UPCOMING EVENTS
November 6th and 7th: “The Farm in Education” – The Acadia Community Farm will host an open and participatory forum to discuss the role of the university in creating a better food system. Academics, growers, students, concerned citizens, and eaters alike are invited to come together to address this key issue. For more information visit http://acadiafarm.org/events/the-farm-in-education/ or e-mail info@acadiafarm.org.
September 13th (Sunday), 1-3 pm: “Native Plants of the Acadian Forest Region: Gardening for People and the Planet.” – A Workshop with Melanie Priesnitz.
As a gardener, do you often find yourself fighting your soil and conditions? Do you have a spot that you just can’t get anything to grow in? Learn about how to start gardening with nature instead of against it. So much of gardening with native plants is about the right plant for the right place; we’ll look specifically at a selection of native plants for various common local garden conditions.
September 16th (Wednesday), 4-6 pm: Volunteer Launch! The perfect opportunity for any and all to “see what it’s all about”. Pick-your-own-sandwich ingredients & Sandwich Eating, compost building, tomato picking…
September 27th (Sunday), 3-?: Harvest Party at the Garden, and open-farm day. Stroll around the garden, talk with gardeners, eat, learn about seed saving, eat some more, help to paint a mural painting……. Overall, old time family fun in the garden. More details to come soon!
PAST EVENTS
“How NOT to kill your best friends” – A workshop with Jen Scott on beneficial insects in your Garden: Sunday, August 30th.
Whoa — 90% of insects are beneficial to home gardens!! On this beautiful, windy Sunday, we caught bugs in jars and looked them up in Jen’s fantastic books, and heard about how to make our gardens attractive to beneficial insects, amphibians, and even animals. Conclusions: leave the rotting logs, and get some more toad-friendly boulders! Be careful of goofy-looking green caterpillars, and check before tossing them into the water bucket. Plant flowers, and plant trees! Leave surrounding spaces natural. Thanks, Jen, for this laid-back, fun learning experience.
Introduction to Permaculture Design & Ecological Gardening: A workshop with Alex DeNicola. Sunday, August 16th, at 1 pm. Room 201 in the BAC (Beveridge Arts Centre) on the Acadia Campus, at the corner of Main St. and Highland Ave.
As it turned out, our choice of a dark, window-less classroom at Acadia for this workshop was perfect. Soon after Alex deNicola began his lecture, he searched for an example that could encapsulate the terrible design that has infiltrated all aspects of our lives — and all he had to do was point out the room – and the building- that we were all sitting in! Indeed, it does seem pretty ineffectively designed, when one thinks both about the energy it uses and recalls the feeling one gets when attending a class in such a dingy, lifeless room. Certainly, this workshop was powerful, and definitely we were a rapt audience. Alex discussed permaculture as the broad, all-encompasing subject that it is, and the bredth of his lecture was overwhelming. He finished with a discussion about specific methods of incorporating the principles of permaculture into our gardens and our homes. His own home – and experience in permaculture design – was referred to frequently, giving us an idea of what it’s really like to try to align your life with the principles of permaculture. Thanks, Alex, for this radical and convincing view on humanity – and on gardening.
Compost-Making: Saturday, August 8th
Success! Two new composters have been made!!! Thanks, everyone, for your help. One was made using chicken wire, one from straw bales! Check out the home composting info that Stefan posted on the blog, and come by to check the new composters out yourself. Take a pitch fork and mix it together, while you’re at it! (Mixing and exposing everything to the air allows all the decomposing action to happen). Extra kitchen scrapes or weeds from your garden are also welcome in the piles! Just add alittle extra ‘brown’ material (in the blue barrel next to the straw bale composter) to compensate if you add alot of veggie material.
Workshop on Successive Planting, Cultivation, (and just generally….on how to grow a great garden): Sunday, July 26
The first OUTDOOR workshop of the season, we were blessed with a hot, sunny day on Sunday. David Greenberg spoke at length about how to know which plants to keep planting – and how often to do so – over the course of the season. That extra garden space that’s been growing nothing but weeds for too long doesn’t have to remain as such! David explained how spring vegetables can be grown regularly for an entire season – even in the heat of summer, when one sometimes wouldn’t think to attempt a new planting of spinach.
As a demonstration, David planted several short rows of hakuri turnips (those delicious small white ones), radishes, cilantro and lettuce; these fast growers are already poking their heads out of the ground, so we know that soon it’ll be time for the next couple of rows to go into the ground! If we all follow David’s advice, we’ll be eating delicious spring vegetables every week, right into the fall. The afternoon finished off with some questions about how to grow particularly challenging crops (sweet peppers and eggplant??!) and a dicussion of how ‘humanure’ can be used to regularly add nutrients back into the soil that we’re using to grow food. (Check out Stefan’s post on the Blog about recommened books from this workshop.) Thanks for a wonderful, informative afternoon, David!
