Hi Kurt,
The Bas-Saint-Laurent presents plenty of challenges, but as you pointed out, the more research we do, the more species/varieties we find that will do well here.
Unlike you, we're not currently looking at producing beyond our own needs, with surplus going to friends and neighbors. We had some successes last year with our first efforts. Our strawberries on a low hugelkultur bed did really well for first-year plants. We were still harvesting some berries even after the first frost, late in October. We planted small sheet-mulched "dinosaur eggs" (about 3 feet in diameter) with yellow salad tomatoes, greens and herbs. The tomatoes started yielding early and never stopped. We dried many pounds of them, simply split in half for the dehydrator.
I put in some long raised beds using a sheet-mulch approach. Between a cold start to the season and an interfering skunk digging things up, I did not get the yields I would have wished for. At the end of the season I brought in about 200 pounds of green and semi-ripe tomatoes. I canned a lot as they gradually ripened indoors, dried some, but also lost a lot when I ran out of time, energy and interest. We had good yields from peas and herbs, lettuces and carrots, but all our brassicas were unhappy and didn't do much.
We put in a couple of aronias and four sea buckthorns. I will be taking cuttings of them and all our other berry bushes in the next month. I would like to have dozens of each to begin planting "fedges" (fence/hedges) that will also bear fruit. We did get a few aronia berries last year, but no seaberries.
In terms of sources, I have been using
Incredible Seeds,
Gardens North,
Richters and
Pépinière Gaucher in Brigham. This year, I will also be ordering some trees and bushes from the Green Barn and
Hardy Fruit Trees in Sainte-Juilienne. I'm also planning to get a few plants from
La Société des plantes in Kamouraska and
Croque Paysage.
Other projects for this year are more beds, more trees, more herbs and more season-extension!! I think this is essential for any kind of decent yield. I'll try to follow some of what Eliot Coleman describes in
Four Season Harvest. We'll also be spreading soil-builders wherever we are not already planting and don't plan on having paths. It will be a mixture of clovers, daikon, turnip, buckwheat, and probably some deep-rooted flowers and herbs. And we'd like to get some wine cap and oyster mushrooms going, as we've got lots of woodchips and deadfall we can put to good use.
I've started some lettuce and mesclun inside to get a few early greens. It is just beginning to look promising. I'll be starting a lot of seeds in the next few weeks, to be set out in cold frames in April or May (whenever I get them set up on existing beds).
Chickens or ducks are off in the future for us. We currently get chickens, ducks and rabbits from Les Jardins d'Édith in St-Modeste, wapiti from a local producer here in L'Isle-Verte and beef/veal from Ferme Luron in Trois-Pistoles. Part of permaculture is supporting the good projects other people undertake, and we've found these people to adhere more closely than most to permaculture principles. We've yet to find a producer of free-range/pastured pork in our area (other than Viandes duBreton, which is marginal), so we don't eat much pork at all.
You're welcome to stop by if you're on your way somewhere this summer, although there really isn't much to see. We're just getting started on all this.