so
so every saturday morning
5 30 6 ish this is the life here at the farm we go to farmers market and it's amazing this is uh
we started the farm here in 2004 so it's almost 19 years of doing this every saturday morning
and we're not the only one doing it but fresh harvest from yesterday going to the
knowlton market it's a tetris game here really trying to fit everything into the van and you
know putting the light weights on top the heavier weights on the bottom it's a tetris
every time i do this every morning how do we do this i think about all the growers
out there doing the same thing early morning saturday there's a bunch of us doing this
when i'm at fqt and for the master class we film the best of how we do everything and
this farm is not like that this farm is more organic it's less organized less structured
but it's it's reality so i think it's great also
is
so this is my lovely wife modeling
she's the grower here at the farm she's doing it without me
but this is her family farm and she's going to market this morning
yeah how many years we've been there yeah i think it's been 16. 16 years going to northern market
so wish me good luck i'm gonna wish you this
so this is uh my home farm like ralinet and saturday morning
and emily just went to market i'm gonna show you a little bit of the farm this used to be a rabbit
barn so that's the building that we bought in 2004 and half of it is our home that i've constructed
over the years in the winters and the other half is the washing station the tool shed the cold room
the packing area it's pretty much like you know the whole environment and we'll show you that
some other time when we're more busy but we'll let's go outside and i'll show you the fields
so the farm is a is it's like a two two acre block two and a half acre block
and then it's about one acre and a half under uh raised beds permanent raised beds and we have
four greenhouses one bigger one which is the nursery and the tomato house this is this is
the one i'll show you that some other time and then these other houses are for winter
winter greens and in the summer cucumbers and all of that so they're all pretty pretty connected
they're all on the clock and they're automated that's awesome i'll show you
so this is the tomato house and this is week i think this is the 16th week where we're really
doing a lot of uh production here and um simple greenhouse there's a cistern
there's a lot of systems here perhaps one day i'll break them out so that people can
really know all these systems but the goal here is to have as much tomatoes as possible
boom boom boom for a need so it's really typical greenhouse growing it's in soil
and it's really about working with the earthworms and the community and the biota outside
it's saturday morning so we have the farm to ourselves there's no there's nobody
working on it so now this greenhouse these were cukes for this summer and now we're
going to be planting our winter greens uh mid-september so we're prepping the soils
the celeries and the chard will be in there for a bunch of the winter
and we're just harvesting some of them every week some of the leaves we have blueberries
it was a good year for blueberries it was it was good but a raccoon came and got some
of it so we have to trap the raccoon and bring him out to another place and you see
everything that we grow is on permanent raised beds these beds have been you know i dug them in
2004 and then we've been just kind of amending them and we don't till here it's a no-till farm
we use a lot of these black tarps to cover the soil and that's how we flip crops
around we cover the soil for a couple of weeks and whatever was growing there
dies off because there's no light we also use a lot of these insect
nettings that's how we protect the crops against a lot of the pests that are there
and you know a big part of our a big part of our work is just calculating the right amount of crops
making sure that we have enough for what our clients want and need and make sure
that we don't have too much so it's a fine balance um salanova's down there this is for
salad mix we grow them on landscape fabrics so that we don't need to weed them the beans
you know we'll be picking them for a couple of weeks and then we flip them over to a new crop
carrots are really coming in nice these are going to be the fall carrots
we'll harvest those in mid-october early november and they'll be so sweet the best carrots ever
so these tires is we have a water line underneath and the valves
you know i try to protect the valves otherwise you know people when they roll around with the bcs
they crush them so we've put tires can protect the valves this way
so you see tires that's where the valves are and every every the farm is all divided in
field blocks and the blocks are all of the same size all this information is really in
the book i wrote the market gardener that's a long time ago but it's still pretty good
but each field block has two valves to water them and that's connected to the pond and that's
what i want to show you today because this is the first year that not only is the well
dry but the pond is completely sucked dry because of the trap and this is the first time we need to
deal with that and frankly it's pretty frightening so here in in quebec it's a it's really it's an
area that gets a lot of rain we get snow in the winter but this season is all time it's like
many places you know california in many places there's fires here it's been so dry and we're not
used to it and so the municipality had to send us you know warnings about not using the water
and then our well ran dry like [ __ ] you know what are you doing that and so
this this is the first time we really need to it's it's so bad because usually it's going
