Saturday at the Asparagus Festival

Lots of hardy souls ventured out to our farm on Saturday May 29 to witness Alberta weather at it's finest!! We toured the asparagus field and the people thought that "ASPARACICLES" tasted absolutely amazing with the added chill of snow!!

Festival News

The rain is fantastic for all the crops, pastures and even the strength of the asparagus plants. Yes, we are going ahead with our festival for this weekend, May 29 & 30 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM.

We have rain plans and everyone will have lots of fun. We have all sorts of children's activities planned in the barn along with the petting zoo. If it is raining we will be putting a cover on the wagon.

We are picking asparagus daily, however the asparagus yield has slowed down the last week with the cool weather. If you were looking for a case lot to make pickles, I would suggest waiting until next week when the weather warms up.

We should have asparagus for sale all weekend, but will not be offering any case discounts because of the somewhat limited supply.

Visit the Asparagus Eats booth where Edgar farms will be offering up many different asparagus dishes.

The LRD WI ladies will be here again with all their homemade tasty treats, home baked pies and coffee for sale.

We are picking asparagus !!

Finally, NO FROST !! and the temperature has been warmer every day and night. The soil had cooled down with the recent rain and snow so it takes a couple of days to get it warmed up. Sunday, May 16 we started picking in a serious way. With 25 degrees the asparagus took off like crazy so we had to get over some of the field twice. The first day and already a long hard day's work. 1/3 of the field is slower so we will start picking it today. We will have all three of our Asparabuggies running and a crew of 10 people helping. If it gets really crazy I will be phoning some of our wonderful casual help to come as well.

Asparagus is up!!

We are picking, FINALLY!! Saturday afternoon at 3:00 PM we checked the field and there wasn't anything tall enough to pick. Sunday morning with warm temperatures overnight there was a little that was tall enough so we got started. The temperature is climbing and so is the asparagus. It can grow up to 10" in one day if it is upwards of 28 degrees. We will pick 2/3 of the field today. The older side is always a few days behind.

We have our farm store open now.

Three Generations in the Asparagus Patch

The asparagus is about 3" tall now. We hope to start picking this weekend. It is very slow to get growing, we are thinking that with the snow and rain we got last week, the soil temperature cooled down considerably.

Asparagus is growing

May 12 YEH!! Finally NO FROST last night, the sun is shining, the temperature got to 20 C. the soil is warming up. We will be picking very soon now.

Baby Pea Plants

Peas are very frost tolerant in the spring. These little guys were planted on April 3 and have survived many nights of -5 and -6 temperatures. We hope to be picking peas by early July.

Planting Peas

May 12, got another planting of our market garden peas and broad beans seeded today. We now have about six plantings of peas in and are seeing lots of baby peas poking up.

Asparagus is coming soon!!

We have lots of baby asparagus tips poking through the ground. Asparagus can grow up to 10" in a day if it is very warm, for example a daytime temperature of 25 degrees. The forecast is great, warming up every day. If the forecast doesn't change, we should be picking by Friday at the latest!!

Rain is great, Snow OK, too!! May 5, 2010

Picture on the left is of our asparagus field and on the right is on the way to the field, both taken on May 4. We have received 2" of rain which was very, very badly needed. We also got about 4" of heavy, wet snow. The snow is fine, too as it melts slowly and tends to soak in. All of this moisture will make the asparagus crowns much stronger and hopefully produce a few more of those delicious tender tips for us all to savor!!