August 15, 2010

What have we been up to?  

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Ok, I realize that it has been a while again since the last post. I keep thinking that I will get around to posting while I am at a market or in the evening but I am tradidionally un-functional in the evenings, especially after a long day of harvesting or markets or, well, ever; and markets have been fairly busy so I have really not found much time. I guess I just need to accept that these posts will happen once per month, then I will be happy when I get to it more often.

I want to first acknowledge a few bloggers and videographers who have mentioned us. Please check out http://duckandcake.blogspot.com/2010/08/mellow-yellow-fabulous-yellow-pepper.html#comment-form where Elizabeth has some yummy recipes and a whole lot more. Regarding Kind Organics, she says: "Sandra and Tamas Dombi, along with partner Amber Malek, grow the most incredibly fresh greens: they taste alive when you eat them, and are best served just as I did, with a bit of crunchy salt and that amazing oil. And if you haven't had fresh sunflower sprouts, make a vow to find them before summer's over." Thanks Elizabeth!

Also FARM START (see link on our home page) has been filming a documentary about young farmers and their successes. We would like to thank them for the photos and footage they took both at the farm and at the Sorauren market. I'm not sure when the production will be done but we will post a link to it here if they post it on the internet.

Also Anne Freeman (Dufferin Grove Farmer's Market Manager) and Laura came up to the farm on a Saturday morning and took some photos and wrote an article about it in the Market News. She writes: "Photographer *Laura Berman *and I really enjoyed a tour of *Kind
Organics*' lovely growing greens recently. *Sandra* and *Amber* appear
at the market most often these days, as *Tamas* has been working hard on
another greenhouse. We were grateful to him for taking the time to
answer all our questions about sprouting, life in the Holland Marsh, and
the many interesting salad ingredients they grow." Thanks Anne!

The "Cosmic Blend" has been really well received by our customers. We are really proud of it. It contains more than 8 types of herbs, 6 or so types of edible flowers, corn shoots and up to 20 types of lettuces, all washed in filtered water and ready to eat. Here is a photo of the lovely herbs and flowers that go into it.

The "Earth Blend" has been retired for the time being. The flowers are out of season for now. We expect it to be back in the fall once the Cosmic Blend is out of season.


The "Aerial Blend" is still a big hit with it's many types of lettuce greens picked fresh by hand.

Arugula is going full force right now so the large bags are back. We have been getting some great feedback about the arugula this year. People seem to like the depth of flavour as well as its healthy kick. Thanks to all who have been enjoying it.


I will be working full time with the farm as of September 1st, 2010. This brings our full time partners up to 3! Having said that, we are looking for people to come to volunteer on the farm or some other manner of involvement ranging right up to partnership. If you have ideas, please approach us with them and we will dialogue about it. If you just want to know more about what we do then you can spend a day with us doing whatever we are doing. Recently we have had people here on a 2 week - 3 month learning stint to really learn how to manage a small community run farm. If this interests you then feel free to contact us via e-mail at kindorganics@gmail.com. This is much better than using the contact page on the website that has an error on it.


Thanks for reading!


If you have a twitter account please considering following us @kindorganics.








by Kind contributor

July 7, 2010

A New Garden  

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Yesterday Tamas tilled a new garden. The principle was to widen the main garden on our property by one extra bed. This will almost bring us to ONE acre of production on our property. This seems amazing since we now harvest all our greens from the back outside garden (we used to grow the greens in our greenhouses) and we currently have more produce than we are selling. Expansion by one more LOOOONG bed (equivalent to 6 short beds) will give us the ability to do more succession planting of our greens and be able to let some grow bigger for greens and harvesting others young for salad blends. Right now we often have bouts where we will be out of one green or the other for a few weeks while the next bed matures. We sure are learning a lot more about farming this year than we knew last year. Of course this is how life works right?

Our original green house is filled on one side with flowers and on the other side with herbs. Though it has been weeded 2 times (the weeds are growing quite well) the flowers are all beginning to bloom and we are starting to see abundance. An Organic grower and friend of ours sent us some Genovese basil seedlings which we planted in the green house so we will have lots of basil in the "Earth Blend" and the "Cosmic Blend" soon.

We have been feeling so blessed to be living and working on this property. As we went for a bike ride this evening and spoke about our future and our aspirations, we were privy to a most amazing sun set and some magical cloud formations and the blessing seemed even greater.
We will see some of you at Dufferin Grove Market on Thursday and others of you on Saturday and Sunday and Monday.
Thank you Kindly for reading.
Sandra Dombi
Kind Organics

by Kind contributor

June 26, 2010

Liberty, Here We COME!  

