From plot to pot: Creemore Farmers’ Market
Creemore Farmers’ Market stalwarts Orie and Judy Johnston are not ones to shy away from a hard day’s work.
In the summer months they tend thousands of plants in their four-acre vegetable garden planted on Orie’s homestead in Mulmur; 700 tomato plants, 500 cucumbers, 3,000 garlic, zucchini, Spanish onions, even celery, and lettuce faithfully guarded by Nico, the mouser. Every week, during market season, they come to Creemore with a loaded truck. If there is anything left at the end of the day, that’s if, Judy is making plans to pickle. Sugar and vinegar regularly top her list as she heads to the local grocery store.
She says she has gone many nights on only a couple of hours’ sleep when produce is at its peak.
“Orie will go to sleep to the smell of one kind of pickle and wake up to another,” says Judy.
From July until September Judy works in the kitchen making zucchini relish, crispy bread and butter pickles, chili sauce with wild apples and corn relish, made almost exclusively from their own produce; 300 jars of preserves is the average, 604 is her record.
Their interest in gardening started when Orie was having trouble sourcing potatoes that were grown without chemical fertilizer or pesticides.
Having both grown up on farms, it wasn’t much of a stretch. Judy was raised on a farm near Stratford, where her father still lives and continues to farm.
They met when they each answered an ad in Western Ontario Farmer, published by Ashgrove Christian Singles. The organization, an early version of Christian Mingle, matched them up and they became pen pals. Judy said she described herself as being tall, strong and a person who loved animals and Orie thought that sounded just perfect. They got married in 1987 and have been working the land together ever since. They are very content and can get through anything as long as they are together, says Judy. Until recently Orie went to work every day as a carpenter and Judy spent many days carting watering cans up and down the 250-foot rows of vegetables, watering each one by hand because “a hose will damage the plants”.
Orie has since put in an irrigation system, which is part of his system of planting in plastic to keep the moisture and heat in. They start the plants early in hoophouses, giving them produce three weeks earlier than normal, says Orie.
Twenty years ago, Orie was already driving around the hills of Mulmur with a tailgate retail operation, selling to neighbours and weekenders. When he heard rumbling of a farmers’ market starting up in Creemore, he began to ask around and ended up talking to organizers Sandra Lackie and Jean Brownfield. He is considered a founding member of the market, that was first located in the Gordon feedlot 19 years ago and has grown into a local attraction and community gathering place.
