Spring is here!  We are busy planting out all the cool weather starts.  Lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, and pac choi.

The over-wintering lettuce in the greenhouse has been growing.  We've had three rounds of Saturday deliveries so far this year.  We've featured Spring Mix, Spicy Mix (with overwintering mustard greens), and Garden Salad.

Linda also planted 500 garlic cloves in the fall, which are starting to grow fast in the springtime.  We've just given the garlic a nice feed of fresh compost.

 Springtime is opening compost bin time!

Look at all the black gold that has been composting for the past 8 months.  We are now busy spreading this home made fertilizer on our garden beds from two compost bins like this.   Each bin fills about 30 wheelbarrows of compost.  Thanks so much to all our Malcolm Island food scrap and manure donors throughout the year.

This is how the compost looks like before it turns into black gold.  We layer cardboard with garden waste, food scraps, and manure to achieve the optimal carbon-nitrogen balance.  We are now ready to close this compost bin until fall when the process starts all over again.  For incredible compost know-how, check out "The Rot" blog at https://therot.substack.com/.

It feels rather dark out there these days...in more ways than one.

Here at Luckyfarm77, we've been focussing on spreading positivity around. We opened up the compost bin to find a huge pile of beautiful "black gold".  Thanks to all our food scrap donors in Sointula where we pick up each Saturday.  Thanks to all our donors: Danni and Brian (Malcolm Island Food Co.) , Robin (Oceanfront Hotel), Linny, Jane, Cody and Spencer, and all the staff at the Burger Barn!  Also Coho Joe's gives us lots of cardboard that provides lots of carbon for our garden!

If you want to be added to our weekly food scrap pickup send us a note at hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail.com or call us at 250-973-2077.  It's so easy to be part of the solution, we will even provide you with plastic buckets!

We added the lovely compost to our garden beds and then for the winter covered them with plastic or old tarps to keep the rain from washing out the nutrients.  We also added seasoned horse, pig, and chicken manure that we kept under a tarp all summer long to heat it up so it's safe to put in our garden.  Thanks Terah and Gretchen from Mitchell Bay!  We will continue to add seaweed and grass clippings all winter long to build up the beds under the tarps and plastic.

For the past 16 years we have been growing out and then saving garlic cloves to build up our garlic production.  After harvesting most of the potatoes, this year we planted over 500 garlic cloves in late September.

Here are the two 37 foot long uncovered beds with the planted garlic topped with seasoned manure and wood ash to make the soil less acidic and add nitrogen.

What a jungle in the tomato house!  This is one tomato plant -- "yellow school bus", a cherry tomato that can grow up to 12 feet high!  This is from our own saved seed stock.  It's delicious and very popular with our customers!

Despite the cold summer, there was such a profusion of late tomatoes.  We made marinara sauce by first blanching and pealing the red and yellow tomatoes.  Then we baked the tomatoes along with onions, carrots, garlic, and herbs.  The baked concoction is then blended and frozen in zip-lock baggies.  This makes an excellent base for spaghetti, pizza, etc.

We continued our home deliveries and fridge sales into the fall. 

If you want to be on the 2025 delivery season, send us an email at hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail.com or phone 250-973-2077.  There is no minimum order and no commitment!

We had fun this year being creative with new products.  We offered the "Roasted Vegetable Medley Kit" and the "Weekender" featuring Mitchell Bay Sea Salt's smoked basmati rice coupled with seasonal root vegetables.  They were both a hit!

Happy Belated Hallowe'en!

Aside from fresh produce available for harvest this time of year, we also are harvesting seeds.  Here is one Pac Choi plant gone to seed.  It was chosen because it was a volunteer plant that survived and thrived all winter long and into the early summer, indicating strength and vitality.  Linda has many brown paper bags currently hanging from the ceiling of her painting studio, drying a variety of seeds that she has recently harvested.

We're off on our ebikes to make a local delivery in Mitchell Bay.  Along with our salad greens, celery, fresh roasted pumpkin seeds, this 8 pound gorgeous cabbage was added from Slow Dog Farm.

