Trinity Reach Farm

New Blog

2011-03-15T12:57:00.002-04:00

New blog launched. Follow our adventures while interning at a farm for the next year. Www.labourforlearning.wordpress.com

Galiform Gestapo

2010-12-02T22:29:00.012-05:00

Ever since we brought our first two hens home we have been candid about the process of raising them. The major platform for communicating about backyard chickens has been our blog. We have also attended Toronto Food Policy Council meetings promoting the legalization of backyard hen keeping, we have invited people over to meet and handle them, and we have communicated and shared advice with other hen owners. This level of uninhibited frankness has lead to many people knowing about our three backyard hens. We always hoped that the clear evidence the hens gave that they were suitable pets would dissuade anyone who met them from filing a complaint to the authorities. The lack of any bad odor, their calm and gentle demeanor, and the benefits of keeping them, both eggs and manure. Apparently, this wasn't enough, on November the 9th we received a notice from Animal Protection Services that we had to remove our beloved hens on the basis of a complaint.

The notice told us that we had to remove the "prohibited animal" within five days. After the bylaw officer paid a visit my fist instinct was to seek out who had filed the complaint. The reality is that the identity of whoever complained is of no consequence. Curmudgeon's who cant mind their own business will always exist. What is of consequence is that this law exists in the first place.

Restrictive laws on egg production don't only exist in our urban backyards. They exist across the province in many sustainable mixed agriculture farms. These are farms people believe to be the way of the future, that will take us away from our reliance on industrial agriculture. Ontario's Livestock and Livestock Product Act requires that all eggs be graded prior to sale. This means that the farmer has to take their eggs to a grading station. Here the eggs are washed and inspected for defects with the purpose of maximizing the quality and safety of eggs sold to consumers.

This limits a farmer who chooses to forgo the egg grading station to selling their eggs only at a farm stand on their property. The majority of the eggs that one may buy at any farmers market in Toronto are ungraded and so illegal. The reasoning behind a farmer avoiding the egg grading station is that it removes their control over the production of the egg that they provide to their customer at the farmers market, CSA member or a partnered restaurant or shop. This is because the eggs that a farmer takes to the egg grading station, particularly a small farmer who may only have a couple hundred hens, doesn't always get back the eggs that he takes in. This means that despite all the farmers efforts to raise the hens in a manner that is in synergy with the farm, they may receive eggs from a producer that makes none of these efforts. Egg grading also takes time, which reduces the freshness and taste of the eggs for those who will be eating them.

These restrictions to egg production are an affront to a farmers autonomy over his produce, and to the urban consumers food security. It limits our ability to access adequate eggs that maintain a sustainable practice and ecological integrity. Similarly the removal of our backyard hens has impaired our food security. Not only in the sense that it limits us from having a good source of protein from our own backyard when we can't afford to purchase alternatives or if their was a global or local crisis that limited access to food. Removing our backyard hens puts us in a position of dual insecurity in the sense it limits our ability to produce an egg of finest quality, as the farmer does, but also our ability to consume an egg, as the farm member does, that is lower in cholesterol, higher in protein, and vastly superior in flavour.

After brooding about this reality for a couple of days it became time to decide what we should do with our three hens in order to avoid the astronomical fine. Fantasies were abound. We could set up a rotational grazing method that would involve hopping the coop from backyard to backyard around the city leaving bylaw officers confused and bewildered. We could replace our hens with up to 30 pigeons or a dozen meat rabbits just to piss off whichever person filed a complaint. Raising these animals in such high numbers in Toronto is legal, I suspect because the squab and rabbit production boards aren't as influential as the Egg Farmers of Ontario are.

After setting these fantasies aside we decided it would be best to let them retire at our friend Leland's farm in Campbellford. There they would join a motley crew of 20 other chickens, and the lucky gals will meet their first roosters. Prior to their big move to the country we decided we would like to have front yard chickens for a couple of days. The ladies clucked around the front lawn, excited to eat new patches of grass and dig in undug areas of soil. Baylik was also excited to get to know the car, luckily she didn't do any scratching. It also allowed passersby to see the hens and ask questions. It even gave a little two year old her first chance to meet and pet a chicken, her mother was pleased.

Luckily Leland and his mum Debbie had constructed a new coop just days before we took the hens up. They had also removed all the fencing around the coop area allowing the flock entirely free range of the property. Our plan was to introduce the hens at night, but they accidentally got into the rest of the flock. I am happy this accident was made because it was very amusing watching the hens interact with their new flock, and particularly meet a rooster for the first time. I just narrowly missed seeing their introduction to the goats, but I definitely heard their startled reaction, the goats didn't seem to mind much. According to Leland they have adjusted to their new home very nicely and still scratch around in their little group of three.

People keep asking me if a cried when I dropped off the chickens at their new home. I didn't. Nor did I cry when I ate the last egg, fried sunny side up and served on top of braised short ribs from Weber's family farm and shooting thyme from our windowsill, though I was very close. I think I may cry when I have to shell out money on a dozen eggs for the first time in eight months, and after this experience, I'll make sure they are an illegal dozen from a farmer I know.

This will be my last post. I've thoroughly enjoyed this urban agriculture experiment from the gardening to the dinners. It has inspired me, among other things, to go work on a farm for the year of 2011.

Chilly Chickens

2010-11-02T18:36:00.006-04:00

Before the hens were ever introduced to our urban backyard we have faced the question, "what are you going to do with them in the winter?". Up until a couple weeks ago my answer was consistently "I'm not to sure". The three options as I've seen it have been to send them to a friends farm, insulate the coop and see how they manage, or eat them. All three of the hens being under a year old means that they still have well over a year of consistent laying ahead of them. This makes the "eat them" option seem un-economical to me. Why kill something for 10 dollars worth of meat when there are still 200 dollars worth of eggs to be layed? Sending the hens to a friends rural farm somewhat de-legitimizes our entire urban farm experiment, so this option was abandoned. This left us with keeping the chickens in our backyard throughout the chilly winter season.

The first issue that needed rectifying was finding a friend to keep Samantha company. At this time Samantha had been sleeping in a smaller separate coop, as a result of her precarious position at the bottom of the pecking order. My original intention was to find another hen of similar colour to Samantha and then hopefully be able to house all four together. Prior to moving in a new hen I set up Hepzebah and Baylik in the smaller coop to try and reduce their ownership of the large coop. So for a week I allowed Samantha free range of the large coop and didn't allow the other two in.

One day later in the week while working on the hotbed, I absentmindedly left the large coop door open. I realized that all three hens were peacefully eating out of the large coops feeder. Surprised by this, I sneakily added the other feeder and closed the door. I had learned via a chicken forum that having multiple feeders reduces the chances of fights. But for the odd peck, the three ladies have been getting along marvelously. It has been incredibly satisfying to see all three of them eat, roost and peck together.

Common suggestions from people have been to get a heat lamp to put into the roost to keep the hens nice and toasty warm. From my research and discussions with other chicken owners this actually not the route to go. Providing heat prevents the hens from acclimatising to the cold, and so makes it more dangerous for them to venture out of the coop. All chickens require is a dry, draft free environment. Chickens provide tonnes of body heat, and through huddling together will stay warm on the coldest of days.

Maintaining a dry environment is taken care of by the structure of the coop. To ensure that there is no draft I stapled strong plastic along all the chicken wire. It is also important to make sure that there is still ventilation in the coop. Poor ventilation can result in condensation from the hens breath settling on the comb and waddle and causing frost bite. To avoid this I put in place some small steel vents.

Another important issue with having chickens in the winter is making sure that one doesn't have to continuously clean droppings out of the coop. To make sure that this isn't the case I put in place a deep litter system. This system uses a deep bed of a carbon based material, such as straw or wood shavings. This carbon based bed will absorb any nitrogen that is introduced, such as chicken poop, this mixture will compost and create a nutrient rich soil. As long as a proper ratio of carbon to nitrogen is maintained the coop wont smell and will even produce heat as the compost off gasses.

Our relationship with the chickens is a symbiotic one, I recently imposed a system that will get them to do some work for me. I put a thick layer of mulch of leaves collected from around the neighborhood over the garden bed. I have been scattering feed over the mulch to to encourage the chickens to scratch through the mulch. As they do this they are aerating the mulch and dropping their nitrogen rich manure into the garden bed. This will encourage the mulch to break down and provide a rich garden bed for next years vegetables to grow.

Fall Planting

2010-10-20T10:14:00.012-04:00

While preparing the garden early this past spring I was surprised to find out that some of the plants I was most excited to grow required seeding in the prior fall. Realizing this in the spring made it difficult to grow onions, garlic, sunchokes and any perennial berries or herbs. Garlic is an allium that I was very excited to grow in the garden. Ontario garlic has a fantastic flavour and stickiness that is incomparable to garlic from China and Argentina. While I love the garlic found at Toronto's farmers markets, growing it will take a bit of a load off my wallet. Garlic also stores wonderfully throughout the winter hanging in a dark, cool place.

