 What do we do after AsparagusÂ
Since we are known for our asparagus, Â our customers have the perception that this is the only crop we grow and we take the other 10 months off. Not so!
We own a traditional grain and cattle farm as well as many other vegetable crops.
 Randy is our primary cattle man. He feeds and looks after the cows. All winter, he fees the cows every day.We start calving our 120 cows the middle of February. All hands are on deck for calving season, especially if the weather is cold as a freshly born baby calf will not survive in the cold. That is the time of year that I enjoy the most. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a baby calf born, up and sucking within an hour. We offer our home raised hormone and antibiotic free, stress free, humanely raised red angus beef for sale at our on farm Country Store and at The Calgary Farmer’s Market at the Innisfail Growers booth.
We start seeding our market garden peas every spring as soon as we can find a little  dry area in our field. This is usually around April 10. Planting many different varieties every week until Father’s Day ensures a consistent supply all summer. W start planting yellow and green beans about May 20, We are busy weeding and looking after our large veggie plot all spring when we are harvesting asparagus. Â As soon as we stop picking asparagus, the peas will be ready to start picking and we will pick until the first frost in the fall.
 All of our other market garden veggies are marketed through our marketing co-op, Innisfail Growers Co-op, that we have belonged to since 1993 and are founding members of. You can find us at many Central Alberta Farmers Markets from Sherwood Park to Calgary.
All spring and summer we are also very busy in our commercial kitchen making many jars of asparagus pickles, asparagus relish and a very large selection of other preserves such as pickled snow peas and rhubarb relish.
 Doug is our grain farmer and he starts planting the grain crops early in May. We have about 900 acres of grain crops that he looks after all spring and summer.
Come September, just as our market garden crops are coming to an end, our grain crops need to be harvested. Unlike all of the veggies that are hand picked, we get our grain combine out of the shed and the grain crops are machine harvested with our grain combine. |
Mark your calendars for August 11 & 12. We are having another open house (no admission charge for this one) We will be touring everyone past our asparagus fields and out to our pea patch where you can sample peas straight off the vines. This is a great opportunity to teach your kids where their food is coming from.
spear, the root sends up another one. This takes strength out of the plants. We monitor the thickness of the spears and when the majority are very thin, this is an indication that the plants are getting stressed. Also, the plants need eight weeks of frost free weather in their fern stage after we quit picking.
Edgar Farms is a 6 generation family farm west of Innisfail Alberta. Back in 1986, inspiration to start diversifying into the locally grown consumer direct market first came from tasting the intenseness of the flavour of asparagus grown in our family garden and the desire to market direct to consumers.
