What we are seeding this spring

February 2nd marks the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.
This first moment of spring is the time we begin seeding the crops of summer 2021

The snowdrops are out, lambs are being born, and we are seeding the first crops of 2021. In the Celtic seasonal calendar, this moment in the year is called Imbolc and signals the beginning of spring. Pictured above are some of the seeds Rumi and I saved from our Teddy Bear sunflowers, a cheerful crop that we grow just for fun! Next week the first tomatoes, peppers, onions, and leeks will be in pots on the heat benches. It's an exciting time of year on the farm; there is still plenty of time for planning, tea drinking, and winter projects, but all the idealism of a new season is also with us! You may also be feeling this spring rush, and before you purchase your seeds I would like to direct you to an incredible fundraiser collaboration with West Coast Seeds in support of Rumi's preschool.

Here is how it works:

• Visit the West Coast Seeds Fundraiser website

• Choose your seeds

• Once you have completed your order, find our organization on the dropdown menu - Salt Spring Coop Preschool.

• Our preschool will receive 40% of the sales!

• Add in your details so that we can contact you when the orders are ready for pick up.

Many of you will recognize the Co-op Preschool by the beautiful sunflower motif adorning the classroom, which is adjacent to the skate park on Kanaka road. Rumi has been attending this lovely program for two years now. This autumn, Ellis and I initiated the "preschool yard expansion project", turning what was once an old parking lot (literally!) into a new eco-playground paradise for the kids. This multi-year, legacy project aims to double the outdoor area available for play, while also restoring the land into a biodiverse ecosystem with plantings of fruit trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals. At the same time we plan to rebuild the beloved pirate ship, expand the bike loop, and create more outdoor covered spaces. If you feel inspired to support this project, please participate in our seed fundraiser or simply donate using the DONATE button on our preschool website. Our goal for this project is 40,000 in financial and in kind donations!

Keeping with the theme of seeds and returning sun, this week we want to encourage you to fill up on BULK SUNFLOWER OIL. We purchase this certified organic product in 55 Gallon drums and instead of packing it up we would like to experiment with a 'fill your own container' system.
Bulk Sunflower Oil (bring your own container) - $8/L
As we dream up all the ways to pack, display, store, and dispense products in our new barn, we would love to hear your feedback. How would you like to shop for bulk food in our new store?

Do you know someone who is interested in organic food, farm fresh flowers, and community projects? Please share this newsletter with them and they can sign up to receive it for themselves!

Sustainable Living at the Farm

10 years ago we planted approximately 50 fruit trees at Earth Candy and since then we have enjoyed many bountiful harvests; pictured above is one of our Italian prune plum trees, full of fruit in late September. Our farm is a unique combination of production gardens, commercial retail space, and family homes, within a biodiverse forest ecosystem. Everything is intertwined and connected: our parking lot is literally adjacent to our fruit trees and flower garden! For this reason, we are incredibly conscious not to contaminate the environment around us, and you can help us!

We want to give a FREE CHOCOLATE BAR to anyone who is:

• Driving an electric car

• Carpooling

• Shopping for another family

• Riding a bike

Your contribution to oil free transportation helps to keep our farm environment clean. This includes the air we breathe while working and shopping, our artesian spring which is downhill from the parking lot, and our food and flower gardens beside the market.

Although we haven't bought our electric tractor yet (it's the dream!) we exclusively use bio-diesel and biodegradable lubricants in all our farm machines and vehicles. It's the least we can do and we rest a little easier knowing that toxic oils aren't dripping into our soil and that our emissions are slightly more clean. How are you managing sustainability when it comes to your transportation and machine use? Do you have ideas for us? Driving is such a big part of the culture on Salt Spring; how do you feel about this?

As we wait for spring and all those fruit trees to burst into bloom, we are craving fresh food more than ever. Luckily Ellis has secured a large volume of organic BC apples and pears at a discount for this Saturday's market. These fruits are grown in Cawston, BC and are top quality, having just been released from Carbon Dioxide storage (which keeps them fresh during the winter).
Apples: Empire, Pinklady, Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, Ambrosia, Braeburn
Pears: Anjou, Bartlett
We are also lucky to have the very last local Spartan apples from our farming friends at the Salt Spring Centre

Salt Spring Island Wholesale Flowers

Many of you have seen our flower field, thoughtfully adjacent to our cob-house market, and probably admired the beauty and abundance of blooms we grow. Each week we pick bunches and prepare bouquets to offer to our market customers. What may come as a surprise is that the majority of our flowers are actually sold to florists and designers across Western Canada. Three years ago we started selling through the Vancouver Flower Auction. In 2020 we created an online shop, allowing our wholesale customers to pre-order directly from us for delivery to UFG. Each week the flower team begins at dawn to harvest and prepare countless buckets of flowers. Of course it must be noted that these flowers are transported and delivered by Ellis, with rarely a single stem broken! Living on a small island like Salt Spring is an incredible privilege and we take the gift of flower farming seriously. Developing markets for organic flowers is important work for us.

From an environmental standpoint, organic flower growing is a protest against the sprayed, dyed, and chemically fertilized flowers grown on conventional farms. Just because humans don't consume cut flowers doesn't mean that is is acceptable for the chemicals used to produce them to enter the environment. Our flower garden is a living ecosystem, full of organisms big and small, that we fiercely wish to protect. In addition, there is published evidence suggesting that the florists using conventional flowers (and undoubtably the growers producing them as well) have traceable amounts of dangerous pesticides in their systems from working with this product.

