hello welcome to Kate's Ag today i'm here at Lennox Farms with Brian during Brussel
sprout harvest so this is incredible thank you so much yeah you're welcome these are
brussels sprouts
today i'm here with Rajan and i am standing in a Brussel sprout field what is the process
you're doing to the brussel sprouts right now so this is the process we cut we break
the leaves we cut the like this pile it then take it to the machine take it to the packing
house and grade the bad ones and and package it boxes and bins whatever oh my goodness
that's wonderful yeah it takes a lot of time but we get it done so the brussel sprouts
grow up like this yes so we get some get all going to the land but it's a pretty good crop
this year very tall yes it looks wonderful yeah this is the process it's a it's a lot
of hard work a lot of time yeah yes but it gets to get through and a lot of labor yeah
there's a lot of labor so the first step in the morning is to break the leaves break the
leaves over here just over here i believe right yeah break off the leaves and get it
like this and then the second step is what you're doing right now to cut it off
and then then keep it up make it heap so the guys in them doing over there so they put
them in big piles yes it piles okay
and then the machine across there yes they will come and just shove it out chop it up
like this you come like this and that's what the harvester does is chucks the brussels
sprout off its stem
and then they take it to the packing house package it and boxes into 20 pounds or how
much they want that's wonderful but we do stocks like long stocks so for bins and and
bags we do it like that too oh my gosh that's very cool come like this the seconds we're
gonna do shuck it out how would you store brussels sprouts well they put in their cooler
yes and bins you have to be clean food you're dealing with so you have to be everything
how to be clean yes food grade yeah food grade but not a lot of work right yeah all of us
are plus the boss the two bosses all that we come together and we get it done that's
great yeah is this your favorite aspect of the the work yes it's my favorite i enjoy
everything i do right but not me alone but you as a guys we enjoy what we do so make
that's great we make yourself you know happy that we know we get it done i won't be like
we do peas we do rhubarb we do um potato we do other things in greenhouse but you see
once i uh have us done layers so we feel happy there's not one done we do strawberry with
one corn we do street corn when we don't finish that we happy we don't accomplish you know
what make our boss happy and we make ourselves happy once he happy we happy yeah so a lot
of work but we we enjoy doing what we do from the bosses to the workers yes it's very important
each position and each team member we need everyone you wouldn't be able to harvest your
crop we need everyone to do this so everybody come together and get it done this is very
cool i've never seen brussel sprouts in a field before so wait from here to the other
end so it's full of brussels sprouts
yes it is how many acres of brussels sprouts would you say are here i maybe see about 40
acres.
oh this part right here was cauliflower and then these are the brussels sprouts
what you've already harvested how long does it take to harvest this we've been from september
don't know oh wow yeah it's a long field yes it is we take it in steps and the five do
five row five row like every day and we'll get it awesome thank you so much and thank
you for all the knowledge and information that was just wonderful okay i've been out
while i doing this i do this for a very long a long time in this farm so you know i have
a little experience a little knowledge like that's great it makes me learned a lot too
while every year you learn something new right now i am standing in the part of the brussel
sprout field that has been harvested and i was just in the area that is being prepared
to be harvested today now i'm walking over to the full brussels sprout plant before the
leaves have been taken off so i'm going to show you that here is the plant it has a lot
of leaves i've actually never seen a brussels sprout plant before so this is incredible
and here is what it looks like and this is a whole field of them and then the brussels
sprouts have all these leaves around them also so here would be a brussels sprout this
must be the clippings from the brussels sprouts stem that come out the back of the harvester
and then these must be the little leaves kind of like the wheat straw coming out the back
of the combine
so right now you are piling the Brussel sprouts yeah we make two piles these bigger piles
are the ones we're going to run through the harvester and then you'll get the individual
sprout and the other pile on the outside are the ones we sell on the stock wow that's awesome
so we do sell a lot of stocks because people don't know how they grow right so it's kind
of interesting for them to see that is very incredible
hello what is the process you're doing right now Stacking number one are these the brussels
sprouts that are going to stay on the stem for sale yeah and then the rest will go through
the harvester that's wonderful thank you so this is the second pile brussels sprouts that
will be for sale on their stem in the store and then this is the pile that will go through
the harvester here are all the leaves brussels sprouts really have a lot more leaves than
i expected i absolutely love touring farms and learning about all different kinds of
crops and where my food comes from so i hope you do too and if you have any other farms
that you would like me to feature please email info@katesag.com or leave a comment down below
this is the brussels sprout harvester which Lennox farms actually built
So this is your brussel sprout harvester that you built?
Yes we built this about three four years ago it suits our operation
perfectly since we saved a lot of stalks it lets them run through it operates off a generator
its all 3 phase power so we had to buy a big generator that runs off the tractor and this
machine here we bought from Holland and everything else we put together to make it work for us
How does the machine separate the Brussel sprouts from the stock?
so if you look in there there will be a little head with six knives on it when the eye sees
that you're putting the stock in the hole the knife pulls around the stock and then
the stock goes through and it cuts all the strips off wow that is amazing and then the
sprouts are we grade them on top so a lot of the garbage the best thing about this harvester
is is 80 90 percent of the garbage stays in the field do you have a person's hand grading
on the top we have a couple guys hand grade and it goes into a bin and then we have our
packing line in the shed now how do you store brussels sprouts we store them cold out of
the air
the straw goes into here gets chopped up and then comes out the bottom
here is the stalk of the Brussel sprout
um what do you look for when you grade the Brussel sprouts?
