As part of a larger initiative to support new farmers in the Vancouver region, the UBC Farm is proud to release the first installment of “Growing Farmers: Feeding the City.” This project, made possible by funding from Vancity, highlights the farming experiences, motivations and stories from a handful of new farmers that are making positive changes in our local food system. Over the next few months, the UBC Farm will be releasing more stories to feature the courageous people who are taking their first steps in the world of agriculture as they bring fresh and healthy food to this region. Through these articles we hope to inspire and catalyze other individuals, young and old, to take up the shovel and join the movement of new farmers that is sweeping across the continent.

Over the coming months, watch for more articles that highlight Vancouver’s urban farming movement and explore tales of inspiring rural growers who are bringing fresh food to markets and restaurants across the city.

I thought I must be lost for sure. I was driving down 128th Street in Surrey, passing by several large rental halls with neon signs, interspersed with industrial truck yards lined with dusty dump trucks and popular fast food chains. I turned on the next street. On my left was a forested area with a substantial collection of mossy, rusted cars dispersed throughout; on my right, sat a medium-sized brown house with a two car garage and a sloped driveway. The address I had scribbled on notepaper told me this was the place. I walked up to the door, still unsure how an urban farm could possibly be located here. I knocked. No answer. I rang the doorbell. I rang again. Beginning to get nervous about being lost again, I turned to head back to the car, when Doug, the urban farmer strode around the corner of the house and greeted me with a handshake and a warm smile.

Unique Access to Urban Farmland

Doug's 1949 Farmall Cub parked in his 1/4 acre market garden. Photo: Doug Zaklan

Doug Zaklan is a 2011 graduate of the UBC Farm Practicum, and an urban farmer heading into his second season of growing food in Surrey, BC. Doug’s extended family owns a large tract of land. They have owned the land since before Surrey was a city. A portion of the land is rented for commercial purposes, but the rest of the property is a 9-acre pasture with a ¼ acre garden and a modest home, tucked to one side, where Doug’s uncle and aunt reside. The pasture has a small creek running though the north end, and is grazed by a neighbour’s cattle each year.

“The landscape you see is very different from what it used to be”, Doug says. “When my great-grandparents first came here in 1928, it was raw land, forested with salmon spawned creeks, and sparse dirt roads. They were called stump farmers because they cleared the area by blowing the stumps out with dynamite making it into arable land.”

Doug’s Great grandmother Marta, left Yugoslavia on a ship with a one-year old child in her arms, via Norway to Eastern Canada and then by train across the country to Vancouver. There, she met his great grandfather, also from Yugoslavia originally, who ran a pool hall in Vancouver. Although his great-grandfather enjoyed the excitement and glamour of early Vancouver, Marta convinced him to move to the “boonies”. They bought raw land and grew raspberries and strawberries.

“There’s some dollar signs on this land now. This used to be an old Yugoslavian community and most of them gave into the dollar sign, but I guess there has been something better than that here. I’m fortunate that the older generation has been that dedicated to keeping the land. I’d just be another young guy trying to farm on land that I don’t have…I definitely feel grateful for my situation.”

First-Year Farming

Doug's automated irrigation system. Photo: Doug Zaklan

In March 2011, Doug asked his uncle if he could grow food on his existing ¼ acre garden at the back of his home. He was surprised when his uncle gladly offered “as much land as you can handle”. When Doug took on the ¼ acre garden last year, parts of the garden had existing beds, but about a third of the area was sod. Doug and a group of devoted friends turned in the sod with shovels and tilled with a rototiller in order to create 11 new beds. Doug produced enough food to attend four markets at Surrey Central Farmer’s Market that summer, a 10-minute drive from the farm.

Starting and managing a ¼ acre market garden and small flock of 23 chickens in Surrey and his fulfilling his 22 hour per week responsibilities at UBC Farm in Vancouver, meant that he was not home as often as he needed to be. However, his busy schedule helped Doug hone the secret to his success: “just charge it”. In other words, “you just gotta do it.” It also meant that he had to build two automated systems on his farm: one for irrigating the garden and another opening the chicken coop door.

