Black Raspberries and Cossack Asparagus

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Last year we discovered on the farm the Black Raspberry. These grow wild on the edge of the Carolinian forest. We never even knew that such a thing existed. It turns out however that they are highly prized for their anti-cancer or cancer fighting properties.

The wild Black Raspberry 

We took advantage of this find. We picked some, sold them, and made some jams. The taste of these berries is unlike any conventional raspberry. The jam they make is simply superb. They were in fact so popular, we decided this year to add to our crop by extending our plot with some new stock.

So this week we took shipment of some 350 canes and began planting.

Planting a new crop: the Black Raspberry

Although the weather has been surprisingly cold for this time of year, we've been rather surprised at how quickly some of our other berries have started blooming.

The Black Currant look like they will yield a significant amount of fruit. This is also where we discovered we planted things much too close together (transplanting will be necessary ). But we also have a neat concept for trellising these plants we hope to implement next Spring.

The Black Currants are in full bloom

The Red Gooseberries have even progressed further. Small fruits are already developing on many of our plants.

The Red Gooseberry fruit is already developing

Even the Haskaps, which we planted just a few weeks ago, have started to bloom. We actually now hope to harvest some of these new berries this year.

The Haskap bloom

In fact, a lot of things have started to bloom and plants in the Growing Dome seem to be well ahead of others. This included our beans (Beurre de Rocquencourt and Scarlet Runners) and even our melons.

This meant it was time to begin transplanting things to our raised beds. Even though the temperature difference between the dome and beds was significant, the incredible amount of rain we faced this week helped in the transition.

Transplanting to our raised beds

Although, we did create a lot of raised bed space this year, it seems we may again run short of space. We went a little crazy in ordering our seeds and with some 50 varieties of plants all successfully started in the dome, we are now looking at every corner of the farm for space to transplant.

While this has been going on, we also continue to forage. This week it was time to pick the "Cossak Asparagus". We discovered this last Spring, but picked them a little too late (the exterior was overly stringy). This year, we picked them just in time.

For those not familiar with the Cossack Asparagus, we're actually talking about the Cattail shoots.

Cattail shoots (aka. Cossack Asparagus) ready for the picking

The shoots can be pulled almost as you would pull on a long blade of grass to release the white base of the leaf. This part of the plant is not only edible but quite good. It can be eaten raw (like a Cucumber) or cooked (like a conventional Asparagus). The texture of this food is similar to hearts of Palm.

Cattail shoots, ready for eating or processing

We're now trying to pickle these shoots and hope to make them available at our Tea Room restaurant and market.

We'll end this week's blog with an update on the old manor's renovation. The interior is now completed and it is now time to complete the exterior.

The major effort has been the landscaping on the back ridge (behind the house). Our concept has been to turn the ridge into terraces; terraces we can use for growing herbs and vegetables (more space for the plants we started in the dome).

Little did we know how massive a project this would become.

The ridge in the back of the manor is slowly being transformed into growing terraces

The outside of the manor is also undergoing a "face lift". Now that it has been restored, the wood trimming of the house has been repainted in a wheat yellow colour (instead of its original bright white). This colour is more in line with the Victorian times and really shows off the details in the wood trim.

The newly painted manor

All that is left to accomplish is the iron work. This was taken down to be completely redone since it was falling apart.

We'll conclude by wishing all our Ontario friends a great May 2-4 weekend and our US friends a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.