​Another gorgeous day at the farm is well underway. Today is the last major day of transplanting here! Phew! From here on out we only have successions of certain crops to transplant in order to keep harvests  staggered throughout the season. 

The extreme lack of rain has been a major challenge for our transplanting process, as we are wholly reliant on drip lines and watering cans to keep small transplants alive until they are more established or it rains. As a result, we have experienced slightly higher mortality than normal. An abnormal number of cutworms, which thrive in warm, dry soil conditions, has also been responsible for the loss of many plants, including direct seeded crops like peas and beans.

To give you all some idea how dry it has been locally, so far in May we have had a little over half an inch (c. 15cm) of rain. On average, we would receive 3 inches (75 cm) of rain in May. June is usually our rainiest month, so there is still a good chance we'll see significant precipitation. We'll just have to hang our hopes on that possibility and keep on trucking water from Carstairs if it doesn't materialize. 

As of yesterday we have hauled about 24 000 litres of water to the farm and, if no significant rain comes, by the end of this week we will likely have doubled that volume. Bear in mind that up until 2020, we had never needed to haul water from our local municipal supply. We had always received sufficient rainfall or had our ponds to fall back on. We are truly farming in a different climate now and if the drought trend continues for large parts of the prairie region this year, there are going to be very serious consequences for both the producers and the food system as a whole.

That there are still people who deny anthropogenic climate change and climate science in general boggles the mind. But as Upton Sinclair wrote, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' This explains so much about the dysfunctional politics of hydrocarbon rich Alberta.

Considering that agriculture fundamentally underpins the continued existence of our civilization and that conventional approaches to food production are going to be seriously challenged by a changing, unpredictable climate, possibly leading to the collapse of industrial agriculture and all the 'cheap' calories it produces, it is time for all of us, especially those lucky enough to have been born into the wealth of the 'western' world to start taking this seriously and to get all of our families, communities and policy makers to start asking some difficult questions. 

There may come a time when the opportunity to guide conscious change towards a more sustainable, resilient, humane food system is lost to us. At that point in time the change will be imposed upon us by the dictates of survival. 

Yesterday was our first Farmers and Makers Market in Sunalta and Tamara, David and Dakota had a great time. This market, along with the Farmers and Makers Market at Central Memorial park in the Beltline, are completely new markets for us and so far things have gone quite well. We are optimistic that these 2 markets will grow to be quite busy and will help us survive another season. 

Tamara said that she met a number of people who have been supporters of our Online Market and it was great to be able to put faces to names that we know so well! 

Thank you all so much for your continued support. By ordering from our Online Market or buying food from us at the Farmers and Makers Markets, you are directly helping to build a farm and food hub for the anthropocene era! 

Sending big love from our little farm,

K+T

Greetings from Blue Mountain!


Yesterday's oppressive, heavy smoke has given way to a slightly clearer day this morning. The forecast calls for the chance of thunderstorms this afternoon, which will hopefully not bring lightning ignition of more fires, and tomorrow we are still seeing a high likelihood of real, heavy rain in our area and in areas to the north. 

We remain hopeful that we will finally see some decent precipitation to fill our water tanks, put some moisture into the soil and, most importantly, help to extinguish the fires raging in northern and west central areas of the province.

The unseasonably dry and hot conditions which have created the perfect conditions for wildfires should be an important reminder for all of us that we humans are a part of and subject to the natural systems upon which we depend for survival. Homo sapiens does not exist as the crowning creation of the natural world, but is embedded in and fully dependent upon these natural systems continuing to function in a somewhat consistent and predictable way.

Our complex civilizations, built on a foundation of agrarian culture evolving over the last 12 000 or so years, developed during a period of relatively benign and stable climate which some wise people refer to as the Goldilocks zone. Not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry.

With its over-reliance on fossil fuels to fuel growth for the sake of economic growth and it's unwillingness to confront the negative consequences of this growth, our industrial, globalized economy has destabilized our global climate to the point where we are no longer living in the Goldilocks zone and have created a new planetary epoch, the anthropocene.

The challenge of our future will be learning to exist in this new epoch, where we can no longer count on a stable climate to allow our agricultural activities to reliably bear fruit and where the risk of extreme weather brings the risk of destructive fires, floods, hail and drought. The very fundament of our civilizations' continued functioning, agriculture, is at risk, and I cannot help but be dumbfounded by the numbers of people who are completely indifferent to or ignorant of this new reality, or worse yet, living completely in denial of it.

Like many gardeners in our part of the world, this weekend and the following week is a very important one for our farm in terms of getting seeds and transplants into the ground. Throughout the course of the following week we will be putting close to 10 000 transplants into the ground and putting in place irrigation manifolds and drip lines to keep these plants growing. 

