If you're tired of tasteless tomatoes, strawberries with the consistency of cardboard and salad greens, wilted and weary after travelling from California, but don't know where to buy local, organically grown produce, Susan Linkletter, owner/operator of a certified organic farm on the Scott Road near Salisbury, has a solution.
In addition to suggesting you shop at weekly farmer's markets, she's developed an online farmer's market, funded by the Petitcodiac Watershed Alliance. Currently there are 23 New Brunswick merchants offering a variety of produce and products including meat, fish and eggs; cheese and dairy; herbs, spices and teas; plants and seeds; fruit and vegetables; honey and maple products; baked goods; beer and wine; jewelry and other crafts. Here people can place an order and arrange for pick-up and payment, either by cash or cheque but not pay-pal, as Susan says it's too much of a security issue.
Susan is one of the 23 merchants. She lists summer market garden produce from her Diddly Squash Farm, including peas, beans and corn, beets and turnips, tomatoes and cucumbers, strawberries and a whole variety of fresh greens, including hard-to-find Swiss chard.
"Ten years ago I was a 'stay-home mom' with four young children," Susan says, "and I was looking for a challenge. I decided to plant a big garden and grow everything organically because I didn't want to expose my children to the chemicals used in commercial agriculture.
Their health is my first concern and I wanted fresh, wholesome food to feed them. I'd grown up on a dairy farm and my dad used chemicals to grow the corn for the cattle, so I knew those chemicals can be hazardous to health."
By the second year, Susan's garden was producing more than the family could eat, so she decided to apply for organic certification and then start selling. "There are three or four certification bodies in New Brunswick," she says, "and I decided to adapt what I was doing to meet the rigorous standards of the Organic Crop Improvement Association, which follows universal standards, meaning what they've certified could be sold in Europe. It has even higher standards than the Canadian Organic Regulation. We're inspected annually and if a grower who's used chemicals in past seasons wants to be certified, he will have to wait three years for the chemical residue in the soil to break down. "
"There are some chemicals that organic farmers can use, but I don't use any. That means I don't use pesticides, fungicides, herbicides or chemically treated seeds. Instead of chemical fertilizers, I use 'green manure'. I grow two crops of buckwheat on a field, plough it under and that creates nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium for the next year. I'll also use compost with animal manure in the fall and till it into the ground."
Susan admits bugs can be a problem. "Cucumber beetles are a challenge and the crows love young corn plants, but row covers work. They're made of light netting so the sun and rain can penetrate but the bugs can't. And there are some crops I just don't grow, for example I don't grow potatoes, because you couldn't pay me enough to pick potato bugs off the leaves."
In addition to the large summer market garden, there's a 50 ft. x 60 ft. greenhouse with long table-height beds of greens, mainly leaf lettuce and spinach, in various stages of growth.
"It takes from four to six weeks to go from seed to market ready," Susan says of this produce sold under her Earth Friendly Farms label at Dolma Foods on St. George Street in Moncton. "The green house is constructed of polycarbonate which is like corrugated cardboard with airspace for insulation between the layers; there's floor heating from an outside furnace and rain water is collected off the roof, so it's operational year-round."
Susan, who is a full time executive director of the Petitcodiac Watershed Alliance, says she couldn't do all what she does without husband Jeff's help and admits organic farming is not hugely profitable. But for Susan there's a different kind of reward. It's all about knowing she's feeding her family with wholesome food, selling produce to young parents who want to make chemical-free baby food so important to early growth and development, creating a distribution network of organic farmers and growers, and seeing the surprise and delight on a customer's face when they bite into one of her strawberries.
"People tell me they have so much flavor and they taste just like the ones they remember from their childhood," she says.
When shopping for organic produce, look for the label that says Certified Organic. Remember "All Natural" does not mean organic.