Our 2024 garlic is updated! If you'd like it shipped, please send us an email! Garlic will be available for pick-up on farm by September 11th.
L'ail 2024 est à jour sur le site web! L'ail sera disponible pour ramassage à la ferme dès le 11 septembre. Si vous aimeriez qu'on vous la poste, écrivez-nous!
Our garlic is now up on the website! Garlic will be available for pick-up on farm by September 11th. Alternatively, September 13th is the set delivery date for people in the Outaouais/Ottawa area. There is a minimum purchase of 28$ worth of garlic for delivery.
Who we are
Junco seeds is committed to growing, harvesting and saving heritage & heirloom seeds that are culturally and ecologically important, adapted to the local climate and resilient to changing weather patterns. Specifically, we are committed to ecological and sustainable farming practices that close loops, sourcing organically and locally, recycling materials and using only living mulches (no plastics). We adhere to small scale, low-till philosophies of land work that seeks to nourish the living soils, all with a long term goal of growing and saving healthy, tasteful, biodiverse drought-tolerant plants
Junco seeds is situated on the ancestral territory of Algonquin Anishnaabeg People, forever territory of wild fauna & flora, cultivated and depleted lands of Irish and French settlers in which we hope to breath new and sustained life. It is now the beloved home of junco seeds, surrounded by the beautiful, buggy forests and marshes of the Outaouais.
We bought this old homestead four years ago - it has not been a working farm for over 30 years. A lot of love, labour, attention, soil amendments and manure have gone into this land. The soils here are sandy and poor, and we are working on enriching them every year.
The tool most often used at the farm, following those of mind and heart, is the handy scythe used for weeding, haying, and cutting down cover crops. We have a BCS (push tractor) that makes new beds when necessary. Compost, compost teas, sheep manure, and crop rotations help feed, revive, and renew the land. Living mulches, straw mulch, as well as living windrows are used to keep moisture in, and keep crops shaded and cool in the dire summer heat.
We have laying chickens and meat chickens that help with bug and parasite control; they also offer us food and manure for the gardens. This year, in early 2024, we purchased our first sheep from a local shepherdess. Having sheep on the farm is a dream come true for so many reasons: wool, manure, pasture revival and so on. We look forward to practicing rotational grazing this year, with our chickens following after the sheep. This is a big step for our farm sustainability - every year we buy sheep manure from a local farmer to add to the soil - hopefully we can become self sustaining in that regard soon.
If you are interested in understanding "why heirloom seeds", here is a blog post What is an Heirloom Seed, describing the difference between hybrid, gmo and heirloom seeds.
