Snowed In

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With most of the snow now melted over the past 24 hours, you would not think it ....however the week was a complete "write off" from a farming point of view.

Although we were not as hard hit as up state New York (we did not get the "lake effects"), the amount of snow we did get transformed our Growing Dome into an igloo.

Not exactly easy to work on the farm in these conditions.

The net effect is that this week felt more like mid-Winter than Mid-Autumn. In fact, visiting Wild Turkeys made it really feel like Christmas.

Christmas Turkey anyone?

Surprisingly, for a passively heated greenhouse, the Dome itself is still producing. We are still growing Tomatoes; the Kale is doing rather well; and, we've even started to get new Eggplants.

Tomatoes are still ripening in the unheated Growing Dome

The Kale is still doing well (we need to pick it before it wilts)

Even Eggplants are fruiting.

Not being able to work outside, meant it was time to start our 2014 vintage of Kiwi Wine.

With our new fermenter, we are scaling up our production volumes and refining our recipes. Because this wine is technically a fruit Mead or Melomel, this means we are now processing local honey in rather large volumes.

Our wine batches now demand a lot of local honey.

Since we just finished the Kiwi harvest, we certainly had enough fruit on hand. After washing and processing (we cut both the stem and flower ends), we tend to freeze them for future use. This week, we decided to use a few kilos to prepare our wine.

Frozen Kiwis ready to be turned to wine.

Our process is rather simple. After boiling honey and water, we combine the solution with our Kiwis. To this, we just add a wine yeast and wait, 4 weeks for the first fermentation and at least another 4 weeks racked.

As we scale up this year, we did encounter an issue. We did not leave enough "head space" between our sealed lid and our mash. The result is another lesson learned!

After a night of fermentation, we found the kitchen smelled a lot like yeast and we began to hear a hissing noise from the fermenter. After a quick look, we realized that the wine in process was spewing through our airlock valve. Of course this lead to a massive clean-up...although we did not lose much.

Finally this week, we leave you with 3 videos created by the FeastON program of the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance. We're really proud to have participated in this program since it really reflects what we are trying to achieve here at the farm.

The first video is really a mini commercial for the farm.

The second video is a good description of what some of us aspire to do in Niagara.

The last video really expresses well what FeastON is all about.