Preparing for Spring

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With temperatures finally reaching above zero (and in some cases high single digits), it almost felt like Spring was in the air. Of course the melting snow has made a mess of the farm leaving behind mud, quick sand and patches of sheer ice.

Nevertheless this allowed us to finish our work on the Kiwis. We finally pruned the last remaining vines. As soon as the ground softens for good, we will now turn our attention to clearing and trellising some of the additional rows ...of course this will not be soon since temperatures are expected to return to freezing this week.

The last Kiwi vine is now pruned....it will soon be time to turn our attention to the other rows.

Having pruned the Kiwis, it was also time to pay attention to the trellises. It is surprising how much load were placed on these during the course of the year. The net result is that some of our cables started to flex while certain T-bars went off level. This week, it was time to tighten the entire installation. First, we leveled some of the trellises by simply tightening the horizontal support structures.

Leveling the T-bars

Next, we used standard tensioning tools to tighten the cables both in-line and at the far end of each row.

In-line tensioning of the cables....

...and tensioning the ends of the row.

Because our rows are quite long, we also noticed a significant load on the end posts. These currently have a tendency to warp. As we approach Spring, we may have to reconsider the position of our steel cables. They are currently anchored almost half way down each end post and we are now considering bringing them up.

The warmer weather this week also had consider sap collection. It seems some people are already tapping trees. We were just not prepared to start and with freezing temperatures coming back this week, we will have to hold back just a bit. What we did accomplish though is getting more spyles and tubing. We hope to increase our sap collection by a factor of two this year.

For any beginner wising to tap the backyard trees, we found that Atkinson Maple Supplies (located between Barrie and Orillia) have a good selection of kits and hardware.

New spyles tubing and containers ready for the tapping season.

We will again tap our Maples and follow up with the tapping of our Birch trees. This season however, we will be experimenting with the tapping of our Black Walnuts. Apparently Black Walnut syrup is quite good and has a rather unique flavour....we intend to find out.

Our attention this week has also turned to the Growing Dome. Now that our work benches are up on the circumference of the dome, it was time to lay out the hydroponic beds. Originally we were hoping to replicate our original prototype installation....with a much longer run of hydroponic beds.

The concept proved more difficult than anticipated. It is like trying to fit equally sized rectangles into a triangular area. The result is a great waste of space and a complicated support structure.

Our original lay-out....too complicated and messy

From this starting point, we tried a variety of configurations.

Configuration 2: parallel longitudinal runs.

Configuration 3: parallel lateral runs.

After struggling through a variety of configurations, we decided to start from scratch (ie. good-bye prototype). Much of our problems stem from trying to maintain this as an "off the grid" greenhouse. We need to use solar powered pumps (and minimize our solar array area) so the water cycle needs to be gravity fed as much as possible. We have now decided to implement a branching network from a centrally fed trough.

The new direction...dual beds branching from a central trough.

It's now time to take down the prototype and implement this new layout.

Working on the dome, we also have been considering once again the fish for our main water tank. The Tilapias are dead and we are not certain we can ever keep the water temperature sufficiently warm for this tropical species. We are now considering more indigenous species, however we are also concerned about the water temperature in the summer....we just do not know how hot the water will be.

Given that inside day time temperatures are now well above 30 degrees C, the water tank is already rapidly warming up. As a result, we have discounted species such as Trout which tend to prefer cooler waters. Species of interest are now the Yellow Perch or the very hardy Catfish.

Instead of investing in new fingerlings from a fish farm, we bought a minnow trap and decided to gather minnows from local streams and lakes. These we hope to identify and transplant to our tank. We're not sure how they will take to commercial fish feed, but this may actually be the best way to identify hardy edible species that can thrive in this environment.

We bought an inexpensive wire mesh trap and we now wait for the ice to melt to start collecting samples.

Ready with our new minnow trap.

Although temperatures were rather pleasant this week, we still have an issue with our barn's water pipes. This has been a great disappointment to Chef who can no longer use his kitchen. To improve his mood, we had him work with us on the assembly of our new fermenter.

We acquired the system earlier last year from Blichmann Engineering and the unit required some assembly. Although seemingly simple, it did take a bit of work to figure everything out.

Working out the new fermenter assembly.

We now wait for warmer and more stable temperatures to try out this system with fruits we have saved from our last harvest.

What was uplifting for Chef was the progress of our contractor on the new Tea Room veranda. Now that the roof and floors are insulated, the ceiling and wainscoting was finished. We can finally say good-bye to the old lattice work which always housed a variety of nesting creatures (birds and squirrels).

The Tea Room veranda is looking great.

The next steps are the new flooring and what is called a "weather wall". The weather wall consists of very large windows (to fill the gaps between the posts). These windows open fully and down so that our patrons are still dining "outside", but the whole thing can be sealed in inclement weather (such as rain or wind). This should make our guests' dining experience much more pleasant.

I'll close this week by congratulating all of our Winter Olympians...and in particular our Hockey teams which proved once again: this is our game!

