December 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Bella and Mae are thrilled with their shed, which Andrew built for them. Each rafter is notched into the log beams. Very wet and warm right now. More rain than snow. When it freezes, the whole farm is going to be an ice rink.

October 6, 2011

Fall has arrived. Lots of rain lately. More mud. Luckily, most of our tractor work is finished, although we still need to get the garlic patch sorted out. Can't decide where to put it this year...

2011 potato field on the right. 2012 on the left. Both seeded to fall rye. 2011 field (now to be called the 2016 field), will be worked up and re-seeded with the regular cover crop in spring 2012.

Carrot washing operation. Plastic bag allows this two be a one person job and worker can switch out bins without turning off any equipment. Keep everything moving- important rule when trying to get lots of work done.

We want to thank the following people for helping us put on a fabulous show for Slow Food Cycle Sunday (over 4,000 bike riders!):

Kathy Wallace

Hazel Birchall

April Lachals

Jess Heiberg

Steph and Mark Owen

Tina Fineza

Annette Rawlinson

Grant Cousar

...and thanks to all our Vancouver customers who made the trek.

Check out dbsteers on Flikr for lots of great pictures.

We will be at our regular markets starting this weekend.

Come visit the farm Sunday August 21st for Slow Food Cycle Sunday. We are located about 1/2 way up the Pemberton Meadows Road. We would love to see you there and show you the tractors, equipment, fields, and potaoes.

Join Evelyn Coggins, registered clinical herbalist, on a walk through Jeanette Helmer’s organic herb garden. Tours begin at 9:30, 11:30 and 2pm.

Enjoy Lucia Gelato, Nidhi Raina Indian Cuisine, Raw Planet Foods.

Art by Anete Jeffe.

The potato flower.

The harvester is finally in the field. The darker plants are the Norland, which will be at markets first. To the left are the Sieglinde and to the right, Bintje.

Mom asking Anna's advice about something. Anna advertising the upcoming Slow Food Cycle Sunday. Which will be held August 21st. Go to www.slowfoodcyclesunday.com for more information.

Planting time. All the spuds are in the ground. Countdown to markets is on!

Farmer Doug. In the background is the Tissue Culture planted from the lab plants.

Hoeing the tissue culture. Too delicate for mechanized work. The potato plants, that is, not me.

Several acres of potato field, looking very romantic in the morning mist.

Andrew working on the cow barn. On the newly cut cedar tree, the bark practically fell off. Andrew really had to work at the older, dead one.

Behold, the chicken, about to cross the garden hose..

These two pics were taken in early May.

Angus and Maggie carefully planting something.

Clear and cold with a very hard snow-pack. I have been hauling firewood out of the bush with this sleigh built on an old pair of skis. I think I am trying to off-set the pending tractor work. Luckily, we have a bit of time on our side. Looks like it might be a late spring, with another foot coming down this very day.

 Sorry about this terrible picture quality. I had to act quickly or one of them would have moved. Yes, these are all the dogs and cats sleeping beside the fire. It was cold outside.

Andrew (father to Angus and Maggie, husband to Lisa, intrepid woodsman) displays his natural talents....

Bella and Mae love to eat eat eat...

December 2010

We will NOT be at market Dec 18, as previously suggested. Not enough spuds.

Merry Christmas.

November 2010

Getting really wet now everywhere. Still no real hard frost, but that is coming soon. The snow is getting lower and lower on the mountains. We are pretty well out of potatoes, with only enough to go to one more market- December 18th  in Vancouver. The winter market at Nat Bailey on Saturday's seems to be rockin' and we look forward to being there a little more often next year. We are doling them out to the restaurants, along with celeriac and eggs.

These pictures are from a little earlier in the fall:

Celeriac harvest: lots of flowers this year, which provided a nice treat, visually.

Maggie in charge of the chickens and Jennie in charge of ducks.

Jennie and nephew Angus.