So this fall I have made sure to devote a significant portion of the garden to garlic. To plant garlic, all you need is ... garlic. I used garlic from the Stop Community Food Centre's garden at Earls Court Park. The bulb is then broken into cloves and the larger cloves are planted two inches into the earth. The small cloves are reserved for the kitchen, as they wont provide a large bulb. A healthy layer of mulch is then layered over top and in the spring the cloves will shoot and develop nice big bulbs for next year.

Sunchokes are another vegetable that is best planted in the fall. We did have some luck this year with going ahead and planting in the spring, in spite of conventional wisdom. Planting in two old recycling bins in a corner of the front yard, that doesn't receive much sun, yielded almost an entire bushel of tasty sunchokes. We were all floored by the size of the sunchoke pile that sat on our front lawn. To plant for next year, we just left a couple of the sunchoke tubers buried six inches deep. Another wonder of planting in the fall is the work that it saves you from doing in the following spring.

One more fall planting that I decided to do involved something called a hot bed. Hot beds are very similar to cold frames with the addition of fresh horse manure being buried underneath the soil. As this horse manure decomposes underground it produces a significant amount of heat which transfers energy to the plants.

Finding a hundred pounds of fresh horse manure in downtown Toronto isn't as simple as it is on a proper biodynamic farm. The only horses I ever see downtown belong to the police. So I headed out with my bike trailer and a shovel to follow some police horses and collect what my bike tires normally try so hard to avoid. After collecting four loads of horse manure along Queen Street, and a lot more strange looks, I decided this was going to take far to long. So I went where police horses live, the horse palace at Exhibition Place. At first I was worried that I would be laughed out of the stables, but apparently lots of gardeners source free manure from the horse palace. They showed me to a massive pile of manure where I filled my trailer as high as possible and cycled home.

In the hot bed I planted some hardy greens. These included arugula, red and green romaine, and another lettuce whose name I can't remember. Hopefully these will provide us with backyard salads all throughout the winter.

Harvest Time

2010-10-13T12:44:00.008-04:00

As we near the first frost the garden has gradually shrunk. Slowly but surely we ate through all of our crops. After several cool nights in a row the tomato vines were the first to be pulled from the ground. Ripe tomatoes were sun dried and preserved in oil and large green tomatoes were made into Governor Sauce. This is an old family recipe of salted green tomatoes and onions preserved with apple cider vinegar, and is served alongside roast beef or pork. Under our next door nona Franka's advice I hung the rest of our green tomatoes in the closet were they will continue to ripen.

Shortly after the peppers followed. The ultra hot red cayenne's were hung in Ristra's to dry over several weeks. The still significantly hot green cayenne's, which this cool September has left us with many, were preserved in a simple vinegar brine.

Beets and carrots were pulled last. The carrots came out beautifully, ranging in colour and size. My favourite are a deep red with a light orange centre. Last year I pickled my carrots, which I felt destroyed all the nice sweet flavours of a carrot. This year, with access to a nice cool garage, I decided to experiment with some burial preservation. This involves removing the green shoots of the carrot and laying them in sand without the roots touching. The carrots are then covered in sand and the process is repeated. I tried a carrot today and they are just as good as they were when they were buried.

Most of the beets were eaten directly from the garden and cooked into salads, risottos and soups amongst other delicious meals served in Chris's Room. Though a portion of the beets were saved to be pickled with cinnamon, allspice and apple cider vinegar.

Onions, sunchokes and watermelons were planted more as an experiment than anything else. The onions and watermelon, which turned out surprisingly well, were eaten with haste and shared with neighbours. The sunchokes, which just began to flower within the last week, will stay in the ground until the first frost at which point they will be dug up and possibly cellared, if the harvest is as big as I hope it to be.

With the harvesting of all the vegetables the fences keeping the hens out has been removed allowing them free range of the entire backyard. They are happy to finally be allowed to dig for all the worms in our rich garden bed.

Back to Brewing Season

2010-09-27T10:11:00.005-04:00

For me, beer and cider making is a seasonal affair. This is because, like many renters, our apartment does not include a cold cellar. It is important to keep temperatures during fermentation between 15 and 23 degrees celsius, if it is hotter than this your brew will ferment to fast and produce funky flavours, cooler and it wont ferment at all. In our poorly airconditioned apartment temperatures often jump up to over to over 30 degrees throughout the summer. As hard as it is to accept that temperatures are dropping it is equally exciting to start taking on new projects as the seasons change.

Last week I was lucky enough to lead an apple pick for Not Far From The Tree in the Vaughn and Arlington area. In a beautiful backyard bordering Cedervale Ravine grew two gorgeous apple trees. Nobody was quite sure what type of apples they were, but the best guess was Red Delicious. The apples were of all different sizes and bumpy and gnarly, not exactly the eating apples, but perfect for baking, sauce and most importantly cider. From these two trees we gleaned close to 200 pounds of fruit. Volunteering to take the windfall, and with the owners of the house not wanting their share, I walked away with a full bushel of apples.

From my cider brewing experience last year I learned that it takes a lot of apples to get a cup of juice. In order to have enough apples Dave and I ventured to the Toronto Food Terminal at 6 am to buy some inexpensive number 2's, the name for low grade apples. I've never seen such an interesting scene at 6 in the morning in all my life. There was a huge amount of energy, with chefs and grocers abound, prices were being haggled, fork lifts were zooming every which way, and even beers were being drank. The entire bushel, about 40 pounds, was only 15 dollars.

For last years attempt at cider I used a juicer. I found that this made to clear a liquid and didn't leave behind any of those intensely appley flavours that cider has. For this year I decided to get a proper fruit press. So when my Grandma asked me what I would like for a graduation gift, I think she was pretty surprised by the answer. The press worked fantastically. First the apples were pureed into a pulp in a food processor and then dumped into the press with a cheese cloth lining around it. The puree was then pressed producing a surprising amount of juice and leaving behind a completely dry and crumbly disc of apple. After an entire day of pressing apples (thank you Shira for giving up your whole day to help) we produced enough cider to fill a 25 liter carboy. This is enough cider to fill just over 30 champagne size bottles with delicious bubbly hard apple cider which, depending on my patience, will be ready to drink in about 8 months.

Getting "It"

2010-09-07T13:36:00.001-04:00

Do you ever feel like sometimes, things just click in your mind, and you begin to get the proverbial "it"?

Malcolm Gladwell talks about the '10,000 hour rule'. Now, I haven't actually read Gladwell. If his TED talks speak to anything, it's that reading one of his books might feel like 10,000 hours. Yet, the concept that after so many hours, one might really begin to understand and develop expertise in a particular field, intrigues me.

Not that I would claim expertise on the subject of meat curing. Nonetheless, every time I follow a charcuterie project to completion, I feel like I have a much better grasp on the subject.

Take this newest one. I decided to do my own take on a tuscan salami - "finocchiona". Toasted fennel seeds, black pepper and juniper provide the spice hit. I added red wine for colour, fruit, and acid. Lastly, I hand diced back fat from a Tamworth/Berkshire cross bred hog.

Charcuterie is on of those funny things where you don't know if you made the right choices until weeks down the road. This time, I feel like it was a real success. It hasn't been 10,000 hours, and I'm by no means an expert - but little by little, I'm chipping away.

Chicken Maintenance

2010-09-05T10:15:00.014-04:00

Last week I was lucky enough to befriend a fellow urban chicken raiser. Unfortunately, our reason for meeting was that she was in the middle having her chickens extradited to a rural farm by Toronto bylaw officers. I volunteer in City Councilllor Joe Mihevc's office. Joe is a supporter of legalizing backyard hens in downtown Toronto, and so his office regularly receives calls when people get into trouble with chicken laws. She, and her neighbour's, had happily lived with five laying hens for several years. She had lots of tips to give me on strategies for raising hens, but primarily our conversation was about chicken laws. Her concerns were not only that the law should be changed to allow people to raise hens, but that policy needs to be put in place to ensure that people raise their hens humanely and with an understanding of the amount of work that hen raising requires.

Raising hens is not like raising rabbits or gerbils. Chickens require a lot of upkeep, disease prevention, and protection from the cold and predators. The area that I have had the most difficulty with is disease prevention. I think this is because laws restrict a contraband chicken keeper from taking their hens to a professional veterinarian for assistance. This leads to a lot of internet research and guessing. Luckily I've only encountered a couple of health problems in the ladies.

One of these common problems was our Spotted Sussex becoming egg bound, or eggs-tipated as I like to say. This is when a chicken gets one of her eggs lodged in her Ovduct preventing other eggs from being made and causing the hen discomfort. I noticed something was wrong with her as she wasn't laying any eggs and was lying on her side and panting a lot. I started to do some internet research which, as any hypochondriac knows, can lead one to believe that thousands of diseases apply since so many diseases have similar symptoms. After being convinced that Samantha had the Bird Flu, Marek's Disease, and failed kidneys I realized that the most likely ailment was for her to be eggbound. Further research led me to find the cure, a nice warm bath and massage, which I found more appealing to an alternative cure which was to shove a pencil up the birds vent to dislodge the stuck egg. She really enjoyed the bath, and the following morning produced an egg, and was in much higher spirits.

