Gray Orion and Ilana Labow of Fresh Roots Urban Farm. Photo: Fresh Roots

Story by Kate Petrusa
Ilana Labow and her Fresh Roots Urban Farm team are taking a close look at the viability of urban farming in Vancouver, both in theory and practice. Fresh Roots Urban Farm is a collection of community farm spaces, including neighbourhood yards and sections of school grounds, being used as spaces to grow food, but also to grow community. They sell the produce from these spaces through a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) box program and involve the students, teachers, and neighbours in the growing and harvesting. These spaces also double as gathering places for teaching, meeting and enjoying.

After completing a degree in UBC's Global Resource Systems, Ilana credits much of her inspiration for urban farming from an internship with the Chicago-based "Growing Power." Photo: Fresh Roots

Fresh Roots Urban Farm’s current direction comes out of Ilana’s 8-month experience interning at Growing Power, during her undergraduate degree in UBC’s Global Resource Systems (GRS) program. Growing Power, too, is a collection of urban farm sites, growing very intensively on small areas in Chicago and Milwaukee, often in reclaimed inner-city locations. Ilana attributes much of her inspiration and practical knowledge at Fresh Roots to working with Growing Power: “I would never be able to do anything I am doing, if I had not worked with them. The work they do has a profound impact on thousands of young people and older people’s lives everyday and every year. Many of the youth they work with come from all kinds of challenging places, places where it can be hard to find positive role models. When [Growing Power CEO] Will Allenwalks into a room, just his presence and the way he speaks gives these youth the opportunity to believe that life could be different than what they have seen so far.”

Humble backyard beginnings for Fresh Roots Urban Farm. Photo: Ilana Labow

Three years ago, Fresh Roots humbly began in one backyard garden. As an experiment, Ilana’s friend Gray Orion turned his backyard lawn into a garden. To amend the new garden, Ilana and Gray started collecting food waste from the Farmer’s Market and composting it. Gray almost single-handedly packed seven CSA boxes per week from this yard. In their second year as project partners, Ilana and Gray expanded to a patchwork of eight backyards around East Vancouver, which were established through word of mouth, and craigslist advertisements. Undaunted, Ilana recalls, “Our goal in 2010 was to see how much we could grow in these eight small urban spaces and how much we could sell to the neighbourhood. It was from that question, our lives changed forever.” As a graduate of the program, Ilana approached the GRS administrators in UBC’s  Faculty of Land and Food Systems and suggested they offer students Directed Studies credits in exchange for completing summer internships at Fresh Roots. The faculty agreed and provided this opportunity to two students. Says Ilana, “the [students] had an astounding summer, we had an astounding summer and really got a lot out of it. Those students who interned with us that summer, it really got them into farming.”
Fresh Roots’ expansion took off rapidly after that successful summer in 2010. Ilana was invited to join the Vancouver School Food Network, a group of educators committed to using gardens to help achieve BC core-curriculum objectives. Through contact with that group, Fresh Roots was one of three local producers selected to participate in a pilot project at Windermere Secondary School, designed to touch several elements of the food cycle. Students in the Windermere Culinary Arts Programprepared meals, using produce from Fresh Roots’ eight backyards, for a nearby elementary school’s hot lunch program. In turn, Windermere’s physical education students were given course credit to pick up the food waste from the elementary school by bicycle, and this waste was added to the Windermere school garden compost.

In the absence of a single, centralized piece of land, Fresh Roots has tackled the challenges of growing food in eight backyards. Photo: Ilana Labow

In the face of such success, Fresh Roots remained remarkably level-headed. They had begun to see the challenges associated with the absence of a single, centralized farm and with keeping eight backyards financially viable in the long run. But serendipity struck. As Ilana recalls, “One of our backyards shared a wall with Queen Alexandra Elementary, which had a garden put in about 10 years ago with a big pocket of grant money. Over time, the garden overgrew and the principal at the school really wanted help reclaiming the garden. When she saw our garden literally through the fence, she offered us that land to help her reclaim the space.” In exchange for transforming the space into an outdoor classroom, and teaching the teachers some creative ways to use the space, this school garden would become one of Fresh Roots’ primary growing sites. “It has been a truly successful partnership. I’m watching little boys arm wrestle for broccoli flowers and little girls standing in a straight line waiting for collard greens. They want to eat everything that comes out of this garden.”

Queen Alexandra Schoolyard Market Garden. This year, Fresh Roots is entering into partnerships with two new schools. Photo: Fresh Roots

This coming growing season, with support from a generous $50,000 Vancity Good Money Impact™ Venture Challenge prize, Fresh Roots will be entering into new agreements with two other schools to build two new school farms this year. “We are calling them our schoolyard market gardens, but they are essentially ¼ acre small farms on school grounds. We want to understand if this model is financially viable for Fresh Roots, and meaningful for the school educationally.” While it is understood that this partnership is a project in its early stages, its goals are clear. Fresh Roots needs to find a way to cover the operational costs of Fresh Roots, while simultaneously using their growing space as an outdoor learning classroom for schools and community groups. For Ilana, she recognizes that her gardens are not “just going to be rows of crops, but rows aroundgathering spaces, designed specifically to enable community gatherings and festivals.”

