Sign-up is Open for Our 2026 Subscription!
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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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Hoophouse 1 freshly seeded and transplanted. Left to right: older chard, mustard greens and radish, arugula, radish and older radish.
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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!
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Farm Update
Our first grafted tomatoes will be exiting the healing chamber this week. They have spent the last week in the dark, warm, and moist healing chamber, joining together the rootstock and scion we've selected and combined.
The grafting is simple at its core: select a rootstock with genetics for naturally hardy and supportive roots, and a scion (top) that produces really delicious fruit. We cut the stems of both varieties in half and clip the scion on top of the rootstock. The plants already know what to do and begin fusing their vascular tissue, becoming a new individual. We just provide an environment most conducive to that process.
There are a wide range of specialty equipment available for use in large greenhouses, including tools and even grafting robots in some cases. For our purposes, the more “homemade” approach works where we graft with an exacto blade and our healing chamber is a folding table with a tarp over it and a small heater inside. It still produces robust grafts without very much trouble!
This week on our seed starting schedule, we are excited to begin yellow onions, beets, and choi. We are also starting to seed the spring lettuces that, before too long, will fill our hoophouses and field tunnels. We have a little more time before we’ll need to start prepping the soil in these areas, since the light hours are still short enough that seedlings take longer to grow. It's difficult to predict what conditions will be like next month when we plant them, but since they're already set in motion, we will at least hope we are out of this deep freeze!
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We will be eating these tomatoes before you know it! This rootstock was grafted to sakura (red cherry) tomatoes, and they are ready to enter the healing chamber.
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FARM STORE NOTES
FROM OUR FARM:
Arugula and radish are available this week. Kale will be taking a break until temperatures warm up and it can grow some more.
From storage: Carrots, beets, sunchokes, celeriac, rutabaga, kohlrabi, winter radishes, red and green cabbages
From the Greenhouse and hoophouses: Arugula, radish, parsley and cilantro.
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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.
Daryl Myny (Aylmer): Spanish onions
Pfenning's Organics (New Hamburg): Red onions, leeks, red, yellow, and russet potatoes.
Through Pfenning's: Ontario mushrooms,. From further away, shallots, citrus, ginger, 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):
La Houlette de vie (St. Thomas): Sourdough bread and pastries made with local, organically grown grains milled fresh by baker Seth. Bi-weekly through the winter. Available next week!
Artisan Bakery (London): Sourdough bread and pastries made with fresh locally milled Arva flour. Bi-weekly through the winter. Available next week!
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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