Another common problem has been the appearance of lice on the birds feathers. At first I thought this was a big problem and it left me worried and itchy. But after some reading I realized that this is very common, and that chicken lice won't transfer to people. Living in downtown Toronto without a drivers license means its very difficult to get to a farm supply store and purchase a delouser. This forces one to get creative. I've used a natural insecticide for removing ant hills in the past called Diatomaceous Earth. DE is ground up fossils of diatoms, a type of algea, which dehydrates insects by absorbing lipids from their exoskeleton and thus killing them. To apply this I put the DE into a pantyhose and powdered the chickens, being careful not to allow the chickens, or myself, to breath it in as its bad for the lungs. From researching DE I learned that its good for removing parasites and worms from and animals and so I've now put a mix of 5% DE into the ladies feed.

With winter fast approaching, I am sure that new difficulties will transpire in raising hens and that the daily chores of cleaning out droppings from the roost will become more tedious. But I am very excited to take advice from my fellow chicken raiser and feed the ladies nice warm steel cut oatmeal with milk on cold mornings, and since this is one of my favourite winter breakfasts, I'll enjoy it with them.

Saving Seeds For Next Year

2010-08-20T14:54:00.006-04:00

The seeds that I purchased to grow this years garden have provided me with several frustrations. I don't want to mention the name of the company that I bought most of my seeds from because I respect what they do and understand that starting out a company such as this poses many difficulties. One frustration I ran into was getting beet seeds in a cucumber seed package. This wasn't to frustrating because I recognized the seeds and averted any mistake. What was more frustrating was buying specific types of heirloom tomato seeds only to find out once the tomato vines started to produce the tomato's, they were not the ones advertised. The most frustrating mistake was buying vine beans that turned out to be bush beans, leaving the trellis I built useless, and us without any tasty beans. The other issue is that seeds are expensive when you consider how cheap it is to save them yourself.

The only way I see that I can avoid these issues and save my money is to save my own seeds. This was something that I had always assumed would be difficult. I talked to my neighbour Franka about it and she was surprised that I didn't already save my own seeds. Her enthusiasm that this was an easy task to tackle encouraged me to try saving my own seeds. So far I've saved Mizuna, Cayenne Pepper, and Arugula seeds very easily. Tomato seeds are a little more difficult to save and require a longer process.

First the tomato seeds and pulp are removed from the tomato's. Then you cover the pulp and seed with water and wait three or four days. The viable seeds will sink to the bottom and the pulp and poor quality seeds will float to the top. After this you let the viable seeds dry on newspaper and store in a cool dry place. This has got to be the best way to grow, because it gives the gardener entire control over their garden from the seed at its earliest stage.

Early Summer Preserves

2010-07-23T10:43:00.007-04:00

One of the best parts of growing your own veggies is preserving them so they can be enjoyed all year round. In the past I've primarily focussed on vinegar based preserves. This year we'll be doing many different preservation methods using sugar, alcohol, drying, and lactic fermentation. With so many fruits and vegetables ripening early this year, I've already begun preserving many foods whose seasons have come to an end.

My first preserve of this year was one of the first vegetables to appear in spring, Rhubarb. The rhubarb came from Leland's farm whose mothers garden produced far more rhubarb than any one family could consume. I joined the queue of people waiting to receive a box full of fantastically fresh rhubarb. First I attempted to make a jam which resulted in a far to tart and gooey mush that I didn't want to put anywhere near my toast. After this failure my second attempt at rhubarb preserves was a jelly. The jelly turned out nicely, with a more appropriate balance of sweet and tart and a beautiful peach colour.

Toronto's fruit tree picking project, Not Far From the Tree, has provided us with a bounty of sweet and sour cherries. Going on picks with Not Far From the Tree is a great way to get free tree fruit. Not Far From the Tree visits a household that has fruit trees the homeowner wishes to be picked and the fruit is then divided between the homeowner, the Stop Community Food Centre, and the gleaners. With a cherry tree producing as much as 80 pounds of fruit, a gleaner who attends several picks can end up with loads of free produce. We did attempt to eat as much fresh cherries by cooking and baking it in to every dish imaginable, but were still unable to make much of a dent in the 40 pounds of cherries that overburdened our fridge. So we pitted and jarred the cherries doing the sweet ones in a simple sugar syrup and the sour in a rum and sugar mixture.

After having great success with cucumbers last year we decided to devote a large portion of the garden to filling our pickle jars. Last year we did all vinegar pickles. While vinegar pickles are nice, being lifelong fans of Strubs has convinced us to try our hands at fermented pickles. This involves sitting cucumbers in a salt brine with pickling spice and leaving at room temperature for a week or more. After the pickles have been in the brine for long enough to develop a salty-sour taste the pickles are jarred with the brine and refrigerated. If we can master this preserving method I'll be very happy as I've been known to put down a jar of Strubs in one sitting.

Dinner is Served

2010-07-07T11:43:00.010-04:00

After the departure of our roommate Chris Battaglia on June the 1st, we decided that instead of finding a new person to rent the room, we would create a dining room. We set a long solid wood harvest table down the centre of the room with matching benches. The decor in the room is a simple presentation of the items that are created at the farm. The charcuterie fridge with its glass door displays beautiful sausages and cured meats, jars of preserves lined the window sill, and an antique painting ladder was used to present planters of herbs.

This past tuesday the inaugural dinner was served in Chris' Room. Using produce from the garden, homemade cheese, house-smoked and cured meats, and of course the ladies eggs we constructed a five course menu for eight very lucky diners.

The Ladies Deviled Egg with House-Smoked White Fish and Garden Chive.

First Harvest Salad with Fresh Lemon Ricotta, Crisp House-Cured Boar, Various Radishes and Basil Vinaigrette.

Fricasee of Backyard Shiitake Mushrooms with Wild Foraged Morels, House made Gorgonzola, Garden Arugula and Flowering Thyme.

Pan-Roast Rainbow Trout with Fingerling Potato, Wilted Mizuna and Sorrel Beurre Blanc.

Celebration of Toronto Cherries: Angel Food Cake with Candied Cherry Ice Cream, Fresh Cherries and Almond Praline.

We want to thank everybody who has dined with us up to date, and encourage anybody interested in having a dinner party in the future to inquire.

Introducing Samantha

2010-06-21T00:32:00.003-04:00

Getting two eggs a day from one's backyard is nice, but three is even better. On a recent trip to my friend Leland's farm in Cambelford we made sure to stop in at their weekly livestock auction. This place was a real scene. Inside a large barn, off the side of the highway, an auctioneer was gathering bids as calves were pushed in and out of small doors. My three vegetarian accomplices didn't much care for this part of the livestock auction so we went outside where the smaller livestock were being sold. This is where chickens, turkeys, pigeons, and rabbits were sold. The man I wanted to see was Chicken Charlie, who is known around Cambelford for having the best selection of heritage breed birds. Chicken Charlie had more than just chickens, he had cats, dogs, bantams, and turkey's. He also had meat bunnies and pet bunnies, which Kayla quickly learned the difference between, meat bunnies are five dollars and pet bunnies are ten. While Kayla ran around trying to get enough money to buy all the meat bunnies and set them free, I started to look at all of Chicken Charlie's heritage breeds.

Chicken Charlie had Silkies, Barred Plymouth Rocks, crazy looking Polands, and your standard Rhode Island Reds. The one that I decided would be best suited for us was a beautifully feathered and docile Speckled Sussex. The standard manner of purchasing heritage breed birds is to get both a rooster and a hen in a package deal. This makes sense for anybody in the country as you'll want your eggs to be incubated so you can replenish your flock with chicks rather than buying new birds. But in the city roosters are not the greatest idea. Roosters make loud cocka-doodle-doo's all day long and, while I might find it charming, I am sure would eventually irritate the neighbors resulting in a call to Toronto's bylaw enforcement offices. In fact the neighbor who borders the west side of our backyard had his chickens taken away several years ago after he had bought and begun to house a boisterous rooster.

Chicken Charlie wasn't entirely on board with selling me just a hen, and couldn't quite comprehend why my neighbors would have a problem. He even pondered what this country is coming too if the government can tell you not to have chickens. After a little haggling and five dollars added on to the price of the hen he agreed to sell me Samantha for a wopping 25$. This is a fancy chicken when you consider Baylik and Hepzebah were only 7 bucks a pop. As Chicken Charlie handed Samantha over to me he didn't treat her as the fancy expensive chicken she is as he pulled her out of her cage by a wing and shoved her into my chest. With wings flapping and a few loud squawks I placed her into a box for the ride home, which always seems to instantly calm a hen.

I have always heard that introducing a new hen to a flock can be difficult. It can result in pecking, defeathering, and even death. All sources that I have read, and even Chicken Charlie, suggest that new hens should be introduced at night while the original hens are asleep. In the early hours of their first morning together this seemed to have worked. The three of them all peacefully pecked at the grass together, and so with a big smile on my face I went back to bed. When I returned to the yard a couple of hours later Franka, who had been watching from her backyard into ours, warned me that "they are going to kill that poor chicken". I suppose Baylik and Hepzebah hadn't realized that a new hen was pecking along side them until after I had gone back to bed. Once they did realize, they did not appreciate her presence.