Doug was really excited about his irrigation system, and rightfully so. “Everything has been coming in line at the right time. I came into possession of a bunch of plumbing and irrigation stuff for free, … so I built the whole automated irrigation system. It was a great learning experience…Because of the nature of the source of the water, it goes through three buildings before it gets to my feed. The system then has a very low PSI, so having a computer control enabled me to water all 6 zones remotely. It allows you to adjust how long and when watering happens.” He also built an automated chicken coop door, so that his chickens could access to their run at sunrise and close the coop down after sundown, without human supervision.

Just Charge It

When I visited Doug, he was in the middle of sawing and hammering away on his newly constructed Harvest Hut, a structure for washing produce and shielding it from the elements. With the help of family and friends, Doug built the Harvest Hut frame within 3 weeks: “we had ‘Work Wednesdays’. My uncle Dan was here, as was Kristoff, Adam, and I. Just having all that help, really got the structure up quickly.”

“I’ve learned hat I have to exert myself a lot, like tire myself out to be happy. If I didn’t have support from family and friends, I don’t think I could do it. You can only weed so much by yourself. I really want this to become a community thing and have a lot of people learning.”

Building the Harvest Hut. Photo: Brittany Buchanan

Since last season, Doug has already built a walk-in cooler and dry office space out of an old portable. He used an abandoned portable was a remnant left behind by a truck driver on the neighbouring Zaklan family commercial lot. “I was thinking about getting a shipping container, but then realized, ‘hey, there’s a portable sitting over [at the adjacent property]’. This portable was just as good and the price was right! I just had to make sure it would clear the power lines when lifting and transporting it with a crane”. In disbelief, I asked if a family connection had helped with the crane too. In a matter-of-fact tone, Doug replied, “No, you just make the connections.” Doug framed the walk-in cooler, insulated it and enlisted help from his dad to install the 120V and 220V electrical system.

“It’s all about nature; I was inspired by nature to start farming. I wanted to do some practical schooling, which brought me to the UBC Farm. From here I’m trying to better understand nature and live a system that is less detrimental to our planet, via the farm.”

Down the Road

For the 2012 season, Doug hopes to have his Harvest Hut up and running, a new greenhouse completed, and a crop rotation plan underway. Even more ambitious, is Doug’s goal to till in another acre of the existing fallow land surrounding the original garden and expand his growing space to an acre and a quarter. He already tried to dig up the sod on the new land with his tractor he purchased from friends at the Farmer’s Market, but 1949 Farmall Cub “wasn’t the right tool for the job”. “I’m going to hire someone to plow it, and I know I can get somebody to rototill. I want to try and plow first so I reduce grass in the field. I’ve dug some holes out there and the soil looks really nice…it will be interesting to see how the grass turns over and assess the results of a soil test.”

Doug would like to use a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model on his farm, in which his customers purchase a share at the start of the year and are promised a weekly box of fresh produce through the summer and early fall. He has already received a lot of interest in his CSA from family and friends. “I made a CSA booklet and gave it to one person who took it to work. Now seven people want to be part of it…I’d like to do a CSA because I’d like to have a little more connection with my customers and get their feedback. I’m shooting for 15 shares.”

When I asked if he would like to have the entire property under cultivation, he replied, “I’ve got lots of plans, but we will see what happens. We will see if I can make it work, financially and otherwise. I don’t have any experience doing any of this, so it’s all a bit of a pipe dream right now. Even getting to this point was a pipe dream, but it came true. I would definitely like to be doing more annual veggie production and I’d like to do more animal husbandry, but I think it wise to expand growing space as I feel I can handle it. Right now, I feel like I’ve spread myself pretty far. I’m having trouble taking a Sunday off!”