More cabbages from the "Cabbage Patch Lady" aka Slow Dog Farm, heading to the Burger Barn.  A whooping total of 49 pounds of cabbage.  Coleslaw here we come!

 Our produce is also available along with Slow Dog Farm's at the Fridge on First Street, right next to the Lil' Wild Gift Shop.  We stock up the fridge on Wednesday's and Saturday's.

 Packaging up potatoes on the weigh scale for deliveries..

 The Merlot lettuce adds fantastic red colour to your salads.  It is doing really well into the summer heat.

It's that time of year for the St. John's Wort to blossom.  The bees go crazy for the yellow flowers.

Greenhouse #1 is just loaded with:

1) Tomatoes forming an arch in the foreground.

2) Green beans climbing the page wire on the left

3) Sweet peppers in the bed on the left and also in pots on the left

3) Basil in pots on the back

4) Melons in the bed on the right

The flagging tape is on the chicken wire to stop the birds from flying into it.

Here is a close up of those sweet peppers.  We already harvested a few - excellent in stir fry, omelettes, and tacos. 

Here is an eggplant coming along.

Looks like this melon might ripen later this summer.  So sweet and juicy.

The arch of yellow tomatoes are on their way.

More green beans hanging on the page wire trellis.  Sweet peppers below and in pots.   We chop up and freeze the sweet peppers, which last us all winter long.

 We are harvesting potatoes for delivery in the early morning shade.

Potatoes and rows of kale in the garden expansion with the two greenhouses overlooking above the retaining wall.

Our first harvest of yellow tomatoes from Greenhouse #2.

And a few red tomatoes along with a cucumber made a great garden salad to accompany black bean tacos!  Happy Summer everyone, we hope that  your gardens are flourishing!

Since it is the coolest spring on the Wet Coast in 70 years, our spinach, originally planted last August 2023, continues to proliferate in the greenhouse.  We make sure to open the sides of the greenhouse during the day to keep the spinach cool.

Here is a sample of the custom box deliveries that we started in May.  The deliveries will continue every Saturday anywhere on Malcolm Island until sometime in November.  If you wish to be added to our weekly mailing list, just send a note to hellofromluckfarm77@gmail.com or call 250-973-2077.

Along with our specialty salads, we've recently added new potatoes, basil, and Slow Dog farm's cabbages to our growing list of available produce.

Again, with the cool weather the lettuce continues to produce in the garden.  Here is some red Merlot lettuce, which adds colour to our various salad mixes.

 This spring has also been great weather for radishes as well as sweet and tender Japanese baby white turnips (Hakurei), which have been a big hit!

 The original annual garden is a sea of green with hundreds of yellow cooking onions in the foreground.  The yellow flowers are various mustard greens (Wasabi, Giant Red, Ruby Red Streaks).  Aside from the flowers being food for pollinators, we will save the seeds once they have matured..

Here is a close up of the hundreds of the yellow cooking onions and the mustard greens  going to seed.

The hard neck garlic saved for over a decade from Texada Island is almost four feet tall.  Scapes have started to form.

The peas are growing up to the sky for Jack and the bean stalk. 

 We always plant lots of wild flowers and Marigolds for the pollinators.

We put hoops and remay over the cabbages to guard against the dreaded cabbage maggot.  The added heat from the remay covering has also helped produce some pretty big cabbages so far.

Here is the garden expansion in full production right now.  Starting from the front row there are:

1) Lettuce under the remay

2) Mustard greens and beets

3) Four different kinds of kale

4) Potatoes

5) More potatoes

6) More yellow cooking onions

7) Broccoli under the remay covered hoops

8) And a few flowers at the last small patch for the pollinators!

 In the greenhouse, there are now some big plants with green tomatoes forming.

The sweet peppers are also on their way.  Have a sweet summer and happy gardening everyone!

We were super busy expanding the garden and building fences this spring.  Here is a panoramic shot of the expanded annual garden.  The beds are now 75 feet long!  We continue to build the beds using cardboard covered with screened top soil and sheep manure.  We are now busy planting in the new beds.

 Moving into the orchard, the asparagus that we planted four years ago, is not beginning to produce!

