Ban single use plastic...

This is a great video I just saw on Upworthy:

Sharing around to help raise awareness...

Some local food places in my area

 There are some fun places to visit in the area around where I live. I'm going to miss being able to go to most of them when winter hits.

 http://www.stjacobs.com/farmers-market
This is where I go to buy most of my food through the majority of the year. There are some things you can't get there, like yoghurt, but the quality of meat, cheese and veggies makes up for that. Also, there's a bulk food stall (which won't be back until the burnt-down building is rebuilt in a couple months) that has pretty darn good prices, and a particularly finely-ground almond flour that is good in baking.

http://www.martinsapples.com/retail/retail-home-page
This family-run orchard is almost within walking distance of me. They have a well-stocked store that also offers some other things than apples.

http://www.lyndonfishhatcheries.com/publicfishing.html
I went to Lyndon Fisheries with my dad a few weeks ago, and it was a nice afternoon. It is definitely a great place to take young kids to learn how to fish. The taste of the fish, however, was kinda not so nice- really fatty, and there was just something not tasty about it. It might be fun to host an event there sometime, though.

http://www.herrles.com/
Herrles is a farm-stand store that is open seasonally and offers local produce. They're closed now for the season.

http://www.naumanfarm.com/
Nauman's has pumpkins. Lots 'n lots of pumpkins. Plus, a corn maze. I go there to pick strawberries and raspberries in the summer. Nice folks.

http://www.localharvest.ca/
*THE* place to find local farms and food in our region. The mapping feature is particularly helpful.

More experiments with cheese

I need to go to the farmer's market today and pick up some beeswax. I have a 'Farmstead cheese' ripening and drying on my counter right now, wrapped up in clean cheese cloth, and it needs to be waxed and then stored in my fridge. I hope it tastes okay in four months... It's a bit of a gamble. But, it smells quite nice right now, so I hope everything goes well.


Here are some links for more info if you're interested-

Dr.A.R. Hill, Dept. of Food Science, University of Guelph


A couple of Canadian companies that sell supplies-

http://www.makecheese.ca/
http://glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca/

And one American one (which has an awesome recipe section and a monthly newsletter)-
New England Cheesemaking Supply Co.



And if you go completely insane about cheese and want to learn more...

Cheesemaking Technology course, University of Guelph



There are also weekend 'artisinal' cheesemaking workshops offered all over the place. You can use Google to find more on that topic.

Passing along some of the goodies from my course

How to get the best soil for your garden...

The Soil Food Web

Plants have existed on the earth for at least a billion years. During that time different plants and organisms found ways of working together in mutually-beneficial ways.

Different organisms work together in your garden to create healthy soil- bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, and larger organisms. These organisms work together to support the healthy growth of plants by suppressing disease, retaining nutrients in the soil and drawing them in to make them available for roots, decomposing waste materials, and conditioning the soil so that roots can grow down to the depth they need.

Plants use photosynthesis to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) into sugars. These sugars are then used to increase the size of the plant, or are bonded to other nutrients (such as phosphorus, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, etc.) to transport them to where they need to go inside the plant. These nutrients are found in the soil, and scientists have found that more than 48 are essential to growing plants.

If you believe the fertilizer companies, then apparently you only need three- nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the NPK you see on the bag.

Nope. You need a lot more than that.

However, if you have the right balance of organisms they do all the work of converting the pebbles, sand, clay and organic matter into all the minerals your plants need to grow. The rest is supplied by air, water and sunlight. The nice thing about that is that the plants and organisms will work together and provide for themselves. Humans don’t need to do anything more than provide the best environment for them to thrive. 

If you use chemicals to kill off insects or weeds it will also kill off your useful organisms as well, and then you need to spend even more money to put more chemicals on your soil to keep up the fertility. This is good for the chemical companies, but not as good for you (or your soil).

Use Compost to Inoculate Against Bad Bugs

Compost comes already full of bacteria and fungi, they were the organisms that turned your food into dirt. If you keep your compost pile aerated (not compacted so air can get in), just moist enough but not wet, and give it enough time to kill off weed seeds and plant pathogens, then you have the perfect booster mix to stimulate good growth in your garden.

Keeping air in the mix means that aerobic bacteria (those that live in environments with air) will be the dominant form in your compost. This is good, because they fix nitrogen into the soil for your plants to use later. If the compost pile is too wet or compacted, then anaerobic bacteria (that don’t use air) will grow, and they use nitrogen and make it into an ammonia gas, which then leaches out into the air. Not so useful for your garden, and stinky, too. Also, anaerobic bacteria didn’t evolve to work in soil with plants, so their presence in your garden can keep fertility levels down for a while until they dissipate.

If your compost is smelly and black, then putting it into your garden will harm it in the short term instead of helping.

However, if, whenever you do significant tilling (digging, turning the soil over) you also add compost, then it will repair any damage to the natural organisms in your soil, and replace them with new ones.

So, how do plants use these bacteria and fungi? They squirt out sugars, proteins and carbohydrates into the soil (basically, they make cookies), to attract the particular types that they need to the area on and around their roots. These bacteria and fungi excrete (yes, poop) out nutrients, and then they, themselves, become prey for the larger predators (protozoa and nematodes), and also the insects which prey on them, which adds more nutrients from the remains. The larger predators eat basically everything, which reduces the ability of harmful bacteria, fungi and insects to get near your plants to feed on them. They get out-performed and eaten.

A study by the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University showed that in one acre of woodlot soil in Michigan there were one million different species of bacteria, five hundred thousand species of fungi, thousands of kinds of protozoa, and hundreds of species of nematodes.

If your garden can get that prolific then you’re doing very, very well. Good quality compost can help you get as close as possible.

If you see water puddling on your soil after a rain, it means that there isn’t enough organic matter and air in your soil, and optimal organism growth isn’t possible. Add more compost and composted manure, and… Voila!

Wow. September was harder than I thought it would be...

But, in the meantime, I've started the Urban Agriculture/Horticulture Certificate through the University of Guelph. My freak-out was (as is usually the case) completely unnecessary. I'm enjoying doing the readings, and learning quite a lot in the process.

I've volunteered to be in charge of my co-op's community garden, and I'm looking forward to running some seminars this fall and winter. Some of the ideas I've come up with were 'what to do with your garden in the fall- what you can plant and how to prepare it for the spring', plus some general information ones like 'composting basics' and 'beneficial insects'. I was also thinking about doing a craft for building an Insect Hotel. It would need to be this fall before the snow hits the ground. We could do a nature walk to collect items. (I'm talking myself into this, now, and it's getting more and more exciting).

One other thing to pass along- this nifty list of 23 Smartphone Apps which will help you figure out everything from when to water your garden, to inventorying your food by best before dates, and finding what's in season in your area.

Hey folks... we made it into Fall. Time to start thinking about wool socks and cocooning with garden catalogs again.