Planning and Planting Early-Season Greens |
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Order vegetables before Wednesday at 12pm for pickup at the Farm (Friday) or Western Fair Market (Saturday).
No delivery or Kitchener market pickup this week.
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Planting lettuce in one of our field tunnels |
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Sign-up is Open for our Spring to Fall 2026 Subscription!
Join us for a season of produce fresh from our fields to your home.
Each week, we draft a box for you filled with our best seasonal produce, which you can customize to fit your needs and tastes. Then, we harvest and pack everything up for pickup or home delivery!
If you were a member in 2025, its likely you have already been auto-renewed for this season! Look for messages from us about the renewal, or reach out to and we can check on our side so you aren't signed up twice!
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Farm Update
We are almost done planting the hoophouses and field tunnels with spring crops! Over the last month, we have transplanted more than 31,000 seedlings. This is a huge accomplishment for our crew, which has still been winter-sized, in navigating these late-winter conditions. It feels like we've seen it all in the last month, planting in rain, mud, cold spaces, hot spaces, cramped spaces with narrow pathways, every seedling laid out and planted by hand.
Instead of planning and seeding transplants for specific spaces, we focus on planning for the type of structure and the volume of plants. We plant the most well-insulated or heated structures earliest and finish with the least insulated and unheated spaces. For us, this means first planting in our heated greenhouse, then our heated hoophouse, next our unheated hoophouses, and lastly our field tunnels.
Since our field tunnels all have the same degree of insulation, we plan seedlings for the total amount of space in all tunnels, rather than each structure individually. Once we know approximately how many plants will fit in the total space available, we seed successions of transplants over the course of several weeks. This way we can be flexible to some tunnels being ready for planting earlier than others.
There is just one more succession to go before we will be done planting spring tunnels and off to planting in the field!
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Sophia clearing out some parsley plants from the greenhouse to prepare for planting the next group of fruiting crops |
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FARM STORE NOTES
FROM OUR FARM:
From the Greenhouse and hoophouses: Spinach and chard. Living Genovese basil plants.
From storage: Carrots, sunchokes, celeriac, kohlrabi, and winter radishes. Dried herbs from the farm!
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FROM OUR SUPPLIERS:
PRODUCE
HOPE Eco-Farms (Aylmer): Sweet potatoes.
Great Lakes Farms (Port Stanley): Macintosh, empire, gala, honeycrisp, ida red. ambrosia, sunpunch, golden delicious.
Pfenning's Organics (New Hamburg): Yellow onions and green cabbage. Red, yellow, and russet potatoes.
Through Pfenning's: Ontario mushrooms (King oyster, shiitake, and bella),. From further away, shallots, citrus, ginger, and turmeric.
DAIRY and EGGS
HOPE Eco-Farms (Aylmer): Eggs.
Through Pfenning's: L'Ancetre butter and grass-fed cheeses
Gunn's Hill (Woodstock): Brie, Handeck and Five Brother's cheese
FROZEN
3Gen Organics (Wallenstein): Ground pork, sausage, bacon, ham, tenderloin, chops
YU Ranch (Tillsonburg): Pasture-raised ground beef, beef patties, stewing beef
New Leaf Foods (London): Plant-based beet burgers
BAKERY
J&D Peters Tortillas (Aylmer): Spelt, whole wheat and unbleached flour tortillas.
La Houlette de vie (St. Thomas): Bi-weekly through the winter. Available next week! Sourdough bread and pastries made with local, organically grown grains milled fresh by baker Seth.
Artisan Bakery (London): Bi-weekly through the winter. Available next week! Sourdough bread and pastries made with fresh locally milled Arva flour.
PANTRY
Aldred Maple (West Lorne): Amber, dark, or whiskey barrel-aged maple syrup.
Wildflowers Honey (St. Thomas): Unpasteurized honey from hives all over Elgin County, including our farm!
Mat's Fine Oils (Staffordville). Fresh, organic and cold-pressed, hemp and sunflower oil. Store in the refrigerator.
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PICKUP OPTIONS THIS WEEK
Farm pickup: Friday 1pm-7pm
Western Fair Market pickup: Saturday 8 am to 3 pm / Sunday 10 am to 2pm
We love to re-use wherever possible! We can take our CGF boxes and liner bags, strawberry and blueberry baskets/boxes, milk bottles, and egg cartons.
For deliveries, please leave these return items out where you would like your order dropped off. Thank you!
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Why am I on this list? At some point you signed up for our previous "farmstand" list or our newsletter list. Want to get off the list? No problem: . Common Ground Farm 6986 Middle River Road St. Thomas, Ontario N5P 3S9 |
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