Nelson Urban Acres is bringing fresh produce closer to home.

Happy 2012, everyone. This is Farmer Paul reporting from his new home in the eastern Ontario town of Cobourg. It's middle of winter here — but rest assured, spring's always on our minds.

Just to update you all: the new operator of Nelson Urban Acres, fresh from Salt Spring Island, is Jasmin Coffey. She will be moving to Nelson in the spring, and she's very excited to get into the dirt!

You can now use the Contact page to get in touch with Jasmin, or e-mail info@nelsonurbanacres.ca.

If you'd to contact me or Laire about our new urban farming endeavours, send an e-mail off to info@victorygardenvegetables.ca. That's our new farm: Victory Garden Vegetables! The website is on its way.

Urban farming full-speed ahead!

Yours,

Farmer Paul & Farmer Laire

It looks like there is a good chance a couple from Salt Spring Island may be interested in taking over Nelson Urban Acres next year! I have yet to finalize details with them, but I thought I'd share the good news and keep everyone in the loop.

Urban farming onward and upward!

As most people reading this have probably already heard, Farmers Paul and Laire will be moving to Cobourg, Ontario in less than 6 weeks. My father passed away this year and we are moving into his old home. Obviously, this means neither of us will be here to contine the farm in future years.

I have met a few people interested in taking on bits and pieces of the farm: a couple of the gardens, the walk-in cooler, the tiller, etc. But so far the number of people who've contacted me saying they are seriously interested in running NUA as a farm business... well, not so many.

So I'm putting the word out there:

Who would like to take over the largest of Nelson's urban gardens, the market materials, the brand, the website?

It's up for grabs at this point.

After a long illness, my father, Richard Homme, has passed away. I am with family back in Cobourg, Ontario, staying in his home until we have sifted through everything and, eventually, got the house ready for sale.

My sister, Meta, and I felt that our dad would have wanted us to grow his vegetable garden one last time. He turned his front lawn into a productive vegetable garden with the help of a permaculture design consultant. Meta and I have revived his garden space and are planning to turn it into a zero- to low-maintenance vegetable garden for this growing season. Here is how it looks after being planted:

For the next few weeks, a group of high school students of Nelson's SelfDesign High will be joining me at Nelson Urban Acres once a week to learn about food, farming and sustainability. My good friend Paula Sobie (whom I've mentioned before here and here) connected me with this group, and we agreed, what better way to teach kids about sustainability than to check out their local urban farm! And what better month to do it than April, Earth Month.

Last weekend we got two of our three potato varieties planted: Russian Banana (a fingerling variety) and Russian Blue. Very exciting! Here's what they might look like come harvest time:

I recently wrote a letter to mayor and council on the topic of backyard chickens in Nelson. They will be considering whether to dedicate more staff time to the issue.

I submitted my letter to The Nelson Post, and you can read it here.

It's the middle of the winter here in Nelson. The gardens have been pretty well protected winter-long with a pretty good layer of snow covering it most times, and when not, it wasn't usually cold enough to do damage to root veggies still snug in the ground. Most of the snow at our elevation melted over the last week or so, but it was cold enough last night to freeze the upper inch of soil. So when we had a short window of sunshine in the middle of the day today, it was just enough warmth to thaw that upper crust.

So Laire and I went outside and dug up the last dozen or so parsnips:

We also took advantage of the sunshine to turn and amalgamate a few compost piles. Some shovelfuls were just teeming with red wigglers! Nice to see so much life during what otherwise seems like such a dead part of the year.