Workshop on Soil Health: Sunday, July 19
The Acadia Community Farm hosted a workshop titled “Soil Health: Your Garden’s Best Defense Against Pests and Disease” led by Av Singh PhD, PAg, Organic Specialist with Agrapoint. Despite being pushed to an alternate indoor vendue due to rainy weather, the first workshop in this new series drew a good crowd of keen gardeners.
Dr. Singh spoke on issues relating to soil fertility, organic pest management, long-term garden planning and the benefits of using and making compost and compost tea. He even made some compost tea in front of us (using nothing more than a bag of compost, an air pump and a plastic bucket!) and he also came down to check out our gardens. His comments as to the quality of the soil we’re working with were encouraging (though we certainly have alot of work to do!) and his suggestions as to what particular weed infestations are telling us were very helpful! Thanks for coming out, everyone – especially you, Av!
Seed Starting Thursday, May 14
We’re almost at the main event now. Meet at the KCIC Greenhouse at 4pm and we’ll either 1) finish the last of the potting on (just one more tray of the Ruby Gold tomatoes and a tray or two of broccoli) or 2) head over to the herb garden and do some soil prep work.
We’ll have to cut an edge to stop the turf from creeping in, start up a compost pile, clean up the perennial herbs that overwintered and use our awesome new broadfork to aerate the soil profile a little bit.
Meeting for Community Gardeners (folks who will have their own plots) April 26th
We’ll meet at the garden on Sunday April 26th, at 2 pm, to meet each other, hatch plans for the upcoming season, check out how the cob bench held up over the winter … etc.
Hope to see all 26 of you there!
Starting Seeds at the KCIC Greenhouse
Saturday, March 28, 12:00-2:00
The time has come! We’ll have our first of two (or three) seeding days in the Irving Centre Greenhouse on March 28th. Come help fill trays with parsely, peppers, eggplant, celery, and a few other slow-to-grow crops. We’ll be starting seeds pretty regularly from March until May, so there are plenty of opportunities to get your hands in the dirt. A true sign of spring!
Community Meeting **updated date/time**
Tuesday, March 10th – 7 pm, in the upstairs part of the Wolfville Public Library. Community members, students, everyone welcome!
This is a great chance to get involved in the farm for the first time, or to share thoughts on how to best move forward! It’s time to get ready for SPRING!
Contra-dance Fundraiser!
Man, was this ever great. We raised a substantial amount of money, and had a really amazing time while we were at it. Many thanks to Amy et al. (musicians extraordinary from halifax — some are part of a bluegrass group called the Smokin Contra band). The music was really fantastic. And, thanks to you all for coming out and supporting the community farm!
Wednesday, September 10 – 5PM : harvesting overload!!! tomatoes are too ripe! beans are everywhere! we’ll be building a few compost tumblers to start breaking down some of that green food waste from the cafeteria, then…if there’s time, help us put up our coldframe greenhouse! the folks at the KC Irving Centre have generously given us the materials we need to put a coldframe down at the field so we can grow into the cooler months. we’ve got the frame, we’ve got some tools, we need some hands and some know-how.
Sunday, September 14 – 2PM : (rescheduled from Sept. 7, thanks for nothing Hannah.) we’ll be putting the finishing touches on our cob bench with a layer of plaster. This is your last chance (for the immediate future) to check out cob construction in action – it’s a nearly completely free and thoroughly sustainable building method and the bench is looking mighty fine.
Wednesday, September 17 – 5PM : more coldframe excitement!! we have loads of spinach and lettuce transplants and they need a cozy home.
August 27 – 5PM – Tomato Symposium and Open House
Pick from your choice of repetitive flyers for details! Bring some food and the burning questions you’ve never been able to answer about tomatoes.
June 2nd – 11 AM - LAND PREPARATION HO! Starting at 11, we’ll be clearing the sod off the new site (with nifty machinery this time, save your shovels for the next day), we’ll be spreading delicious composted manure, and we’ll be a-tilling it all in the ground, hopefully with some nice soggy leaves to help break the dykeland clay up a bit. Come down early, come down late, come down whenever, we’ll be there through the evening to make this garden ready for growing. Your hands and minds are more than welcome to join us.
June 7th @ Noon – And finally, it’s gardening time. A mere 7 months after the plans began to unfold, we arrive at a time and (more importantly) a PLACE where we can start some digging and let the earth do its thing. More details as we get our act together, but we’re going to be on the big dykeland site no later than June 7th. Oh yeah, this will be a big one – clear the calendars.
May 16th – We cordially invite you to help us BREAK SOME GROUND. This Friday, May 16th, we’ll be tearing up some sod and preparing a (very) small garden bed next to the cafeteria. This garden will soon be full with delicious sage and rosemary and basil and thyme and several kinds of crazy lettuces like red rage and oak leaf, but before the planting comes the digging. So!
Come out May 16th at 10 AM, right behind Wheelock Hall (on your right going up Highland Ave.) and bring your own shovel! We’ll have a couple of extra tools, but maybe not quite enough to go around.
As always, if you’re interested in helping out in the greenhouse, drop us an email or a phone call and we’ll figure out a time that is convenient.