We had a blast of super warm weather over the weekend and even had to open up the greenhouses.  But now it's cooled off again.

The tomatoes and sweet peppers are growing fast under the grow lamps.  There are four kinds of tomatoes and three kinds of sweet peppers, all from our own saved seeds. 

The new full spectrum LED grow lamps give the lettuce and onions a golden glow.

It is a sure sign of spring when we open up the compost bin.  Thanks to all our regular food scrap donors in the village of Sointula and even in Mitchell Bay.  If you wish to be added to our regular weekly Saturday food scrap pickup, send us an email at hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail.com or phone us at 250-973-2077.  We provide freshly rinsed buckets each week.

Here is the soft neck garlic coming up with a fresh coating of compost.  That's St. John's Wort in the foreground.  The bees will love the yellow flowers.

Tiny thin threads of lettuce started indoors has been transplanted out in the garden.  The bed was fertilized with a layer of compost prior to planting.

 We continue to expand the annual garden by layering cardboard and soil to make beds.  We'll be adding aged manure and growing oats and clover as green manure to add nutrients to the soil.  In between the beds we are using wood shavings from a local mill to cover the paths.  We will be fencing the area soon and it will eventually double the are of the annual garden.

In the orchard, Linda has been busy weighing down the branches of the fruit trees with string and stakes.  By lowering the branches, this will stimulate the fruit production.  It will also make it easier to harvest the fruit!

This pear tree has nice spring buds.  Hopefully we'll get some fruit from it for the first time since it was planted four years ago.

Our 21 blueberries are coming along nicely since we planted them four years ago.  We have added organic bone meal and used coffee grinds to make the soil even more acidic.  We are looking forward to our first bumper crops.

We also look forward to our first May crop of asparagus that we planted a few years ago.  We added wood ash, which is high in potassium, as a soil amendment.

Wilma the Cat says: "Get your Super Saved Seeds Soon!".  Luckyfarm77 saved seeds from 2023 are available at the Sointula Resource Centre Community Market Garden Stand.  Seeds are selling fast, but we continue to replenish our stock every week.   See you soon for more Luckyfarm77 growing adventures!

Packing up our late fall custom orders for Saturday morning deliveries.  With the fall bounty we kept delivering right into November.

Here is our associate Alex Morton from Slow Dog Farm transferring her produce to our truck for delivery to Sointula.  Look at that abundance!  What a great collaboration.

After our busy Saturday deliveries, we are thrilled to sit down to a leisurely Sunday brunch.  This late fall we had a totally hyper-local brunch with:

1)  Bacon and eggs from Conner, Terah, and Lillian's farm;

2)  Omelette stuffed with our own onions, sweet peppers, and locally foraged Chanterelle mushrooms;

3)  Our own pan fried potatoes with our own garlic; and

4)  Our own greens and tomatoes on the side.

The only store-bought ingredients were olive oil and spices!

 There were some lovely November days in the orchard with the blueberry leaves changing colour.

The strawberries also turned colour but they will need serious weeding early in the new year to achieve their full production next June.

The cherry trees also turn a nice colour in November.

  We were lucky to find a bumper crop of Chanterelle mushrooms at our favourite location in mid-November.

 Here are some perfect prize-winning golden trumpets.  Overall, we managed to freeze over two pounds of these delicious fungi.

The nice part about the late fall season is being able to reap the bounty of the garden every day.  This salad again is all hyper-local with salad greens, spicy mustard greens, carrot sticks, and cherry tomatoes.

The broccoli just keeps on giving all winter long!

Here is another hyper-local salad with cooked beets, beet leaves, sweet red onion, and parsley.  All marinated in a store bought organic apple cider vinegar infused with locally foraged spruce tips.

 We had good success growing carrots this year thanks to Conner's hot tip to just sprinkle the seed on the ground without being too fussy.  This is a nice power-blended carrot-potato-ginger soup garnished with a wasabi mustard green leaf.  Only the ginger was store-bought.

 This is our staked out garden expansion area for next year with is about 40 by 70 feet.  We will extend the beds from the existing garden (to the right) along the contours of the land then extend the fence around it.  Can you see Petr with the carpenter's apron?

