Open Farm Day
Foote Family Farm features honey extraction, cider press at Open Farm Day
It’s like having a backstage pass that allows you to meet farmers and see first- hand where your food comes from.
A total of 40 farms across Nova Scotia took part in Open Farm Day Sept. 18, a provincewide event sponsored by the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture. Foote Family Farm in Woodville was among several in Kings County taking part.
Co-owner George Foote said Open Farm Day is a way to get people through their doors to show them what they have to offer. They sell most of what they produce themselves. He said it was great seeing so many people, especially children, taking an interest.
“I grew up on a farm,” Foote said. “If you don’t have some way to relate to it, you don’t know what a farm is.”
Their farm specializes in apple and honey production. Visitors got to see a cider press in action and honey being extracted. There was also apple picking.
Four-year-old Hudson Brydon- Stark of Kentville was among those watching honey being extracted. When asked how it was getting to taste it straight from the comb, he said, “good.”
Co-owner Trina Foote said people are very interested in bees and they like having visitors in to share a pleasant experience.
“Honey bees are nothing to be afraid of, unless you’re allergic,” she said. “The more that people realize this, the better off we’ll all be.”
The Foote’s have about 500 beehives they move around. The Foote Family Farm co-owner George Foote demonstrates their cider press as part of Open Farm Day.
bees are taken to help pollinate blueberry fields, for example.
A hive could have one or more boxes with 10 frames inside each box. Trina said that in good conditions, bees could fill a 10-frame box in a week with 60 to 80 pounds of honey. She said she gets stung on occasion but rarely while working around the extractors.
Employee Joan Sanford said you could put up to 50 frames in an extractor at a time. If the frames are good and full, as much as 200 pounds of honey can be produced from an extraction.
The extractor spins the frames and the speed increases, using centrifugal force to pull the honey free. The process takes 20 minutes to a half hour, depending on how full the frames are. Sanford said the frames must be balanced or the ma-
chine will “shake all over the place.”
“On a good day, I can go through about six extractions a day,” Sanford said.
Sweet on ciderh
Foote said he purchased the farm in 1964 and although they used to have more, they currently maintain about 35 acres of apple orchard.
They demonstrated their cider press, a machine George purchased in 1972 from the Orchard Equipment and Supply Company in Conway, Massachusetts.
Trina said they start cider production around this time of year and produce it every Friday until May. They press an average of 15 bins of apples a week. Each bin yields 40 to 50 gallons of juice. They also press apples for wineries, some of which take several thousand litres of juice at a time.
George said they also do a lot of custom work, as people bring them apples to press. When it comes to cider, he said, “Quite a few people put a barrel in the basement.”
They were pressing Cortland apples on Open Farm Day. George said “the better the apples, the better the cider.”
After about 90 per cent of the juice is removed from the apples, there’s some pulp left over. George said he has a friend who raises sheep and cattle. The friend picks up the pulp and feeds it to his animals.
“They just love it,” George said.