Rêves Canadiens

The First Year

Here in Bannockburn just north of Eldorado in Ontario the growing season is short and the soil so weak it drove many immigrant farmers south to the lake. This in prehistoric times was the beach. We lie between the limestone to the south and the granite to the north.
My field is sand deposited by the river many centuries ago. Blue devils and goldenrod love to share the soil with the quackgrass and vetch. I ploughed the field twenty-five years ago and managed to kill tomato plants and potatoes.
Cairn-Tech offered to supply their agricultural products if I supplied the elbow grease. I had used the field the previous year to stack logs for the portable saw-mill.
I started to prepare the field the year before by applying six bags of Crossroads. In the Spring I spread six bags of Legacy by hand over the acre. The farmer up the road then ploughed and disked after which I spread six bags of crossroads and started to plant. I divided the acre in half and planted buckwheat in one half in preparation for next year. The other half I marked off in three foot rows crosshatched at the same interval. This provided me with hills at the intersections. I planted 180 hills of potatoes and 130 hills of carrots. Yes, hills of carrots. I placed a coffee can on the hill to make a circle where I planted the carrot seeds. At the time I thought I would rototill down the rows and across field using the diagonal. That is until I heard of a farmer in the States who moves his chickens across his pastures in large moveable cages.

I have three cages 2'x2'x8' which move down the rows like organic rototillers. I also planted buckwheat in the rows for the chickens to eat as they moved. I move the cages a cage length a day. In the morning I throw down a little rolled barley and while they are feeding I move the cage. I do this so that they don't get trapped under the cage as it moves. I even have my mature hens in a cage with a laying box.
I have planted about twenty of my potatoes in tires with straw mulch using a method I found in the permaculture book. I am curious to see if the tired hills produce more potatoes.

The results so far are very good. The potatoes are doing very well. I have kept the potatoes bugs at bay by squashing them. They have not been a big problem. I squashed ten to twenty a day at the worst time. The basil is growing very slow, but I started it by seed in the field.
The buckwheat that I planted in the rows started to get ahead of me, so I mowed down the rows with a lawnmower. This provided instant mulch. I am finding that the chickens do not eat all the weeds. A friend down the road has informed me that turkeys do eat everything. I may try them next year, but I only think I will be able to get two in my small cages.
I bought a roto-tiller in late August and now follow the cages with the tiller, because as yet the soil is very hard and packed. I am replanting the rows that the chickens will be going down next with buckwheat. Hopefully it won't get ahead of the birds.
At the end of the season I moved the chickens out into the field that had been in buckwheat after I roto-tilled the buckwheat into the ground. My routine changed now to releasing the birds at five o'clock in the afternoon. Earlier than this on sunny days tempted hawks. Before letting the birds out I retill a section of ground. This tempts the birds to scratch for the freshly exposed worms and away from the tomatoes in the garden. On the whole though the chickens stay away from the crops.
You can see the difference between the sunflowers grown without Cairn Tech's minerals and with. I could see the difference even more dramatically within the garden. The product in this case Crossroads was spread more thickly in the center of the garden. The sunflowers grew taller as they reached this area.
The potatoes did well, but I found out at the end of the season that I had not planted them correctly in the tires. The formula is to add straw dirt, straw dirt. I only added straw.
The chicken cages worked well, next year I will leave them in the garden and use them to keep the frost off the tomatoes. I will spread a tarp across the cage and adjoining plants.

Final Conclusion

Just before Thanksgiving the eighty-six year old farmer up the road came by for a visit. He was the farmer who gave me the seed potatoes. He started the conversation by apologizing for giving me old seed potatoes and wasting my time and effort. I said, "But Ab the potatoes are not that bad considering they were grown in soil as hard as cement." I was able to get five to ten potatoes per hill and some quite large. His potatoes did not produce or produced hollow potatoes. This was the icing on the cake for me. Minerals and all the work I did was worth it. I can not wait till next year and its surprises.
The carrot's brix test was "9" in March after a long winter in the rootcellar. The best we could find in any food store was "6". The amazing thing is that they taste even higher in sugar. It must be the combination of balanced minerals.