Borage on Film

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One of the more interesting vegetables we planted this year is Borage. Borage is a beautiful plant with strikingly blue star-shaped flowers.

Our Borage patch

The Borage flower

The plant is native to the Mediterranean region and its taste is often described as resembling Cucumber. Our experience has been that it s a bit more complex than this. There are notes of oyster or fish in the taste of both its leaves and flowers.

 From a health point of view, Borage oil is extracted from its seeds as a great source of Linoleic acid for vitamin supplements.

Of course our key interest is in serving this in our Tea Room and to do so, Chef has created a Raviolini with Borage and Nettles in a Beurre Blanc sauce. The dish is delicious and actually very pretty when plated.

Borage and Nettle Raviolini in a Beurre Blanc sauce

We're discussing Borage this week because we decided to make it one of our signature dishes for a special visit to the farm: the FeastON team of the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance (OCTA).

As one of the first restaurants in Niagara to qualify for the FeastON program (a program promoting local foods and restaurants using a minimum percentage of local produce), we were chosen as a site for filming and recording some of our practices. These images will be used to promote the program.

So this week we welcomed the FeastON film crew to the farm.

The FeastON film crew ready for a three hour stint at the farm

The film crews objective was to record as much of our process as possible. This started with our produce from our berries to our vegetable plots.

Chef introduces the crew to Borage

This also encompassed every step of our process for Chef's chosen signature dish.

Chef preparing the Raviolini

We hope this will not only help promote the FeastON program but as well promote the farm and our unique approach to the farm to table Tea Room concept. Certainly we will now have access to some professionally created photos and videos for our own marketing efforts.

Aside from Borage, our vegetable garden has generated some other successes but as well some serious disappointments (the Tomatoes in particular).

On the positive side, our Citron melons, Fennel and all of our herbs are doing extremely well (many of the latter are flowering and seeding already).

Among the weeds, the Fennel still thrives

Our Three Sisters bed is also lush with ears of heirloom corn already clearly visible.

Heirloom corn in the Three Sisters bed

The Squash and Beans are also well developed.

Squash acting as ground cover in the Three Sisters bed.

Even our Carrots and Beets are showing promise. Unlike the previous year, the beets have not (yet) been munched on by deer.

This year, our two varieties of heirloom Beet are evolving without being harmed by wildlife

Finally this week, we have a short update on the Growing Dome. Although we have not yet re-introduced fish to our Aquaponics set-up, we are really pleased with the progress of some of our experiments.

The monster Cucumber generated using the Kratky hydroponic method is quickly taking over the center of the dome.

The Growing Dome's monster Cucumber vine

Although early on we had written them off for dead, our Aquaponic tomatoes are now well ahead of those planted in our raised beds.

Our Growing Dome Tomatoes are almost ready to flower.

We'll close this week with our Concord grapes. This year was our first attempt to prune the vines we discovered last year. The results are literally bearing fruit.

Even among weeds, the Concord Grapes are thriving