We decided to wait it out for a few days and see if the pecking would subside. After three days of pecking, several warnings from Franka, and a growing pile of Samantha's removed feathers I decided to build a separate coop for Sam. I decided to go with a triangular coop design. The triangular design allows for a coop with a smaller foot print because the roost area is built above the run. This was important as I didn't want to clutter the backyard with another structure. I also wanted the coop to stay small and light so that it can be moved around the yard, and maybe to the front yard so that the hens can mow the lawn.

Now that Samantha has her own coop she is getting along much better with the other two ladies. They even peck along side each other with out much incident. Samantha has also put on a little weight and become a little more bold, and with her sharp beak and flying capabilities may even become top hen someday. From this experience I also realized that I am pretty good at building coops and so, If anyone is interested in raising their own backyard hens they may want to check out this craigslist ad http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/grd/1766576663.html .

Experimenting with Watering Techniques

2010-06-13T11:41:00.003-04:00

Despite the first week of Junes rainy weather, this summer is supposed to be a particularly long and dry one. According to the Stop Community Food Centre's gardening tip of the month this means you want to do sporadic deep waterings. This encourages the roots to grow deep to find moisture, allowing the plant to survive during periods of drought. It also means you don't have to wake up to do your early morning waterings many days of the week. While I think that this method of long deep watering will be sufficient to keep our plants healthy, I still want to experiment with some different watering techniques.

One of these is to dig a figure eight pattern around the base of your plants with an elevation at one end. This allows for the water that is poured at one end of the pattern to work its way throughout the garden arriving at the bottom of each plant. It also forces the roots to go deep because the plants are placed up on mounds, which prevents the roots from going outwards. Water is also confined to the root zones making sure that it is not wasted by soaking into areas without plants.

The watering technique that I am finding most interesting uses recycled tomato cans. I punched holes into the cans using a hammer and nail and then dug them into the ground beside the root systems of the desired plants. These cans are then filled with water which will slowly trickle out and into the root system of the plants. I figure that this is going to be a good technique for potted plants because they have limited depth for the root system to dive and the soil is more susceptible to drying out. I also like this watering technique because it gives me an excuse to go gleaning through peoples garbage bins for old tin cans.

Family Dinner

2010-06-09T16:08:00.000-04:00

"Family dinner" has become a bit of an early week tradition 'round these parts. We all have nights off from our respective restaurants - and what better way to celebrate, than to enjoy the fruits of your labour with good company, good food, and a healthy dose of home-brew.

Pan-roast rainbow trout, with fingerling potato, sea-asparagus, beurre blanc, and various radishes.

Interested in joining us?

Natural Remedies for Garden Pests

2010-06-07T09:09:00.004-04:00

In urban vegetable gardening, as with in large scale farming, insect infestations can wipe out your entire crop. In most of the conventional large scale farming operations pesticides are used to address these infestations. In more recent years even large agribusiness has moved towards using organic pesticides in order to tap into the profitable organic produce market. While many of these organic pesticides have now become available to home gardeners, I thought it would be more interesting to use old fashioned techniques and household remedies for any pest problems that arise. These are remedies that I have learned from the older generation Italians in the neighborhood, as well as from my Mum and Grandma.

The first important thing to figure out is which bugs are pests and which are beneficial to your garden. Worms are beneficial, that is obvious, we all know that worms help to aerate the soil and provide waste to keep the soil healthy. Ants are a trickier insect to determine as beneficial or harmful to the garden. They worry me with their scurrying up and down the stocks of my tomato, sunchoke, squash, and cucumber plants. But apparently, they are merely helping to open the buds, and performing general investigation of their landscape and doing no harm to the plant. Ants are also helpful in destroying aphid and fly larvae, as well as aerating the soil. Although if your garden is overrun with ants it can become an issue. One insect that gave me a fright was the alarming amount of earwigs that were on a recently harvested crop of spinach. To be fair the "alarming amount" was only 5 or 6 earwigs, but they creep me out, and so I was alarmed. Earwigs are of no concern, except for the occasional sting that a gardeners hand may receive, and are actually helpful in similar ways to ants.

The major pests that I have been told to look out for are slugs and aphids. One way to address these pests is through using the preventative measure of planting protective botanicals. I incorporated this into the planning of the garden and planted marigolds and cilantro along the boarders.

Despite the use of these protective botanicals I found some slugs creeping through the garden while weeding the other day. Instantly I called in the big guns, asking Franka, our next door Nona, what should be done to eradicate this problem. Her first bit of advice was to use the egg shells from our three lovely hens. She advised me to crush the shells into smaller pieces and spread them throughout the garden. Apparently the egg shells will cut the soft flesh of the slugs which will dehydrate them to death. Franka's other weapon of choice is spent coffee grinds. Caffeine is a deterrent for slugs and if scattered around the base of your plants will keep slugs from destroying them. My Mum and Grandma's arsenal for warding of slugs has always been using a small container of beer placed strategically in the garden. The slugs, attracted by yeast, will venture into beer for a drink and be killed by the alcohol.

I do find it amusing that the three items in my armoury against slugs are three of my favourite things, coffee, beer and our backyard eggs. If I were a slug I would be in heaven. What I don't find amusing is that the biggest threat to our garden has been our three hens, who we had originally hoped would eat the pests. One of whom, Baylik, ate an entire F@#%$* cabbage the other day.

Home-grown eggcitement

2010-05-28T19:01:00.008-04:00

The concept of the “3000-mile Caesar salad” has always perplexed me some. Between shipping costs, seasonal differences and a general lack of support for local farmers, the entire construct seems both irresponsible and completely unnecessary. It’s with this in mind that I can very proudly (and gratefully) say that there is a grand total of 20 feet between our eggs and my frying pan.

Paul was the first to discover our very first egg. I wasn’t there, but he insists that the noise he made was far louder than anything that has come from the chickens thus far. Somewhere between a gasp and guttural moan, I imagine.

The eggs, at least at this stage, are still quite small. A size you would never see in your grocery store, if I’m honest, but there’s really something so special feeling about plucking a still-warm egg from your backyard coop – regardless of how hungry you may still be afterwards. A little wash-up and a lot of excitement later, and we were ready for our first taste. We gathered around a very buttery pan, cracked Baylik’s spherical bounty, and all waited with wide eyes for the white to go opaque.

Initial impressions are that you really can’t match this level of freshness. The yolk clings very tightly to the white (normally after a few days, the yolk becomes easier and easier to separate), the color is a bright yellow, you almost want to swig it down raw, Rocky-style. The yolk is rich and coats your mouth with a mineral-ish taste, the whites basically taste like butter, but the general consensus is that they have a “warm” texture, very viscous and molten.

For the first while, Baylik was the only one to lay anything for us, because she is the older hen. More recently, however, a trip to the coop yields contributions from Hebsebah as well. Equally delicious, equally exciting. Jacob and Paul have even started stamping the eggs with our blog address.

Frequently asked questions:

How are you getting eggs without a rooster? We don’t need one. We’re getting one a day from each hen, roughly, they’re just not fertilized.

Can they fly? No, but they will give a flappy jump if you hold a worm in front of them.

Do they have personalities? Oh yeah. Baylik is a total rebel, usually the first to explore things, and will be the most fervent out of the gate when you open it. Hebsebah is a little more tame, but a bit louder. This might be due to younger age.

Long story short, the eggs are delicious, and they come from very happy chickens.

Grandma's Sorrel Soup

2010-05-21T13:40:00.007-04:00

The best part of vegetable gardening has to be eating the fruits of your labour. Produce from ones own garden is more fresh and satisfying than anything that can be found at grocery stores or farmers markets. For me, enjoying veg from the garden doesn't get any better than using my Grandma's sorrel plant to make her fantastic sorrel soup. If you remember one of my past posts on the blog, I transplanted my Grandma's sorrel plant to our garden from her backyard in Scarborough.

Last week the sorrel plant yielded enough sorrel leaves to make a big pot of soup and go to her new assisted living residence to enjoy it with her. I got the sorrel soup recipe from my Grandma along with about a thousand other recipes she has accumulated in a black book throughout her lifetime. The sorrel lends a delicious citrus flavour to the soup, and once combined with the cream has a smooth velvety texture. My Grandma enjoyed it a great deal, but I must admit that I still have some work to do before It's as good as hers. I also didn't have any of the beautiful edible flowers that used to be her signature garnish.

Gambling With Cold-Frames

2010-05-12T10:11:00.006-04:00

Using cold-frames is a good way to get a jump on the season and have your hot weather loving plants in the ground well before Victoria Day weekend, the traditional day to transplant these vegetables. My introduction to cold frame gardening came as I was wandering the streets of Little Italy and noticed all sorts of plastic coverings placed over planters and some directly on the ground. The "cold-frames" that made me most curious appeared in gardens all over the neighborhood. These were 2 liter pop bottles with the bottoms cut out and placed over top of plants. Thinking that all the vegetable gardeners in Little Italy had gone completely insane, I asked a lady who was working on her pop bottle covered plants what she was doing. She explained that the pop bottle creates a miniature green-house that traps in the heat from the day and prevents frost from landing on the plant at night.