We look for cut ones like this or anything that is not perfect
it's too bad it wasn't a nicer day but this is what we get in uh late october so yes so
is this the time that you would normally harvest brussels sprouts we generally start the end
of september and our big push is obviously for canadian thanksgiving and then we try
and wrap up a week or two after that yes and where are you based out of we're in Melancthon
in ontario which is an hour and 15 minutes north of toronto half an hour north of orangeville
in between orangeville and collingwood so and you grow all of your vegetables here on
the farm and sell them at your shop so yeah we grow probably over 20 different vegetables
and we have a on farm market that it's actually closed now because it's after thanksgiving
but start that may long weekend until thanksgiving and it's absolutely incredible that you see
the process all the way through from growing the crop to harvesting and then selling the
crops yeah so we uh we have three greenhouses we start these brussels sprouts seeds the
end of march so we've been babying them in the greenhouse for six weeks and then we'll
plant them out first week of may and then we don't harvest till september so it's a
long it's a long process for brussels sprouts but it's actually one i really enjoy because
there's a lot can go wrong and it's probably the biggest challenge on the farm uh we moved
here in uh 80 1987.
we actually started our my great great grandfather was down in etobicoke by the big ikea there
oh that's wonderful and in the 1950s we moved out to the huttonville region east of brampton
or west of brampton and then we got pushed up here with development in the 80s how long
has this been a vegetable farm for uh well we've had it since 1987 prior to that it was
uh potatoes this is potato country so it's uh it was potatoes and turnips and and cattle
before that so what types of vegetables do you grow we grow like i said about 20 different
ones our main three are rhubarb english peas and brussels sprouts so we grow quite a few
acres of them and then we grow 15 or 20 items again for our market just little things tomatoes
zucchini and sweet corn and all that kind of stuff wow that's wonderful you can't get
any fresher than this that's right we pick every day and and we sell basically sell the
next days what is the process and timeline of brussel sprout harvest when would you plant
them we planted may 10th like i said we see it in the greenhouse and late march early
april and then our transplants about four to six inches high we'll transplant out early
may and then we baby them all summer we gotta keep the weeds out make sure the bugs aren't
getting in there and then we'll harvest around september 20th until we finish and then what
is the process of harvesting yeah so uh brussels sprouts grow two to three feet tall and there's
about two pounds of sprouts on a plant and then there's a whole bunch of leaves so the
way we harvest is we have to take all the leaves off the plant and then we'll go along
with a cutter and cut them all down and then we grade to uh if we're gonna sell the stock
we keep that one separate or if we're gonna run through our harvester we'll make a separate
pile and then we'll show you the harvester here in a bit that's awesome thank you so
much they're amazing they taste amazing this ground up here in the climate just makes our
brussels sprouts so much sweeter and better flavor than you might find elsewhere what
climate conditions do you need to grow brussels sprouts they like cool definitely a cooler
climate with a bit heavier soil our soil is a silt loam they do well on sand but you have
to irrigate more and just don't get the flavor you get off our soil either so wow that is
awesome and when you pack your brussels sprouts you have to pack certain sizes together yeah
we have to grate out the little tiny ones on top of the plant uh which is unfortunate
there's not a huge market for them we do pickle them for our market but other than that the
restaurants take them uh so they like the medium size so basically take those minis
out and then everything else goes in the box 20 pound box for the customer do any of your
brussels sprouts go out to restaurants yep a lot go to restaurants and uh most of our
clientele are either fine food stores or other farm markets like our own that's amazing and
then i noticed in the harvested brussels sprout part of the field that the stems are all chopped
up would that kind of be the chopper that goes out the back of harvester yeah the harvester
we have we put stock choppers on it otherwise you have these big long stocks which is hard
to decompose so the harvester will chop them into three four inch pieces so it's easy to
break down for next year and you'll they're not even you won't even see them are they
good for the soil everything's good for the soil so like i said there's lots of leaves
on the ground and any calls we take out from grading get spread back on the field to help
put nutrients back in and then we'll plant cover crops and green green crops for next
year after this and do you harvest those crops we actually just mow a lot of them in oh wow
everything we do is is to feed the soil for the vegetable crops so we have about 500 acres
we grow we only grow about 200 acres of vegetables and the rest is for rotation so we're always
growing cover crops and mowing them in so we'll grow two cover crops a year and mow
it down to feed the soil and the soil is the most important aspect so it's the foundation
of any plant or crop that's correct yep so you want to have great soil conditions and
we need to rotate all of our crops we rotate three to five years so we don't hit that spot
again with a vegetable for at least three years so oh wow just helps with disease pressure
and insect pressure yes that's extremely important now i'm here with Jeanette of Lennox farms
and you are going to be giving me a tour of the packing facility right so this is where
we um take our brussels sprouts the ones that have been taken off the stock and um then
they go through the grading line and get boxed up that's amazing thank you so much no problem
and it's multi-use like depending on what we're harvesting or um we have going on so
instead of writing out the brussels sprouts those big white bins that are filled from
the um the hopper out in the field and then it tips up and then the brussels sprouts go
up and around and then we have people standing on either side of the grating line picking
out them and again yes and i guess the rollers separate size like they increase the increase
separation for bigger ones and then they shrink down for smaller ones and then they go in
and then they get weighed and boxed up wow that's awesome and then this is so your boxing
area yeah you would box them in um in 20 pound boxes or ten pounds okay depending what the
customer wants that's awesome what is the most common bag you sell the size um medium
to large like we just grade the minis or large but um definitely the bigger ones wow that's
awesome and what is the most common size of bag you would sell a 20 pound box wow that's
amazing thank you so much no problem thank you so much for watching today's video make
sure to like and subscribe i hope you learned a little bit more about how your brussels
sprouts get to your table you can visit lennoxfarms.ca to learn more about their vegetable operation
thank you so much for the wonderful tour and all of the knowledge yeah no problem it's
glad that people know know this stuff so it's great okay bye