Spring Fever, Already?

Dreaming Up New Ventures...
Well, here we are, half way through February, winter winding down, and looking forward to another season's promise. Not like we have had it too hard this winter. On the contrary, it has often seemed like it has been having a hard time settling in from Fall. Oh well, maybe we got the equivalent of 2 winters last year and we get a break from the chilly climes. It is a leap year, after all.

Michelle and I have been taking advantage of these milder temperatures. On Sunny days, temperatures have been well over +15 C inside the greenhouse! So we've been doing some renovations in it, building higher raised beds and tables which will allow us to do more with it this coming season.

Troy building raised beds in the balmy greenhouse 

CSA
This year we will be giving the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) a try with our vegetable garden. Basically this means rather than taking all of our produce to the farmers market, we hope to pre-sell shares (half and full shares) to households in the surrounding area at the beginning of the season, which would buy them a weekly box of whichever vegetables are in season delivered to them to enjoy. The CSA model has really caught hold in larger centers, but we are sure that we can make it work here too. We believe it represents a better way for us to get to know the people we grow food for and vice versa. Basically, it is a great way to build community and share what we believe is really good quality, local, fresh produce with you.


We would like to keep our deliveries local - within 30 miles of Cartwright - but will remain flexible, depending on where most interest is. Tentatively, we are open to doing weekly deliveries to Pilot Mound, Clearwater, Crystal City, Mather, Cartwright, Glenora, and Killarney. Let us know if people in your community might be interested, as we'd be happy to try and accommodate you. We are also open to on-farm pickup. You can visit "vegetables" on our webpage for info on varieties and pricing.


Bedding Plants
Secondly, we are pleased to announce that we will also be offering bedding plants for sale this coming season! Michelle and I have been busy planting seeds, germinating them indoors so that they will be ready to transplant into the greenhouses come March. The plants we will be offering are mostly perennial herbs and flowers, but we will also have some annual herbs, flowers and, of course, vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, pumpkins, etc. These plants would all be ready to pre-order by the end of March and ready to deliver by mid to late May. We will hopefully have a plant price list up on our website soon, so check back in on the website in March or contact us.

Michelle and her grandma, Dorothy, seeding down some flowers. 

Aside from the CSA and bedding plant sales, we will also be offering a variety of other products, including unpasteurized honey, preserves, free range broiler chickens and eggs, as well as pasture-raised pork and beef later in the fall. Feel free to spread the word to family and friends - we'd appreciate it!

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you would like further info on our farm offerings. send us an email or call, we'd love to hear from you.  

Hope you are enjoying this winter as much as we have been and talk to you soon!

Michelle and Troy

New Year, New Logo, New Puppy, New Plans!

Happy New Year to all of you - we hope that you enjoyed as much good food and good company as we did this holiday season. Thanks to everyone who came out to the farm to bring in 2012 with us! It was a blast.

So along with this new year that's come upon us, we'd like to introduce a swanky new logo for Fresh Roots Farm, designed by the talented, lovely Danielle Sheedy. She's been toiling away for a while now, trying to find something that 'fit' for us - and this does, beautifully! Take a look:

Speaking of new, a good snowfall was kind of a 'new' thing in these parts lately, and we got a nice one last week. Alas, most of it melted this week, with our +5 temperatures. Can't complain - it's amazing that the cattle have still been grazing on grass, as well as the bales, at this time of year. It just makes me a tad nervous, wondering what the upcoming planting season will be like...

To take advantage of this weather, while it lasts, Troy and I are thinking of insulating our newly-constructed hoop house...so we can actually use it for our veggie transplants this year. This will involve putting insulation on our plywood ends, and ideally, doubling our poly. If anyone out there has suggestions for a double-wall (with blower) design, or another more passive heating method, send it our way! Check out the amazing, creative greenhouse design that our friends Greg and Carissa deJong have been working on for the Spring at the Harvest Moon Learning Centre, here.

Lastly, Troy and I are looking forward to participating in a Holistic Management course later on this month, with instructor Don Campbell, renowned for his great facilitation of the course. Keep updated for our perspectives on what we'll learn in HM, and the valuable things we take away from it to further improve the sustainability of our farm and balance out our general lifestyle.

By the way, check out our brand new puppy, 'Merle'! He's an Australian Shepherd cross with a beautiful 'blue merle' colouring (aren't we creative in our naming?), and he's stolen our hearts away since we picked him up on Thursday. We're hoping he will be a help here on the farm, and know he'll be an awesome companion. More pics of him are sure to come.

