Harrowsmith的Summer 2022目录

Ready to grow my own Dear Harrowsmith, I was thrilled to find your magazine on the newsstand and with such helpful information in it to grow my own vegetable garden, something I am doing for the first time ever. Your magazine is something I always saw at my grandparent’s house and I am happy to find the modern update to it now. Thank you! Sarah Conlan, Toronto Small steps for change To the editor, We loved receiving your Earth Day newsletter and daily ideas! Our family has already tried a bunch of these sustainability ideas and we are saving more for the upcoming weekends. Already we have been more diligent about unplugging appliances when we are not using them, not running the water when we brush our teeth and we…

For so many of us, the idea of fresh-from-the-garden food fuels our dreams of moving out to the country. How nice would it be, we wonder, to have a plot of land that yielded good-for-you, nurturing food for our families? If it could connect us deeply with nature and our animal friends again? And wouldn’t it be an amazing place to raise our children in too? Those romantic notions have reached new levels of urgency during the pandemic. Has anyone ever wanted to have their own farm as much as they did during the past 2 years? I sure did. All of a sudden, the idea of self-sustainability and locally sourced food became paramount. For so many of us, though, growing our own food is still a long way from…

Meet with the home/farm owners ahead of time. Get your hands, eyes, and body out on the land and with those you’ll be caring for so that you have›an opportunity to see how they respond to you and vice versa. Try some of the to-dos in real time so that you have a feel for the function of things, can gauge your comfort level, and ask for any support or clarification while you have them there. Remember that you are a visitor to the animals’ home. They know where they are, and they want to be there. Sometimes it can become overwhelming to feel responsible for so many lives and their care. At one point, my anxiety had me fearing they might all run away overnight! Trust in those you’re…

“The secret to having a great atmosphere in the garden is having lots of trees,” says Virginia Johnson. “It’s all about scale, like a painting. I counted last summer, and I think I have 25 trees in my tiny garden and I’m including a dwarf magnolia, my hornbeams and the beautiful upright ‘Degroot's Spire’ cedars.” Virginia Johnson wanted an old-fashioned garden in the back of her modern house in Toronto’s inner-city neighbourhood of Trinity Bellwoods. While most of the planting in her yard happened two summers ago along with the construction of her artist’s studio, she has been imagining this garden for years. “The backyard used to be a lawn and a sandpit for my kids to play and now it is growing with my family as we are growing…

CHAINSAW For cutting fence posts and crib logs to length. A small model is all you need because cutting is light and intermittent. One of the new cordless chainsaws is perfect for this work. POST HOLE AUGER This is for boring holes if you have enough depth of soil for posts. Tractor-mounted models are the easiest to use, but portable gas-powered augers are an option, too. A long-handled shovel, a pry bar and a clamshell scoop are hand tools that work. I’ve dug dozens of fence post holes by hand like this, and it is an option if you have more time than money. TAPE MEASURE AND 48-INCH LEVEL The tape measure is essential for spacing the gate posts or cribs and for cutting parts. The level lets you orient…

Summer is all about dining alfresco with family and friends; it’s the season when days are long, fresh produce is abundant and the mood is relaxed. The simple menus I create on these days call for pulling out the platters and serving family-style. The best time to dine outside is just as the sun begins to set and the light turns golden. Some of my favourite memories are these magical summer evenings filled with laughter, great food and cool sips. I hope these recipes inspire your summer nights too. As estival fruits, mangoes and cherries envelop the senses in the deeply sweet aromas of flowers warmed by the winds of the season. Mangoes are juicy and dance with the flavour profiles of peaches and citrus, while cherries embrace both rose…

If you are going to go to the trouble of making a great burger or hand-cut fries, why not let your ketchup rise to the occasion. This ketchup is closer to the true origins of ketchup. It is spicier, more savoury and far more complex than any of the popular brands. Taste it side by side with that bottle in your fridge and judge for yourself. 1 tbsp olive oil ½ onion, diced 2 garlic cloves, chopped 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 tbsp best-available balsamic vinegar 2 tbsp brown sugar ½ tsp salt 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper ¾ tsp ground allspice ½ tsp mustard powder › tsp ground cloves 2 star anise, ground up in a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder ¾ tsp harissa 1…

As I craft this note, we are getting ready to celebrate my nana’s 103rd birthday. My nana, Helen, grew up on a farmstead in Buchanan, Saskatchewan with very little. For as long as I can remember, Nana would tell stories about milking the cows, washing laundry by hand, and storing potatoes in the ground to keep them fresh over the winter. She doesn’t make her own meals anymore but when she fed her four kids and her five grandchildren, it was clear that nothing ever went to waste — every bit of food was saved to make into another meal, feed an animal or nourish her compost. Bones and peelings made stock, bacon grease was used to fry the perogies and bits of anything and everything filled her delicious cabbage…

