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By Christine Clarke

I was talking to some farmer friends the other day, and we were all expressing excitement over the coming farm season. We were like little green sprouts in the snow: dormant over the winter, and now we’re ready to pop! I think February 1st is the true New Years for farmers. Planting those first seeds feels like it’s just around the corner come February -- and in many ways it is. Some farms will head to their indoor growing spaces at the end of the month, to start long germinating crops, like celery and parsley. At Ignatius, we’ll start our seedlings indoors during the first week of March. Some of the earliest vegetables and herbs we’ll start seeding are the ones for our Spring Plant Sale.

How early do you start thinking about your garden? Is it April? For some of you late bloomers, is it in June? I start thinking about your gardens right about now. (Truth be told, I’ve been thinking about your gardens all winter). I wonder what you like to grow? How do you use what you grow in your recipes? What new herbs and vegetable varieties might you like to try in your gardens? All of these ponderings and imaginative wanderings lead me and Farmer Don to choosing the plant types and varieties to offer you during our sale.

I imagine that gardeners, like us farmers, will be thinking a lot about sustainability this season, not just environmental but also our manner of living: can we sustain parts of our diet with the food we grow? I see gardens abundant with the veggies you may use most in your cooking: tomatoes, onions, potatoes, eggplant and a variety of greens. I also see gardeners who’ll want to give a little space to those crops that, in turn, literally give us the spice of life: basil, cilantro and hot peppers.

And so I sit down with snow still blanketing the fields, making a plant list and checking it twice like a green Santa, wondering what everyone’s little patch of land will look like come spring. Tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers, hot peppers, onions, potato, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, kale, leeks, parsley, fennel, cabbage, basil, cilantro, flowers and more. I’ll soon be looking after all these little seedlings, keeping them warm against the deep cold outside the greenhouse, tending to them until they become hardy and vigorous plants, ready to find their home in your gardens.

  

This program is made possible through collaboration between Ignatius Farm, Everdale, and the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario as well as an Ontario Trillium Foundation Seed Grant.

The Ignatius Farm Internship training combines weekly education curriculum with hands-on field work to develop your skills and knowledge as a farm worker, and the basis of your work in ecological agriculture or food system advocacy.

Check out Farm Training options on Ignatius Farm website

or e-mailing [email protected]

Apply for an immersive organic farming internship today!

Check out our employment page here for available opportunities, and keep checking in as positions are posted.

Farmer Christine working on a dibbler that pokes holes in the seedling trays.

Farmer Dons WFH look. He's deep into planning!

Carrot cleaning on a frosty morning.

Farmer Christine saw her shadow on Groundhog day!

Greg Kennedy, SJ

wigged with snow

the frozen life of kale

holds on to its September

youth and forest complexion

even as cold brittles

its bones that fracture

in arms they once wrestled;

still its senior days

are sweeter more than bitter

diet fads and rehearsal

apocalypses grab

the junk food news feeds

that stuff arteries

but leave stomachs empty

while quiet kale

in the dead white of winter

shares its frozen life

and late summer childhood stories

to every tongue that cares to listen

between the rocks

the frost heaves up

and the hard places

of current affairs

lives kale, loyal philanthropist,

where all other plants have long stopped giving.