A view of a bit of the land Doug is working with. Photo: Doug Zaklan

“I think we are super detached from knowing where our food comes from…I think I’m contributing to fighting that detachment in a very small way if I’m doing a 15-person CSA – that’s only 15 people in the Lower Mainland for whom I’m providing a part of their diet. But I hope to do a good job of it, and I hope that I teach a thing or two, and that I inspire somebody else to do it. And I hope to build it every year and do a better job every year… to do a tiny slice of what needs to be done. That’s where it has to start. It’s a little bit bold, but I don’t know what’s more naïve, doing a little bit, or just saying, ‘there’s no hope’.”

“There’s always an opportunity out there, and as you get positive feedback and you feel like you are getting somewhere, you gain momentum. The hardest part is just to start. But you have to have faith that this is what you should be doing and you can do it, and without a doubt, there is some space of land that you can be growing on.”

As I drove home from my visit with Doug, through traffic lights and the yellow hue of streetlights in suburban Vancouver, I was tremendously inspired by the tenacity and enthusiasm that Doug and his friends showed for their new farming endeavour. I saw with renewed freshness the challenge many new farmers are taking on: making lasting, positive changes to our current food system. May everyone face this task head-on and find the motivation to ‘just charge it’!

In today’s world, the notion of communal living and organic community farming may conjure colourful images of dreadlocked hippies, living off the grid in order to oppose the “system”. Mark Cormier recalls hearing perceptions of community farming like this before, and had heard this lifestyle described as having a “weird, super-hippie vibe where people sit around and sing songs all the time”. His experience working as a farm hand at Fraser Common Farm in the summer of 2011 would suggest otherwise.

Mark shares some thoughts on community farms. Photo: Brittany Buchanan

Fraser Common Farm is an organic community farm that has been cooperatively owned and managed for over thirty years, in Aldergrove, BC. This farm works collectively to produce food sold at Farmers Markets and restaurants, and distributed through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) system; at the same time, they work to balance food production with protecting the surrounding land and managing several communal and individual houses on the property. Fraser Common Farm’s 20 acre property is currently the home of 13 people.

Mark first explored Fraser Common Farm (FCF) as part of a UBC Farm Practicum fieldtrip in 2010. After completing the practicum and looking to do another season on a farm, Mark learned that FCF was hiring. After not hearing back from several other farm prospects, he approached this opportunity at FCF with reticence: “I wasn’t sure that a co-op was something that I was interested in being a part of. I’ve never been into community living. I’d rarely ever even had roommates in my life, so it was a huge step. I was going to have to share – not really my own personal living space, because I had my own space – but the property, and there’s certain things we’d all share. I’d have to accept certain things about certain people and vice versa, which can be challenging.”

Still, Mark met with FCF farmers despite his hesitations, and they were willing to take each other on. “They were super cool people and I thought the farm was really beautiful.” Slowly as the season wore on, Mark’s initial perceptions of communal farming and living began to change.

Ironically, even on a community farm Mark found the loneliness factor the hardest. “I had moved out of the city, to a community. And I expected it to feel like a community – a place that has to have certain things happen sometimes, that people would come down and have bonfires with me drink beer, barbeque and hang out…I wasn’t expecting people to become my best friends or anything, but I rarely saw people some days. There are 13 people on the farm, and I wouldn’t see anybody the whole day. It became something I was confused about. I didn’t understand why it worked that way, but after a while I came to actually appreciate it and understand why it worked that way.”

Slicing into an apple grown at Fraser Common Farm. Photo: Brittany Buchanan

“The thing I came to understand and like is everyone is doing their own thing, but doing it differently, and still living in a common area. I think there’s a lot to be said for that – people who are very different, being able to live together. I wouldn’t expect certain people to come down and hang out with me at the bonfire. But as far as the first while I was there, I had to adapt to the fact that people are doing their own thing and that I can’t always look to them for entertainment…I realized I was expecting too much of people that I really didn’t even know that well. I was expecting too much of what I thought a community was supposed to be…I realized I had no reason to feel the way I did and I completely changed the way I thought.”

