On a favourite farming podcast the host sometimes asks “If you could have one farming super power what would it be?”

For me the answer is easy: I would have the ability to stop time… so I could get caught up on all the planting, weeding, watering, washing, packing, marketing, bookkeeping, and so on… in the height of the season there just never seems to be enough time!

Vegetable farming is so busy for a good six months a year, time becomes an incredibly valuable asset (also the reason why my favourite song of 2019 was “Don’t Waste My Time” by Sault- check it out, it’s super catchy too!).

For the past few years we’ve been trying to grow more produce so that we can market longer into the winter and early spring; however, we never seem to have enough time to grow this extra food and we usually sell out completely by early December.

Well this season (even though we have another baby in tow) we are expanding our area in production, hiring extra staff, and making some changes to our weekly marketing schedule all in effort to really grow more, so that we can supply you well into the winter. With this comes a trade off though, namely the decision to stop our farm gate sale on Wednesday afternoons. As much as we loved having people come by the farm and chatting with our loyal customers, it was taking Nick and I away from a valuable day of field work for the better part of the growing season. So after much deliberation we have decided to narrow down our markets to just the Duncan Farmers Market on Saturdays, plus our Harvest Box, and two wholesale accounts.

We know some of our supporters will be disappointed to hear this as it can be difficult to get out to the Duncan Farmers Market on busy Saturdays, and for this we are sorry! (In one small way we will address this by continuing our Harvest Box program with pick up at our farm on Wednesdays). The flip side though is that we hope to be at Duncan Farmers Market much longer into December and again in the early spring!

We see this trade off as helping us create a little more work-life balance over the course of the year, by spreading out some of the marketing into a time of year when we are less busy. But it also means we need to take the time during the busy part of the season to grow even more food! Nick always points out that the phrase “take the time” implies just that: you have to TAKE it! We have a limited amount of this asset, there is no making more of it, all we can do is take that time away from doing something else.

So as we take time away from marketing on Wednesdays this season don’t doubt that we will make the most of it and do more field work. In turn we’ll look forward to seeing you at the Duncan Farmers Market more often throughout the winter… we hope you can take the time to come find us there!