Join me as I tour the back lanes of the farm in my trusty Defender (admittedly through rather dirty windows!) The snow banks as I drive around the farm are historical in size. I grew up in Barrie and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much snow in my life. RJ cannot recall seeing snow banks this big at the farm either. How many days until spring??!! You can visit “Winter Wonderland” to see some stunning phots of the farm in winter in December 2022.
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Everyone can use a little companionship on a long day at the end of a busy farming season. So Sammy joined John for a day in the combine earlier this week. This video is a compilation of our corn combine process seen from her eyes. My only question is this….Why was Sammy allowed to drive the combine and I wasn’t allowed to drive the tractor?! You can visit “Back In The Combine Again” to see another video of our grain corn combine in action.
After numerous breakdowns and trips all across Southern Ontario to find parts for our rather antique combine, John is finally back in the combine again. Our grain corn harvest is moving along nicely now, but there are a lot of acres to harvest before the weather turns. You can visit “The Compelling Combine” to see another video of our grain corn combine in action.
Grab your broomstick and fly with me over our spooky pumpkin patches! And just in case you’re not a witch and don’t have a broomstick, you can always stop by the farm to grab your last minute pumpkins to add to your scary Halloween décor. If you need inspiration for carving your pumpkins you can visit “Jack-O’-Lanterns.”
Welcome to day 5 of “Ontario Agriculture Week” where we celebrate Ontario farms and the bounty of food grown in Ontario. We are proud to be the faces behind the food on your table. There is a wide variety of jobs to complete and we all have our areas of expertise. From fieldwork to storing potatoes, from stocking the farm stand to providing customer care in the office, you can be certain that we do what we do because we love farming. Even Riley works during the busy harvest offering companionship as he tags along in the tractors! You can visit “The Faces Of Our Farm” subcategory in The Common-Tater to learn more about who we are and what we do.
Welcome to day 3 of “Ontario Agriculture Week” where we celebrate Ontario farms and the bounty of food grown in Ontario. This video of the harvest was filmed last week when we were digging russet potatoes. We own 240 acres on the home farm, and somehow we all ended up in the exact same little patch of land jockeying for positions. RJ is running the potato harvester, John is working the windrower, Curtis is bringing an empty truck for the harvester to fill with potatoes, and I use my little Defender to boot around the farm capturing footage for our website and social media.
I’m not sure who is going the wrong way here, but I think it might be Johnny in the windrower. And as for that annoying squeak in the audio, I also think it’s Johnny in the windrower. (Do you see the pattern here…?!) Rest assured there were no collisions, and the potato harvest continues to move forward at full throttle. You can visit the “Video” subcategory in The Common-Tater to see many more videos taken at our farm. Welcome to day 2 of “Ontario Agriculture Week” where we celebrate Ontario farms and the bounty of food grown in Ontario. This drone video gives you a quick overview of some of our equipment. And yes, we really need all this…or so I’m told anyways! We need specialized equipment to plant, maintain and harvest each of the crops we grow. Plus we use additional equipment for field work, packing potatoes and delivering our products.
While we can handle the routine maintenance and upkeep of our equipment, we have an extremely reliable list of outside vendors who have bent over backwards for us over the years. So here’s a huge “thank you” shout out to the wonderful people who keep us going during our critical farming season. Whether we need a tire changed, a tractor fixed, an emergency repair on a weekend, our delivery vans serviced, or parts delivered in a rush, they can usually get it done for us. You can visit “Spring Cleaning” to see John getting our tractors ready for the season. Here at the farm, we all focus on the potato harvest during September and October. After tending to the crop during the spring and the summer, the last step is to get the potatoes into the storage buildings before the weather turns. These are our Yukon Gem potatoes rolling along the belts of the harvester into the bulk truck. Yukon Gems are a favourite potato of our customers. They are an extremely versatile potato, and make excellent fries, home fries, mashed and baked potatoes. We will be growing more of those as we continue to look for a substitute for Yukon Gold potatoes which are becoming obsolete. You can visit “The Hypnotic Harvester” to see another video of our potato harvester in action.
I have to admit that I usually wait for perfect weather to take videos and pictures to create blog posts. After all, who doesn’t love blue skies and sunshine? However, one of my good friends from university recently mentioned that it’s interesting how the sun always shines at our farm. So, here’s a video montage of some absolutely miserable, horrible weather that we experienced here at the farm. We are not immune from late April snowstorms, wicked winds and torrential rain downpours. This one’s for you Duane! You can visit “A River Runs Through It" and “Stormy Father’s Day” to see how weather has impacted our crops in previous years.
Our new potatoes are ready & waiting for you at our farm stand. These small, white potatoes are only available for a short time during the summer. We sell them unwashed at this time of year to protect their tender skins. Store them in a cool dark place and only wash them when you’re ready to cook them.
One of the best ways to enjoy their unique flavour is to simply boil the new potatoes, squash them lightly with a fork and add butter. You can also visit “BBQ Smash Potatoes” for one of my original new potato recipes. PS Yes, our corn is almost ready! |
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