Realizing the brilliance of these simple green-houses I went home to do some research so that I could construct my own cold-frames. After a little research in a readers digest book called Back to Basics, I learned that cold-frames can be as simple or as complex as you want, ranging from a simple pop bottle to a walk-in green-house. I decided to construct something in the middle.

The Back to Basics article that I read suggested the best material for cold-frames to be old windows. This gave me an opportunity to perform one of my favourite activities, riding my bike around and rummaging through peoples garbage to find thrown out treasures. Eventually I did find a set of great old windows which I attached together so that it could run overtop of the tomato plants. For the cucumbers I made a simpler cold-frame, constructed out of clear plastic sheeting and wires bent to shape.

I put both of these cold-frames in place just before the last couple of frosts and have been worried about whether the plants are going to make it. I raised the tomato's and cucumbers from seed and don't have a back up set of plants if they die, so there is a bit of a gamble here. But if it is successful we could get an extra two weeks of production out of the plants.

Holy Shiitake, Thats A Lot of Mushrooms... And Other Garden Updates

2010-05-06T10:10:00.007-04:00

Mushroom logs are something that I think are really cool to have in a garden, and are perfect for small lots, as it doesn't take up much space. They also take very little care to grow, since you don't really need to water the logs, a single soaking at the beginning of the growing period will suffice. To grow mushrooms all you need is a recently cut log of Oak, spores of the mushrooms of your desire, and an inoculation kit to inject those spores into said log. Or you can do as I did and purchase already inoculated logs from FunGuy Farms, which is the more practical and cheaper way to do it if you are looking to cultivate only a couple of logs.

Growing your own mushrooms does provide a significant amount of savings, especially if you grow high end mushrooms like Shiitake's that will often fetch between 10 and 15 dollars a pound. The inoculated logs cost 25 dollars each and will produce about 8 pounds of mushrooms. After this most recent rainfall I noticed a ton of mushroom caps poking through the bark of the logs, and two mushrooms that were already big enough to pick, though we have yet to eat them.

The rest of the garden is looking great. The early crop of radishes, spinach and lettuces that were sown a couple of weeks ago, have sprouted nicely and are near ready to eat. The Hops plant has come back to life and is providing some beautiful green shoots of leaves. I'll have to build a trellis to train it to soon, or else it will take over the entire garden. The Sunchoke sprouts have also started to poke through the soil, and I've heard that once this happens it's very little time before they are 8 foot tall flowers. The Cabbages are also coming along great, as long as we can keep our two hens from eating them.

At long last, cheese.

2010-05-03T19:28:00.012-04:00

This afternoon it became too much to bear. I had to try some cheese.

About a month ago I started a batch of Gorgonzola style cheese with some blue mould from my trip to Glenngarry in early March. The recipe calls for at least another 30 days of aging, but not to worry. Using some curd left over from making three wheels of what will hopefully turn out to be that tasty Italian blue I haphazardly pressed a little experimental wheel.

Hoping to end up with a crumbly, Stiltonesque cheese, I tried to get a good amount of moisture out of the curd. I pressed the curds with a moderate amount of pressure for 24 hours then let the resulting wheel sit at room temperature for the mould to take effect. It was with surprising speed that the pale blue veins crawled through the little cheese wherever a crack had formed. I waxed it and threw it in the back of the fridge with little hope of an edible result.

So it was with low expectations that we sliced open the little orange wax covered wheel early this afternoon. The firm curd inside is still moist with little veins of blue mold. Creamy in texture it has a pleasant acidity and very mild blue cheese bite. We agreed over bites of the hamburgers on which it was crumbled that the outcome was very tasty indeed.

In the spirit of Paul's beer making, lets call it "Beginners Luck Blue".

Fowl: Making a Home for the Ladies

2010-05-02T22:29:00.009-04:00

No, this is not a letter for the penthouse forum, the ladies I speak of are from the galiforme species. As discussed in my last post on chickens we had decided to construct the coop based on plans recommended by the blog Toronto Chickens. Toronto Chickens is a fantastic blog that works to promote the legalization of backyard chickens in Toronto as well as provide people interested in raising chickens with useful information.

Two types of coops are recommended by Toronto Chickens. One is the Eglu, which is a ready made coop that comes in a wide range of colours. Though these coops may be a great design they are expensive. The prices range from 500 to 1300 dollars, and the one sized to our needs is in the 1300 dollar range. The much cheaper, and better suited option, was to purchase plans from a company called Ready Coop.

The price tag to buy the plans and all the materials for the coop was 270$. Not only was the coop affordable, but the way the plans outlined the steps of construction made its assembly very easy. I took advantage of my Dad's wood shop to do all the cuts, and then transported all the pieces to the farm for construction. The transportation of wood nearly broke my bike trailer and garnered me some strange looks. Both of which are bound to happen when you strap three 4x8 sheets of plywood to the back of a bike and fly down Christie hill. Once I arrived home, having all the pieces already cut to size made constructing the coop almost like putting together Ikea furniture. The process of building the coop also gave me a much more satisfying feeling than I think having a ready made coop, such as the Eglu, arriving in the mail could have.

The coop provides an area large enough for 6 hens to roost, and has two laying boxes for the hens to share. There is a short case of chicken stairs so that the hens can traverse down to their run. This is where the feed and water are kept and there is 16 square feet of room for them to stretch their legs and peck at the soil. A door in the coop allows the hens access to the rest of the yard so that they can hunt for little grubs and slugs and have a dirt bath. The coop seems really secure from predators, especially with the addition of a chicken wire skirt we attached to prevent raccoons from digging under the coop walls. It would take a particularly clever raccoon to break into the coop and do any damage to the chickens, and if one is capable, it probably deserves its dinner.

The completed coop looks great, and Jacob's suggestion to paint it a barn red makes it even more bad-ass. The place is starting to look more like a legit urban farm everyday.

Larder: Building The Big Smoke

2010-04-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

Paul: I think a quantity of nice smoked bacon is worth its weight in gold.

Jacob: Agreed. And legitimately smoked cheese - not that liquid smoked junk - is a real treat. Even many boutique dairies and cheesemakers have trouble finding the resources to smoke their own product.

Paul: It was with this spirit that we started our most wing-nut project yet.

Jacob: We were five or six home-brews in, and reminiscing about Norm's Smokehouse, in Haliburton. We've taken day-trips to his old-school smokeshack whenever we're at the lake.

Paul: You had also done a few smokes last year.

Jacob: Yeah, last year, we did a few bacons, some duck breast, and whole whack of ribs using a rickety gas barbecue on our three square foot balcony. But smoking meat on a barbecue isn't really all that practical.

Paul: With all of our dist-stink-tive projects, we've become pretty used to strange odors floating around the apartment.

Jacob: Yeah, but perhaps smoking meat on a 'balconette' directly connected to our living room was not the best idea.

Paul: But the results were tasty.

Jacob: So, with succulent pork product in mind, and alcohol in blood, we began our foray into the world of smoking.

Paul: After a solid 10 minutes of poor internet research, we decided that we were experts on all things smoke, and started acquiring building materials the next day.

Jacob: You mean, you "borrowed" bricks from a demolished house the next day.

Paul: Yes. Actually, it was pretty funny - Dave and I were walking up and down the street, with batches of bricks across 2x4 planks on our shoulders. One construction guy said, "What, the pharaoh's got you building that damn pyramid again?"

Jacob: Dave's penchant for, "winging it", and "rigging up" meant that we proceeded without any plans. Not exactly an expedient process...

Paul: Dave's constant assurance of, "it'll all come together" was not always re-assuring.

Jacob: But, it did. And despite our total lack of bricklaying experience and terrible roofing skills, we soon had most of a smoker assembled, ready to lift onto the brick foundation. The thing was about five and a half feet tall, sitting on the deck.

Paul: It looked like a reasonable size, and seemed light enough to pick up.

Jacob: At first. By the time the last shingle was attached, it required four skinny men (and a full case of beer) to move onto it's moorings. And once it was assembled...

Paul: ...It was HUGE. The thing is eight feet tall. We did not anticipate that.

Jacob: Damn right. We started to get a bit nervous - we had told our landlord that we would be assembling a, "small barbecue structure", not a mammoth-sized outhouse. That being said, actually having something material to look at, dreamed up by us, and actually followed-through to completion: very cool.

Paul: Well, that's not to say that it was a complete success. Our first smoke was... touch and go?

Jacob: More go than touch. Perhaps bringing a wooden structure up to 350 degrees fahrenheit was not the best idea?

Paul: That thing was hot. And leaky! Smoke pouring out everywhere. And despite our "expertise", more extensive research would have shown...

Jacob: And by "extensive research," you mean Jenny looking at a Reader's Digest for five minutes?

Paul: Exactly... would have shown that we needed a baffle, a grease catch, and a much smaller source of ignition.

Jacob: In our enthusiasm, we had decided that a 65,000 BTU burner would be sufficient.

Paul: Sufficient for NASA.

Jacob: Right. Anyway - Brick; Wood; Fire. Smoker: Done.