“That’s one of the really good things about the co-op that I had the opportunity to learn…You get a lot of people’s opinions and answers and questions to things that others might not think of. It’s like having a big brain for a small operation. Even me, somebody there for just this one season, I had a lot of input on a lot of different things. In a lot of ways this input worked out really well. Certain things I suggested and did were appropriate…We all talk about how farmers need [to] share information, because that’s how you become a good farmer. You share what you know with other farmers and they share what they know. You kind of pass that information along. People in a community are lucky because they are around this knowledge all the time. That’s a big bonus.”

Mark found that the co-operative structure definitely allowed for being a farmer with varied interests and commitments, such as artistic interests and family. “Because we were all being paid by the hour, and because there’s no owner, you are getting paid for the time you put in.” This ensured Mark’s farm team was paid fairly, in a way that made sense when so many different people are involved with the same operation. “We could all help each other, in terms of time management. That was a huge bonus. We were all actually able to take small vacations, at different times throughout the summer.”

A couple on the farm really benefitted from this flexible schedule, in order to take care of their two children, 10 and 7 years old, with a third on the way. Both parents work part-time, and their combined hours function as a full-time person on the farm. “It’s so they can take care of their children as equally as possible, and also farm…they would work [in the field] together, but not very often because there needed to be someone spending time with the kids. That was of huge importance to them.”

Mark noted that many residents, even those who weren’t farmers, ate the food grown at the farm and many shared their miscellaneous grocery expenses. In one of the shared houses of five residents, the structure was “such that every night of the week, one person cooked for the whole house. You only had to cook dinner once a week in that house. There’s a lot of benefits to that. It gives you a lot more free time; you can spend more time doing your own thing. We had a blacksmith, we had an artist, we had a woodworker, a handful of farmers, a photographer – a lot of people who could afford to live that kind of lifestyle…They are able to do it, because of communal living. It opens a lot of doors for artists and musicians and writers”.

While being part of a community, Mark also found the space for diversity, individuality and difference; he really appreciated the ability to be himself in this setting. “I do not pretend to be something other than who I am…I’ve never been able to do that, it’s an impossibility to me. Every job I’ve ever had, I’ve been able to wear my own clothes, be who I am, listen to my own music, just be myself. I may not have made a lot of money, but I’ve always been able to live with my own personal principles. That’s always been extremely important to me.”

“I’m not on anyone’s schedule; I’m on the food schedule. My boss is the food growing in the field…I can say the Earth’s my boss and that’s pretty awesome. I don’t mind answering to her, and there aren’t too many bosses out there that I can say that about, that’s for sure.”

Leek harvest. Photo: Mark Cormier

This past winter, Mark relocated to his native Nova Scotia in order to explore land ownership possibilities in a comparatively affordable province to BC, and to be closer to family. However, as the 2012 growing season approaches, Mark has now also been in touch with Fraser Common Farm again to see about returning for a second season. In either case, he knows he will be farming again this year.

Despite the stereotypes of community farms out there, from his own personal experience, Mark has seen that these community farmers “are hard working people…they have been working since day one to save the world.” With farming start-up costs being so high, community farming is becoming a more attractive – and realistic – option for new farmers to gain access to affordable land. What’s more, community farms provide peer support, a built-in network and unique ways of learning how to farm while balancing other interests. For more information about how you can begin community farming in BC, please check out Farm Folk City Folk’s community farm initiative, and get started!

Sheila harvesting salad greens at Glen Valley Farm. Photo: Chris Bodnar

Sheila Poznikoff comes from a family of people who have always grown their own food: Italian immigrants to Canada and descendents of Russian Doukhobours. Following in these footsteps, Sheila too, has always had her hands in the soil, growing food. Sheila grew up in Surrey, BC and spent most of her adult life living and working in Vancouver. For the last 13 years in Vancouver, Sheila went to school at Simon Fraser University, and worked as photo lab technician and a freelance artist, before deciding to make farming her full-time vocation in the Spring of 2011. Sheila began farming because she wanted to grow good food for herself and others. She didn’t want to continue working a day job that left farming to the side of her desk; she wanted farming to become her career.