More than simply producing food for city dwellers, urban farms like Fresh Roots are transforming the social fabric of their communities through food system education. Photo: Fresh Roots

Like Growing Power, Fresh Roots Urban Farm is becoming a place to grow food, but more than that it is becoming a place that grows community and awareness. Ilana would go so far as to say that food education and community, is the role of her urban farm: “I don’t think we would genuinely be able to feed a city in any way, but I am watching our urban farm sites become ‘middle men’. They really become these stepping stones, where the whole neighbourhood is rethinking where their food comes from. These community-invested school farms are really expanding the market for just locally farmed food, in general. I think that’s the big thing with urban farming  – that huge potential to expand the market for our small-scale rural farmers. I see us expanding the market, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.”
The work of urban farms goes beyond operating a business to increase local food available in cities. Urban farms like Fresh Roots, provide a profound educational tool that enables more urban folks to rethink their food sources. At the same time, urban farms provide a space to reclaim our local urban areas by developing beautiful, aesthetically pleasing gathering spaces. Ilana couldn’t have said it better: “I feel excited about the future, and all the potential that urban farms have for our city. ”

Cropthorne Farm Family. Photo: Cropthorne Farm

Story by Kate Petrusa

Lydia and Rachel Ryall are two sisters who come from a long, unbroken line of farmers on both sides of their family. With such a wealth of family knowledge to draw on and their imbued passion for growing food, together they are continuing their family’s farming lineage by running their own organic mixed vegetable farm, complete with chickens. Cropthorne Farm is a 5-acre swath of fertile farmland in Ladner BC, and a real anomaly amid hundreds of acres of large-scale farming operations and greenhouse growers in the area, bordered by the industrial seaport infrastructure that snakes along the coast of Delta and Tsawwassen.

The land in Ladner and the Fraser River floodplain is much flatter than the undulating and mountainous terrain in most of the Lower Mainland. As such, from Cropthorne Farm, it is easy to see the extent of farmland nearby and several long, blueish glass greenhouses glinting in the afternoon sun. Cropthorne Farm is about 50 meters from an 18-acre greenhouse, on a 75-acre farm that was previously run by Lydia and Rachel’s parents until 2011. “It’s a nice big piece and so they rented out the back 40 to a neighbour. Their thing was just the greenhouse,” Lydia says.

For over 40 years, their parents specialized in growing tomatoes hydroponically in the greenhouse, which is a method for growing plants without soil. Instead of soil, the plants grow in water or an inert medium like sawdust, and the plant is fed a mineral nutrient solution. “With Mom and Dad’s place, there was ton of off-farm inputs, coming from all over the world. They grew into coconut husks, the pulverized husk fibers, or sawdust-looking stuff that comes from Sri Lanka that was sent here right of the port here in Delta. Then they shipped their tomatoes from here all they way to Atlanta! But, they could produce a product at a decent price and it was consistently the same. They were feeding people. I’m not against what they did. But for me, I have a hard time understanding it.”

The Cropthorne farmers enjoying winter sunshine amidst a day of weeding in the greenhouse. Photo: Cropthorne Farm

While Lydia and Rachel haven’t always agreed with their parents’ farming methodologies, they do see how these methods come from an ardent and longstanding enjoyment of growing food. On their dad’s side, Lydia and Rachel’s grandparents were farmers, and their grandfather completed an agriculture degree at UBC. On their mother’s side, their great-grandfather was a well-known and accomplished greenhouse grower whose family had been farming as far back as one could go in the family tree. And Lydia recalls, “As kids, our parents took us camping a lot, and the natural environment became important to us. I think we know it’s important to tread lightly [on the environment] and things like that. With our upbringing, I think that has sunk in.”

Lydia and Rachel get a lot of support for their farming business from their parents. For the past four years, they have had access to parents’ land, making for a reliable and long-term lease situation. “Our dad is very enthusiastic about our stuff. We grew melons one year and we had people come up to us saying ‘Oh, your dad was talking about the melons you grow and how great they are,’” says Lydia. Similarly, “my mom has been helping us this year to set up the books better. And now that she is semi-retired, she is going to be taking on that stuff, so it’s really exciting. It’s super nice, and I certainly don’t expect it, but it frees me up, especially for the next couple of years while we are expanding.”

Lydia Ryall has found that despite their focus on larger-scale, conventional agriculture, neighbours are often enormously supportive of her and her sister's endeavours. Photo: David Tanner

The Cropthorne girls also get a lot of farming support from their larger-scale farming neighbours, too. Lydia attends the Delta Farmers’ Institute meetings, where she keeps the company of farmers with up to 400 acres in agricultural production. “Sometimes I felt pressure at these meetings just because I was so different. I’m a woman, I’m young and naïve, with all these like 50 year old guys who have had farms passed down. These families have been doing it since forever. But listen, these neighbours of ours, it’s not like they are looking down at us and what we are doing as wrong or silly or anything like that. Our next door neighbour has been helping us with negotiating deals on tractors and pointing out things we need in a tractor, like setting wheel spacing. Everyone I have talked to has been more than willing to help us out. I think everyone sees there’s an issue with not a lot of young people farming. They are just happy to see that the land is being farmed.”

Ten-month-old Adelaide works closely on the farm with her mom, Rachel Ryall. Photo: Cropthorne Farm

Contributing even further to the family focus at Cropthorne Farm, Rachel and her two children, 3-year-old Isla and 10-month-old Adelaide, are at work with their mom and aunt all day farming. To do this, Rachel and Lydia divide their labour based loosely on childcare needs. Lydia, with the help of an apprentice, does the jobs related to crop production, including planning, seeding, transplanting, tractor work and harvesting. In the height of the season, Rachel does most of the post-harvest tasks, as well as most of the markets, which includes bagging, weighing, and washing vegetables for market. She remains relatively stationary during these tasks in order to be available for Isla’s bathroom breaks, cuddles and energy level, and also to avoid disrupting naps taken by Adelaide on her back in the carrier. When chores can’t be divided neatly, they include the children in work as best they can. As Isla gets older, she wants to help out more and more. She helped with carrot harvest last season and will often pick up a hoe when others are weeding, to show her symbolic solidarity!

From Lydia’s perspective, the arrangement has offered a desirable middle-road to the common tension between child-minding and other work. “That’s one of the nice things about family working together, where it’s not an ‘employee’ leaving to do childcare, we are taking care of my niece. And if one of us wants a break and something needs doing, the other can go and do it. It’s worked out really well. Rachel and I get along really well. Our temperaments are very different. We balance out. I’m pretty fiery, Rachel is very even-keel and very diplomatic, thoughtful and very focused. Adds Rachel, “I can put up with Lydia’s stuff and she can put up with mine. It works.”