Here we are starting to fill in some holes and depressions in the expansion area using the tried and true cardboard and soil technique.  First we layer cardboard over the grasses, swamp grass, and weeds to make sure they decompose.  Then we put the soil on top of the cardboard to fill in the holes and depressions.  Once we have smoothed out the expansion area, we will build the garden beds on top of everything using a combination of rocks to create small retaining walls along the contours.  Then we will add more soil, seaweed, leaves, and manure to create the actual garden beds.  So enjoyable to work on this sunny fall day.  Thank goodness for the electric wheelbarrow!

 Another great late fall sunrise on Luckyfarm77.

Best Solstice greetings to all our friends and customers on Malcolm Island and all the other beings with whom we share this precious planet Earth.

On Thanksgiving, we continued to harvest and deliver a cornucopia of delicious food in collaboration with Alexandra Morton's Slow Dog Farm.

We are also busy processing our own produce.  Here we are preparing a tomato based "marinara" sauce mixed with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and herbs including parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme all from our garden.  The tomatoes are first par-boiled to remove the skin.  Here is the medley before roasting.

And here it is after roasting.  We have found an important trick is to use parchment paper, which makes cleanup of the roasting pan so much easier.   After roasting, blend all the roasted ingredients and then freeze the sauce in zip lock bags.  The sauce can also be canned, but be careful to pressure can it or add lemon juice to avoid food poisoning!

We planted some lettuce in the green house in late September and we will be getting production for the popular Spring Mix and Salad Blends well into November.

Here are some spicy mustard greens that love the cool weather outside in the garden.  The giant red mustard greens are very cold hardy and VERY spicy.

The oats are planted in an empty garden bed as a winter mulch.  The oats also serve double duty as an excellent herbal tea, especially for the ladies (Linda always says great for men too!), as recommended by the famous herbologist Susun Weed.  The oat grass is collected in paper grocery bags, which we then hang in the cabin loft to dry.

Here are more bi-weekly deliveries to the Sointula Resource Centre's Market Garden Stand.

This is the time of year when our greenhouses are overflowing with sweet peppers, some of which are ripening to red next to the big window.  They are great to chop up and freeze.  What a great alternative to imported peppers which are considered part of the dirty dozen full of pesticides. Oh, there's also a few tomatoes there ripening next to our picture window.

Here are the peppers all chopped up and ready to be put into baggies to be frozen.

Sometimes the peppers are so huge we wonder what to do with them.

Thank goodness that I remembered my mother's recipe for Hungarian stuffed peppers!  Just make up a meatloaf type mixture with ground meat, egg, onion, garlic, flour, and herbs, stuff it into the peppers and bake.  What a great combo with rice, salsa, or tomato sauce especially when most of the ingredients come from your own garden.

Here are some low sugar pumpkin muffins with an orange cream cheese icing for our livestock farming neighbours Terah, Conner, and Lillian.  Don't tell them, the orange colour was made from a combination of tumeric and cooked red beets.

As promised, we have a new feline addition to our Hallowe'en driveway display.  Notice the treat bags hanging on the lights behind the black cat.  All except one of the dozen bags were gone by the end of the night.

 What a great Samhain it was, even the dancing pumpkins were happy.

The lighted pumpkin says "See you all in the new Keltic year on the Luckyfarm77 blog."

In early August, we pulled the giant garlic to cure on the sunny deck.

We also pulled the purple onions and cured them on the sunny deck.

Fuzzy got the same idea enjoying all the sun on our property!

Hundreds of yellow onions came out the following week.

We ran out of room on the deck, so we had to start curing the yellow onions on top of the kindling storage box.

Here are some of the first carrots and beets that we harvested in the third week of August.

The ever so clever Gabriel at Sedna Designs and Robin at the Oceanfront Hotel gave us some salmon skin that they were using in a natural dyeing and fish skin tanning project for us to add to our compost pile.  Here we have added the salmon skin and covered it with some cardboard to add carbon to all the salmon nitrogen.  Thanks Gabriel and Robin!

