Hy Hope Farm, Ashburn Ontario

Pruning in the orchard

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:49:19 +0000

Well we haven’t had that bad of a winter so we have been pretty lucky to be able to get into the orchard and get a great jump on pruning all of our apple, pear cherry and plum trees. Generally we don’t get started on the pruning until the end of February or the beginning of March, but this year we have made a big dent in the work and it is still only the middle of February.
There are always good and bad with everything of course, and all of this warm weather and no snow means that the tobogganing has’t been very good this year. We have had a few weekends where people have been able to get out on the hills bit I know there has been some kids who got a sled for Christmas and didn’t get to use it until the beginning of this month. We are hoping that the snow that we do have holds up for this coming weekend for Family Day!
We have been busy in the kitchen as well trying out new recipes and ideas for the coming season and I think we have come up with quite a few pretty good ones. Dave has been making a new kind of bread for us with oat oat and honey. It is so good that the night I took it home to try it out I ate half the loaf myself and then woke up the next morning and had some more for toast, no kidding. We’ve also tried out some new muffins for our morning customers and we have been asking the neighbors for their opinions. We have had some winners and maybe a dud or two. Sampling is always fun though. The trouble is we never give the treats time to cool down, we always eat them when they are straight out of the oven and so hot they burn your taste buds right off! Oh well better try another one!

Christmas baskets and Goodies!

admin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:36:07 +0000

We have been busy getting our store ready for the holidays. We have been preparing gift baskets full of our jams and preserves, pickles and relishes. We have already prepared ones ready to go in the store for you to pick up on your way through or you can choose your own jars to fill your basket and have it wrapped up on the spot to take home with you.

We have also been busy baking shortbread cookies and other holiday treats like fruitcake for you to enjoy or take with you to that holiday party. We make different size cookie trays from small to large and everything in between. We are also busy baking all of our pies, tarts, cookies and breads for your parties or holiday dinners. If you are looking for baked goodies for your Christmas dinner make sure you get your order in so you and your family won’t be disappointed come Christmas Day! Just give the ladies at the store a call and they can take your order. 905-655-4123

And don’t forget everybody has to eat, so food is always a great gift! I hear Spicy Dilly Beans make a great stocking stuffer and your Dad will never forget the Smoked Summer Sausage!

Hope to see you soon!

Open all year round!

admin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:21:50 +0000

Don’t forget we are open all year round!

We are open everyday of the week and we are baking all of our pie, tarts, cookies and breads as well as having a huge variety of apples still available for sale. We have Macs, Cortlands, Empire, Golden Delicious & Northern Spys to mention a few. We also have loads of potatoes, squash, onions along with our preserves and jams.

We are also open throughout the winter for tobogganing when the conditions are right. So bring the family and your toboggans and come out for a great time (not to mention a great way to tire out the kids). Just give the store a call to find out the conditions.

We hope to see you out at the farm so come by and do some shopping and have a little fun!

Harvest Food Drive

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:29:57 +0000

We are getting ready for our Harvest Food Drive supporting the Salvation Army. This Saturday October 22, from 1 p.m. throughout the afternoon. We will be featuring Stony Smith from Oddball Kustoms car shop, famous Cowboy Dan Price, CanSaf Race team & Maverick Drag racing team. Live music by Miracle Span garage band & BBQ with all donations going to the Salvation Army in Uxbridge. We hope to see you out at the farm this weekend so make sure you bring a non-pershable food item or donation for the food bank.

Fall Harvest

admin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:31:25 +0000

Well the fall is upon us and there are so many great things coming off of the trees and in from the fields!! We have been digging our potatoes when the weather is nice and the crop has been pretty good this year. It is actually pretty neat to look back at the previous posts and see when we planted the potatoes and what you get from the ground in the fall. It’s not always a given that your going to have success but this year so far so good.

We have also been picking our apples from the trees! We have MacIntosh and Cortland apples and everyone’s new favorite Honey Crisp! Honey Crisp have become the most popular apple ever I think and they are so good. They do live up to their name! Sweet and crunchy! They don’t last long though, because once they are gone that’s it until next year, so make sure you get out to the farm and pick up a bushel. A basket won’t make it through the weekend.

I should say that the Cortlands and Macs are great this time of year too. The Macs are still nice and crispy and the Cortlands are sweet and juicy! We will be picking other apples in the coming weeks including Empire, Spartan, Red and Golden Delicious, Spys, Fuji, Ambrosia, Royal Gala and Red Rhone. So needless to say we will be busy in the coming weeks.

We are also getting ready for the Thanksgiving weekend. All of our bakers will be busy in the kitchen baking up pies, butter tarts, cookies and breads for you to take home to your family and friends for your big dinner. But keep in mind it is a good idea to place an order for your baked goods that weekend because we tend to sell out quickly, so just give us a call at the store at 905-655-4123 and we will be happy to set something aside for you.

We Hope to see you out at the farm sometime this fall, bring the family or a call full of friends for a nice drive in the country. The leave are already stating to change, can you believe it?!

Picking Our Own Blueberries

admin — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:28:26 +0000

Well the sumer seems to be flying by us very quickly!

Our own blueberries are finally ready and we have been picking them for that last week or so. We have picked the first of five varieties so we still have loads to come. The plants are covered with little white and light blue berries just waiting to ripen. We are very proud of our little blueberry crop and are happy to share them with our customers. The fresh sweet corn is also ready to enjoy, another sign that summer is moving on. We have both peaches & cream and super-sweet for sale in the store, picked fresh everyday.