Furnishing the Dome

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Since the weather has not cooperated much in terms of our working the land, we decided to work "inside". This week, we concentrated our attention on furnishing the dome. As indicated last week, our concept was to build shelving on the periphery of the dome in order to lay out seedling trays for both our raised beds and hydroponic tables.

The most difficult aspect to this was the layout of the shelving support structure or "legs". Although the dome geometry at its base is relatively simple (effectively consisting of equilateral triangles), this part of the work proved difficult. The reason for our problems was the original installation. When we mated the dome to our pre-constructed foundation, the fit was not exact and this caused a lot of difficulty in its original assembly. At the time, to overcome the problem, we installed a "spacer" of 2x4" wood beams. The net effect is that we did not have a consistent frame of reverence when installing our shelving on the foundation wall.

Installing the support structure for our shelving.

Since we are using "deck" technology, the whole assembly was somewhat forgiving and in the end we managed to generate exactly what we were aiming for. In fact, we're now ready to prepare our seedlings....should the weather finally cooperate.

The final product....shelving on the circumference of the dome.

The next step will be the hydroponic tables. The lay out for these we intend to base on our early prototype. It should be noted however that the weather in the past months has been harsh and has highlighted some deficiencies when we reach temperatures below zero.

Since our thermal mass (the large water tank) did not get a chance to heat up over the summer, this has now happened a few times. Although our day time temperatures can be 10 to 20 degrees C higher than outside, our evening temperatures have gone to as much as 8.8 degrees below zero (outside night time temperatures were 23 below at the time). Sadly, this means "good bye" to our Tilapias.

On the operational side, the net effect is twofold. First, the hydroponic beds which are shallow freeze solid and the piping linking the beds also freeze up (much like our water pipes did in the barn). Of course this is very detrimental to any plant as the roots freeze as well.

Frozen hydroponic bed.

The second effect is a bit more concerning. The solar powered pumps continue to operate and in the early morning of a very cold night, they will pump water from the large tank into these beds. The result is an over-flooding of the beds. In our case, we have observed this once and as a consequence we have lost a lot of water from our tank (and our thermal mass). We now have 12 inches less water in our tank than what we had originally started with. One of our pumps is no longer submerged and we have had to turn it off.

Our tank (thermal mass) has lost a lot of water following a very cold night.

We believe we might be able to overcome this next year. However, we will have to keep a close eye on night time dome and water temperatures in the winter.

In any event, some plants are managing to survive. Although our fennel is not looking very healthy, it is still sprouting new growth. Furthermore, any plant (in particular the lettuces) that were left in potting soil have been doing relatively well although their growth is somewhat stunted.

Our fennel struggling to survive.

I have to add that there are two very frustrating aspects to working in the dome. The first is the day time temperature. This week we have reached 30 degrees C. It is really inconvenient to dress up like an Inuit to get to the dome and then find out you have to strip down to your T-shirt in order to work comfortably in this atmosphere. We'll definitely have to add some coat racks to our furnishings!

Second, the humidity in the dome is incredibly high. It is consistently above 70%. The frustration here, as any person wearing glasses will appreciate, is that these things will fog up. We are consistently having to take off our glasses and waiting for these things to clear before starting our work.

In any case, these are just minor inconveniences or frustrations and we do have high hopes for this set up as we continue to furnish the dome. We now anticipate germinating our seeds a lot earlier than we did last year.

Finally this week, we did have a "break" in the weather. This means that we were eventually able to continue work on our Tea Room veranda. The ceiling and floor were insulated and we are now ready to refinish both, hoping to provide a much more pleasant dining environment for all of our patrons.

The Tea Room veranda is now insulated

We will end this week by reminding everyone that Chef is still working at Niagara-on-the-Lake's Oast House Brewers on Sundays. So come on by to try his cooking or just to say hello. 

Guest Chef at Oast House

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This month, Ryan has been guest Chef at Oast House Brewers in Niagara-on-the-Lake, performing every Sunday. As we are closed for the season, this is a great opportunity to get a taste of his skills.

Chef at Oast House

For this project, Chef has developed a great "pub menu" which is well paired with the offerings of the brewery. This includes an Albacore Tuna Sashimi, Fried Duck Wings, Russian Imperial Stout braised Pork Belly with Barley Risotto and Zeta Farms Moroccan Lamb Kafte with Couscous.

Chef's Menu at Oast House Brewers

Luckily, the family had a chance to try his work and it was definitely worth the drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Moroccan meat balls with Couscous were one of our favourites and really is a testament to the work of Pelham's Zeta Farms which we featured last week.

Moroccan meat balls with couscous ...and of course a great Oast House brew.

Meanwhile back at the farm, we took the few days of respite from the cold weather to get back to our Kiwi pruning. We've been covering this for a while now and given the cold and snowy weather, it has been taking us a lot longer to complete than we had anticipated. We now wish we had the chance to do a lot more pruning in November and December.