And then we topped off the new compost pile with some dried grass clippings.  Thanks Bob and Liz from Mitchell Bay!

 The apple trees are starting to produce.  The Redfree variety is really awesome.

 Linda likes them so much she eats three at once!

Braided yellow and red onions in the golden fall light.

Another big bowl of goodness - cherry, grape, and Roma tomatoes, mini snacking cucumbers, and Hungarian Cheese sweet peppers.

Or would you like your pasta Primavera on a plate?

Tony and Donna gave us a pile of red plums from their forty year old tree in Mitchell Bay.  There were so many we froze and dried a bunch.  Thanks Tony and Donna!

Linda got some flowers from Donna's stunning flower garden too!  Linda often buys flowers from the Market Garden Stand and Teddy and Kerri's "Sometimes Flowers".  Thanks everyone for your beautiful bouquets!

Here are bags and boxes of custom orders of produce being assembled for delivery to Sointula and anywhere on Malcolm Island Saturday mornings.  Everyone is welcome to order whatever they wish from a list that is posted on Facebook and on www.luckyfarm77.ca every Wednesday.  To get on our email list, just send a note to hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail or phone us at 250-973-2077.

We collaborate with Alexandra Morton's Slow Dog Farm.  Alex's apples, cucumelons, and New Zealand spinach are paired in this custom order with our colourful mixture of tomatoes and heaping bag of broccoli florets for another happy customer.

There is no minimum order required.  Here is our very popular mini snacking cucumbers paired with our simple yet delicious Spring Mix.

Produce heading for the Market Garden Stand at the Sointula Resource Centre.  Sometimes we bump into some nice people like Marjorie Greensides!

 And more custom orders blending produce from Luckyfarm77 and Slow Dog Farm.

 Alex's Purple Sprouting Brocolli caused quite the flurry and she quickly sold out!

Look what happens when farmers work together.  Thanks Alex for being such an inspiration for us. What a great time of year this is , a really cornucopia!

Wilma and Fuzzy look forward to seeing you next time at Hallowe'en, the third harvest festival and the beginning of the new Keltic year when we'll have a special cat surprise.

We are slightly delayed with our Lammas post, which should have been August 1.  But we have lots of news to report, especially our new collaboration with Alexandra Morton of Slow Dog Farm. To be put on our weekly email list for Saturday delivery service, please send us a note at  hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail.com or phone us at  250-973-2077.

We had a bountiful harvest of strawberries that lasted well into July.  Here is one of our peak orders, a full 2.5 pounder!

We have been harvesting and selling tasty fresh garlic.

Golden delicious new potatoes are regularly coming out of the ground.

Salads, potatoes, snow peas, cooking onions, and herbs are being put into the Sointula Resource Centre Garden Market Stand twice a week and through direct sales on Saturdays.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are climbing to the 10 foot ceiling and starting to produce.

There are also lots of sweet peppers growing on the other side of the greenhouse.  All the tomatoes and peppers have been grown from our very own saved seeds, which will also be for sale next February.

There are some "mini snacking" cucumbers growing as well.

 There are lots of pots of basil growing in the greenhouse path, which will make great pizza and pasta pesto.

Finally, there is the amazing "schoolbus" yellow mini tomato pushing against the ceiling of the greenhouse in the corner.

Moving into the annual garden, Carly from Mitchell Bay gave us these apple seedlings in pots that she grew from seed in her very creative driftwood greenhouse.  They will eventually be transplanted into the orchard. Thanks Carly!

Bodacious broccoli that just keeps giving!

Hundreds of yellow and red cooking onions.  We will cure and store enough for ourselves to last until next year.  We also started selling them.  The yellow and red combo bunch is a hit.

Celery, carrots, parsley.  We couldn't get our carrots to germinate, but Conner came to the rescue by showing his carrot trick in daughter Lillian's garden.  He just throws the seeds on the ground.  No fuss, no muss.  We now have lots of carrots growing.  Thanks Conner and Lillian!

Three kinds of gaaaaaahrlic.  Smash them, bash them, and throw them in your dishes, BAM!  Thanks to the super celebrity TV chef Emeril Legassi.