Paul: Well, not really. We still need to fill the holes, deal with the indirect fire-box...

Jacob: DONE.

Vegetable: Poaching Perennials

2010-04-25T02:00:00.015-04:00

The response received since starting this blog has been overwhelming. Not only from the people interested in following and reading the blog, but more so from the enthusiasm people have to become involved in the farm, and offer their own gardening tips,and experiences. What's been even more surprising are the number of people who have contacted me to offer plants to be put in our garden. Particularly since my mention of lacking perennials.

The first offer came from someone very close to me, my Grandma, who having just moved out of her house and into assisted living had many plants on offer from her former garden in Scarborough. The plant I was most enthusiastic to get my hands on is the main ingredient in her incredible soup, Sorrel. I was sure to transplant a portion of this amazing perennial before the house was sold so that I can continue to enjoy this soup with my Grandma.

While the gift of sorrel from my Grandma was a given, with or without the blog, the rest of the plant donations have come from people who may not have known this project existed had the blog not been made. One very exciting new perennial is a Gold Hop plant from a friend named Alex Jarvis Squire, lead singer of the Whole Entire Universe. Alex is a horticulturalist by day and has an amazing garden. Fortunately for me he felt the Hops plant was taking up to much space. When he offered the plant to me I jumped at the opportunity to grow my own Hops to be used for flavouring my home-brew. Having just undergone a transplant the shrub is looking a little bit sad, but hopefully, with some tender loving care, will spring back to life.

One of my favourite perennials are sunchokes. Franka provided me with some really good advice about growing sunchokes through a horror story of hers. Franka suggested that when planting sunchokes I create some sort of barrier around them to prevent them from spreading throughout the garden. She learned this the hard way when the root system of a sunchoke plant spread under the grass of her lawn, only to be torn up by squirrels in search of the tasty tuber. Franka was particularly adamant that I take this advice because of the proximity of our sunchokes to her garden. To create this barrier I used the old recycling bins with the bottom cut out. Franka was pleased with my ingenuity and rewarded me with a couple of chive plants to accompany the one that I had left from last year.

Another plant that we hope to be giving a home to is a raspberry bush from a friend who lives up the street from us named Krista. For this plant I am having considerable difficulty finding space. As much as I love raspberries, sunchokes and loads of other perennials I do find them challenging to incorporate into the garden because of how large they get. WIth a garden as small as ours it becomes difficult to incorporate these plants without having them take over the entire plot. One good option for the urban gardener to enjoy things like raspberries and blueberries is to forage them wild, which I hope to do this summer.

Hopefully getting these plants in the ground and taking care of them will stave off my desire to get an early jump on vegetable planting before the recommended May 24 weekend. Also, soon there is going to be enough sorrel for a delicious sorrel soup.

Vegetable: Preparing For an Early Crop

2010-04-13T10:33:00.005-04:00

Regrettably I didn't grow many perennials last year. Being a renter, and not a home-owner, means you don't necessarily know what your living situation will be every year. Not knowing where I will be from year to year prompted me to resist planting perennials, and particularly plants that you have to wait several seasons before a nice crop appears. So this spring I will look on with envy as farmers arrive at the markets with asparagus and strawberry and other delicious seasonal treats.

Without these first signs of the growing season in our garden, I have been increasingly eager to get something sprouting that we can enjoy fresh from the yard. The beautifully deceiving weather that we have had recently has increased my impatience to start working in the garden. The only thing that has been holding me back are Franka's warnings that these deceptively warm days are followed by cool nights, that often bring a frost. Franka tells me that if I were to plant my seedlings now they would rot and die. She stresses that I need to maintain my patience, and wait until the Victoria Day long weekend to transplant the seedlings into the ground.

Feeling dejected I had come to the conclusion that I would have to be satisfied with the seedlings in the living room, until I received an email. The Stop Community Food Centre sends out a "Gardening Tip of the Month" in its monthly newsletter. For the month of April the tip is to plant crops that are resistant to frost, and will actual grow best in cool temperatures. These are crops such as spinach, arugula and radishes. Having received this tip we wasted no time in getting outside and double digging the soil in the front yard. The front yard faces the morning sun and so will provide the best environment for early crops to grow. Unable to wait for nice weather, Chris and I flipped the soil in the rain and cold. While digging we received several warnings from neighborhood Nonna's that we should go inside unless we want to catch a cold. Despite the warnings we dug on and were able to plant seeds once the rain passed, and now have spinach, lettuces and radishes beginning to sprout in the front yard.

The backyard is much bigger and required a few more hands, a case of beer and some nice weather.

Curd: 'Wheying' in on Curd

2010-04-07T14:39:00.035-04:00

I love cheese. I have always loved cheese. As a kid, I loved things that resemble cheese, but no longer consider cheese. I used to eat American cheese slices out of the little plastic wrapped packages as an after school snack. Yes, I am ashamed. In interim years, I have discovered such wondrous creations as French Munster, Italian Tallegio, and Spanish Valdeon. More recently, the delicious local cheeses of Monforte Dairy, and numerous other local and small-scale producers, have made me think that maybe this is something that I could do myself.

I finally decided to make cheese at home after watching the process on the BBC's the Victorian Farm, a great documentary series that recaptures daily activities of our recent ancestors. Seeing the simple, relatively inexact conditions under which the researchers worked, inspired me to try my hand at cheesemaking. My first attempt was a pressed ‘farmhouse’ cheese from Gramma's copy of Joy of Cooking (see Paul’s earlier post). We used buttermilk as a starter, dried rennet tablets, and a very questionable pressing method. The result was not great.

I have since received some help from the fine people at Glenngarry Cheese. They are located in Lancaster Ontario, where I recently visited. I was expecting to purchase some quality bacterial starter, liquid calf's rennet (that’s the good stuff) and a cheese mold. When I arrived, they greeted me with such inspiring enthusiasm, and a whirlwind of information and encouragement. They were thrilled to hear that I had decided to join the ranks of the cheesemaker. We talked for over an hour about the major do’s and don’ts that a first timer should watch out for. They also had all of the key ingredients that I could not find elsewhere. Thank you Glenngarry Cheese.

With the completion of the cheese press, and all the proper ingredients we decided to make one of my favourites, Traditional Cheddar. We won’t know how it tastes for another nine months (it's meant to be aged), but it definitely looks like cheese, and has a an aroma that I can confidently say, smells like cheese. I’ll keep you updated.

Larder: Spanish Chorizo, and our first "sale"...

2010-03-31T13:03:00.001-04:00

After stumbling home from the Dakota Tavern, Patrick Krzyzanowski officially became the first buyer of Trinity Reach Farms product. Pat is now the proud owner of a small vac-pack of saucisson sec. With blatant disregard for monetary defamation law, we nailed up that first fiver for good luck.

Since the saucisson came out so well, we decided to start a new batch of sausages. I wanted to do something that could be used for cooking, as well as snack-fodder. We settled on Spanish chorizo.

Having never actually made a fermented sausage before, I consulted a few resources: the Ruhlman "Charcuterie" book; Paul Bertoli's, "Cooking By Hand"; and my friend Johnny Poon. Johnny is the new head chef at Delux Bistro on Ossington, and has always been a great help when it comes to curing, cutting, or salting any piece of meat. Turns out, Johnny was putting in an order from his sausage supplier for a live bacterial culture. This acts as a starter for sausage fermentation.

Armed with bacteria and gorgeous, farm-raised pork shoulder from Vince Gasparro, we set to work grinding the meat, and hand-cutting the fat. After all the meat was processed, I stuffed the sausage into hog casings, while Paul started on dinner.

More updates to come.

Brew: Trouble Shooting the Coffee Porter

2010-03-29T18:29:00.013-04:00

Well, it appears as though my beginners luck has run out. There is not much that I have experienced that is as frustrating as waiting two and a half months for something to be ready, only to find that it is unusable. I had an inkling something was fishy about this beer from day one.

When I fermented my first brewing attempt loads of yeasty gunk bubbled out of the bucket that I used to house the beer. For the Coffee Porter I used a glass carboy as the vessel for the beer. The fermentation process for the Coffee Porter lurched along, producing none of the overflow that had occurred during the last beer. I assumed that this was the result of the change in container, as it was the only thing I had changed in the brewing process. The same slow ferment happened when I pitched the yeast into the India Red Ale. Having done a little more reading on the process of making beer by the time I was making the IRA, I now know that a rapid bubbling fermentation is very important in producing a quality beer. Desiring a more rapid fermentation I biked over to Fermentations on Danforth to pick up more yeast, and see if a healthy dose of yeast would force the beer to ferment more vigorously. When I pitched a couple more packs of yeast it was obvious that the original yeast was the problem, as the beer produced a big overflow that made a mess of the broom closet I keep them in. The people from Brampton Home-Brew Supplies had sold me expired yeast. The beer pictured here on the left is how a beer should look during fermentation, the one on the right is the Coffee Porter, and how a beer shouldn't look.