to be like four or five weeks and then water comes back but this year you know we've had
just a little bit of rains here and like today a little bit of rain but
so we've ordered a big water syst uh truck water truck and we're delivering water we did that
yesterday for the first time supposed to come back today but i'll show you the pond later on
let's try so again these black tarps it's called occultation you can google it
but it's really a smart way to clean the beds because you don't need to till to you know you
just cover it and then once you remove the tarps the beds are really nice ready to plant it and you
know the earthworms love it because it's keeps the build of the humidity and if you look underneath
you know that's how we get rid of some of the crops that are there
not sure this is the best example but you know it's just the absence of light that was gonna
you know turn over the crop modeling runs the farm without me because i work at another farm i teach
young growers to be really good growers that farm is called fqt farm and she's been running the farm
here without me for seven years now already and she has a crew of four people with her
and this year emily is the manager and that gives modeling a nice break because it's really heavy we
have two kids and we have two dogs and we have community life and everything happening and so
emily is you know she was she was um many years ago she was one of her intern and then she worked
on other farms she had her own business and now she came back and she's running the crew
it's really been a great summer with everyone being involved here
the gardens are beautiful they're pumping we feed
you know 250 families we have a hundred members csa we go to two farmers market it's pretty cool
leaks are coming nice they're on trip these leaks are buried so there's about
there's about six seven inch poking into the soil they're coming in nicely
when we started the farm our goal
was to have an alternative lifestyle and we wanted the farm to be not only our workplace
but also a place where we could just have freedom and live differently from how society really how i
was raised and born and how where i grew up the suburbs and the farm has been really good to us
it allowed us to you know raise our kids here and
all of this was an open field at one point except for that tree
and the building that was there then again this was an old barn and then we just over the years
put a lot of work into it i did a lot of it myself the last few years we've hired people to help but
it's been fun to construct this environment one day i'll show you pictures of how it
was before and we really like it wild you know we wanted to we want to have as much
you know little spaces where there's flowers growing this was this is how we see things
so this pergola that's where we have dinners when we're at night and friday night pizza
friday night pizza is down there we had some last night so first pond
is really low but it's not dry
this one we're not pumping out of this one is really where it's kind of our swimming pond
we've never seen it so low
now we're entering the woodlot and this is where the interns that we get and some of the
workers there's four of them um three of them live here in the woods we have little cabins
and we have a community building where there's a kitchen
when there's an outdoor shower and this is where they get together to have breakfast and dinner
modeling makes lunch every day for them but they sleep in these little cabins
so these are two farm dogs
yeah you see so we have mirage and nuki so this is nuki and famous uh guard dog
and this is rose we have a daughter her name is hose and that's her dog nuki
and new ash is the other black dog they're best friends and you know we just
this is their home and we spend a lot of time with them we really like them and you can return
this is unbelievable this is the pond oh [ __ ] it's
never seen it so low it's unbelievable
usually i have we have water
so
so this isn't this is crazy but you know modeling and i when we when i met my wife we were
you know we were studying environmental science at mcgill that was like 20 25 years ago and
we were studying climate change and i don't know if there's still people out there that
think climate change is not happening but you know we're really feeling it and as somebody
that's been farming for all these years the fact now that it's getting so dry and that
water is becoming scarce is scary and and you know we'll find solutions for our farm
but you know definitely capturing rain water is going to become something that we'll need to do
better we'll probably need to use a lot more drip irrigation that we've had but
for me this is a clear signal that something is definitely new and it's a trend
and perhaps some of my friends in california have been facing this trap for many years now but
more of this would be better more of this would be better will rain
so that's it for this week really excited about starting this project i'll be sharing more of
what i do and why i do it my farm and my farming life and the people that i meet and why all of
this is important why i care about it we'll be doing weekly videos on youtube so it's exciting
new projects if you like it subscribe and share it talk to your friends about it the more people on
it it's really cool and if you're curious about my farming techniques check out the market gardeners
master class and there's a community of expert growers in that circle it's really awesome and
if you want to be part of my farming community check out the work that we do at growers and co
they're behind this video so it's really awesome see you next time uh hope you're well farm on jmf
you