From a grower's livelihood standpoint, developing markets for our flowers allows our family to make a modest living doing something that causes no harm and contributes beauty and biodiversity. Two years ago we were able to hire three flower employees and pay them a living wage - what a joy to bring more people into our cult of flower love! Each week on the auction we bring not only our own flowers but also any excess flowers grown by our farming colleagues on Salt Spring: Hey Day Farm, Bullock Lake Farm, Small Earth Organics, and Flowers by Tali. Promoting the work of other growers is key to promoting the greater vision of organic flowers and we love the wide variety and high quality we are able to offer to our dedicated wholesale customers.

Are you a florist interested in organic, locally grown product?
We want to hear from you!
Please fill our our Wholesale Flower SURVEY
Also feel free to send us an email with all your questions, comments, and requests related to wholesale flowers.

Each year (especially during winter farm planning) I find myself recommitting to my relationship with flower growing. I am often faced with my own insecurities about growing a non-edible product; comparing the usefulness of flowers to that of kale or onions. At this particular moment in time, as we are witnessing catastrophic ecosystem collapse and biodiversity loss, I ask: "is my contribution leaving the earth a better place for the next generation?" With two beautiful boys to think think about now, I am able to more confidently see the worthiness of the flower garden. The insects, the birds, the soil microorganisms - they all benefit from our flower diversity, our soil amendments, our irrigation, and ultimately from the shear volume of plants we nurture. Isn't it lovely to think of this charming ecosystem existing for beauty and biodiversity? This undeniable charm also lifts the human spirit and satiates our innate hunger for art and nature.

I pulled together some of my favourite instagram posts about our wholesale flowers from the past few years - click below to check them out!

Locals, I haven't forgotten about you!
If you are on Salt Spring and itching to secure your flower abundance for 2021, please sign up for our Flower CSA!

Sri Lanka Sister Farm

The darkest day of the year has come and gone, but we still have a few more months of winter left. Luckily, we have some vibrant tropical food products en route to our island right now. Dried pineapple, tropical (and nostalgic!) fruit cocktail, lots of coconut products, and new spices are just some of the items currently sailing the ocean from our sister farms in Sri Lanka to Salt Spring. You may remember some of the big hits from our fall shipment: our coconut cream (guar gum free), dried banana coins, coconut sugar, pineapple juice, and masala spice blends. One of the reasons why these products are so especially delicious is because they are picked tree-ripe and brought immediately to the processing facility. This facility has all stainless steel equipment, made in Germany, and everything is canned/dried/pressed etc. within days of picking.

Arriving the end of January 2021
Juice: Mango, Pineapple, Passionfruit
Canned: Pineapple, fruit cocktail
Dried: Whole banana
Coconut: Coconut milk powder, coconut cream, coconut sugar
Spices

Our vision of sourcing everything farm-direct is slowly coming to fruition! We asked our producers to send some photos of the crops growing, the finished products, and the shipment being prepared for transport. As you can see, we are purchasing a full shipping container at once - it's a lot of food! This bulk buying helps us keep our prices down and gives us the power to customize our final products. As always, all of our fruit products are made without sugar (that includes the canned fruits, juices, and dried fruits). We also have everything packed in glass, using jars that coordinate with our jar return program. It is slightly more costly to ship products in glass, however in this era of waste and micro-plastics, glass is a non-negotiable for us.

Salami

Earth Candy isn't just pretty flowers and bins overflowing with peaches, we also raise animals in our effort towards Full Circle Farming. To create some of your favourite artisan foods we begin with traditional artisan farming.

One of our most popular products at the Earth Candy Market is our custom charcuterie. These items are made with three simple ingredients: pork, spices, and bacterial culture. Ellis has been working directly with our butcher in Vancouver to recreate some of the classic Czech salamis from his childhood, which feature spices such as caraway, juniper berries, and paprika. Our family favourite is the Landjäger, which is traditionally eaten by hikers and hunters on long journeys, as it does not require refrigeration and comes in single serving portions. Come check out our salami selection at the market this Saturday!

Salami: Wine, Cervelat, German, Garlic, Paprika
Other: Dry Cured Pepperoni, Landjager, Schinkenspeck, Liverwurst

We began raising pigs at Earth Candy Farm in 2013 and in 2016 we purchased a boar to begin a breeding program. Our pigs are a mix of Berkshire, Large Black, Mule Foot, and Tamworth. Raised outdoors, we keep them moving onto fresh pasture, and besides a small amount of organic grain, they mostly consume a vast amount of fruit and vegetable compost that we acquire from our organic wholesaler in Vancouver. For us, full circle farming refers to a continuous cycling of nutrients on the farm, with as little loss and as little inputs as possible. Pigs provide a huge contribution by their manure and ability to turn the soil, this in turn helps us grow vegetables and flowers more successfully, and any waste from the garden is fed back to the pigs.

As we enter the holiday season, we want to tell you about two local businesses who are featuring our products in their holiday offerings. Deb and Miranda of Salt Spring Goods have a wonderful fresh crate full of locally made products, including our landjager salami! Austen Brown of The Salty Whisk is also featuring our salami (as well as many of our other specialty items such as olives, fruit, and cheese) on her party boards - she also offers vegetarian and gluten free options! Email her directly to order one today.