especially since we are trying to source from Canadian sources.  Importing plants is too expensive with the low Can $, the shipping, duty, and customs.  We have been busy learning all about some new plants too:  Dwarf Bush fig, Strawberry Red Rhubarb, Black Monukka Grape, Peters Honey Fig, Quinal and Tristar strawberries, Sweet Purple Asparagus, and more dwarf sour cherry’s, fuzzy kiwi’s, Arbequina Olives, Gooseberries, etc.  Plant list and prices here:  All prices include GST.
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  Gord grafting last year.  Boo is helping.

  Gord wrote two articles for the BC Fruit Tester’s Association, one on Greywater and one on Food Forestry.  Saturday (March 21) is the BC Fruit Testers Association sale at the Saanch Fair Grounds… Gord’s excited to go again this year and will be busy grafting more trees here on Tuesday.

• Our Municipal council meeting this week focused on fire protection in the Highlands.  We spoke about how climate change is predicted to cause longer, hotter, dryer summers, which translates into greater fire risk.
• We are leaving some eggs in the chickens nesting boxes hoping that a chicken will go broody.  Last year the ladies hatched 13 chicks…half were roosters.  The roosters  were very good quality even thought they grow much slower than “meat” birds.  We are hoping to have three batches this year to add hens to our flock and produce healthy well treated roosters for eating.  Seems to make more sense then buying and raising ‘meat birds’. Let nature do what nature does.  Chicken eggs ($5/dozen)
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  Our ducks when they were little. Dog TV.

  Sweet Pea and Angie have started laying duck eggs again (as opposed to chicken eggs), after taking the winter off.  We will have 12 duck eggs for sale on sunday.  ($4/half dozen).

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  Dried nettle leaf tea.

  We harvested lots of nettles at our neighbours farm.  We were very grateful for this opportunity so as a thank-you we offered our neighbours a gift certificate to our nursery to buy some perennial edible plants.  Ann has been busy drying nettles for tea.  We have two 1/2 pint jars of nettle leaf tea for sale (no big stems).  ($8)

• We pulled 43 ticks out of the dog last week and another 15 last night.  We have a vial of black legged ticks ready to send in to the lab for analysis.  Worst tick year ever.  Poor Boo.  Ann even had a council packaged delivered and when she opened it up there was a tick inside.  Ack!
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  Bruising and rolling the tea leaves

  Ann has been REALLY enjoying her home grown and processed black tea. Leaves were bruised, oxidized, fermented and then dried. SO GOOD. Tea plants have been our biggest sellers lately. We currently have 2 types with a third type coming next week.

• We’ve been fermenting all kinds of food.  Gord made some cut off glass bottoms that are perfect to put into the jar to hold down the fermenting veggies under the brine.  This works awesome in both the jar types.
• Sweet potatoes have been very popular so far this year.  We have 4 types for sale.  Just yesterday we heard Brian Minter on the CBC talking about Georgia Jet Sweet Potatoes and how well they can do in our climate.  We have certainly had bumper crops.  Here’s a photo of how I start my slips.  Once they get going I pluck off the shoot with roots and plant in soil.  The slips are $4 each.

And finally, links that we found interesting this past week:
the-surprising-reason-why-some-people-become-environmentalists-and-others-dont/

This video interview as well worth the hour. Brilliant and strait forward. Filmed 10 years ago. It’s unusual to hear such clarity. Many people may not share these opinions at the state of the earth and the human predicament but for those who do…this is a so real. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-E71lCH6Ow&feature=share

Thanks for reading,

Ann and Gord