The last few years have brought us so many lessons in terms of adapting to unpredictable and changing conditions and we feel like we are better equipped for what is to come, both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of practices. We are focussed on becoming a resilient farm, and are confident that we will be able to produce healthy and delicious food, come what may. 

Thank you all for supporting us in this journey of learning and adaptation. We hope, and believe, that we will be here growing food for many years to come and that we will be able to teach many others how to do so.

Sending big love from our little farm,

K+T

​Happy Mother's Day!


Although it is often cynically stated that Mother's Day was invented by marketers to push increased consumption of flowers and cards, the truth is that it was manifested by one Anna Jarvis, following the death of her own mother in 1905, as a means of honouring the sacrifices mothers make for their children. Her story is fascinating and I encourage you all to read up on her life.

Well over a hundred years later and the day has become a huge opportunity for marketers, while women and mothers still face inequality, carrying a disproportionate share of the labour of raising children and maintaining a home. In the workplace, women and mothers are frequently paid less than their male counterparts doing similar work and quietly punished for having families which might interfere with an unconditional commitment to the workplace and climbing the corporate ladder.

This all is to say nothing of the violence to which women and mothers are all too often subjected. As Margaret Atwood famously stated, "men are afraid that women will laugh at them, women are afraid that men will kill them." Rates of intimate partner violence are still staggeringly high and we should all be doing everything we can to foster a culture where the price for inflicting violence on women is elevated both socially and judicially to the point where the consequences of carrying out such abuse are a much more effective deterrent.

I'm just a farmer, and as such, hardly an expert in fomenting societal change. But I cannot help but think that if we truly wish to honour our mothers, we should be supporting causes and political movements that have as their stated goals the complete equality of women and an end to the systemic patriarchal attitudes that permeate pretty much every facet of our existence. 

Sorry men, but the fact is that we have done NOTHING to warrant our privileged positions in this society. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that were more women, and especially mothers, in positions of leadership in business and politics, we would likely live in societies that are more compassionate, more egalitarian, more consensus based and healthier, in every sense of that word.

So by all means, buy your mothers flowers and cards and gifts, take them out for brunch or make a delicious dinner, but do not neglect to do the important work of pushing for real change, in politics and in the business world, that will ensure that mothers, women and girls are able to live lives where they are free to fulfil their full potential without fear.

I know that this might be a difficult subject to read about, but we do not put an end to the injustices in our world by avoiding uncomfortable subjects. We must confront them head on. 

Thanks for your patience and understanding in allowing me to convey my thoughts here. I am a brother to five sisters, raised by a mother who made so many sacrifices for her children, and husband to an amazing wife. Women, and mothers especially, make the 'human project' possible. It is time to stop acting like their positions and interests are secondary to those of men. Our future likely depends on it.

Spring planting continues apace, with many seeds now in the ground and early transplanting set to begin this week. So thankful for our stellar team members who are keeping everything on schedule and perhaps even a little ahead! 


Cooler weather has finally arrived, bringing with it a few showers. Not enough to make a substantial difference to either the soil moisture or the fire risk, but at least it is something and it will keep the dust down for a few days. We are trying to be optimistic about the forecast and hoping that much more rain will come later this week.

My sister and her family, who live up by Evansburg, have now been evacuated twice and some of their friends in the area have lost their homes. Some 25 000 people have now been evacuated in Alberta and it will take a few days of cooler weather and rain, real rain, to put an end to the fires.

Meanwhile, online idiots and conspiracy theorists, especially prevalent on Facebook, are claiming that the fires have been set by the NDP and its supporters in some twisted attempt to raise fears about climate change and change the outcome of the coming election. This kind of willful stupidity is almost enough to make a decent human despair. 

As some of you may have gleaned from Friday's Online Market update, Tamara and I are celebrating our birthdays this week. Together we are celebrating a collective 92 years of life on this beautiful planet. Today is Tamara's birthday and tomorrow will begin my fiftieth (50!) year on earth. 

If any of you good folks in our community of supporters wish to do some small kindness for us to celebrate these special days, we would ask that you channel that impulse into spreading the word about our online market to your friends and family in real life, and, if you use them, to your social networks online. 

Many of you are consistent and passionate supporters of Blue Mountain, and as such, you are the most valuable, intangible force for the organic growth of our farm business imaginable. Our marketing budget is so small that it is essentially nonexistent, but no amount of marketing money spent on slick and clever campaigns can ever compare to the effectiveness of word of mouth spreading positive stories about a great, locally-owned business.

Thanks for your continued support and encouragement and especially for the little notes, silly jokes and stories you share with us in your comments at ordering or in emails. These things mean so much to us!

Sending big love from our little farm,

K+T

​Happy New Year from Blue Mountain!