Though I was able to save the IRA, I fear that there may be no hope for the Coffee Porter. When I opened the bottles they didn't produce the deafening pop that my brown-ales had, they simply made a little pffft. We still went ahead and drank some of them, we could all still taste unfermented sugar, and the beer gave us a horrific case of the toots. In an attempt to save the beer, and the sixty dollars it cost me to make, I emptied all the beer back into a carboy and pitched new yeast to see if the remaining sugars would ferment. I am concerned that this may be to little to late and I am now stuck waiting another month and a half before I have any new home-brew to drink.

Fowl: Weekend at Leland's

2010-03-24T10:23:00.012-04:00

This past March twelfth I headed to my friend Leland's farm in Cambelford for the nearby Warkworth Maple Syrup Festival. At this festival we celebrated the end of the sugar harvest with a massive pancake breakfast, syrup on snow, and a log sawing competition. Although I enjoyed the trip and festivities, particularly the breakfast at which I received all the maple syrup sausages of my vegetarian companions, I had an ulterior motive.

Leland is proprietor of a coop of beautiful chickens, and I will take any opportunity i get to go and visit them. These chickens have wonderfully decorative feathers and produce the most magnificently coloured eggs. The eggs come in pale blues and browns and have richly flavourful yolks. These birds are nothing like the poop covered White Bantams that I've seen crammed into massive coops in movies like Food Inc. They don't peck each other, or pick out their own feathers from stress. They are given enough room to run in the day, and yet still huddle together at night in cute sleeping arrangements. Having the opportunity to spend time with the chickens at Leland's farm has inspired me to make a chicken coop, so I can keep egg producing hens in my downtown backyard.

For things like smokehouses, cheese-presses, and compost bins, it's fine to "wing it" without plans, and figure out later if they work. For a chicken coop, that will be housing live animals, I would rather approach the building process with a little more care. So I purchased plans for a coop design that was suggested by www.torontochickens.ca. This coop provides room for six hens to sleep in a roosting box, and a wired in grass area for them to walk. The benefits of having a design include, being provided with the know how to make the coop easier to clean, and keep out predators, like cats and raccoons. My older Italian neighbors, all of whom have had chickens in their backyard at one point, will also be great sources of advice on keeping the hens happy and safe.

I am approaching this project with a bit of apprehension because of the illegality of keeping chickens. This is not so much a fear of reprisal from law enforcement, but rather I worry about what I would do if a chicken gets sick or injured. Would I be able to take the chicken to a veterinarian? Without proper policy in place to help people with backyard food producing animals it puts urban farmers in a precarious position. This is why I have been discussing this issue with city councilors and the Toronto Food Policy Council to see what initiatives can be taken. My ultimate goal is to make our coop a part of a pilot project for keeping chickens in the city of Toronto.

Making a Trinity Reach Sign

2010-03-07T01:39:00.014-05:00

In the hopes of drawing attention to the strange happenings in our house, we built a sign to be placed in the front yard. It is our intention that this will draw more people into our home to help us with projects, or give us much needed advice. We discovered last year that simply having a front yard vegetable garden provides an allure for neighbors to become engaged. Franka, among other nonnas, provided ample evidence of this. It would also be nice to entice participation from other young people operating their own vegetable gardens around Little Italy.

The sign is made from the stump of a tree, that I salvaged from Christie and St. Clair. Two men from Toronto Hydro were dismantling the tree. When I asked if I could have the large stump of wood, and told them I would transport it by bike, they laughed. When I returned with my bad-ass bike trailer they were eager to help, and interested in the trailers design. The stump sat in my room for over a year without any purpose, until we decided it would be a clever place to stencil Trinity Reach Farm.

When developing a name for this project, we wanted something that would reflect our place in Toronto. Our original thought was to title it after the street we live on, Crawford Street Farm, but we thought this lacked creativity. The name Crawford Street Farm would also disregarded the dozens of other backyard gardens situated along Crawford. Since these projects are a throwback to a time when people produced their own food in their urban dwellings, we thought it would be interesting to research Old Toronto, and see what existed in our location. Perhaps there was an old farm or some other sort of food producer in this area that the project could be named after? What we discovered was that Garrison Creek ran directly through our neighborhood. Immediately below our house is a portion of the creek called Trinity Reach. Running from Harbord St. to Queen St., Trinity Reach connects Dewson Stream to Denison Creek. Evidence of Garrison Creek exists all across the neighborhood. Shaw Street has slowly sinking houses that appear to be gradually disappearing into the buried creek. The creeks valleys are also still to be found in Christie Pits, Bickford Park, and Trinity Bellwoods. Despite the worry that Trinity Reach would make us sound like an outreach organization, it reflects where we are situated in Toronto, and refers to the history of the city, and so the name stuck.

Brew: Scavenging for Bottles

2010-03-06T14:11:00.018-05:00

After having to consume an unhealthy amount of Grolsch in order to have swing-top bottles for my first brew, I decided I will need another way to get my hands on these hard to find bottles. I tried going to the Beer Store to see if I could rummage through their returns in search of the elusive swing-top. Only a couple of Beer Stores were open to the idea, most said that it was against the rules for them to give untreated bottles back to customers. From the Beer Stores that did let me scavenge it appears as though other people are as interested in keeping their swing-tops as I am, since there were none. I was nearly at the end of my rope and ready to give up and pay an exorbitant amount of money for liter Grolsch style bottles from Home-Brew Supplies in Brampton until I found the perfect solution. My employer, Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy, stocks birch and spruce beers at his Gilead Cafe. These bottles have swing-top lids affixed to them by metal brackets. I've been getting dozens of these from Jamie for next to nothing, the deposit price, and now have plenty of bottles for my home-brew.

For cleaning these bottles I purchased a fancy doodad from a wine making store at Queen and Ossington. This bottle cleaning contraption rigs up to the sink and blasts out any undesirable gunk in the bottle. This is particularly useful for getting out any settled yeast left over from former beers, or the inevitable cigarette buts left from parties past.

Larder: Saucisson Sec-cess

2010-03-03T11:55:00.007-05:00

Cured sausages have intimidated me, thus far. The risk of the dreaded 'case-hardening', the need for exacting ratios of cure, and the omnipresent danger of botulism poisoning made me approach this project with a bit of trepidation.

Under the careful watch and guidance of Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn (or at least, their Charcuterie handbook...), I started simple saucisson sec: a French country-style pork and garlic sausage. There aren't too many ingredients, and the sausage requires neither a bacterial starter-culture, nor any incubation time. We'll save fermented sausages for another time.

As previously mentioned, one of the major problems most people seem to run into is 'case-hardening'. When conditions are too dry, the outside of the sausage will lose all of its moisture very quickly. This forms an impenetrable skin, preventing the interior from drying adequately. The result is a sausage or cured item that looks finished, but when cut open, is effectively rotten from the middle.

The best way to combat case-hardening, is to dry your sausages in a cool area with lots of humidity, such as a basement, or root cellar. For apartment dwellers, the best option is a fridge. Unfortunately, standard bar fridges have air that is far too dry, so a humidifier is often needed.

Our solution was to purchase a wine storage fridge from Craigslist. To prevent wine corks from drying out, the natural ambient relative humidity in a wine fridge is about 75%, spot on for curing meats. It also looks bad-ass. More on that later.

I also elected to use lamb casings. Natural casings are an amazing product to work with. The tensile strength is incredible, and they shrink up at the same rate as the sausage interior. The lamb casings, specifically, are very skinny, so we would shortly find out if the sausage were a success (or disaster).

Lastly, I wanted to do a cured sausage with all hand-diced fat. This proved to be a more time consuming task than initially estimated, since a small gauge sausage would require a particularly fine dice, and the fatback has to be quite chilled to slice uniformly.

At long last, success:

I'm not going to lie: These are some tasty sausages. They were a bit of pain during maturation (growing some wacky fuzzy mold that required diligent cleaning), but well worth it. So far, no botulism, either.

Vegetable: Gardening in a Small Apartment

2010-03-02T13:26:00.012-05:00

In an apartment as small as ours, barely 800 square feet, it can be difficult to find space for all of these projects. It is also important to make sure these projects don't begin to invade our living space. A little project in the living room now and then is nice, but when you find yourself sitting next to fermenting pickles with your feet up on a case of homebrew and a leg of prosciutto hanging over your head you realize you may have a problem. This lead me to put some effort into finding a nice space for our seedlings to sprout. It is necessary that the spot in the apartment brings lots of sunlight to our little seedlings, which can be challenging in the grey days of winter and with minimal window space. With these restrictions in mind I looked up to the sky light in our living to find a home for our little sprouts. Using salvaged plywood from a neighbors demolished garage I constructed a shelf to hang from the ceiling so that light can still enter the room and egg cartons filled with soil pellets and seeds can perch along it. This puts the seedlings out of the way and yet keeps them easily accessible by stepladder for watering. The seedlings are getting lots of sunlight and there are already some chives, marjoram, oregano and coriander peaking out from under the soil.

Brew: Deciding to Make an Inebriant

2010-02-24T00:32:00.024-05:00

I don't know what gave me the idea that I could make a half decent home-brew.

