Flip of the Coyne

Did my major seed ordering this morning.  I am looking forward to the garden this year I have some things coming that I truly am looking forward to growing including peanuts.  In our quest for 100 mile sustainability it is hard to imagine not eating the things that we have taken for granted like peanut butter.

Even though I am not a big peanut butter eater the idea that I cannot have toast with peanut butter and honey is a bit of a downer but if my peanuts are successful then I will have enough peanuts that we can have peanut butter for a year.  When I first started to look for peanuts I thought I might be able to make some sort of makeshift lean-too to grow them in but then found not only one but two varieties that should grow in my limited growing season I was ecstatic, well almost.  The first ones I found were in the US and since I cannot make heads or tails out of the import regulations I started to lose hope until I found that Dominion Seed House had a variety developed for a Canadian growing season.

I have actually found a couple of great things over the past few weeks that excite me about 2010.  I got the Zero Mile Diet Seed Kit for Christmas from my wonderful wife, you can get yours at www.saltspringseeds.com, this kit will give me enough seeds combined with the Ref Fife we obtained last summer that we should be able to grow enough grains to keep bread on the table for a long time.  I also found Maple Syrup right here in BC and within 100 miles of home too!  I was amazed to find that BC has a budding maple syrup industry with a festival to boot!

Then there is Naramustard from Naramata, I have yet to confirm if their mustard seed is from local sources or from the prairies.  It may be the closest thing to local mustard I can find since I have come up empty on mustard seeds to grow.  I would like to know if I could make something from the wild mustard that grows everywhere.

I am still looking for a Canadian source of sorghum both for the sugar and for the grain so I can make gluten free flour for my dad.  There are suppliers all over the US but I have not found any here yet, well other than broom sorghum.  I did order an Aztec corn that I will try to dry and make flour out of I just hope mother nature cooperates this year.

Sometime today when I wake up since it is 4am I will make my sweet potato order.  This may be the funnest order the idea of having a winter supply of sweet potatoes is exciting.

I am pretty lucky that we have the space to experiment with all these varieties of plants.  If I am successful then in a few years we shouldn’t have to go off our farm to by much of anything.  Once we have our garden all established we have talked about putting in a small orchard, the challenge there is our growing zone is 3.  There are some older varieties that once grew on farms all around the area but as new people have moved in they quickly cut down the old fruit trees as the fruit is bitter from the lack of water or care or they simply don’t want to look after the tree or have no use for it.  It is a shame there used to be a bunch of apricot trees that grew what would now be a heritage apricot but they are mostly gone as are the cherry trees and even the apples.  It is too bad since these older trees were not always grafted onto another species.  We have a plum tree that my great grandpa planted the original tree is gone now but 4 of its suckers have grown into very productive replacements that give us the best plums ever.

Its late and my son will be up in a few hours so I need to sign off.  If you are going to be doing any gardening this summer I would love to hear about it.

g’nite.