After a completing the UBC Farm Practicum in 2010, and a full season at Glen Valley Organic Farm in 2011, Sheila will begin the 2012 season starting up her own business at Glen Valley Organic Farm. She is specializing in raising chickens for eggs and perfecting a salad mix operation. Sheila decided on eggs and salad mix because of the experience of previous Glen Valley farmer Alyson, who successfully managed these two specialties. “Having those two things is a nice balance. It’s been nice having that business model to springboard from,” says Sheila.

A Cooperative Farming Model

Glen Valley Organic Farm is a collection of businesses leasing land from the Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative and together grow nearly 50 different vegetables and fruits, as well as eggs. The Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative owns and operates the land cooperatively and has been in existence since 1998. Forty-five shareholders work together to ensure that the land continues to produce certified organic food for its shareholders and the local communities while its farmers continue to steward the land, wildlife, and people. This model of land ownership ensures that this land will be used for agriculture in perpetuity. This is where Sheila is choosing to farm, and here’s why:

“In 2010, we came out [to Glen Valley] on a field trip, with the UBC [Practicum] Program.” Chris, one of the Glen Valley farmers, led the tour. “There wasn’t anything remarkable about the landscape or any particular feeling that I got when I was here, it was just my first introduction to a community farm model. Chris explained a little bit of the details about buying a share and then shareholders have access to leasing affordable land from the Co-op.”

“That was the first time I thought I could farm in the near future. That it was something that was available, sooner, rather than later. Because simply, I didn’t know what was available before being exposed to this community or network of farmers. […] I guess the practicum was a good way to meet people in the community and get access to all this information that I just didn’t really have access to before. […] I just didn’t know if farming was for me, with not enough money to purchase my own piece of land and farm independently as a private landowner.”

“A community farm is a great place to start out because there is already established infrastructure, there is potentially access to markets, peers – onsite experienced peer support. I’ll be relying on them quite a bit.” There are other options for leasing land, “but at this stage, I see the benefit of farming with other experienced peers. And then just believing strongly in the co-op model in terms of having an alternative to privately owned land.”

Sheila’s Family Connection to Farming

Sheila believes strongly that her family history and her exposure to the land in the Kootenays contributes greatly to her work today as a farmer on cooperatively owned land. Her father’s side of the family comes from the Doukhobors, Russians who settled in southern British Columbia over one hundred years ago. The Doukhobors were remarkable agriculturalists, who valued communal life, communal land and above all, valued freedom. Beginning in the 1920s, their approach to life was actively repressed by the Canadian government, a repression culminating in the 1950s, which placed Doukhobor children in residential schools. Her mother’s side emigrated from Italy in 1956 to New Denver, BC and, as a family, operated a farm that provided the means for their survival.

Out on the farm at Glen Valley. Photo: Chris Bodnar

Harvesting magenta spreen. Photo: Brittany Buchanan

On her mother’s farm, “they grew vegetables, and had cows and chickens[…]. They were self-sufficient that way. This is a huge difference […] that wasn’t a choice they made. It was a necessity to grow their own food because there were no jobs where you could work for a wage. And knowing how hard it is, and knowing how high stakes are when you are a subsistence farmer…The perspective that they had was that if you are born on a farm, you get off the farm. Your job is to find a job off the farm. So people always wanted to have an hourly wage. ”

“And within one generation, I’m a person who’s become part of this gone-to-university class and I’m making a choice to grow food […]. The fact that it is a choice is really significant.” Sheila keeps in mind that small-scale subsistence farming is completely different from choosing to farm as a career. She sees this choice as one made from a privileged position.

“I’m motivated because I am interested in [the Doukhobour] lifestyle of communal living and farming. ‘Toil and peaceful life’ was basically their motto. But that culture was interrupted. It was shamed and people discontinued it because it was shamed by mainstream populations. It was physically oppressed by the government. That interruption makes me mad, so I am motivated by injustice on some level. I kind of want to pick it up – now that I have a choice and I can make these decisions – where that left off a couple of generations ago, where people were deprived of choice, by coming to a community farm that is not privately owned and the objective is to farm […]. I feel like I’m reclaiming my birthright.”

