It's begun...

We had such a mild winter this year with so little snow, and a few early warm spells that were a total tease, then the freezing temps and flakes of snow last week made it all seem like a cruel joke. But spring is really here! Everything's greening up nicely- in the veggie garden the peas, rapini, arugula and lettuce greens are in the ground, and I already have rhubarb and spring onions. The flower gardens are erupting daily and up on the roof the seedlings are looking so promising, I can almost taste the tomatoes already.


Speaking of tomatoes I'm up to 14 varieties of heirlooms this year; all except the Romas are destined for containers on the roof. Right now the Cheroke Purples and Black Brandywines seen here are well ahead of the rest; they were planted at Gayla's book launch back in Feb.


I also have Big Orange Stripe, Black Cherry, Yellow Cherry, Scotia Cross, Russian Rose, Sasha's Altai, Green Zebra, Romas and Brandywine, all planted mid March.


The 3 newest - Amish Paste, Black Plum, and Cosmonaut Volkov, seeds courtesy of a fellow YYGer, are in the makeshift greenhouse along with eggplants, Russian shallots, basil,and dill.



Colette and I tripped over to the Gladstone on Saturday for Slow Food's Farm to Home Fair- a lovely gathering of local food producers. We got to make our own butter and shopped for seeds- I had to buy these beauties, CAPUCJINERS BLUE PODDED PEA from Urban Harvest (http://uharvest.ca/)

Some of other highlights were the absolutely fantastic cheeses from Fifth Town artisan cheese company ( http://www.fifthtown.ca/) , and talking chickens with one of the farm families from the Kawartha Ecological Growers group (http://kawarthaecologicalgrowers.com/ ). Rent-a-chicken for city dwellers might be a possibility next year- I'm so there!

And I finally got to meet Joel and Dana of Well Preserved ( http://wellpreserved.ca/) in person!! We've been connecting online for so long it was just like running into old friends and I know we will be getting together to swap CanJam jars soon!



Speaking of which- the CanJam ingredient for this month is herbs. Colette and I've got some great ideas for this but the challenge this month seems to be whether our chosen ingredients will be available in time, so spring please get a move on!