Thursday 19 June 2014

Farmgate is Open


As you come up the highway, past the old stone house with the white picket fence where the old bachelor farmer lives, and past the old United Church that sits unused, and then past the cemetery, the little one right off the highway with the old wire sign, you will see the sign for the hamlet of Murvale and on your left, a large greenhouse in the distance. You will then notice a sign that reads:

Eggs - free range, organically fed
Pork - organically fed
Chinese Dim Sum -
Steamed buns and egg tarts
Kale

This is Long Road Eco Farm.  The sign now reads all of those things and cucumber.  We have turnip greens and snow peas, radishes and collards, garland chrysanthemum and oregano.  Lettuce next week and then tomatoes, mustard greens, asian salad mix, then soon after we will have squash and sweet potatoes.  There will be okra, chard, zucchini, cilantro, sweet corn, strawberries, and lots of nice beans of different colours and lengths.  There will be garlic and onions, and ground cherries and watermelon.  There will be Shiitake mushrooms, Berkshire pork and eggs from Chantecler hens.  There is a lot going on right now.

The farmgate is open and people are pulling in.  You can hear the slow crunch of gravel as cars hesitantly venture into the property, driver and passenger gazing to the left at the garden beds under row cover or black mulch cover or bare soil with vegetation as neatly weeded as can be expected, then to the right where the greenhouse doors are open and cucumber and tomatoes sprawl upwards on stakes, the yellow cucumber flowers bright.  At the foot of the driveway is parking and a chicken yard in sight.  People get out and ask about our operation, buy a couple of steam buns, some veggies, some egg tarts.  Driving back towards the highway they see the red clover, the daisies, the butter and eggs, the alfalfa, the mullein, the prairie smoke.

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