The sun has begun its slow, arcing climb out of the darkness of December. A few extra minutes of daily light, growing almost imperceptibly, are a sweet promise for the year which lies ahead, a solar encouragement for the farmers and gardeners in us all, a reminder that there are brighter days to come.
The year 2020, which we have now thankfully put behind us, was difficult beyond imagination for so many in our communities. To those of you, our friends, our customers, our supporters, who have lost grandmothers and grandfathers, moms and dads, or anyone dear to you in this pandemic, our hearts go out. We wish we could have been there to offer a hug and to show our love for you in your time of loss. 
It was a tumultuous and challenging year for Tamara and myself- the usual marathon of a growing season with the additional challenges of an obstacle course thrown in! 

The year began with such great promise for us and our farm, as our friends and family threw us a Hail Net fundraising party (way back in the before time!) at the Palomino Smokehouse on February 9. This community effort raised $14 000.00 for Blue Mountain to invest in hailnets and hoophouses, affording us a greater degree of resilience in our food production efforts in the face of a changing and unstable climate. 
Unfortunately, by the time we knew how much this effort had raised, Covid-19 had eclipsed all issues. Occupied with adapting to a rapidly changing situation, we did not find the time to properly thank the people who made it possible. To Quita and Hallie, Tamara's sisters who organized the fundraiser, our ever-loving gratitude! To sister Candace, who made the silent auction happen on the day of the event, thank you! To our friends and egg co-op partners of many years, the Smiths, David, Carolyn and Family; Tania and Trevor; Lauren and Rob; the Sunnyside Gang of Gerald, Kerri, and Dennis, thank you for your support! To Pat and Patty and Sunnyside Natural Market, thanks for your support and love! Special thanks to Wes and Jen of 8 oz. Coffee, and their superb crew comprised of sons Logan and Morgan for brewing up delicious coffee!

To everyone who attended the Hail Net Party, donated or bought silent auction items, or purchased a raffle ticket, all you beautiful people, thank you! We felt the love! The really good news? With 1000's of square feet of hail net on hand, we had a great growing season with no hail! A 2000 square foot high-tunnel purchased with some of the funds from the fundraiser will be going up this spring and we are still evaluating how the balance of the funds raised will be invested on the farm.

In the week following the Hail Net Party, we launched our 2020 CSA Shares, and sold out in a couple of days. This was encouraging, to say the least! Our weekly market presence at the Farmers & Makers Market at cSPACE during this period was really 'rocking it', as the kids say!

For Blue Mountain, 2020, planned as a year of infrastructure investment, was off to a great start.
But then, in late February, came the recognition that Covid-19 was already spreading rapidly in Alberta, especially in the Calgary area. With talk of coming lockdowns, we had one last great winter market at cSPACE on March 7th. By the 10th, the board which operates the Farmers & Makers Market, a board that Tamara and I were both on at the time, had decided that in order to protect our community of vendors and shoppers and with cSPACE, our host, having decided to close for the foreseeable future due to Covid-19, we had no option but to shut down the market as well. 

Our primary sales venue, a thriving market home that we helped build and loved dearly, was closed and not re-opening anytime soon. The potential financial loss arising from this closure, to say nothing of the friends and supporters we would no longer be able to connect with on a weekly basis, was anxiety inducing and truly saddening.

Coolers full of produce. Freezers full of protein. Chickens laying eggs every day for a market that is gone. What do you do? We decided to take a risk and go for it. Tamara worked for 2 days straight building out our on-line store, which we had previously used only to sell CSA shares, and we announced our intention to open a time-limited, on-line farmers market and contactless home delivery service. Even before the first orders were placed, a friend connected with us to see if her husband, Kris, whose company, Calgary Show Services was now completely shut down, might be able to make use of his van and driving services to get our orders out to our customers. Between this and our own larger reefer truck, we felt ready to take on this new venture.

We took our first on-line orders on March 14th and our first deliveries went out on the 17th. The initial response to our on-line launch was overwhelming, the second week even more so, requiring two delivery days to manage all of the orders. We learned a tremendous amount very quickly! Thanks to the broad community of supporters in Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane and Canmore who wanted to help keep us and the other producers whose products we were carrying in business, and also thanks to Kris Benoit, who is not only our primary driver, but also helped us master routing and delivery systems, we had a small but successful enterprise on its feet. 

At least from the perspective of our farm business surviving the initial challenges of the pandemic, we were feeling hopeful. 

On March 23rd, our sweet young dog Ruby, who was Tamara's constant, beloved companion on the farm, died instantly under the wheels of my farm truck after losing her footing in the snow as she ran alongside. For those of you who have known this sort of love for a canine in your lives, you know what a sense of loss we experienced, and what guilt I felt for having inadvertantly been the agent of her death. So many have lost so much this year, and this helps us put her loss in perspective, but we will never not miss her energetic presence and sweet demeanour. 

