The property we farm on is 15 acres and includes plenty of spaces for pollinators and wildlife.

But we only grow the crops we sell (vegetables, herbs, melons, and cut flowers) on 1 acre each year that we rotate around the farm each year with 3-4 acres of soil-building cover crops and green manures like oats, rye, clover, and field peas.

We’re Certified Organic.

• We don’t use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides,
• we don’t use GMOs,
• we don’t use sewage sludge

And that’s all true.

But farming organically isn’t just about the things we don’t do; it’s about what we ARE doing:

• Building soil health (THE organic saying is ‘Feed the soil, not the crop’)
• Encouraging a balance of wildlife to avoid pest outbreaks
• Figuring out ways to enhance the health of the watershed and the air around us
• Working to minimize our energy use
• Experimenting constantly to increase the nutrition and flavour of the foods we produce
• Innovating to find simpler and more joyful ways to continue providing ourselves with a livelihood from this land
• Enhancing the beauty and value of the land from the perspectives of humans and non-humans.

To us, THIS is what it means to farm organically.

To do all this takes commitment, the constant gathering of both knowledge and wisdom, and a whole lot of love.

Read more about our philosophy and practice of organic farming in our blog posts, like: What does Organic Mean?, Does Organic Mean No Pesticides?, and High Yields for Humans and Biodiversity on Organic Farms.

Our farm is Regenerative.

We practice no-till farming. Please read our blog post about this to learn more.

We work to keep the soil covered with mulch and/or living plants as much as we can, and try to maintain as many living roots in the soil as possible.

We encourage and increase biodiversity on the farm – with the different plants we add (annuals as well as perennials) and habitat for diverse species, both above and below ground.

We encourage and maintain wildlife corridors, ponds for wildlife, and habitat for various species.

To learn more about what regenerative farming means, check out this page from Canadian Organic Growers (for whom Shannon is a board member…and she wrote this section on regenerative farming for the website….so these are literally her words).

We are a Bee-Friendly Farm

Bees and other pollinators are so important for our food system! We work so that our farm can provide a home and food & water sources for these hard workers.

We never spray any pesticides (including organic-approved ones).

Bees need flowers that are blooming for as much of the year as possible and so we’re always looking to make sure each season has plentiful blooms. Dandelions are beautiful on this farm!

Read our blog post on Bee-Friendly Farming.

We save seeds.

We do this because plants adapt each year and we want plants to be able to adapt to our farm. This means adapting to our particular soil types, our particular climate, the particular way we manage our crops as farmers, and the particular qualities our customer like.

Learn more about our seed-growing on our blog, with posts like: Farm-Raised Seeds, Organic Seed Growers Conference, and Saving Those Seeds.