A Tip for New Farmers

When asked what Sheila would give to a new farmer just starting out, she provided a quote and some wise words of her own:

“Farming as a business is a wonderful lifestyle, farming as a lifestyle is horrible business.” ~Author Unknown

Harvesting fresh greens. Photo: Chris Bodnar

“Right now with costs being so high, land costs being so high, if you want to live anywhere near a city and farm, you have to have a solid business plan. Your objective has to be to make money. That might sound poorly motivated within a movement that values environmental sustainability and social justice goals, but it’s not. Your own labour has to be sustainable as well. You need to be able to make enough money to take care of yourself. Not a ton of money, because no one is going to make a ton of money farming on a small-scale, but you have to make sure you are making enough to take care of yourself. And to rest when you need to rest. Because you have to be able to go the distance, that’s what’s going to be sustainable in the long run – people who are farming for life.”

“I’m making the leap to be a business owner. And I don’t have those skills. I didn’t learn them from my family and I didn’t go to business school. That is a huge challenge now, figuring out how to become interested in something that so actively disinterests me, ie. business planning and financial planning…But I have to do it, if I want to farm. So it’s becoming a little more exciting for me to think about budgeting and planning because that means I get to farm.”

Valuing and Learning from History

“I think there’s value to revisiting the way my recent grandmothers, grandfathers, mom, dad lived, growing up on farms, because I admire it. And I want to emulate it […]. I admire it, I believe in it. I’ll be very proud to pull it off. I’m not going to say that it’s easier or simpler. You know, people want to simplify their lives. I don’t feel this decision to farm is a simple one. I don’t think I’m saying anything new here. I just want more direct connection with something that I need to sustain my life. I want a more direct connection with my food and I want to cut out the middle people. I’d much rather do the work of growing food, preserving food, freezing, canning food than having a job where I get money and trade that money for those services. I’d rather just do it myself. That would make me feel really proud, that I could take care of myself. There are things I could pay someone else to do, but I don’t have to because I can do it myself…it’s that thrill of being self-reliant.”

For more information about Sheila’s eggs and salad mix, please visit the Glen Valley Organic Farm Blog.

Volunteers from Concert Properties took part in a special community building event at the farm on June 10, 2010

Initially, this partnership seemed an unlikely pairing between Concert Properties, a major developer, and the UBC Farm, a non-profit organization. At the time, Concert Properties was building a seniors residence in the new Wesbrook Village, and the UBC Farm was in the process of securing its 24-hectare ecosystem from development. As the planning for the event progressed, it became clear that Concert’s intentions was to provide financial support for projects that would reap benefit on more than just its own staff. In addition to donating tools, materials and picnic tables, Concert also purchased a 95 foot by 25 foot polytunnel greenhouse from B&W for the UBC Farm. Growing in the temperate west coast presents its challenges for heat loving crops such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and melons. With an additional greenhouse, the production capacity at the UBC Farm was greatly expanded, thus providing additional learning space for students and researchers who utilize the farm’s facilities throughout the year.

What started as a one-day event has grown into a partnership with Concert Properties, as the UBC Farm now sells produce to the Tapestry residence in Wesbrook Village. The results of this pairing have far surpassed any that that the UBC Farm could have expected when initially taking on this project. The legacy left extends well beyond the volunteer work that was done at the UBC Farm on that day, and it has created a stronger connection with the local community.

Old UBC Farm Website: for nostalgia's sake?

If you happened to be a regular visitor to the UBC Farm’s website, you may have noticed something’s happened: the old site is no more. Besides occasional updates on the front page, not much had changed on the site since we first went online in 2001. This meant that as the UBC Farm grew and flourished, our presence on the internet lagged behind. A confluence of factors prompted the new change you’re now looking at. Our academic plan, “Cultivating Place,” the UBC Plan, “Place and Promise,” and UBC’s new brand, “A Place of Mind” all launched in 2009, and with this across-the-board renewal it seemed appropriate that we make ourselves a new place on the web. This proliferation of new place-based plans complemented a coming-of-age year for social media tools that are now used globally and didn’t even exist when our last site went live. This means that our new site is — finally — a collaborative effort, integrating posts, feeds, and tweets from many different voices. If we can now send a tweet or write a post from anywhere on-farm or off-farm with an internet connection, there’s a chance that the new site can keep pace with the projects in the field.

