My first field trip in Introduction to Production Horticulture was to BECK's farm in Innisfail Alberta. Shelly and Rod Bradshaw have about 50 acres for their vegetables and 1200 acres for their grain production. They have 2 sons that help out on the farm along with 5 foreign workers and 3 harvesters. They started their farm in 1986 and helped create the Innisfail Growers co-op in 1993. The Innisfail Growers co-op consists of 5 families growing different crops in order to not create competition among the co-op members. 

They use a top harvester to harvest their Nantes carrots. The harvester runs along the carrot rows and grabs the tops of the carrots, cuts the tops off and discards them back into the garden and the carrots travel into the holding container. 

They grow 2 types of cultivars, one has strong tops and the other one has weaker tops but better flavour. They grow about 32 acres of carrots, the other 18 acres are cold crops including cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, cabbage, dill, parsnips, peppers and beets. In the spring Shelly uses an air seeder in order to get the proper seed rates with the different carrot types.

 

They produce about 6000 jars of pickled carrots to sell at the 20 farmers markets they attend every summer. This year the farm is experimenting with hot and sweet peppers in cold frame greenhouses. Sadly the peppers are infected with aphids, and because it was an experiment Shelly has just let the aphids go. 

A problem that occurs on the farm is a white mould on the carrots called sclerotina. They use a naturally occur bacteria in the soil to reduce the outbreaks and they also use a herbicide to cut down on the weeds in the fields, because they just do not have the time to hand pull all the weeds. 

In the fall when all the carrots and other crops are harvested they store everything in a huge cold storage room.

They have a great system to washing, separating and bagging their carrots onsite. 

This field trip was amazing to see how carrots are farmed on a large scale and to see how their produce goes from field to market.