I had been served several atrocious home-brews in the past, my uncles being the worst. They were often overly sweet, under-carbonated and served in plastic pop bottles. My initial desire to make my own booze came during a slow time at work, when shifts were scarce and my bank account was taking a nose dive. Not wanting to give up one of my favourite pastimes, I started looking into making an inebriant. My first idea was moonshine. After a little research, I decided I wanted to avoid going blind, and keep my apartment unexploded. The next liquor I looked into was alcoholic cider. The process was very easy: make an apple cider, add yeast, and then wait - but the final product was very dry and bland. After having this boring beverage, I figured beer might be more interesting, both to drink and make. I was also spurred on by having drank the first palatable home-brew I've ever had, from my friend Johnny Deshman. Realizing it was possible to make my favourite beverage at home, for next to no money, I began my first brew.

The first beer I brewed was a traditional American brown ale. I brewed it using ten dollars of equipment bought from a wine making store at Ossington and Queen, and picked up the ingredients from Fermentations on Danforth. I wanted to avoid those ugly plastic bottles that are sold by brewing stores, so I started a drinking competition with Dave and Jacob to drink as many swing top bottles of beer as possible. I will never drink another Grolsch again.

The brewing process itself was pretty nerve-wracking; my only instructions were from a 2 page article out of Mother Earth News, and early on in the boiling of the malt, I experienced a flash boil. This is where the sugary syrup from the malt "jumps" once it reaches the boiling point, spilling over and creating an incredibly sticky mess. Difficulties aside, the end product was impressive. All of the taste-testers were overwhelmingly positive, and even I was surprised by the quality of the beer.

I hope the success of my first beer wasn't beginners luck, and I'll know in about a month, when my second brewing project, a coffee porter, is ready to drink. The one complaint I had about my first beer was that it needed more hops. Loving a disturbingly hoppy beer Jacob, Dave and I decided to brew the hoppiest beer known to man, an IPA. To give it a twist, I decided to do an IRA, India Red Ale, by adding a healthy dose of munich malt, which will give a distinctive red tint and a caramelly flavour. By this, my third, attempt I had mastered the brewing process. The entire house, and probably street, stank like a brewery in no time. The IRA is now fermenting in our broom closet, which manages to contain most of the smell. It'll be ready to bottle in a month, and ready to drink in a further two months.

Vegetable: Planning the Garden

2010-02-23T11:49:00.015-05:00

Last year we were somewhat hurled into the gardening process. Having no access to a back or front yard and only a small west facing balcony we had looked to the roof to produce our beets and carrots. Using the old City of Toronto recycling bins gathered from around the neighborhood we had nice deep soil to plant root veg. Unfortunately, and understandably, our landlady didn't want us tromping around on the roof watering and planting vegetables. She kindly and generously offered us the front yard for gardening. This was a great opportunity but came a little late in the season, the end of May, well after the optimal time for sowing seeds. In order to make sure we had some production we planted with haste and with little planning. As Franka, our next door nonna, quickly made us aware we planted much of our veg to close together. We also didn't do any companion planting, or plant with garden cycles in mind.

This year is going to be different. We invested in some books to help us with planning our garden. One was given to me by my grandma called The Canadian Gardener by Marjorie Harris. Harris is one of Toronto's gardening gurus. The other we bought from Lee Valley, called Canadian Vegetable Gardening. I have only found books that specialize on dealing with the Canadian climate to be useful, other books don't address the long cold season or help with growing after frost.

This year we also have much more space to grow. This means a wider array of vegetables and the opportunity for more creativity in planting. Our little balcony will be used exclusively for herbs, such as rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme and marjoram. In the front and backyard we will have mixtures of plants growing on trellises with shade-tolerant vegetables

growing in their shadows. We will also plant vegetables that have compatible root patterns next to each other such as cabbage next tomato and beans on trellis next to lettuces and carrots. In seeking a completely organic garden we will use natural insecticidal flowers such as nasturtiums and chrysanthemums. We may also scatter some Cannabis Sativa throughout the garden for, according to my grandmothers book, its soil improving pathogenic micro-organisms.

Last week we began sowing seedlings for slow growing herbs such as rosemary, sage, thyme and oregano so that we can have a luscious herb garden for the entire summer and dry lots of herbs to get us through the winter. The simple process of merely sowing seeds in egg cartons got me really excited for the spring. Watching plants mature throughout their life cycle and produce their delicious bounty is a great pleasure for me. The fact that I can't wait to get out in the garden and double-dig all the soil, a grueling process, attests to how much I miss the garden and how difficult even this mild winter has been.

Larder: Wild Boar Pancetta

2010-02-22T18:25:00.013-05:00

Our very first pancetta is ready.

This one is from a beautiful Ironage boar belly. This breed is a cross between a Tamworth sow, and a male wild boar. The fleshy taste of the wild boar combines with the fattiness of the Tamworth pig, giving the meat incredible flavour. Tamworth pigs are known as "bacon pigs" because of their wide bellies, making this crossbreed a natural choice for a flat, Italian style pancetta.

I did a salt-box method cure, where the meat is heavily dredged in your cure mixture, and left to sit until stiff, and cured through. For this piece, the meat felt reasonably stiff, and no longer completely "raw," after five days. After rinsing, I give it a quick rub with bay leaf, black pepper, and red chili.

The drying took about two months. Generally, we're looking for about a 30% weight loss from moisture. This one didn't quite lose that much weight - since there is so much fat, which doesn't really dehydrate. Curiously, there was no mold growth throughout the entire drying process.

The thing I'm finding difficult about all this meat curing, is the inability to taste as you go. It's very frustrating to cure a cut of meat, hang it, and find out it's too salty three months down the road. Nothing could be more frustrating.

Not so with this pancetta. The flavour came out incredible. Very nice balance of salt; pleasant earthiness from the bay and peppercorn, and a subtle kick of heat to finish. We're very impressed by the astounding creaminess, and gorgeous texture of the fat. Pretty decent for a first go round, and the first cure without an explicit recipe.

Trinity Reach Farm

2010-02-21T12:56:00.003-05:00

It all began the spring of 2009. What started as a small herb garden on a second floor patio, expanded into a rooftop recycling-bin garden, with Paul and I scrambling up precariously perched ladders to water carrots, beets, and radishes.

When our landlady put the kibosh on somewhat hazardous experiment, we looked to the front yard as a new home for our burgeoning interest in horticulture. Much to the chagrin of our downstairs neighbours, we turned over a small section of lawn, and began successfully cultivating a more serious and productive garden.

Living in a predominantly Italian neighbourhood, it wasn't long before others began taking notice... our neighbour, Franka, found our new project especially comedic, given that two young men were following in the footsteps of nonnas all over the street. Her unsolicited, but much appreciated advice in broken english helped us to realize that being a sustainable household is not just a trend for the environmentally savvy, nor necessarily a hobby for the under-employed, and that yes, we had, in fact, planted our cucumbers too close together.

With vegetable production ramping up, we turned to canning as a way to keep our season's crops from spoiling. This simple act of preservation piqued our interest in other forms of preservations. Around this time, we started some small home charcuterie projects, beginning with fresh sausages, and duck prosciutti. With some reasonable successes doing the easy stuff, a small bar fridge was purchased, and larger, more challenging pieces of meat were begun curing.

After the timely, and somewhat inevitable decline of our downstairs neighbour's relationship, Paul's brother Dave staked claim of the first floor apartment. We promptly turned over the lawn in the back yard, clearing room for an even larger garden, and more ambitious projects.

Ideas began spilling out at a rapid pace. A smokehouse; chicken coupe; fire-pit; compost... perhaps fueled by a few too many home-brews, our small herb garden had turned into a full-fledged small-scale urban-farm, overseen by three inexperienced twenty-somethings.

Curd: Making The Cheese Press

2010-02-16T22:38:00.003-05:00

Our first foray into making cheese was a clumsy affair. We used a recipe from mine and Dave's grandmothers copy of the Joy of Cooking, one of our go to books. Our cheese press was comprised of a coffee can, a circle of wood, and several bricks gathered from the backyard. The process went well and seems to have produced something resembling cheese, its still aging and we should be able to taste it in another week or so. We attempted to dye the wax on this cheese with red food colouring which obviously didn't provide an even coat. We also had difficulties with the bricks used to press the cheese when they toppled over in the middle of the night.

We decided our next attempt at cheese making will need a proper cheese press. Dave came up with some plans and we have started putting it together in our dads wood shop. The materials used for the press will be entirely plywood scraps gathered from old projects. So far we have glued together the base of the press and the arms but will have to connect it all together. We are still undecided on what to use for weights at the end of the lever.

I can see a lot of benefits from producing our own cheese. One obvious benefit is the enjoyment of the cheese making process. Another benefit is not having to spend the fortune it costs for the hard cheeses I use in every day cooking like parmigiano reggiano, piave or toscano. To do these more complicated cheeses we are going to need bacterial cultures that we are still in the process of acquiring. I've been talking to the artisan cheese makers at the Wychwood Barns Farmers Market to see where they get their cultures or if I can get some from them. Ruth Klahsen from Monteforte Dairy has been particularly helpful. I am also trying to find some raw milk sources, hopefully my buddy Leland who is expecting to get some goats on his farm near Cambelford this summer will have excess milk.