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Sunday June 27th will be our first Sunday at Liberty Village Market. I am SO excited. We have been low on Lettuce and other greens since mid May during the "Heat Wave" that caused many of our crops to either bolt or succumb to the shade caused by the enormous weeds that were loving the heat. We have finally repleted our supply of greens and have several nice gardens coming along well.
This Saturday's Brickworks Market saw the first batch of the special salad mix "Cosmic Blend" sold. If you are one of the lucky few who had a chance to taste it then we are hoping to hear your comments about it next week. The Cosmic Blend features many more types and quantity of herbs and flowers as well as microgreens and corn shoots. Yesterday it featured Tiger Lilly flowers!!!

Follow Us on Twitter @kindorganics. You can have up-dates texted dirtectly to your phone!!!

Tamas and George are building the skeleton of the new greenhouse this weekend, it seems to be going well despite the deluge of rain this morning.
Special Thanks to Dave who is working with us for 2 weeks to learn more about Organic Farming. He has been a great help so far.
Thanks also to all who came out to the Brickworks Market in the rain on Saturday, I love that it is such a hub of activity! I hope everyone has a Glowing Full Moon.
Sandra Dombi

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June 14, 2010

Liberty Village Update.  

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Hi Again All,
I realize that I have been remiss in letting everyone know that we do not have enough lettuce and other greens planted to add another Market at this time. We will be delaying our Market start at Liberty until the last week of June at the earliest. And that is if the weather co-operates. We were unprepared for that last heat wave which caused many of the greens to bolt and ALL of the weeds to grow exponentially. We just couldn't keep up. There are more greens planted but they are still too young to harvest. We are also having 2 more woofers arrive this week and that will greatly help us get ahead with respect to the WEEDS.
You can still get your Kind Organics Greens and sprouts at Brickworks, Dufferin Grove and Sorauren Markets. We will also be at Wychwood this Saturday! Come on by.

Our Asian Greens are looking GREAT this week and BUCKWHEAT sprouts are back!

See you soon!
Sandra Dombi

by Kind contributor

June 6, 2010

Things are ramping up  

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Well, you can tell that the season is getting busy since the blogging is getting more sparse. The Asparagus patch is mostly gone to seed now so I imagine that there will be little to harvest tomorrow morning before the Sorauren market. We have recently (1.5 weeks ago) planted a large portion of the back field next to the forest and also the back of Mr Chan's property next door. We are trying to get caught up on planting so that we won't be out of things like arugula or spinach. One of the limiting factors for us is Weeding. We only allot 1 person one day per week for weeding (since everyone else is so busy). Luckily Amber LOVES weeding so Tuesdays are weeding days for her. If we can get the weeds under control then our yeild will be significantly higher and we will be able to expand to one more market per week on Sundays. We have one new Wwoofer, Sayaka, who is a Great help and we are looking forward to 2 more coming to live with us in mid June. Extra manpower will go a long way to help us getting our harvesting yeilds up too. I am so excited to have more people on board.


The "Asian Green" Bed has been doing AMAZING! We even made a new Asian Green blend called "Esteem" blend. This bed was made from well composted organic soil from our sprouting trays from last year. This also means that the weeds in that garden consist largely of sunflowers and peas. I can't wait to see the sunflowers in bloom!



We have acquired a "NEW" greenhouse from down the street and will be erecting it as soon as possible. This will allow us to use one greenhouse for sprouts and one for flowers and herbs. Yesterday Tamas mowed down and plowed under the current greenhouse on our property so bye lettuce, hello seedlings. This will also let us get the seedlings out of the downstairs seminar space so we can host our courses there now.


Thanks for reading!

Sandra Dombi

by Kind contributor

May 10, 2010

Asparagus time  

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Hello everyone,

It is Asparagus time at Kind Organics. Last Thursday was our pilot project with selling Asparagus. I'd love to hear from those who bought some, how was it? Our Asparagus plot is anywhere from 5-7 years old and has not been tended to properly in the past so this time we are planning to do an experimental harvest and see how much care is needed to bring in a full crop. Secretly I have always wanted an Asparagus garden, and now inheriting this one is a dream come true. It requires a lot of weeding though, the weeds have a well established network from the years of neglect, and they are just reaching the point of being taller than the Asparagus so it makes the vegetables hard to see. Amber put a few hours into it the other day and I have been trying to weed one bed per day but lately it has been too cold! I have noticed how much they bolt up after a big rain like the ones we've been having lately. A perfect time to harvest them is in the morning after dropping our son off at the bus, the garden is on the way back to the house so I stop and harvest the new shoots then.