Cheers to New Years,
Michelle (and Troy)

...'til the cows came home

So Michelle and I brought our cattle herd home the other day! It is a small herd but, to us, it feels like a big deal. I mean, Michelle grew up on a cattle ranch. I didn't, but have spent a fair bit of time acquainting myself with cattle over the years. And I like 'em! My uncle had cattle; and I have worked as a farmhand on various ranches, including Michelle's folks' these past couple of years. Regardless, raising cattle makes sense to us, we are passionate about it, and is an overall good fit for our farm and the land.


We picked out 20 bred cows from Fraser's (Michelle's dad) herd. They are Angus, Simmental, Charolais crosses and range in ages from 3 to 10 years old. Diversity is strength, no? We were appreciative and fortunate to have the 30 years of knowledge and experience Fraser contributed to the selection process. The bulk of the selection criteria was to pick out cows that would likely be calving later in the spring (May-June), which will be both easier on the animals as well as us. Afterall, we don't have a much in the way of barns and such, which could serve to house animals in need of assistance, especially in the very cold, winter months. By the time our cows calve, the spring will be well under way and temperatures much more conducive to less stress. This is why most other animal species have their babies around that time of year, including deer, elk and moose. It is obvious how it is much easier on everyone when it's not -30C with a howling north wind! 


Bale grazing and the Holistic Management Philosophy


After quite a bit of research and consultation, we decided to try bale grazing our cattle through the winter months. In fact we had to decide on this months ago, as there was much preparation to be done before the cold set in. Rather than feeding hay bales to the cattle as they need them in a controlled feeder at a single location, we set up our hay bales out in a pasture in a grid, spaced out 30 or so feet apart. Our 20 cows will eat about 2 round bales every 3 days, so we give them access to 4 at a time, which lasts them nearly a week. They are prevented from accessing the other bales by way of a temporary electric wire. 


Bale grazing is done for several reasons that really resonate with us.  Firstly, beyond the initial bale setup, we don't need to use a tractor throughout the winter. So we don't burn fuel and therefore don't need to maintain our winter pasture road. Secondly, the leftover (residual) hay from the bales that were fed to the cows remains on the land, breaks down over time, along with the manure, and provides a huge amount of beneficial organic matter to the pasture. The before and after results are staggering as seen here. The nutrient release from the added biomass and manure will continue to show such results for many years into the future. Thirdly, because the feeding location of the herd is changing so often, manure distribution on the pasture is nicely spread out. So we won't need to collect and then spread that manure around, saving more fuel, labour and so on, important resources when we need to watch our costs and focus on a diversity of other things happening on the farm during the summer months. We aren't taking this approach because it is easier than other methods, though it surely is. It just makes sense on so many levels. Michelle and I have been noticing that more and more cattle ranchers are adopting this approach, which is nice to see.         


Bale grazing is a component of a long established philosophy called holistic farm management, which we are very interested in further exploring. It is about working toward and finding a sacred balance between self, land and social relations. It is nice to start consciously thinking about the needs of the land, how we relate to it, how to better care for and enhance it alongside what our economic and social needs and realities are. Bale grazing and the introduction of cattle to our farm is no doubt working towards enhancing our landbase as well as our lives more generally. 


I often pause and think about the herd of 90 million buffalo that once roamed these Prairies. They were part of a sacred balance between animals, land and the people that once depended on them, who therefore took measures to ensure their continuance. It is a tragedy that the buffalo were exterminated. We are also aware of the countless injustices colonizers doled out to the Indigenous people here, a legacy that sadly continues. That is another story for another blog post. For us, we believe cattle, when raised in a natural manner, are contributing to the restoration of that sacred balance that was once here on the prairies and are looking forward to the benefits they will bring to the land, to us and the people who support our farm. 


As always, feel free to get in touch, start a dialogue, ask questions. 


Have a great holiday season and happy new year! 


Troy and Michelle

A few of our cattle grazing at the remains of hay bales.
This is day 5 of 6, so they move onto fresh bales the next day. 

A cross section of our herd genetics: from left, Angus/Charolais,
Charolais/Simmental, Red Angus, Charolais, Black Angus. 

First Harvest

Hello readers,

Reflecting on our first harvest in our first season as [attempting] new farmers, Troy and I decided it's time we joined the world of blogging. Alas, the work seems never-ending with many ongoing projects here on the farm... But with the gardens harvested, the chickens on ice, and the honey extracted from the hives. there are more opportunities to reflect on our first season here in Cartwright starting up Fresh Roots Farm. We feel incredibly enriched from our experience and look forward to writing about things happening in our world more often.

Check out an article we wrote for the Harvest Moon Local Food Initiative, which we are members of. It sheds a bit of light on our first year's adventures: http://www.harvestmoonsociety.org/posts/2011/autumn-musings-from-first-year-farmers/

Cheers to the end of one season and the beginning of another,

Michelle Schram & Troy Stozek, Fresh Roots Farm