Lydia preparing the soil for a fresh suite of crops. Photo: Cropthorne Farm

What stands out most clearly about Lydia and Rachel is the passion that they express for farming. Lydia comments that in trying to understand her soil better, it almost makes her want to eat it: “You want to get a feel for it, get a taste for something.” On a purposeful walk back to the barn, she stops suddenly in mid-sentence and her eyes soften. Then she exclaims, “I get excited this time of year – I thought I just heard a tractor! Yesterday one of the neighbours drove by with a manure spreader, and I said to myself: ‘It’s starting!’”

Their passion stands out in many ways, but in particular, their discussion of the ways they will ensure they are farming for the long haul is particularly telling. “Efficiencies are huge, if you want this [farming] as a career. Listen, it has to be [efficient]! If I can have 10 spare minutes in my day in the summertime to do some stretching or read a book, I really appreciate it. I love what I do, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. But if I can find a little bit of time to focus on something else, or just go for a walk, I’m grateful for the balance.”

Lydia had lots of ideas about how to make things easier for them, to reduce the amount of effort expended, and to avoid burn out. “Seed things at the right levels. Don’t lift things from the wrong heights. I can’t lift 60 pounds of potatoes continuously, so have things in smaller bins. These things will help you become more efficient, in a sense, because you aren’t going to get tired out. And at the end of the day, I think you have to make sure you are paying yourself appropriately as a farmer. Like most businesses, it takes a while to get there, but it’s so important. You shouldn’t be scratching or begging for that. That should be your wage.”

“A lot of that comes from my parents though. They’ve been farming for 40 years and at such a large scale, they have had to find ways to become more efficient. My mom can tell you what exact costs are, so they have to find efficiencies because at their scale, there is so much competition. They have hammered home the importance of efficiency to me.”

Amidst exciting plans for expansion, Rachel and her sister are quickly become versed in techniques for working efficiently on an organic farm. Photo: Cropthorne Farm

And efficient they will need to be. This coming growing season, this farming family is transitioning to a new 50-acre property on Westham Island this May, while managing their existing farm until December. From their existing farm, Lydia, Rachel and their two little helpers will be providing a 40-share Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) program to South Delta, North Vancouver and Vancouver and attending 5 markets in the Lower Mainland this summer. Simultaneously, Cropthorne Farm will be building barns, establishing a chicken pasture, preparing 3 acres of soil for planting , and building a propagation greenhouse at their new Westham Island farm. Their parents will be involved with the vegetable production on this new land, as well as beginning organic grain and sheep production operation of their own. As Cropthorne Farm expands their operation, the passion Lydia, Rachel and their family bring will continue to generate methods that make farming more energy efficient, easier on the body and financially feasible. It is this practical passion that will make small-scale organic farming ultimately more sustainable in the long run.

Chris Thoreau and Gavin Wright, Chief Executive Pedalers. Photo: Chris Thoreau

Story by Kate Petrusa

Vancouver’s urban population provides an essential customer base to many rural farmers, who readily commute from all over southwestern BC to access this market. Compared to their home communities, the sizable summer customer base in Vancouver often makes a 3-hour, one-way journey for a farmer well worth it. One small business has been gearing up local food distribution in a particularly clever fashion. Based in East Van, Your Local Food Pedalers is successfully bridging the gap between urbanites and local farmers – all on their bicycles.

Chief Executive Pedalers Gavin Wright and Chris Thoreau are graduates of UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and both have close relationships to the UBC Farm. Together, they run Your Local Food Pedalers as business partners and co-owners. From June to December, the two pedalers offer a weekly Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) box to their customers filled with organic and local items sold at the Trout Lake Farmer’s Market. They deliver each box by bike to their customer’s doorsteps.

While they knew each other peripherally through the UBC Farm, Gavin and Chris had not worked together prior to their current enterprise. In early 2011, they both heard and inquired independently about investing in ‘Your Local Food Pedalers’ business opportunity.  After speaking with the previous business owner, Gavin proposed the idea that he and Chris tackle this idea together, and Chris readily agreed. “Since we have taken [the business] over, we are also interested in including urban agriculture produce, because that is what we are really involved in. We kind of kept the things about [the business] that we liked, and tweaked the things that didn’t make sense to us. We changed the name, decided to pick up and deliver on the same day, we brought in urban farms, and we expanded the variety of vendors [21 different farms and processors].”

Your Local Food Pedalers making the rounds at the Vancouver Winter Farmers Market. Photo: Chris Thoreau

Each Saturday morning, Chris and Gavin bike to the Trout Lake Farmer’s Market, pick up their produce and other goods from the market, and return to their packing area to fill the CSA boxes. After all of the boxes are packed, Chris and Gavin deliver the boxes by bike, hauling large trailers full of produce behind them. For Gavin, “Coming back with piles of awesome food from the Farmer’s Market and getting to sort through all this amazing food, it just felt like… Well, I literally have that image of Scrooge McDuck digging through a pile of gold, you know? It just feels like so much wealth. It is a cool feeling to just go to a stall and get a huge box of great stuff, and I come back here with all of it and get to have a nice morning sorting all of it out.”

Your Local Food Pedalers’ target market is people who love local food, but have trouble getting to the Farmer’s Market each week, or at all. Gavin explains, “My neighbours across the lane are really cool community folks and are super interested in local food. They totally want to support local farmers. My neighbours also described how they struggle with going to the Farmer’s Market, because of the high volume of people and lineups.” He stated there are also potential Farmer’s Market fans that don’t attend due to a Saturday work schedule, or living further away.

