 Hi, my name is Rebecca Compton and I'm an asparagus farmer in Norfolk County. So asparagus is the first field crop of spring, which is one reason why it's amazing to be an asparagus farmer. Everyone is so excited because it means that summer's on its way, it means warmer temperatures, it means new fresh fruits and vegetables. It's kind of that first sign of spring and it gets people really excited. So one of the reasons that the majority of the asparagus in Ontario is grown here in Norfolk County is because asparagus loves sandy soils, which is what we have here down along the lake. So most of the farms that it's grown on are sandy loam soil. Local asparagus season runs typically from the first or second week of May until the end of June. So it's about a six to eight week season and so that's when you can look for it in stores. Asparagus is a perennial, which means that we plant it and then we don't harvest it for three years and then we can typically harvest it for what we're finding for about 15 or 20 years following that successfully, commercially. So that's why it's the first crop of the season because we're basing off a plant that's been in the ground for many, many years. So asparagus grows very, very quickly. Today it's about 32 degrees out here, so it is growing very quickly today. As you can see, this row here, if you look down it, was just cut. The guys just went through and cut this. You can see approximately the height of the asparagus. If we look over into this row here, you can see this asparagus is much taller. So they'll be cutting this very, very shortly. The machine will be coming back down. And when it's growing this quickly, we will typically cut the field for sure once, but for sure we like to do one and a half times in a day simply because the asparagus, when it's this hot, can grow like a half an inch an hour. So it grows very, very quickly at this time. Once the season is finished, so we stop cutting asparagus at the end of June and then we essentially let it go to fern. So as you can see, this is a portion of the field that's very young. So we've decided to not cut it the rest of the season. We stopped cutting it approximately a week ago. So you can see in a week, the two types of how quickly this has grown. When it gets to full height, it will be taller than myself. So asparagus is actually a crown, which means it's a very, very large root. And that root or that crown has many, many buds on it. So each of these asparagus spears is coming out of a bud. So I'm going to say, you know, every day the plan is going to put up one spear. Then we come along and we, a couple days later, we cut it off and it puts up another one. So you'll see, especially within this field that we're cutting, you'll see multiple spears coming out of the same crown, all at different levels. So it gives us kind of like approximately one spear a day that we can cut. And then there'll be another spear for the next day. So these fern act as a solar panel, essentially, to recharge the sugars in the battery, which is the crown. So that's why we stopped cutting at the end of June. This allows the fern time to grow up. We maintain, you want to make sure that you maintain a healthy fern crop through the summer, which helps to recharge the batteries. And then when the fern dies back in the fall, all of those sugars leave the plant and re-enter the crown. So when we're harvesting this year, we're actually harvesting off of our previous year's crop. So you want to make sure that you have a really good summer crop of fern and that your plant and your field is very, very healthy. And that's where you will get a very good yield the following year. I also want to show you this plant here. And some people I've heard say that they feel that thicker asparagus is older and therefore woodier. That's very much a myth. Actually all asparagus is the same age. If you can see this crown, it's putting up essentially five spears right now. This one is quite large and this one's smaller. It just is the size of the bud that's growing out of the crown. Regardless of size, all of these asparagus is delicious. It depends a lot on how you're cooking it, depending on what size you want. And it's a personal preference. On our farm, we hire a combination of workers from Canada that live locally as well as international workers that come from Mexico and Jamaica. Many of these workers have been working with us for years and years. I think the average length of employment with us right now is about 15 years. We have several workers on our farm that have been returning. They have been coming to our farm every year since 1989. So I was a very little child at that time. We depend on their experience and skills in order to get our crops off efficiently during our very, very short season. If you'd like to learn more about local asparagus and how to prepare and enjoy it, visit producemadesimple.ca.