Sept 2010

The summer season has come to a close with a heck of a lot of rain. We are at both the East Van and Kits markets on Sat and Sun in Vancouver, as well as Squamish on Sat and Whistler on Sun. The Vancouver markets will be going until the end of October. Not sure about the other two.

All the potatoes are in, and we are awaiting the first frost.

We are thankful to all our customers who make the trip, rain and shine, to the markets.

Some random shots from the summer:

One day Twique, the dog visible in this pic, made her way over to the other side of the road where we were digging. Very unusual for her to leave the farm yard. Still not sure why she did that, but she sure enjoyed spending the day in the tractor while we were digging.

This is the view of the harvester from the cab of the tractor.

This is a view of the mangled bunker feeder which got caught on the side of the bunker without us/me noticing and self destructed as a result. Jennie and Anna were able to take it all apart and take the worst mangled metal to John Tschopp's machine shop. We had it back up and running in 24 hours. This event picked up nominatioins for "worst breakdown on the farm 2010", "most mangled metal 2010" and also "biggest thing you don't want to tell dad about Lifetime Achievement Award".

Market update:

We will be at Squamish this Saturday July 17, and hopefully Whistler July 18. We will begin to harvest in earnest next week and attend the East Van market July 24 and Kits July 25. Potatoes have been slow to grow but are catching up now with all the heat.

Last day of June entry

Here are the first potatoes picked this year. They are a little small just now. We consider this a "promising" sign of things to come. As it stands, our first East Van market will be July 17th.

June 2010

A windy and rather wet start to the summer up here in Pemberton. Potatoes don't mind, but I think the corn might get a little behind...

We look to be on track for potatoes mid-July, and look forward to joining fellow Pemberton farms Rootdown and IceCap at the Vancouver markets. It's a good looking field. We have spent lots of time cultivating with various implements and the weeds are not competing well against the potatoes.

We hosted the UBC Farm Apprentice Progam students recently. Great prgram. Good luck all you future farmers.

Pemberton market starts this Wed June 30 outside the Pemberton Supermarket.

And this is exciting...we are on Facebook: Helmer Farm. And even more exciting...we are on Twitter helmerfarm.

My two favorite vehicles.

Here is a little potato. This was taken at the beginning of the month. Much bigger now. Flowers possibly in the next 2 weeks, depending on the variety.

Jeanette and Anna did a bike trip up over the Hurley Pass, over Mission Mountain, and along the Highline Road back to Darcy, and then to Pemberton. 3 nights, 4 days of fairy epic cycling- very little traffic, wonderful wildflowers, good company, and ridiculous hill climbs on ungraded dirt roads.

May 2010

Want to know what else is happening in Pemberton's farming scene? Go to www.pembertonfarmers.com.

Stay up to date with the big summer bike ride at www.slowfoodcyclesunday.com.

Anna has been writing articles in the local paper, the Whistler Question. Read the latest here.

March 2010

Welcome to the farm, cows with curly hair.

Mom and Uncle Duncan, the famous ex cattle rancher and current organic orchardist.

The fuel line failed and got replaced. An adventure in learning.

We are spending some hours in the lab cutting plantlets. We will end up with 150 plants of each of our varieties which we will then plan in the field, harvest, plant again next year, repeat, and then bring to market. We do this for 8 of the varieties we grow; the others are grown for us by other seed growers in Pemberton.

Here is our spring newsletter!

March can be a bit of a messy month on the farm. The hole is filling with water as the water table is just about at the surface just here.

Maggie discussing RPM's with Anna

This is a picture of Jennie working on the biodynamic preparation 501 (from last fall).

Jan 2010

We are all back from various holidays and are now planning for the coming season. Plans are the only things that grow at this time of year, and do they ever flourish. Can be a little frustrating as there is lots of snow on the frozen ground and there is plenty of winter to come.

Still lots of spuds in the root house. We are attending the winter markets on alternate Saturdays, and Capers Cambie, Raincity Grill, C, Nu, Peartree and Bishops are getting regular deliveries. Thanks to all those hearty Vancouver shoppers who come out to markets rain or shine. Vancouver market shoppers are quite hard-core. There have been some cold, wet markets days where we have been run off our feet. Thanks so much, everyone.

