There’s nothing like freshly rolled pizza doughs topped with fresh veg from the fields straight out of the oven! The SOYL youth at Farm Roots make a mean pizza, and all the leftover veg went into pasta sauce.
We have been so busy growing, learning, and sharing our love grown produce with the community! This summer has gone by in a blink of the eye, and it is hard to beleive there is only a week left in the program. The students have worked so very hard and we are so very proud 🙂
There has been a lot of harvesting recently. I think it is mainly because there are a lot of markets and senior centers coming up. My market and senior center days are in August so I will be the last one to go to a market or senior center. Today I harvested broccoli. We couldn’t find the shears so we had to cut the broccoli using scissors which was next to impossible. Every time I pass the broccoli I am always intrigued on how it is grown. I find it so cool how it grows in the middle of the plant and it looks so funny. We collected so much broccoli! They were all huge too which is great for the market.
We also collected carrots. They are so cute and tiny. They are like tiny, little baby carrots. Some of them were this pretty purple color too. I wonder why? Either way I cant really eat carrots because of my braces but that is okay cause I never really liked them that much anyways.
What is your favorite type of veggie and why?
Wow, week two is in the books; we can hardly believe it.
Spent the day building tables, seeding beets and drying beans, and cooking our signature bean and warm potato salad recipe with blueberry, blackberry crumble for dessert.
What a terrific Thursday!
Week One
A crazy awesome week has gone by here at the farm! Our SOYL program has begun and we are so excited to learn, grow, and share good food with our community.
Here are the highlights of the week 🙂
Students cooking up the Farm Roots special, garic scape baked fries.
Before and after pics of the students hard work weeding the overgrown rows.
Garlic hanging to dry (we have lots of red russian garlic ready for you to stock up on).
Have a great weekend!
We have been busy getting the farm space ready for our summer SOYL program to begin. Shamus took the lead in designing and building the luffa trellis. That’s right, we are going to have vines growing up a ten foot trellis over a picnic area. Thank you Shamus!
Wait, there’s more! We set up a 12 ft by 19 ft hoop-house (small green house) so we can extend our growing season 🙂
One more week until SOYL starts and we couldn’t be more excited.
What a year!
Yesterday marked the last day of the fall/winter program at the farm, and boy was it a big day!
The day started with a farm scavenger hunt, then the students competed in farm Olympics where they had to fill two buckets with weeds, plant corn, pick peas, water the orchard, and fill two wheelbarrows with wood-chips.
Students and staff prepared a barbeque lunch before unveiling the new sign at the entrance of the farm paying homage to Mr. Graham Harkley, and Mrs. Tammy Veltkamp – the amazing teachers who started this program and who will not be returning next year. Their legacy will live on through our students and the farm.
We finished the celebratory day by watching the grade 12 environmental studies students’ film then indulged in some tasty treats and the students presented their teachers with gifts.
P.S a note from the gr. 12 enviro class – SAVE THE BEES!!!
Have a great summer and be sure to visit the farm stand for fresh produce 🙂 Look at all those garlic sapes we just pulled, come before we are all out!
June is here and we are already full throttle into our growing season thanks to the hard work of the Delta Farm Roots students and staff. With nearly all our beds planted, we are expecting lots of food and we are excited to announce we will be selling at the Ladner and Tsawwassen farmers markets: July 22nd (Ladner) , July 28th (Tsawwassen) , Aug 11th (Tsawwassen). We may change one of our Tsawwassen markets to the North Delta market, so please stay tuned!
Farmer Jasmine is back with Fresh Roots for a second growing season, and we are very excited to have Farmer Shamus join us with his excellent building skills and eye for infrastructure improvements. Please join us at the Delta site – 6570 1A ave – to buy our fresh produce on our honour stand and don’t forget to say hi to us on the field.
Happy Growing!
Hello friend! Amanda and Nicole here.
Have you ever been responsible for storing three totes full of abnormally large spinach? Because we have! And we have written a step-by-step guide just for you based off of our very own experience at the Fresh Roots’ Norquay office. So, if you ever find yourself in this situation, do not fret. Follow this guide, and you will achieve three-tote-mega-spinach-storing success!
