Guest Chef at Oast House

To view the latest from Ridge Berry Farm visit our new blog and site!

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!