Over and above benefiting customers who can’t attend the Famer’s Market, there are unexpected benefits to this innovative business model. Firstly, Gavin and Chris are establishing ‘partner farms,’ with whom they work closely and have a committed relationship. By being included in Your Local Food Pedalers CSA, early in the season these ‘partner’ farmers have a much better idea how much of a particular crop to plant. For example, they know in early spring that Your Local Food Pedalers will be purchasing 100 units of Butternut squash from them for four weeks through October. It makes planning for the season easier for the farmers and more secure. “The [farmers] are actually planning ahead, in order to sell to us. They are doing some of their crop planning around the fact that we are going to be moving their stuff […]. And through our CSA, the farmers we partner with are getting customers that they wouldn’t necessarily get.” In effect, Chris and Gavin extend partner farmers’ existing CSAs by committing to take produce at a specified time.  Through their own farming experience, Chris and Gavin know how much stress it can relieve when growers can comfortably cover early-season costs such as seeds and soil amendments. They opted for a CSA model largely because farmers receive share payments in the spring, which cover the cost of weekly boxes for the whole season.

Furthermore, Your Local Food Pedalers’ business model opens up a new customer base to processors who sell their goods at the Trout Lake Farmer’s Market. Processors include vendors who sell items such as cheese, meats, fish, pesto, bread and more. Because Gavin and Chris source from the Farmer’s Market, their customers can request ‘add-ons’ of processed goods to be included in their box for a given week. While processors aren’t able to plan their sales in the same way as primary producers who are partnered with the CSA, the vendors are still able to sell to customers who aren’t at the Farmer’s Market. “It’s going to be relatively easy to facilitate this for us, because there are some items, like pesto, that is frozen, so we can buy a larger quantity and won’t have to pick that up each time. There will be a few products like that, which we can keep stock of,” says Chris.

Chris prepares the steed for deliveries. Food calories, rather than fossil fuels, are the Food Pedalers' preferred energy source. Photo: Kate Petrusa

Notably, Your Local Food Pedalers are distributing food to urban dwellers by relying completely on burning calories, rather than burning fossil fuels. “I feel like our business encompasses the whole picture. It’s being sustainable. It’s keeping the fumes out of the air, keeping cars off the road; it is easier to get around on a bike taking different routes. If there are folks who aren’t able to make it into the Farmer’s Market, or don’t want to drive another single-occupancy vehicle down to the Farmer’s Market, then we can get it out to them on bikes. We stay fit, which is a big part of it. Local, organic food and biking are a good mix,” says Gavin.

With one successful season under their belts, Gavin and Chris are expanding substantially for the 2012 season. Over the winter, they modified their bike trailers to make them taller. Now, the trailers can haul almost 300 pounds of weight. “This season is kind of nerve racking. We are also scaling up quite a bit this year in terms of the number of shares. We are going to scale up from a peak of like 25-27 customers last year to 100 this year,” says Chris. Such a large increase in customers begs the question of how Your Local Food Pedalers plan to handle a threefold increase in customer base. Two words: electric bikes.

In addition to hiring an intern this season, Your Local Food Pedalers has a dedicated group of volunteers who assist with packing

Sponsorship by Elite Bikes will enable Chris and Gavin to use electric bikes for their deliveries. Based on last year’s experience, this improved mode of transportation seems vital to the success of their expanding business, states Chris: “We really think that this model can be super successful, but especially by using electric bikes… There were days last year where I was literally exhausted, just so tired. And there was just no recovery time. I am so happy to have these electric bikes!” In addition to electrifying their bicycles, this season Gavin and Chris have invested in a software program to help manage the customer increase through an online ordering system. Customers can modify their weekly orders online to include an “add-on” and special delivery instructions. Your Local Food Pedalers has a devoted following of volunteers who contribute to packing the CSA boxes, and they will also be hiring an intern to help manage the delivery numbers.

As Farmers Markets grow and farmers strive to reach new audiences, innovative responses to distributing fresh food to our cities are essential. Your Local Food Pedalers is one such response to an overwhelming demand for locally grown, organic food. This summer, if you notice an electric bike humming by, hauling a loaded-down bike trailer bursting with greenery, be sure to cheer on Your Local Food Pedalers!

What is Joy of Feeding, and where did your inspiration come from to organize it?

Meeru Dahlwala at the 2011 Joy of Feeding fundraiser

Joy of Feeding is an international food fair that celebrates the importance of (happily) carrying on the cooking traditions of all cultures within our increasingly mixed culture society in North America. Joy of Feeding takes this celebration and, rather than just showcasing the foods from various heritages, encourages people of all backgrounds to cook foods from all backgrounds. Much in the same way that inter-racial relationships are on the rise, Joy of Feeding encourages inter-racial home cooking.

I had the idea for Joy of Feeding in the middle of the night in November 2010. I was involved in many events related to local food and farming but felt frustrated that increasingly I was seeing the same basic group of people at each event. We weren’t tapping into a larger community. It clicked in my head that there was a disconnect between intellectually talking about local food and emotionally cooking with it. People are eating out more and more, watching more cooking shows on TV and NOT actually cooking at home. I knew that many immigrant families still cooked at home on a regular basis and I knew that Vancouverites as a whole enjoy many ethnic cuisines. So I decided to hold an event that connected those who wished to cook and loved to eat various types of cuisines to those who actually did cook. I wanted to hold this in a farm setting where sustainably farmed food is grown to make an emotional, triangular connection between whole foods, cultures and cooking. Unless we know what to do with local, unprocessed foods, we will never be able to support and appreciate local farming in any large scale, meaningful way.

I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts on the connection between the importance of home cooking, family and food system sustainability.

With regard to family and health, the actual term “Joy of Feeding” comes from the belief that, while cooking is work, it is important work. Joy doesn’t necessarily have to come from the actual cooking, but it does come from feeding family and friends. The most affordable and healthy way to enjoy local and organic produce is to cook it at home. Feeding your family a home cooked, healthy meal and gathering in one place to eat together is the best way to nourish your loved ones bodies and emotional well being. When a person takes the time to cook an actual meal, then that person wishes for everyone to gather around the meal, rather than gather around the TV. Or, today people tend not even to gather but to separate and eat alone at one’s computers. This isn’t healthy at many levels, and we, as one big umbrella culture, can’t allow this to overtake our family lives.