You will need:
Step 1: Give your spinach a rinse and stuff them into ziplock bags!
The spinach arrived at our office this morning a little dirty. We filled up the sink to about a quarter of the way full of cold water, gave them a wash, shook off the excess, and stuffed them into ziplock bags. We ended up with twelve entire bags full of spinach!
Step 2: Realize that twelve bags of spinach cannot fit in your freezer.
We love our fridge’s freezer here at Fresh Roots. We freeze a lot of things! So much so, that when it came time to try to fit twelve bags of spinach into the freezer – well… that didn’t work out too well. Thankfully, Ros remembered that we had another freezer stored away in the office’s storage space.
Step 3: Clean the other freezer.
Ros went quickly to work, grabbed a funny smelling cleaner, and started cleaning away. The freezer was nice and clean afterwards, and definitely ready to house twelve bags of spinach. All we had to do was plug it in…
Step 4: (Try to) Plug in the freezer… and realize there is no outlet to plug it into.
Upon realizing that, Nicole, Ros and I had to decide between two courses of action. Either, we had to:
We chose to blanch the spinach.
Step 5: Stuff the spinach into the available crevasses of the fridge for a few hours while you go out and solicit donations.
Nicole and I had other things to do to prepare for this summer’s SOYL Program, so we let the spinach cool in ice out in the fridge to cool for a few hours. While it was cooling, we went on a trip around East Vancouver trying to get donations to support Community Eats!
Step 6: Google “how to blanch spinach”
Ros found this one:
https://www.wikihow.com/Blanch-Spinach
To summarize, all we had to do was boil the spinach for a few moments (until it turned bright green) strain it, flash-freeze by soaking it in an icebath, and squeeze out all of the excess water. What happens next? The spinach shrinks down to about one-tenth of its size, making it way easier to store!
Step 7: Begin to boil some water and realize that you have no ice to make an ice bath
Not a problem – just go out and find ice! It’s everywhere, neighbours, gas stations, and of course the grocery store. Just make sure you get A LOT!
Step 8: Prepare an ice bath.
It worked like a charm!
Step 9: Blanch the spinach by cooking it in boiled water for 60 seconds, straining it, dipping it in the ice bath
Then you can squeeze it into little spinach balls!
Step 10 (Optional): Master the art of spinach blanching and assemble a standing desk
After blanching so much spinach, you will have reached spinach blanching nirvana. You can now move on to doing other things while your spinach is being blanched – like building a standing desk!
Step 11: Voila! You have reduced 12 bags of spinach down to 2!
We were able to store the spinach in the freezer with no trouble at all. Overall, we’d have to say that our spinach-storing journey was a success. 10/10. Would blanch again.
Well, congratulations! You now know how to blanch spinach! Now you can sleep peacefully at night knowing that if three totes of spinach ever arrive at your doorstep, you’ll know exactly what to do with it.
You’re welcome.
-Amanda and Nicole
What did you first think when you heard about the SOYL Program?
I first heard about it attending the VSB’s 2016 Sustainability Conference.
During the conference’s opportunities fair, Fresh Roots had a small booth in the very corner with a little orange poster. I think I nearly missed it, but fate would have me approaching the Fresh Roots booth while I was waiting for people to clear up around the, quite honestly, much more exciting-looking booth beside it.
There, I was greeted by a friendly girl who gave me the rundown of the program. As she spoke, I began to think: would I be willing to spend my entire summer working on a schoolyard farm? Performing all the laborious tasks needed to grow vegetables? Outside, in the hot summer heat?
Heck yeah I would.
You see, while most sixteen-year-olds would be turned off by the idea of working on a farm, I was in love with it. I started getting involved in environmentally-focused volunteer work in grade 9, and over time I ended up developing a huge passion for environmentalism. Before SOYL, I was an avid volunteer for nature day camps at the Surrey Nature Centre. I was also, at one point, part of something called the Salmon Habitat Restoration Program, which allowed me to spend my last summer removing invasive species and doing industrial education work around the city.
Growing and maintaining a garden was something I had absolutely no knowledge about at the time, and it’s because of Fresh Roots that I’ve been able to learn how to do that. Thank you Fresh Roots.
