Tourism Season Begins

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With the warm weather, tourists are now returning to the Niagara Peninsula. This week at the farm, we had to close the restaurant for one afternoon to welcome a bus load of tourists originally from Taiwan. For us, it was an amazing pleasure to welcome them to Pelham to get a taste of the region; Niagara is so much more than the Falls, the Casinos and the wineries.

Our first tour bus of the season....luckily we have the parking space.

Their key interest was to learn about history and local foods ...right up our alley. The Manor has proven to offer a fascinating backdrop to discuss the Victorian past of the area, while we were also able to educate these avid learners about the health benefits of many wild and local plants, as well as our berries.

In general, we had a great time and certainly hope they did as well.

What we did not expect is that they cleaned us out of some of our inventory. After doing a demo on how to use cordials (fruit syrups), our shelves were completely cleared! We now have to ship some orders and need to rebuild our stock.

Empty shelves....we will need to increase production

Elsewhere on the farm, this week was rather tragic. We lost our fish in the growing dome....again! And this time, it was purely our fault.

As for most start-up aquaponic environments, we have been tackling an algae problem. We have so much algae in our system that these small plants have been absorbing the nutrients in the water to the detriment of our hydroponic tables. As a result, our plants are suffering from stunted growth.

Our preliminary solution was to shade the large water tank in order to minimize the amount of sun available for algae growth. This is where things went wrong. In doing so, we displaced a water pipe feeding the aeration pump. We could not tell the pump was off because of the shade cloth and because of the noise of water flowing to the hydroponic tables for which the pump was still working.

Our shade cloth over the main water tank

The bottom line, our fish were asphyxiated and I just can't sufficiently express our disappointment.

In any case, we've learned a valuable lesson and we're definitely going to continue our work....we feel so very close to a permanent and stable solution.

On another front, we still have a lot of space well exposed to the sun in the Growing Dome. So we've decided to experiment with another hydroponic technique requiring no energy. We set up two experimental tables below those used for aquaponics. The concept we implemented here is based on the work of Dr. Kratky from the University of Hawaii.

Conventional hydroponics require some form of energy (electricity) to pump water through bubbling stones. This helps oxygenate the water which is essential to good and healthy root development. For the aquaponic tables this is achieved by the aeration pump (when we don't mess with it) and the water flow from table to table.

The Kratky method is actually very simple and overcomes the need for any pump. The hydroponic tables are filled with water and nutrients. The plants are then mounted atop this solution. As they consume water and nutrients, the water level descends. The roots develop to reach toward the nutrient solution while a larger segment of the root becomes exposed to air (ie. oxygen).

In our case, we first seeded our plants in Perlite. This allows the plant to develop a good root while making it relatively easy to transplant once we're ready to transfer them to a hydroponic table.

Cucumber seedling removed from its Perlite bed

Once they had developed a reasonable root length, we placed them in small plastic baskets extending the root out of the basket as much as we could. The plants are again held upright with Perlite.

The same seedling ready for its new hydroponic bed

We mounted the baskets on insulation boards in a manner similar to our aquaponic tables. In this case however, the boards are not used as floating rafts, but rather as lids to the hydroponic tables, basically fixing the height of the plant above the water and nutrient solutions. As nutrients, we used liquid organically derived nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous....and now we wait.

Final Kratky installation

We actually thought that this might be a good idea for the aquaponic tables as well. Basically, using the mounting platforms of insulation not only provides more oxygen to the roots, but also prevents sunlight from reaching the water (another way to control algae). In this case however, the nutrients would come from the fish (once we've got that resolved) and the water levels would be maintained.

Wax bean combining the Kratky method with our aquaponic tables

So far, our beans seem to love the concept. Our major concern now is that we may not be able to mix plant varieties in a single bed, since some root systems might develop faster than others (part of our current experiment).

Elsewhere on the farm, the berries are really coming along. The Raspberries are flowering while the Gooseberries are ripening, as are the Currants. The latter are proving prolific and we hope to be able to produce some amazing Black Currant jam this summer. We'll probably also work on a cordial (syrup) and we definitely want to experiment with a wine.

The Black Currants are prolific

We were also quite surprised to find that our small Haskaps, planted earlier this year, have already produced some berries. This was a great chance to try this fruit.

Haskap berries....enough to get a taste of things to come

The Haskap taste turns out to be very similar to Blueberry, perhaps a little more tart. The texture of the berry is amazing. The seeds are like Kiwi seeds and the skin is very fragile so the berry simply melts in your mouth. We have some great hopes for this berry since it will likely make some superb jam, cordials and pies.

Finally, the farm is home to a variety of wildlife and this week has been a bit frustrating.

The deer have become a lot more brazen this year. We have found them munching the tip of our apple tree branches just behind our Tea Room. They've also munched on a few of our fruiting bushes. Luckily, our Paw Paw have survived and they seem a lot more vibrant than when we planted them last fall.

Evidence of munching Deer just behind the Tea Room

Another visitor this week was a large Snapping Turtle once again in our backyard to lay eggs. This happened last year close to our raised beds. With the many ponds and swamps on the property I guess we can expect this to become an annual event. And once again, we'll probably have to save some of the baby turtles from going into our parking lot or even crossing the road.

Once again our backyard will become a turtle nursery