What were some of your favourite moments from this past year’s event?      

Peggy August of the Ahousat First Nation was pleased to share her salmon cake recipe at Joy of Feeding last year. Photo: Headstrong Design

My best highlight from the 2011 Joy of Feeding was the look of pride and happiness on all the faces of the participant moms and their families who were helping them serve hundreds of guests. The moms’ families and friends had gathered around them. In particular, Peggy August, our participant representing the Ahousat First Nation, called me over to tell me, with a big smile, that she had one of the longest lines throughout the afternoon. She was so pleased at the popularity of a simple salmon cake recipe that she often made for her children as a working, single mom. Joy of Feeding is NOT about fancy, complicated, five-star meals. It’s about our family comfort foods. And Peggy chose to share the comfort recipe that she inherited from her parents and gave to her children.

What would you like people to know about this year’s Joy of Feeding?

Cooks are men and women. Most importantly, I decided to take the connection of food and emotions of “breaking bread together” to another level. We have been hearing about Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Mexico quite a bit in the news. So much so that we hear big stories and then forget about them. If we actually meet someone from these countries and have this person welcome us and give us tastes of their foods, the next time we hear about events in these countries, we will feel a more personal connection. What we do with this connection is own to decide. But at a minimum, it is a new and deeper connection.

Manyara Rinomhota and her son Joshua served sadza nyama neMuriwo, a Zimbabwean cornmeal mash with greens and beef stew, to grateful attendees at last year's fundraiser

But I don’t mean to say that the four countries above are more important than the 12 other heritages that will be part of 2012 Joy of Feeding. The 12 other participants have their own, proud heritage, and people can connect at many different levels to all 16 heritages – from the international news, to “Oh, I didn’t know that!” to past or future vacation, to meeting a person in the future from that country and being able to start a conversation about food.

What cultural dishes will cooks at this year’s event be sharing?

The heritages this year are: Mexico, Chile, Maya (Guatemala), Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Sweden, UK, Vancouver, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Goa (India), Hakka Chinese from Tanzania, Vietnam, Tsimshian Nation (Prince George) and Southern Italy. Many of these cultures are underrepresented in the Vancouver food scene, which makes the event even more delicious and unique.

This year’s Joy of Feeding is on Sunday, June 10th, 2012. We look forward to having you join us!

Scott Bell harvests cones from the UBC Farm hopyard that he established as part of an Agroecology Directed Study

Despite hops’ vital role in beer and the rich history of hop farming in the Fraser Valley, the crop hasn’t seen much production in the region until recently. With the resurgence of craft beer in British Columbia, a number of small-scale hopyards have been established across the province. One of these new yards can be found right at the UBC Farm.

The UBC Farm hopyard was established as an undergraduate Self-Directed Study by Agroecology student Scott Bell. As a homebrewer, Scott sought to better understand what it takes to operate a small-scale hopyard in a mixed farm setting and hoped to identify hop varieties that were particularly suited to Vancouver’s damp, coastal climate. Taking advice from Left Fields Hops Farm in Sorrento, BC, Scott broke ground in 2010 to make a hopyard at UBC Farm a reality.

Female cones from Humulus lupulus, a perennial vine, are the part of the hops plant used for brewing and herbal medicine

Hops are the flower of the female hop plant, Humulus lupulus, a perennial vine that can grow up to 6 metres in a single year. Once harvested, these aromatic, cone-shaped flowers are used by brewers during the beer making process. Hops added to the brew kettle at the beginning of the boiling process give bitterness to the beer while hops added at the end of the boil contribute to the beer’s floral aroma and flavour. Hops are featured front and centre in many Pacific Northwestern pale ales and India pale ales (IPAs), providing a character that can range from piney to citrus.

While it is not yet clear which varieties thrive in Vancouver’s climate, the hopyard saw its first harvest this past season. The majority of the crop was dried, to prolong shelf life, and packaged for sale. However, hops can also be used fresh in wet-hopped beers to create a distinctive flavour, although this is only possible during the early autumn when hops are harvested. With the growth in small hopyards across the continent, these harvest ales have found growing popularity amongst brewers and beer enthusiasts. Following a new USDA rule change for companies that label their beer as organic, there is also an increasing demand for organic hops production.

Due to the short shelf life of fresh hops, the cones must be used within hours of picking to ensure quality. Though challenging to coordinate, this offered the UBC Brewing Club a unique opportunity to make a wet-hopped beer with hops grown a few minutes away from their brewing space in the Student Union Building. The remainder of the dried hops were sold at the UBC Farm Market to Vancouver homebrewers and herbalists, who used the flowers to make everything from chocolate stout beers to sleepy pillows.

Little-known fact: Due to the volatile oils they emit, handling hops for a long period of time can induce mild drowsiness

The UBC Farm’s hopyard is still young but should achieve full production in the 2012 season as the plants reach maturity. The 70 plants at the farm include varieties such as Centennial, Cascade, Hallertauer, Magnum, Mt. Hood, Nugget, Fuggle, Golding, Zeus, and Chinook. These varieties provide a range of flavours, aromas, and bitterness that brewers can mix and match to create the types of beers they favour, while adding to the diverse range of perennial crops grown at the UBC Farm.

While trained in law, Andrew Arkesteyn-Vogler is among a growing number of young grads from professional programs who have found their true passion in organic farming

Before starting his own farm, Andrew Arkesteyn-Vogler completed law school. He will tell you that he’s not actually a lawyer, because he didn’t write the bar exam, but there’s no denying he put in the grueling hours required from lawyers-in-training. It may sound unexpected, but many young people who take up organic farming these days usually do so during or after finishing some type of formal education. Joel Salatin, featured in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, recognizes this trend, and makes a candid claim: “I actually believe that we need professional farmers. Smart farmers. The best and the brightest. And to do that, farmers need to believe, first of all, that such a possibility exists.”

