It's Strawberry Season!

To view the latest from Ridge Berry Farm visit our new blog and site!

Well that didn't take long. Last blog entry our berries were still green, now we're piking berries every single day.

The Strawberries are ready for picking

There is nothing like sun-ripened freshly picked Strawberries. They certainly put the store-bought versions to shame.

If you live in the Fonthill area, we urge all our readers to go to your local "pick your own". You'll have a delightful time and you'll be enjoying this year's first crop of berries.

Here at the farm, our entire crop is dedicated to the Tea Room. You'll find our berries in pies, jams and every so often on our High Tea.

With the Strawberries now in season, we decided to survey the other berries which we will soon be able to pick. We expect that these will be the Mulberries and Saskatoons.

The Mulberries are ripening.....

...and so are the Saskatoons.

This year is looking very promising. We've never seen so many Black Currants in our bushes.

The Black Currants are simply prolific!

Even our Kiwi Berries will be showing more blooms than we've ever seen.

Kiwi buds just ready to bloom.

As we continue working on our raised beds, we also have made acquaintance with a new "weed". Looking a bit like small Christmas trees, this weed is called the Field Horsetail (Equisetum Arvense). We have found it primarily in the beds near our dome and we have left it occupy a portion of our Asparagus bed as ground cover.

Field Horsetail fronting a thick wall of Asparagus ferns.

It turns out that the Field Horsetail is a living fossil. It has descended from larger versions that covered the globe some hundreds of millions of years ago. It is one of those rare plants that actually reproduce by spores. As a weed it is very difficult to get rid of. Herbicides do not generally work and the plant develops a deep network of roots making it difficult to pull. The best solution is to just keep cutting it down.

The reason we have an abundance of these is that the plant loves a wet sandy soil. Exactly the conditions around our dome.

Our latest "weed" discovery: Field Horsetail (Equisetum Arvense)

Always looking for the good in "weeds", we had to do some research on this plant and we discovered a few very interesting facts.

The Field Horsetail contains a lot of Silica (in fact it feels a bit like plastic). As a result, it has been used in biodynamic farming to condition soils. A tea made with the plant can be sprayed on a given soil to prevent fungus.

As avid foragers, we were also surprised to find that this plant is indeed edible! It can be poisonous to certain animals (eg. horses), and it also can contain Nicotine (so not recommended for children). The buds are eaten in Japan, where it is called Tsukushi, pretty much the way we consume Fiddleheads.

For thousands of years concoctions of this plant were used by man around the world. It is said that the tea strengthens hair and nails. It has also been used to aid in kidney dysfunctions. However, nothing has yet been proven by modern science.

We were a little late in discovering this new weed so we've not had a chance to taste its buds. But you can be sure that next Spring, we'll be looking for some Japanese recipes!

We'll close this entry with a quick wildlife pic: the Northern Leopard Frog.

A very well camouflaged Leopard Frog

We must have thousands of frogs on the property. We figure it's a good thing and an indication of a healthy ecosystem. However, it can also a problem.

These very well camouflaged frogs can turn into a sad mess when we BushHog or mow the lawn. We do our very best to avoid them but every year we sadly find we just can't avoid them all. At least one of us in the family always cringes when he has to mow the fields.