The Pacific Agricultural Show is this weekend. We are going on Thursday to attend some potato meetings, see the latest new equipment, and make even more plans.

Happy January.

December 09

The barn is finished and we are now stuffing it with equipment.

However, we are slightly distracted with this in the back field:

One sweet sheet of ice. Heavy rain almost every day in November, (while building the barn), has resulted in some big ponds. Now that the weather has turned cold and sunny (now that the barn is finished), we are rewarded with pond hockey.

November 09 update.

The barn is coming along very well. The new part is now finished and we are tarting up the old barn and the shack-teau. The ridge cap went on at 5pm just as the first really big snowfall of the season got into full swing. Too wet and cold to bring out the camera.

Tons of rain in November. Neither river flooded, and there is an abundance of water on the fields. Every time we think it is going to get cold and really start snowing, the rain comes (again and again). The fields are happy for the water, and the cover crop on this past season's field is really taking hold before the winter comes, so we are actually quite happy with the weather.

This picture shows the log work on the barn. Roger is an absolute artist.

October 09

Well another summer is done and dusted. And dusty it was. And smoky too. 1,600 hectares of wildfire within sight of the farm was a little distracting. No significant rain from very early summer until late August and then very little (enough to douse the fires, thankfully). High temperatures. Everything that got water grew really well.

The potato crop is all in now. We had an irrigation system on 1/2 the crop this year (for the first time ever). A good year to start.

upper roothouse now full

chickens "helping" to dig the base of a new compost pile

The fall project: rebuilding Grandpa's barn, which had sunk two feet over the last 40 years and become downright dangerous. Roger Harris is doing it and we are helping. He is also going to expand it so that we can fit more equipment in there.

Somebody is going to be peeling all those logs for the barn...

Earlier in the summer....

Jennie the bee lady.

Collecting Dandilions for a Biodynamic preparation

Garlic coming up strong.

We started planting potatoes April 26th and finished May 7. Today is May 18th and they are starting to show! Go to the Farmer's Markets page for our market schedule. This year we have 18 varieties.

Twique (the dog) and a chicken on guard over newly hatched chicks.

The celeriac is started! This is going to be a banner year. I have promised Chefs Quang AND Scott.

Jennie and Maggie keep the bees company on a nice warm winter day.

This little owl has become part of the family and spends hours around the wood pile waiting for mice.

In case anyone was wondering what we get up to all winter...

Everytime it snows we shovel the snow away from four greenhouses before it gets too heavy and threatens to crush the structures. Here is Jeanette hard at work. It has snowed a lot lately.

The field on the left is next year's potato field, planted in fall rye. The field on the right is this year's (2008) potato field, planted back to forage (clover and grasses).

2007 potato field with a good cover crop showing the mulch from regular mowing.

The small greenhouse has some lettuce planted which will be ready in February

The garlic was planted at the end of October.

Doug, Jennie and Anna on the tractor.

How we grow

We use biodynamic methods to build soil health and productivity. Our potato fields enjoy a five year rotation under cover-cropping which returns the nutrients to the soil. The off-year fields are mowed 4-5 times per year which creates a thick layer of mulch- we consider this to be porridge for the soil and thus there is no need for blood or bone meal fertilizers. We cultivate the fields using our tractors and PTO driven implements and well as more simple discs and harrows. Garlic, celeriac and other vegetables are cultivated using stand-up hoes, hands and elbow grease. Garden soils benefit from applications of healthy biodynamic compost heap material.

A proud mother with 7 babies!

Potato Nutrition:

Potatoes (with the skin on) contain fiber, protein, more Potassium than bananas, complex carbohydrates (the good ones), Vitamin C, important B Vitamins, and other minerals (Copper, Magnesium, Iron). They can be a healthy meal all on their own!

tomatoes, sunflowers and a handfull of fingerlings...

Garlic hanging in the barn to finish curing.