The Weather has veered away from the "Bright, Sunny and Warm every day" pattern of April and we have had a lot of rain in May (Which is GREAT! and a little too much at the same time). I don't feel that it is a good idea to complain about rain when last month we were needing it so much. So far the crops are dealing with the deluge well. Tamas and Amber created a "Raised" garden on the far side of the greenhouse, using last year's well composted soil, that is helping to keep the rain water from flooding into the greenhouse. There is definitely a reduction in flooding! On another weather note, last night there was a frost warning so we had to make sure all the greens were tucked in, under their nice thick row covers. Just a reminder that it is still spring and frost is still a possibility.

We are gearing up for a busy season. We will be attending 3 Markets this weekend and then starting on the last weekend of May we will be at 4 Markets per week. The Sorauren Monday Afternoon Farmers Market goes into full swing this Monday the 15th of May. If the weather is nice then we will be outside in the park. If the weather is too cold then we'll probably be in the small building at the south end of the park. We will be here every Monday here after from 3pm-7pm. Be sure to drop by if you live in the area. We are still at Dufferin Grove every Thursday Afternoon from 3-7pm and we will be at the Brickworks regularly on Saturdays from 8am-1pm. To get to the brickworks there are shuttle busses from the TTC stations near by and it is also on the bike path. They are opening new parking spots this year too. The Market is on Bayview north of the DVP on and off ramps. This Market will be opening up on May 29th, coinciding with the Doors Open festival.

We are so happy that the sun is back out today.
Sandra and the Kind Organics Team

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April 21, 2010

Recovering from a Hectic Week  

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"I'd like to thank all those who have been visiting the website and reading the blog and dropping by markets due to the posts on Facebook. Actually this social networking and blogging thing seems to have some merit. I write these blogs and don't really know who's getting them and reading them. Will someone please try to post a comment to the WEBSITE at http://www.kindorganics.ca/ so we can see if the comment section is working. We appreciate it.

To our amazement the fermented veggies are selling really well. Let us know at the market what you think about the sauerkraut and the root kimchi. We are also really excited to announce that we will be launching a small batch of Kind Kombucha for this Dufferin market (approx 10 bottles) We give a warm THANKS to Kevin for all his hard work, on both the bottling and on himself!"

We have begun planting outside in the last few weeks and harvesting the new batch from the greenhouses which is still young but plentiful. The "Earth Blend" salad mix is here for a short time, this is the blend with the flowers, we are using arugula and mustard flowers to begin with. Most of the flowering plants are just recently transplanted and wont be producing flowers until about 3 weeks from now. The days just are not long enough yet. The "Earth Blend" is a little more tender than the Spring Salad Blend and also contains sweet NON-GMO Corn shoots for a zingy taste experience.

New products this week are: Sprouted Yellow Peas, Onion and Chive Blend, Fava Bean Sprouts, Sprouted Wheat and Kamut, Dandelion Greens, Curly Cress and Kombucha Live -Fermented Green Tea Drink. See the photo here.




This week we will also be featuring a Purple Sauerkraut!




Thanks to everyone for all your support.




Sandra


Kind Organics Team

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April 10, 2010

Transplanting Weekend  

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This weekend was one of those "work really hard and get lots of things done" weekends. George came over and as usual him and Tamas worked non-stop to Clean up and fix things and move things and build things and fix the tractor and ... I on the otherhand worked diligently on the single task of transplanting the seedlings that we planted on March 3rd (at least the ones that survived). This was a tremendously pleasurable task once I got things rolling. It took me a long time to figure out which plants would get priority as far as transplanting. Then I decided that we need more room in the sprouting room this week (since we have 3 markets in a row coming up) so I will transplant as many of those seedlings as possible, leaving the ones by the window to continue in their starter trays. I also re-potted all those tall lanky seedlings into something more comfortable.

Tamas and George also tilled 2 of the greenhouses without plastic covers, ready for planting on Monday. Hooray! Our first semi out door crop! We will be covering the seeds with a heavy row cover so they sprout but dont get too cold. We have to remember that it is still very early in the season eventhough the weather has been so nice. There is still frost in the mornings.

We will have our first batch of salad with flowers this week at least for one of the markets. We have Mustard flowers and Arugula flowers. YAY! The flowers always make me feel so Happy!

The greenhouse doors on 3 of the green houses now open all the way thanks to Tamas and George. It seems that the ground is still frozen behind the greenhouses. Likely because they face North and don't get any sun back there.
Tamas has acquired a fertilizer spreader and mower attachment for the tractor. All second hand and the spreader needed some welding. Thanks to Romano in Bradford for all his help fixing that piece of equipment up.