Born and raised in Abbotsford, BC, Andrew grew up immersed in the landscape of farming in the Fraser Valley. “When you grow up in Abbotsford, you know farmers. It’s not this mystical idea. We’re a city surrounded by farmland.” Andrew is only one generation removed from farming. His grandfather grew up on a dairy farm, which had been a family operation for generations. After the Second World War, his grandparents emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada, purchased their own land in Pitt Meadows in the 1960s to start their own dairy farm and their family. After 30 years of a successful dairy business, none of the children who grew up on the Arkesteyn dairy farm wanted to take it over, so the land was eventually sold and their children moved on.

Andrew and his father at graduation

While his immediate family wasn’t involved with farming, Andrew grew up gardening on a ¼-acre garden, complete with fruit trees, berries and grapes. He remembers being involved with the garden and really enjoying it, though says early on, “It had never crossed my mind to be a farmer.” After high school, Andrew completed a Fish, Wildlife and Recreation diploma from BCIT and an Environmental Science degree from Royal Roads University. With this training, he worked for private fishery companies, fishery education programs and worked hard outside and with his hands regularly. Slowly however, as a result of this career, Andrew began to realize that his original reasons for fisheries work – a love for recreational fishing and being down at the river – ironically were not being fulfilled in this line of work. He realized it was time to refocus in an area he had always known he wanted to pursue: law school.

“I knew I had the ability to go to law school, and it’s an area that people respect. I also quite like politics… After the first year though, it didn’t quite stick. It didn’t quite feel right. It was a strange thing for me. I felt a class difference there… All of a sudden, my classmates’ parents were Supreme Court justices, and they had always planned on being lawyers or doctors. All of these things just didn’t quite feel normal to me, for my life.”

Says Andrew Arksteyn-Vogler about why he was attracted to organic farming, "I’m actually creating a product that improves people’s health and ideally improves my own health."

In my own travels, as a farm-hand and graduate student, it is extremely common that my fellow farmers, particularly the organic ones, come to farming after getting their degree, and sometimes several. What’s more, the sheer number of formal education opportunities available in sustainable agriculture adds considerable and necessary steam to the local food movement, and also contributes to the education trend. Interestingly, Andrew pointed out to me that he has seen how education (among other factors) can contribute to a not-so-subtle divide between conventional and organic farmers, a divide which won’t help anyone in the long run: “Everyone is just trying to make a buck [farming], and it’s not easy for anyone. In speaking to many different farmers, conventional and organic, I definitely think there is a tension between the two types of farmers. Both have agriculture issues, one way or another, but of course there are differences too. Why not try to work together?”

After the first year of law school in 2007, Andrew took a month to camp and fish in the Chilcotin region of BC. Camping on the banks of the Chilcotin River was when he began to explore the idea of starting an organic farm. “The thing I really like about farming, sustainable farming, is that has the ability to touch a lot of areas that will help our society to improve. It helps the environment… I’m actually creating a product that improves people’s health and ideally improves my own health. Also, it’s really good for rural renewal… I think it brings a lot of life back into these communities in which people are leaving. We need people in communities all around BC… I think organic farming, small-scale farming, is a way for people to have a little bit more income in towns right across BC.”

After his first sumer of law school, Andrew pitched an idea to his parents of buying and running an organic farm together

After his brainwave on the riverbank, both of Andrew’s parents became catalysts for his new business idea – both for its inspiration and its execution. Since the 1990s, Andrew recalls his mother hoping to become involved again with farming. Also in 2007, his father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; if Andrew could farm with his mother, it would allow him to be back home and support the both his parents in different ways. “It seemed like the right thing to do.” After that first summer of law school, Andrew tentatively proposed the idea to his parents of buying land together, farming together and running the farm business together.

Andrew set to work preparing himself to see if this idea of family farming would really work for him. “When I was back in law school in second year, I tried to make sure all my courses were related to running a business. I took corporate law, tax law, insurance law.” During the second summer, he found work on a nearby organic farm in Aldergrove, at Fraser Common Farm.

“I had never worked on a farm, so I wasn’t really ready to say I was 100%, but that this was an idea. It’s not really something you should make a decision about in a month. It’s different if it was just me taking the summer off and working on a farm. But when you are asking your parents to move and put their life savings into a farm, you want to be pretty sure it’s a good idea.”

After Andrew’s summer season at Fraser Common Farm, he and his parents began looking for properties but decided it was wise to take their time with the decision through his final year of law school. “I went back and worked with Fraser Common Farm again the summer after graduation from law school. By that time, my parents and I were gung-ho about it, and it seemed like a good idea, so we agreed we would take the plunge.”

Andrew Arkesteyn-Vogler and his father at Crisp Farm

In 2010, Andrew and his parents purchased an 11-acre farm in Abbotsford. For the past 3 years, Andrew and his mother have been business partners for their organic farm business, Crisp Farm. Together they run a business that supplies 50 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes and attend 6 markets throughout the Lower Mainland. “You [farm] because it’s your raison d’être. As I farm more, I can’t really imagine doing something else.”

Does Andrew “use” his law degree while farming? Perhaps. Did he “need” to train to be a lawyer to become a farmer? Not at all. As more young professionals with training at post-secondary institutions establish organic farm operations, this demographic is changing the face of farming. The enthusiasm and cachet this demographic brings is expanding the limits of the industry, and will continue to do so, provided we work with all of the farmers in the community. Together, the farming community can further the groundwork for transforming the food system we know today, for the better.