Whether you have three backyard hens or 300 broilers, they still need care at least twice a day. And if you want to go away on holiday, then you need to find someone to help care for your homestead. In the last 8 years of vacationing away from the farm, we’ve learned a lot about the dos and don’ts of farm sitting. My husband, Ken, and I have been living on our 17-acre farm for 4 years, after moving from our first farm just down the road back in 2018. Now that we have the space, we raise all our own meat, plus far too many eggs, of course. We have a select few vegetables and fruits we grow, but gardening is not our passion. Animal husbandry, eating nose to…

Haute Goat Farm in Port Hope, ON. Book the Yome Sleepover Experience and slow things down with the simple pleasures of life in the country.hautegoat.com Foymount Farm in Cormac, ON. From collecting eggs, feeding horses and looking after›the sheep and donkey, every morning and evening there is something to do when you book an overnight stay on the farm. foymountfarm.ca Bold Point Farmstay in B.C. The cozy farm cottage on Quadra Island is rustic yet charming and daily activities are hands-on and interactive, perfect for kids. Enjoy farm-fresh meals, nearby beaches and incredible starry night views. farmstay-ca.com Hope River Farm on P.E.I. Hang out with the livestock and lend a hand at Chore Time with the farm work for a couple of hours. The experience promises to give you and…

Upcycling is a fancy name for summoning your creativity to reuse something for a new purpose. Doing this benefits the environment by reducing the amount of waste going into landfills by decreasing the resources required to make new things. Plus, it will save you money. Whatever your “why,” the goal is to take something that is no longer used and to turn it into something you can benefit from. An upcycling project can be something you add to your wardrobe, your home or —›in this case — your garden. Hanging pretty I saw this colander at a thrift shop for $4 and instantly knew it would make a perfect addition to my kitchen garden. It’s deep, allowing lots of room for roots to grow, and it’s already fixed with natural…

Fresh veggies are the essence of summer, but when a recipe calls for them to be cooked, blanching them is the best way to preserve their crunch and flavour. Blanching and shocking is a technique used to partially cook and preserve the vibrancy and crunchiness of vegetables. Vegetables can be eaten after they’ve been blanched and shocked, or they can be added at the end of a recipe. Blanched and shocked vegetables are perfect for vegetable grazing trays, salads and pasta. 1. GET THE WATER JUST RIGHT! You’ll need a pot of salted boiling water, and when I say salted, I am speaking of salinity levels beginning to approach the salinity of sea water. This is especially important if you plan on serving the vegetables cold. Salting the water well…

The bun you wrap your burger in is often an afterthought, but it can have as much of an impact on the overall taste experience as the burger itself — and it deserves the same consideration. The right bun adds just enough bread to every bite, without overwhelming the burger and condiments. The wrong bun hijacks the whole experience or collapses into nothingness. Ever since Daniel Boulud put foie gras on a burger and charged $50 for it, high-end burgers have established a foothold in the world of fine dining, and “third wave” burger joints have popped up everywhere. Bread makers have risen to the occasion, and now an assortment of artisanal buns designed to complement fancy burgers are available at many grocery stores and bakeries. The most popular options…

I’m not sure why I wanted to torture myself, but I went out to our vegetable garden one afternoon, after many months of neglect.› Our veggie garden is fenced in with pickets recovered from an old fence that used to line the front of our property.›It’s located in the far corner of our spacious backyard, close to the pasture and as far as possible from the toxic walnut trees that drip and ooze inky juglone. There’s a gate that (mostly) keeps the chickens out and there’s even a sturdy bench at the end of the garden row — perfect for sitting and admiring. It’s very charming, or rather, it could be. That day I wasn’t feeling very charmed. I could barely find the flagstone path, and with each step through…

DENISE AND CHRIS’S eldest daughter, Naomi, calls what she’s experiencing right now in agriculture “a movement.” “I was doing a presentation last night, and one of the questions was, do you have a hard time keeping consistent labour or return labour? And the answer is yes. And that’s because these young, excited farmers are often wanting to start their own farms as well. So we see that they come on as a manager role, but they’re also building their own farm and we’re trying to help foster that. [Eventually] they decrease their hours until, finally, they’re ready to launch and do their own thing. It feels like a little win every time,” says Naomi, who also works with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, which is helping new and young…

• Boots! You’re going to want to ensure you can get around the property comfortably and safely. Boots help for trudging through mud, protecting from ticks, and giving you good coverage when you’re walking among the animals. • And on that note, comfy clothing! • A good book, or a journal. Little notes kept from your experience are likely to be valuable to you in the future. • A non-electronic pastime, like needlework or a musical instrument. • Some nice recipes or plans to make food slowly.…