Our on-line presence continued to grow and by late April we could see the need to replace our old Hino, with its limited cooler functionality, with a newer, more flexible unit. We were lucky to find the truck we needed, a 2013 Hino 195 with a standalone reefer, and we added it to our fleet in early May. It allowed us to expand our cooler space in advance of our delivery days, so that we were able to keep up to the demand we were experiencing for on-line orders.

With our growing season now almost upon us, we were now facing a new challenge. The usual slate of potential interns and employees had evaporated as lockdown measures were imposed. Normally, we have candidates from many parts of the globe seeking to work with us, and in 2020 there were, understandably, only a very few Canadians interested in living and working at Blue Mountain. We were so fortunate to have 2 employees, Franck and David, still working and living on the farm, and they were crucial to us having the successful growing season we ended up having.

With a real dearth of workers to make everything happen on the farm looming over us, our community again came to our rescue. Some of our friends with young adults stuck at home, unable to go to school, unable to find employment, all due to the pandemic, reached out to see if we might be interested in having these young folks join us at the farm for the summer. My sister in Ottawa reached out as well, letting us know that her son and his girlfriend were interested in coming to Blue Mountain for a few months. In the end, we had 6 young adults ranging in age from 17 to 20, working with us at the farm. There were definitely some moments of frustration, as we tried to manage this crew composed mostly of such young, inexperienced humans, but in the end, Henry, Maia, Rorie, Vaughn, Maddie and Gregor helped us keep the farm functioning during its most demanding days in early summer. Our gratitude goes out to you all!

Crucial to our success in 2020 was the extension of our on-farm electricity grid in June, which would not have happened if it were not for the on-site assistance of Tamara's dad George. A retired electrical engineer, George helped me draw up the plans, ordered materials, directed our excavator operator and back-filling crew, and together we installed and connected new electrical panels for 4 major growth nodes on the farm. Thanks, George! This expanded grid also allowed for the addition of more cold storage and packing capacity in the form of a 48 foot reefer, which was instrumental in allowing us to manage all of the products coming from our own gardens and other producers before being packed for individual orders for delivery. The 48 foot reefer and the refrigeration system with which it is equipped were made possible by the generousity of our friend Jay, who has been a great supporter of Blue Mountain for the past 3 years. Thanks, Jay!

The 2020 growing season was a good one. While we could have used more heat, we did receive sufficient precipitation, and, unlike both 2018 and 2019, we were spared both destructive hailstorms and early snowfalls. Thanks to David and Franck and a gloriously long autumn, we were able to harvest all of our crops by the beginning of November. We are so excited that both of these excellent human beings will be working with us in 2021 and taking on a larger role in managing our gardens!

With the exception of the snowstorm which dumped 35-45 cms on Calgary and area on the night of December 21st, making our deliveries on the 22nd rather challenging and causing them to be stretched out into the 23rd, the remainder of 2020 was mostly uneventful, but still very busy, for us at the farm. The success of our on-line farmers market and home delivery service has allowed us to see a clear path forward and in 2021 we will be focussing on further developing the infrastructure required to support this business on our farm. 

There are so many more people we would like to thank for making 2020 a good year for Blue Mountain Farms, but I'll limit myself to just a few more! For her huge weekly contributions here at the farm, thanks to Tamara's mom, Carol. We literally could not do this without you! To our regular drivers, Erik and Sheldon, thanks for taking care of our truck and for being such professionals at what you do. To Rachel, who helped us manage the numbers of Calgary deliveries in April and May, thanks for being such a huge help. To our Canmore and Cochrane delivery crew, Laurelle, Eleanore, Elijah and Amanda, thanks for helping get our food up into the Bow Valley! To Tyla and Chantel, thanks for helping us prep and pack produce during our busiest weeks of the growing season. You ladies rock!

Finally, thanks to all of you who have supported our farm in 2020 through our on-line market. Special thanks to all of you who were part of our CSA program. We would not have made it without you! All of your notes and messages make us laugh and smile and wish we could meet you again, or anew, in person. We hope to host a most memorable party once we have put this pandemic behind us!

We have many dark winter days yet to survive before we see the first signs of spring arrive. But those precious minutes of extra sunlight we see each day are the cosmos' way of encouraging us not to lose hope. Brighter days are coming, but it is up to all of us, together, to make sure that the days yet to come are better than the days we have left behind, should we only have the courage, spirit and strength to make it so. Together. There is much hard work in this, but, as they say, everything worth doing takes time and effort.

Wishing you all a better, happier new year and sending love from the farm.
​
Yours, in food, in community,
K & T`