Rootdown Organic Farm is located in the lush, mountainous landscape of Pemberton, BC. Photo: Kate Petrusa

Story by Kate Petrusa 

 
I first visited Rootdown Organic Farm in June 2010, one month after the farm team took possession of their new land. A modest white farmhouse beside a large tree greeted our cars as we drove up the access road. It was easy to feel small so near to the dramatic, snow capped mountains towering over the farm. Bordered by a creek, the farm was enveloped in an agricultural valley in Pemberton, BC that teemed with birds and greenery. I was visiting Rootdown as part of a UBC Farm Practicum field trip. As our group walked towards the production fields of the property, all I could see was a sea of green. It looked to me just like a large grassy field. It was then I began to realize that the Rootdown farmers, Sarah and Simone, were up against a serious obstacle on their new land: couch grass.

Sarah and Simone, both UBC Farm Practicum graduates (2008), fortunately had access to land of their own, but needed to start from scratch. There were no existing beds on which to grow their crops, just a large grassy field that had had been hayed for years and depleted of nutrients in the process. Couch grass, Elymus repens,  (pronounced ‘kooch’ grass) also known as quackgrass, is a very invasive perennial grass. Its rootstalks ‘creep’ horizontally across the soil surface, and prove to be extremely difficult to eradicate even with weeding or tilling with a tractor, because each piece of rootstalk can develop into a new plant.

Early in the season of 2010, when Rootdown farmers were still leasing neighbours’ land, Sarah was working with her neighbour to bring two pigs onto her leased land for their own consumption. Sarah’s inspiration for experimenting with pigs came after reading Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Cookbook. She found “his ethics very much in line with ours regarding farming and treatment of animals … He was talking about raising pigs and I was really interested. I talked to our neighbour, and the two of us decided to raise two pigs that year.”

Tamworth heritage pigs. Photo: Sarah McMillan

Before the pigs’ arrival, to their surprise Sarah and Simone found that the land they had been eying for months became available for them to purchase. Although they decided to follow through with the original plan of sharing feed and infrastructure costs with their neighbour, they decided to give up their lease and keep the two pigs on their new land. They decided on Tamworth pigs, a heritage breed, known for good bacon and high quality meat. Tamworths are not well suited to industrial-style production methods and are listed as a “threatened” species in the U.S. “They were just so easy to care for, especially after we figured out our fencing issues! At the end of the season, they were getting out of their pen quite a lot, and they were going for trots down the dyke and would end up a kilometer down the river.”

After a successful experiment with two Tamworth pigs on the farm, Sarah and Simone looked more closely at how to integrate and benefit from pigs in their farming system. “We had a really hard year [2010] with couch grass, and fertility is an issue too. We thought if we have a larger number of pigs, they can work on eliminating the couch grass and we can use their manure on the fields. Also, we all felt pretty strongly about the integration of animals into the fields and our farm system.” Not only can pigs improve soil quality and help with weed management, their meat provides a valuable commodity for the farm at the end of the season.

After working hard to find a breeder in BC with Tamworth pigs, the two farmers arranged to have 12 pigs on the farm for the 2011 growing season. They took another big step by creating a rotational grazing system for the pigs that integrated their 50 chickens. To do this, they had to build movable sheds and fencing for both the chickens and the pigs, and worked out a rotation that they hoped would achieve their goals of fertilizing the soil and eliminating the couch grass.

Tamworth pig shed under construction. Photo: Sarah McMillan

“We built a shed for the pigs measuring 20 x 10 feet, about 4 feet high and estimated to weigh over 1500 pounds. It’s sturdy!… At the beginning we actually couldn’t move it, and it was just sitting where it was built. It was too heavy for our tractor.” The team needed to make a few modifications in order to make the pig shed mobile. To facilitate sliding the shed along the ground, Sarah and Simone cut two snowboards in half to act as skids. Next, they drilled a large hole in the wall, through which they threaded an industrial-size chain. This was then hooked up to the tractor bucket for pulling. After the modifications, they succeeded in moving it about every 4 weeks. “The last few moves of the year were much harder because it was getting muddy, and there were lots of divots in the ground. We really need to figure out what to do about that this coming year.”

To forage, the pigs would be outside most of the time, so establishing a movable fence to surround the shed was a key part of the infrastructure. “We experimented with solar powered fencing, and it wasn’t strong enough for pigs. They have tough skin and they are pretty headstrong… We ended up going with an electric hard-wire system that was plugged into the wall, and we just rotated with the shed. We were wondering how the pigs would adjust to hard-wire, but they did really well. They learned to respect it. I think as long as we moved them enough and they had enough pasture to go dig up, they were pretty happy with where they were.”

In 2011, Rootdown Farm enlisted the help of chickens and Tamworth pigs in a remarkably successful battle against invasive couch grass. Photo: Sarah McMillan

Adding a further layer of complexity to the rotational grazing system, chicken coops were also integrated into the movable pig shed infrastructure. Rootdown opted to build two small chicken coops rather than one big one, simply because smaller coops are easier to move. Simone describes the chicken coops as resembling “giant rickshaws”. “There are BMX bike wheels on one end. You pick up the other end and drag it like a rickshaw.” Similar to the pigs, the chickens needed an outdoor run, so Rootdown also set up another electric fence that they could move fairly easily. “The first couple of times you move all this, it takes a long time, but as we went through the season, we could get this down in an hour, but we needed four people to do it. I think this season will give us the time to iron that out a little bit and get more efficient with our rotations […]”.

Managing a total of 12 pigs and 50 chickens, the 2011 growing season marked Sarah and Simone’s first year of experimenting with the rotational grazing system and their self-made infrastructure. Their initial plan was to have the chicken pen following behind the pigpen along the land, but they quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be that simple. “Pigs are really good at turning over the soil, but they are so good, it doesn’t leave anything for the chickens.” With this lesson learned, they put the chickens and pigs in completely distinct field areas and moved them through the land independently of each other. “That worked really well, and they made just one pass on one area of land throughout the season … I’m pretty proud of it. It took some brainpower to figure it out.”

