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`
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`
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