The site is intended to be partly a guide for the UBC community wanting to know about the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, what it does, and how to get involved with its programs. It’s also a place for the existing UBC Farm community to document a story as it unfolds, recording successes, challenges, and the progression of dynamic place. Most importantly, though, we hope that our story will be of use to communities around the region and around the world looking for new ways to bring together land, food, and community, looking to bridge the rural and the urban, and asking questions about how to feed our growing cities in the future.

The UBC Farm Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture is a part-time, 8-month program that offers instruction and daily work experience in small-scale sustainable farm management. In a balanced, hands-on learning approach, students work alongside staff in the greenhouse, gardens, fields, and orchard, and attend lectures, demonstrations, and visits to other local farms. They also participate in a variety of practical and reflective educational activities.

“This program offers students the opportunity to develop skills through daily and seasonal activities like planning, production, crop care, harvesting, and marketing,” said Mark Bomford, the Centre’s Director.

The program runs from March until November. During the growing season, students spend between 7-21 hours a week on the 24-hectare UBC Farm, gaining experience in the production and direct marketing of a wide range of horticultural crops and animal enterprises in a mixed farm setting.

Brittany Buchanan, an undergraduate in Applied Biology and one of ten students enrolled in the 2010 program, blogged about her experience as part of her directed-studies learning objective.

“Being a farmer is hard work,’ she said. “It’s a job that demands a huge breadth of skills and knowledge. I wanted to learn more about the inter-workings of an organic farm system, and this program seemed like a good fit for me.”

To read more about Brittany’s experience in the practicum program, visit http://blogs.landfood.ubc.ca/bbuchanan/

Indeed, this high-value crop is in great demand and tastes best when grown close to where it’s consumed.  However, use of conventional fertilizers is thought to have robbed the tomato of its true taste.

Professor Andrew Riseman and Greg Rekken (Photo: Martin Dee)

Plant Science graduate student Greg Rekken and Dr. Andrew Riseman, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, have taken their quest for the perfect tasting local tomato to the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm, where they have embedded their research into the Farm’s existing production system.

With the goal of developing a sustainable organic nutrient management system for tomato hoop house production, a range of local and farm-derived fertilizers were assessed. Alternative fertilizers included a green manure (i.e., hairy vetch), composted poultry manure, and a kelp-based liquid fertilizer.

Preliminary results indicate these sustainable fertilizers produced high-quality tomatoes in sufficient quantities to be economically viable.  Additional analyses on fruit traits will include sugar and protein content as well as total soluble solids.

Through this research, Rekken and Dr. Riseman hope to inform farmers about the options available regarding alternative fertilizers that can improve their production systems and farm-wide sustainability while keeping costs down.  Additionally, this project demonstrates how research and production goals can be synergistic, enabling farmers and researchers to quantify ways of improving their farming practices without a loss in production.

The UBC Farm is envisioned as a part of a new South Campus Community in Derek Masselink’s 2001 Landscape Architecture Thesis (note that this configuration differs from the current plan for the farm area)

The initial reinvention of the UBC South Campus farm was founded upon two visionary documents. The first, “Re-Inventing the UBC Farm,” provided a high-level vision for bringing together urban agriculture and forestry on the Point Grey campus, and the second, “Elaboration of an Alternative,” proposed a detailed physical plan and program for the south campus lands.

Many of the ideas that originated in these early documents are reflected in the South Campus Academic Plan, “Cultivating Place.” While many of the specific ideas proposed in the “elaboration” thesis are no longer physically possible to pursue, the general principles detailed here remain entirely current today.

