REMINDERS
- Fall CSA Shares - prepay and receive bonus dollars! Must order by September 15th
- Thanksgiving Turkeys - 32 days until Thanksgiving. Reserve one of our heritage turkeys, raised outside & certified organic grains. September 15th reservation deadline.
- Pork freezer order - heritage, forest-raised Tamworth pork. October 15th reservation deadline.
- Orono Fair Farm to Table dinner - this Saturday, September 8th
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What's available this weekend:
- Fresh chicken, available whole, half, legs, breasts, hearts, livers & feet.
- Pork: ground, sausages, shoulder roasts (boston butt), jowls & hocks
- Frozen chicken: thighs, drums, wings, boneless skinless breasts, legs & sausages
- Mushrooms: shiitake, lion's mane, pink oyster, blue oyster, reishi (dried), and giant puffball
- Creamed Honey: regular, cinnamon, lavender, chocolate & ginger
Where to find us:
- Farm Gate: Fridays 6-8pm and Sunday 3-6pm
- Junction Farmers Market: 9-1 - sorry, we are short-staff this Saturday (Sep. 8th) and won't be there. We'll back on the 15th.
- Withrow Park Farmers Market: 9-1 every Saturday
- Peterborough Regional Farmers Market: 7-1 every Saturday
- Leslieville Farmers Market: 9-2 every Sunday
- Sorauren Farmers Market: 3-7 every Monday
- Stonegate Farmers Market: 4-7 on Tuesday, September 24th
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Managing an Ecosystem
The revival of Kendal Hills Game Farm is now in its 2nd year of a multi-decade project. We look after 70 acres of rolling hills, and 65 acres of that is forest. Our approach to farming is based on working with the natural features of the land to grow food, in order to reduce the amount of inputs needed.
This is a big part of why we grow mushrooms since they play a vital role in the decay of forests, releasing nutrients that can be used for new growth. Many of them just happen to be tasty and all of them are strangely beautiful. As you know, we grow most indoors on sawdust. We've been placing the spent sawdust in the woods, hoping to 'seed' the forest. It's working!!!! We've started seeing and harvesting 'wild' versions of the mushrooms. :)
With mushrooms looking after the decay, we added an important piece of the ecosystem management puzzle this summer to help with the growth of the forest: bees. We partnered with another young couple in the area, who are in their 2nd year as beekeepers. Wildflower Honey Co placed 20 hives on our farm and the bees have been loving it, and so has the forest. The heritage apple tress, wild flowers and berry bushes are having a great season. With our farm being on the edge of a forest and a significant distance from conventional field crops (soy, corn, etc...), these hives are as free from chemical contamination as possible and are thriving.
We are excited to announce that the first batch of honey from these hives is now available!
Since most of the farmers markets already have one or more honey vendors, we won't be able to bring the honey to market UNLESS YOU ORDER IT IN ADVANCE.
In future years we'll be moving even more of our livestock production to be in the forest and orchards (this Winter's project will be to train a couple of herding dogs to round-up the turkeys in the evenings), planting more fruit, nut & berry trees and encouraging more wild mushroom growth.
Thanks for joining us on this journey towards a new model for food & farming in Canada!
See you at market,
Emily & Dave
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