Kevin will be bottling the first batch of fermented veggies, kimchi and organic live raw sauerkraut this weekend. We will be working on the labels and pamphlets later this week too. I am so excited about this new product line coming to Kind Organics.

We now are updating our blog on our website as well as on blogger. This will continue for a short time until I figure things out completely. So far I cannot add photos to the website blog.
We will be at Dufferin Grove Market on Thursday from 3-7pm and Wychwood Barns on Saturday from 8am-1pm and then at Sorauren indoor market next Monday from 3-7pm.

Kind Regards,
Sandra

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April 4, 2010

Easter Weekend 2010  

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Sunday April 4th 2010

What unseasonably beautiful weather we are having. (Not complaining) Our lettuce that we planted in early March will be ready to harvest in about a week and we will have a lot! The spinach however is confused and thinks it is summer and wants to bolt. We are trying to keep it cool but that is difficult in 25*C deg. weather. We have sourced another organic type of late bolting spinach that we will plant this week to enjoy a longer season. Our spinach has been so popular at the markets that we are trying not to run out of it but we may see a few dry weeks.
We did a little SPRING CLEANING last week. Frankie came over fortuitously on the morning of the clean-up with his chain saw and was willing to help chop up some logs that have been lying on the ground since last fall. THANKS FRANKIE!
Amber did a lot of tidy-up around the property too and it looks just perfect to start the new year fresh.
We have an exciting new crop option for this year, ASPARAGUS! Mr Chan has been letting his Asparagus garden do it's own thing for 5 years and we have now taken over the stewardship for it. Hopefully this will be a bumper crop too. Julia and Michael helped Tamas clear out the brush from the last few years to offer the best conditions possible for the baby spears to grow. Not much to see yet but we'll keep you posted! This will be our first experiment with Asparagus but for many years we have been intrigued with growing it as it is one of MY favourite spring veggies.
People at the markets have been loving our wild-crafted stinging Nettles and Chickweed. Great for a spring internal cleansing. The best way to cook stinging nettle is to boil some water and put the steamer pan on top. Then carefully (without touching the Nettle) dump the bag into the steamer and let it steam for 2 minutes. Then add salt or herbs to taste. It is a fabulous tonic as quoted her from Vitality Magazine: (See link) http://www.vitalitymagazine.com/node/216 by making it into a tea and drinking with honey.
Chickweed is a popular salad additive and tonic also.

We also potted some Nasturtiums into hanging baskets. We will be doing a lot more hanging baskets this year and that hopefully means a lot more flowers!

This week we will be at Dufferin Grove Market on Thursday from 3-7pm.

Sandra

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March 30, 2010

WHAT !!! -18 deg. C???  

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Last Weekend of March 2010



This weekend the temp is dropping to -18*C overnight. We ran around to all the greenhouses (Unheated) and covered as many of the crops as we could with row covers, tucking them in and wishing them a good night. I instructed them to "cuddle up with their neighbors to keep warm".


There were not enough row covers for all the crops so some of the seedlings are on their own. This will be a true test of their hardiness.

We are growing in 6 Greenhouses so far this year.

Remember to drop by Dufferin Grove Market on Thursday s from 3-7pm to get your greens, sprouts, and early Spring Salad mixes. We will be wildcrafting Stinging Nettle and Chickweed as part of our Spring Detox series.




Thanks to Julia (our Wwoofer) and George for all their help in the recent weeks.




Sandra

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March 19, 2010

A New Season is Upon Us  

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March 18th, 2010

Well, green houses have been seeded with lettuces and sprouts have been started. And what a week for it too. Sunny and 16 deg. Celcius. We have to store the sprouts inside at night due to the overnight temperatures but in the day we have been letting them bask in the sunlight and the heat. We are using our large workshop for this task. Tamas has a brand new forklift for this task. No more 2x4 makeshift fork lifts for Kind Organics. The greenhouses will be full time Lettuce producers until we can go outside and then the sprouts will move back into the greenhouses.

We are selling at 3 different farmers markets this spring and many more come late May. We will be at Dufferin Grove Thursdays 3-7, Wychwood Barns on Saturday mornings (8-12) once a month on the 3rd Saturday of the month, and Monthly on the second Monday of the Month we frequent Sorauren Market from 3-7pm. It would be great to see you there.

At the end of May the Market schedule will be changing so keep an eye out for times and places.

Kind Team.

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