As the “elaboration” thesis is large, the display boards listed below are available as separate pdf downloads only.

Masselink, Derek. “The UBC South Campus Farm: The Elaboration of an Alternative.” MLA Thesis, The University of British Columbia, 2001. [Download 2.9MB pdf] [UBC cIRcle link]

Display Boards

The following display board documents provide the physical plan elements of the thesis, along with contextual information assembled to complete the plan:

1 – Beginnings (Optimized) (pdf, 3.5 MB)

2 – History (Optimized) (pdf, 2 MB)

The History board provides a good visual timeline of the UBC Farm’s development from 1915 – 2001.

3 – Infrastructure (pdf, 4.5 MB)

Basic information regarding climate, soils, drainage, etc.

4 – Design Approach (pdf, 1.1 MB)

5 – Ecology (pdf, 1.1 MB)

6 – Economy (pdf, 1.3 MB)

7 – Integrity (pdf, 1 MB)

8 – Beauty (pdf, 1.5 MB)

9 – Conceptual Plans (pdf, 3.1 MB)

10 – South Campus Plan (pdf, 2.5 MB)

This plan provides a good overview of the larger vision articulated in the written thesis document. Boards 11 – 13 are not available in digital form.

14 – Development Senarios (pdf, 6 MB)

Note that the scenarios referenced here were under consideration in 2001, but these options are no longer being pursued under the Cultivating Place academic plan.

Masters student Natalie Yuen, renowned animal behaviour scientist Dr. Temple Grandin and the farm's two Belted Galloway cattle guests. Photo courtesy of Don Erhardt.

For the second year in a row, the UBC Farm is playing host to a pair of Belted Galloway cattle.  Following the success of her undergraduate Self-Directed Study on rotational cattle grazing, Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems student Natalie Yuen is researching the integration of cattle into the Farm’s annual crop rotation as the basis of her Master’s research under Dr. Art Bomke’s supervision.

Last year, Natalie merged her interests in agroecology and animal welfare by designing and implementing a rotational grazing system at the UBC Farm.  This involved subdividing a field into several smaller sections and allowing the cattle to graze in one area at a time.  Sequential grazing allows sections that have been grazed to generate regrowth, thereby providing a continuous and sustainable food source for grazers.  The objective of last year’s research was to demonstrate how a functional agroecosystem such as the UBC Farm could achieve soil fertility benefits from grazing cattle by allowing them to exhibit their natural behaviours, while simultaneously enhancing the cattle’s welfare.

Moreover, “mob” grazing has received glowing reports as a tool to fight climate change. In a nutshell, intensive grazing stimulates a high level of grass growth. The grasses convert CO2 from the air into sugars through photosynthesis.  Subsequently, some of the carbon compounds are sequestered in the soil through the growth and decay of root matter.

A great source of inspiration to Natalie in her research, particularly with regard to cattle welfare, has been the work of world-renowned animal behaviour scientist, Dr. Temple Grandin. With the goal of improving the lives of beef cattle, Dr. Grandin applied her research on cattle behavioural responses to various stimuli and thus revolutionized the beef production industry.  In particular, Dr. Grandin has designed humane handling facilities in feedlots and slaughterhouses to ensure that cattle welfare is maintained, even in later stages of life.  In the highlight of her academic career thus far, Natalie arranged a visit by Dr. Grandin to the UBC Farm to see her project.

Over the coming season, Natalie will be investigating soil and egg quality properties in a management-intensive, mixed livestock rotational grazing system.  After cattle graze a particular field sub-section, a small flock of chickens will subsequently be introduced into the field to mechanically decompose the cattle manure and digest the ensuing fly larvae. This portion of Natalie’s research was inspired by the innovative farming practices of Joel Salatin, author of The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer and co-owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia. Salatin is well-known for being featured in the documentaries Food, Inc. and Fresh, as well as Michael Pollan’s New York Times best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In September 2010, Natalie invited him to UBC. Faculty, students and staff were treated to Salatin’s particular brand of humour and innovative vision for a vibrant food system.