Since the vines are prolific growers, the key problem is their "pig tailing" around each other. This is a result of not being trained to trellises for years.

The reason Kiwis are taking so long to prune.

Since the vines wrap around each other, it is clear that when we clear the remaining plants from weeds, we will need to be much more aggressive in cutting them back - before trellising. Of course doing so will affect our overall fruit production since fruiting occurs on three years growth. Given the amount of healthy plants we have on hand, we figure we can probably do this if we manage our rows properly (ie. clear one or two rows a year).

The more aggressively pruned row was much easier to prune and "train" although they do not produce (note the "un-pruned" "un-cleared" vines in the background)

Of course, the normal seasonal temperatures did not last long this week as a cold snap and more snow returned (certainly no drought here as they have in California). The result has made a mess of the roads and driveways in the area....including our parking lot. Below six to eight inches of snow we have a solid sheet of ice.

Our icy parking lot/skating rink

In the end, this makes for hazardous driving....if you can get out of the parking lot.

So with the cold returning we thought best to return our attention to the Growing Dome. This week we started on our "furnishing" of the dome. The concept, is to install shelving on the circumference of the dome (before we install the next set of hydroponic beds). This low shelving would be used as work space, but also to support trays of seedlings for both the aquaponics installation as well as our raised beds.

Laying out the Growing dome shelving concept

The cold has also hampered our progress on the veranda renovations. We were hoping this week to begin insulating the roof top. The old lattice work was taken down and the veranda sealed. However, foam insulation requires heating and dry weather....both of which we are certainly short of.

The veranda ceiling ready for insulation and some cooperation from the weather

We've actually progressed on one thing: our restaurant tables. The old tables were in very poor shape and rather small (it made it difficult to serve High Tea). These were refinished and the size of the tables was also increased. This should make for a much more pleasant dining experience for our patrons.

Our new dining tables are looking quite nice for next season

We'll end this week by hoping that everyone can stay warm as we endure this latest cold spell....and please drive carefully!

Frozen Pipes

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Like the rest of folks in the North East, this Winter has been harsh for us. So this week culminated in a series of accidents that we're sure are common to a lot of others in our predicament.

This week was all about frozen water pipes. Things started in our restaurant kitchen. Both store and kitchen in the barn are using electrically operated heat pumps as their primary source of heat. Both of these have been failing regularly. They are exposed to the elements and as soon as negative double digit temperatures are reached, condensation freezes over and they go into a "defrost" mode.  Often they "pop" a fuse.

As we have been cleaning the kitchen, we have also turned off unused refrigerators and freezers (nominally another source of heat). All of this worked against us one morning when Chef discovered a pool of water on his newly painted kitchen floor.

It is amazing what frozen water will do to pipes...and in the barn we ended up with half a dozen breaks.

Frozen water and pipes do not mix......

To make matters worse, in the same week our kitchen in the old manor also encountered a problem. On one side of the house, the sewage water was backing up into one of our main floor powder rooms. In this case, it turned out that one of the sewage lines going to our home's septic tank was also frozen. This meant that we could not use water on one side of the house, including our kitchen.

A source of nightmares....the sewage main which froze as soon as it exited the building

The barn kitchen turned out to be a major repair, the house kitchen was a little more tricky. Using standard Roto Rooter equipment turned out to be useless, so the servicemen we called in turned to a steaming unit. The major problem turned out to be the bends in the main prevented them from reaching the frozen segment of pipe.

They ended up having to steam the pipe by entering it from the septic tank....a very messy job! But we were very pleased when their gamble paid off.

Meanwhile, as a team, we do like to try new restaurants in the area. This week we were hoping to try one in  Niagara Falls. As we eagerly approached the venue, we were dismayed when it was shut due to a broken water main....we can certainly commiserate.

In the meantime, Chef has been eagerly preparing for his "gig" at Oast House in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We were lucky to have first try at his "pub grub"; he has prepared scrumptious Duck wings, a delectable Tuna sashimi, and amazing Moroccan meat balls. He is starting today and will be there every Sunday this month.

With Chef, we are always looking for good local suppliers and this week we were pleased to meet with Rose Marie Meier of Zeta Farms.

Zeta Farms was established by the Meier family some 15 years ago. Originally from Southern Germany, the family operates a 200 acre farm in South Pelham, at the corner of Effingham and River Road. In addition to growing vegetables, they raise sheep, goats and chicken, and because they grow their own grain, they do this in an organic manner. If you are looking for some good locally grown food, Zeta Farms is certainly worth visiting

In our case, we were looking for lamb and we certainly were not disappointed (Chef's Morrocan-style meat balls now depend on it!).

The goats of Zeta Farms well sheltered from the cold

Finally, with the weather coming back to normal seasonal temperatures late this week, we had to continue to prune our kiwis. For the most part, the great amount of time taken to deal with this is due to the vines "pig tailing" behaviour. We end up spending the majority of our time de-tangling intertwined  "pig tails"....this is a real test in patience.

De-tangling kiwi "pig tails"