Beetmania in the lower bed of the annual garden.  New wood shavings on the paths from Karsten Millworks.  Thanks Lance!

Down in the orchard here are the profuse strawberry beds inter-planted among the fruit trees.  We will continue expanding the strawberry beds since the "Red Alert" was so popular in June.

The 21 blueberry bushes that we planted three years ago are slowly beginning to produce.  Fingers crossed for next year.

The apple trees have started to take off.

And the yellow plum is on its way.

Our new compost bins are rocking and rolling.  Malcolm Island Food Company have accelerated to three buckets of food scraps a week with their new storefront location downtown Sointula.  Thanks Dani and Brian!

We are now collaborating with Alexandra Morton of Slow Dog Farm to deliver even more local and organic produce to our direct sale customers on Malcolm Island. The pickup truck on Saturday is  now brimming with food for delivery.  To be put on our weekly email list for Saturday delivery send us a note at  hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail.com or phone us at  250-973-2077.

 Alexandra's cabbage was so huge that it deserved its own passenger seat and seat-belt.  More huge cabbages coming soon.

Happy Bountiful Beltane!  We have moved our blog to our very own web-site Luckyfarm77.ca!  We missed the Spring Equinox blog due to heavy contractual deadlines, so we are updating you with some events going back to that time.

Every six months we open our amazing compost bin to find the naturally decomposed food scrap treasures from all our contributors over that time.  Many thanks to Malcolm Island Food Company, Jungle Jane, Robin, and Spencer for their kitchen scrap contributions!  This spring, we put 15 wheelbarrows of pure composted gold onto our gardens.

We are busy converting the second "ShelterLogic" tarp shed into a greenhouse.  We have already built the beds for the second greenhouse with rocks from our land and soil brought over by from nearby road building.   Thanks Art and Earl!  The ends of the second greenhouse will be framed in with cedar 1"x2" lumber and a transparent tarp will cover the metal arches, just like the first greenhouse.

The first greenhouse is already producing some wonderful salad greens, including cool weather-loving Asian greens such as Mizuna, Komatsuna, Pac Choi, and Giant Red Mustard.  Plus a variety of mixed lettuce greens.

Luckyfarm77 already has salad greens and kale available at the Sointula Resource Centre's Market Garden Stand regularly delivered on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  All this and more will be available for home delivery anywhere on Malcolm Island every Saturday.  No minimum order and no commitments necessary.  If you want to be on our email list, just send a note to hellofromluckyfarm77@gmail or phone 250-972-2077!

Also available at the Market Garden Stand are our locally saved organic seeds, including heirloom tomatoes, mixed lettuce, and wasabi mustard greens.  Here they are presented by the fluffy and talented Fuzzy the Cat.

We have an expanded double-decker light table, with some new LED lamps for all our plant starts.  Yellow cherry tomatoes, red Roma tomatoes, basil, Minnesota midget cantaloupes, parsley, celery, rosemary, oregano, and kale will be available for sale in May.  Contact hellofromluckyfarm@gmail.com or phone 250-973-2077 to make your reservation.  The plant starts are presented today by the sleek and beautiful Wilma the Cat.

We are busy planting a lot of potatoes, which do very well in our cool climate.  The potatoes are most delicious when freshly pulled from the ground.  We anticipate our first harvest at the end of June.  This year we will try to keep the potatoes in the ground all year round, since we discovered that they store much better that way.  As soon as we set out any box, Fuzzy the Cat always jumps into it!

So far in the vegetable garden, we have planted mixed lettuce greens, shelling peas, snow peas, potatoes, cabbage, brocolli, cauliflower, three kinds of kale, celery, and parsley.  The perennial plants including raspberries, walking onions, and the herb garden have all started to grow again.  In the orchard, blossoms are starting to show, asparagus has started to sprout, and strawberry plants are growing strong.  We have also transplanted half the raspberries to the orchard.

Fuzzy the Cat says "Until Next Time", the Summer Solstice is on its way!

Please see archived blog 2020-2022 at https://luckyfarm77.blogspot.com/