This coming season, Sarah and Simone plan to improve their animal integration system while adapting it to a longer-term production plan. They plan to divide the production fields into three standard sections, each just under an acre. Every year, each section will be assigned to vegetable production, pigs or chickens. The following year, the section assignments will rotate and again host either vegetable production, pigs or chickens. This means that over a three-year period, a one-acre section of land will host vegetables, pigs and chickens – a richly diverse crop-livestock rotation.

Simone MacIsaac and Sarah McMillan of Rootdown Organic Farm. Photo: Pat Reaves

With the momentum gained from the previous year, Sarah and Simone are thrilled to start the 2012 growing season. Not only are they winning the battle against couch grass with the help of pigs and chickens, they are building the fertility of their soil, selling the chicken eggs at markets and providing a highly coveted Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) pork option to their customers. Moreover, their tireless efforts have yielded a model that can be adopted by other small-scale organic farmers who seek to integrate their own vegetable crops and livestock. In just two short growing seasons, Rootdown has progressed in leaps and bounds, using their savviness and resources to capitalize on the benefits of integrating animals into the farm system. I can’t wait to visit again to see the transformation of couch grass sod into rich production space!

Research Fellow Tejendra Chapagain measures carbon influx for barley in his small grain trials at the UBC Farm. Photo: Tejendra Chapagain

While the vision of an endless golden, rolling wheat field may elicit nostalgia for an imagined agrarian paradise, the intensive agrochemical and irrigation inputs needed to support such a monoculture reflect a harsher ecological reality. However, UBC Research Fellow Dr. Tejendra Chapagain is exploring possibilities for a more enlightened model in grain growing. Through an innovative project that integrates small-scale grain and legume production, Tejendra and his supervisor Dr. Andrew Riseman of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems are shedding light on farming systems in which crops grown together bring out the best in each other.

With stewardship as an underlying value, Tejendra’s research focuses on the use of manure and the intercropping of grains such as wheat and barley with legumes like pea, lentil and bean to enable on-farm nutrient cycling. This type of integrated system draws inspiration from the self-watering, self-fertilizing properties that typify the ways in which natural ecosystems might produce food (popular scientists refer to this copycat approach as “biomimicry”). His ultimate goal is to enable small-scale farms to improve their food security through effective, sustainable approaches to improving soil fertility.

Tejendra's research involves intercropping legumes and cereal crops in various spatial configurations. Photo: Tejendra Chapagain

By pairing grains and legumes in different spatial combinations, Tejendra hopes to design low-input organic cropping systems that have greater sustainability advantages compared to monoculture plots with respect to carbon sequestration, nitrogen-use efficiency, productivity, and systems interactions. Some of the specific components of his research include:

• Evaluating heirloom and commercial cultivars of cereals available in B.C.’s Lower Mainland for plant performance metrics such as yield, protein content, and their potential for inclusion in integrated cereal-legume trials
• Assessing plant traits, such as maturity dates, root architecture and disease resistance in small-grain and legume cultivars to help identify the most functional, synergistic pairings of legumes and cereals
• Testing which combinations of intercrops offer the best advantages over monoculture plots for effects such as productivity, biological nitrogen fixation and transfer, and carbon influx

Tejendra’s personal interests in community empowerment and rural development fit well with the potential public health benefits of his research. With greater attention to the linkage between human health and off-farm environmental impacts such as water pollution by pesticides and excess fertilizer, reduction of biodiversity, soil erosion, and greenhouse gas emissions, the scope of possible impacts from his research extends well beyond the domain of biology. This type of integrative, multi-faceted research corresponds well with the UBC Farm’s vision of drawing upon its rich academic resources to model cutting-edge possibilities for more sustainable communities.

For more information:

• Evaluation of Small Grain Cultivars under Organic Cropping Systems during 2010 Spring Season, by Dr. Andrew Riseman and Dr. Tejendra Chapagain
• Additional project photos available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cereal-legume_intercropping_ubc/
• Email Dr. Chapagain at: tejendra@interchange.ubc.ca

Kaylah Lewis worked with fellow Forestry student Brent Matthies over the past summer to develop a comprehensive spatial photographic of the UBC Farm

Beginning in May 2011, Kaylah Lewis and Brent Matthies led the hefty task of developing a land use plan and biophysical data repository for the UBC Farm. Sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, their project involved Dr. Steve Mitchell and graduate student Felipe Hirata from the UBC Faculty of Forestry, along with numerous other dedicated volunteers and colleagues. The extensive range of quantitative and qualitative data that Kaylah and Brent collected forms part of a comprehensive land use plan for the UBC Farm. The fruits of their labour will be tremendously useful for informing future land-based academic initiatives at the farm.

While visiting the farm during the past season, one could often spot the pair of students with orange hard hats and vests, sundry measuring devices and notebooks in hand. Spanning the entire 24-hectare site, their dataset incorporated existing information collected by previous students, along with data collected for the first time. They also included volumetric assessments of the various forested stand types located in the farm’s 12 hectares of second-growth forest.

To organize all of the information, Brent and Kaylah stratified data into working units, or polygons. Each polygon was then entered into ArcGIS, a geospatial database. This database will be used to model the growth of the forest at the UBC Farm and map out disease centers. Given the depth of information and wide variety of applications, the students hope their work can be used help inform future planning decisions for site enhancement, along with structures and roads on South Campus.

Says Brent Matthies of his research experience, "The energy of the farm, its direction and potential, is something to should be utilized, as it too is an invaluable natural resource.”

Describing his experience with the project, Matthies notes “During the time working at the farm we had the opportunity to meet many of the wonderful volunteers and special interest groups that make up the mosaic that is the UBC Farm. It was this interaction that we felt that was the greatest motivator in building a robust dataset. The energy of the farm, its direction and potential, is something to should be utilized, as it too is an invaluable natural resource.”

For further information regarding the project, please contact Dr. Steve Mitchell at: stephen.mitchell@ubc.ca

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.