We also have peaches from Niagara available in the store. We have dealt with the same peach growers for the last twenty years and their peaches are excellent! They are always juicy and sweet and hard to stop yourself from eating the basket

in one sitting!

We have also harvested our home grown garlic. We have been spot picking the garlic for the last few weeks but the garlic was definatly ready to go this week sowe pulled all of it and put it into the greenhouse to dry down so it will keep into the winter.

Yes I said winter.

Dave has also spent a few evenings on the combine brining in the rye. He finally finished last night, now we will have to have it cleaned and send it out to be milled into flour for Dave’s bread. It is pretty awesome to see something like rye be planted, watch it grow, harvest it and be able to turn it into flour which is then made into bread!

That’s what it is all about!

Lots to do…

admin — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:16:21 +0000

We have been very busy the past two weeks! We made it through the Canada Day long week-end and we got all of the hay off and into the barns. We were able to get it put away before it got rained on, which is extremely important for good quality hay to feed to the cattle.

We have also been hilling our potatoes and we have dug a few for sale in the store. New potatoes are the best! The potato crop is doing pretty well but we are in need of a little rain, for everything on the farm. We feel a little guilty saying that especially after the spring that we had with so much rain. But all of this sunshine and heat makes everything that much sweeter.

We have had a bumper crop of red currants and we have been busy making jam and freezing them for us to use in our pies through out the year. The black currant crop has not been very good this year which is odd compared to the red currants. We will be making a little bit of black currant jam as well so if you are a fan of black currant jam make sure you stock up because it won’t last long!

Our freezers are also full of our beef, pork and whole chickens. We have been sold out of our chickens for a while but our freezers are full now! Our free range chickens are between six and nine pounds and are great for roasting or even making that great beer can chicken recipe on the B.B.Q. They are also big enough to have leftovers which is nice during the hot summer!

We will be busy in the kitchen baking and canning or at the farmers’ markets in Pickering and Oshawa Centre or out in the fields or on the golf

course. Where ever we are make sure you say “Hi” and take home some healthy fruit and veg or some treats for your family and friends! Stay cool!

Haying time is here!

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:22:57 +0000

Well we have started haying for another year! We need the sun to shine so we are hoping that the weather men and women are right for the next few days. It’s very important for the hay to dry down properly so we can get it baled and into the barn, stored away until the winter comes. There are a lot of other things on the go this week as well.

We have just pulled some fresh garlic for sale in the store. The bulbs are a little bit smaller than what you would see later in the season but the skins are so soft that you can eat the skins and all. No peeling, beautiful!! We still have some garlic scapes as well. The sweet corn is growing great as are the potatoes, tomatoes and onions. We also planted some sweet red peppers this week along with some pumpkins, so hopefully all of the major planting is done and now we get to watch everything grow! Everything is a little bit behind, especially compared to last year when everything was so early. I think this time last year we had sweet cornalready!

We are also getting ready for a busy Canada Day weekend! We will be busy all weekend baking butter tarts, pies cookies and bread for our customers to come and pick up to take a b.b.q. or away to the cottage and don’t forget we still have strawberries available as well as lettuces, tomatoes, zucchini, peas and spinach, add in a couple of steaks from the freezer and that sounds like dinner!

We hope everyone has a great and safe Canada Day long weekend. Enjoy, we only get so many each year so make the most of it!

Still more planting to be done!

admin — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:50:19 +0000

We have had another busy week here at Hy-Hope Farm. It seems this time of year there is always something to be done. We have had some interesting storms this spring, with high winds and lots of rain. We have had many trees come down around the farm as well as pieces of sheet metal come off of the roof of the barn. We convinced one brave soul to go up the ladder to repair the roof one day this week. He made short work of it and was back on the ground safely.

We also spent quite a bit of time getting the tomato plants into the ground and getting them staked. There are still more tomato plants to go in but we have made good head-way. We still have our beef steak tomatoes to put in along with red and green peppers. The pepper plants are tall and healthy and I think are ready to bear peppers any day now. Both the tomatoes and the peppers love all of this sunshine and warm weather we have been having. It has also done our sweet corn wonders. The corn was planted just last week and is already up and growing like crazy! Talk about the perfect summer-time dinner, sweet corn (smothered in butter of course!), thick sliced beef steak tomatoes with a dash of salt and pepper and a tall glass of cold lemonade… ahhh nothing better!

The sweet cherry trees are loaded with lots of cherries waiting to grow up. We should get an excellent crop of cherries again this year, that is if the birds don’t eat them all before we get a chance to pick them.

It is hard to be patient this time of year but all of the great Ontario fruits and veggies are worth the wait. I think that is part of what makes them taste that much better!

The farm hands have been working overtime!!

admin — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 23:24:24 +0000

The farmers have been busy trying to get things done. They have been preparing the drip irrigation for the blueberry bushes. The plants are loaded with flowers and we have seen lots of bees buzzing around them, so we are hoping for a good crop of blueberries this year.

We have also planted a good size crop of potatoes, including red chieftain, canabec, cali white as well as a few other varieties. Here’s hoping that this years crop will be as good as last years!

The “farmer’s rule” is in full swing, “work until everything is done”. Planting sweet corn and gladiolas, perennials for cut flowers and orchard maintenance has kept the farmers busy. Dave and Derek have been staying out until dark and even later trying to get everything planted, seeded, rototilled, weeded, mulched and fertilized! Remember January when there was nothing to do but watch the snow fly?!

Look for an update on the Sweet Cherry crop next time!

I.P.M. Update for the Orchards:

Very low bug pressure, but apple scab is a problem.