Golden Bough, Toronto, Simpler Thyme

So I’ve just spent my first week(-ish) at Simpler Thyme, and have had a very enjoyable start to the season. After three weeks at Golden Bough Tree Farm, where they plant, raise, and sell native, exotic/ornamental, and some edible tree species (including some rare nut species), but are not a food farm, I am now glad to be working for food producers. Golden Bough did have some pasture and hay fields, sheep, a veggie garden and orchards - and it was interesting and valuable to see how young trees are cared for and sold - but the experience of working at that nursery was a bit different from working at a farm. Whereas my last few days at the tree farm I was mulching around Manchurian ashes, at Simpler Thyme I found myself one day mulching newly planted potatoes; last week I was weeding around young hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) trees, this week I was weeding around leeks; last week I was transplanting maples and oaks, this week I was transplanting peppers and tomatoes. Quite a contrast, as far as working with plants on a “farm” goes. And one I am enjoying. I am looking forward to 5 upcoming months of helping grow food, simply put.
Since I am only mandated to work a 40 hour week (+ a bit more when needed) at Simpler Thyme, in this first week I had the time to take a look at another farm in this neighbourhood (north of Hamilton). Yesterday after work I biked over to Plan B organic farm where a couple of my friends (including an FES’er) are interning this year. While both Simpler Thyme and Plan B are “organic,” sell locally through farmers markets and a CSA, and thus are quite similar in the grand scheme of things, getting down to details they are very different operations. Plan B has much more land under production 40 acres I think an intern told me yesterday, and has a CSA with more than 10 times as many members, and thus uses techniques which are somewhat more “industrial” in nature. Simpler Thyme produces most of their veggies on raised beds which are cultivated only by hand-tools (with some overflow fields, maybe an acre, are instead tilled by a 60 year old tractor), while Plan B grows on flat fields and which are tilled by horses and tractors.
Yesterday I got to experience “The Transplanter;” this is a tractor with an apparatus on the back which hosts four chairs (each with a tray in front for seedling trays), and a wheel just ahead of these chairs which makes and pours water into holes for transplants. The tractor crawls along at a slow pace while four people, each with a row of holes for themself, methodically plop one seedling after another after another into the ground. I will get picture of this device the next time I am over at Plan B because my description does not serve The Transplanter justice. Either way, I ended up spending about three hours working with the Plan B interns first preparing then transplanting parsley seedlings (this after working a day at Simpler Thyme).
This device is a manifestation of a different set of principles and goals which guide the operations here at this farm. Simpler Thyme’s goal is not to produce as much food as it can sustainably, whereas I think to some extent that may be the goal of Plan B’s owners. I could be wrong; if I am, it’s a matter of semantics. Certainly, Plan B looks and operates differently for a reason. At Simpler Thyme transplanting involves walking, kneeling, and use of a trowel, and that reflects Ann and Bill’s perspective on farming. But They are not interested in just feeding their customers; rather they want to educate them too. Simpler Thyme’s CSA members have to pick up their own produce, which involves coming to and seeing the farm; and they are encouraged to take seedlings home and plant their own garden. As Ann said the other day (I’m paraphrasing here) “really we want to put ourselves out of business; we want people to grow their own food.”

One more thing to note: they planted a bunch more trees this spring. This farm... it’s going to become an edible forest / arboretum in another couple of decades. More on this later.