Blog Category: Indigenous Land & Food

YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Burton, BC – McCormack Farm

Posted by Tessa Thompson on December 02, 2024

Are you an aspiring farmer looking to gain experience on a very diversified mixed livestock and silviculture operation in wild and beautiful Burton, B.C. ? Are you wanting to learn from a 4th generation farmer who never stops innovating ?!  McCormack Farm is offering an apprenticeship; join their team! About the Farm With 175 acres in production, McCormack Farm is one of the largest farms in the region to be integrating silvopasture practices – the combination of tree crop production with rotationally-grazed livestock. This 120-year-old farm is in the process of planting out their existing open pastures with tree species … Continue reading YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Burton, BC – McCormack Farm →

YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Armstrong, BC – The Okanagan Honey Company

Posted by Tessa Thompson on December 02, 2024

ABOUT OKANAGAN HONEY CO Our farm is a bee breeding and honey producing farm in the Okanagan Valley. We raise and mate queen honey bees and spring nuclei for sale to various regions in BC and Alberta. We also produce a beautiful Okanagan wildflower honey each year in the later summer. The honey bee colonies are placed on 20 different locations around the region, with an emphasis on organic farms or areas full of wild flowers.  Our home farmland itself was originally cleared in the early 1900’s by Doug’s great grandfather and great grandmother, who farmed and lived on the … Continue reading YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Armstrong, BC – The Okanagan Honey Company →

YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Rose Prairie, BC – Whiskey Creek Ranch

Posted by Tessa Thompson on December 02, 2024

Are you an aspiring farmer looking to gain experience on a regenerative, soon to be certified organic, mixed livestock farm? Are you wanting to learn about beef, hogs, layer hens, and honey production?!  Whiskey Creek Ranch is offering an apprenticeship; join their team! About the Farm Located approximately 30 minutes north of Fort St. John, British Columbia and stewarded by first generation farmers Gaston and Michelle (and young family), Whiskey Creek Ranch is a mixed livestock farm raising grass-finished beef, pasture-raised pork, eggs, honey, and other specialty on-farm products in an organic, sustainable, and regenerative way for their community.  Whiskey … Continue reading YA APPRENTICESHIP 2025: Rose Prairie, BC – Whiskey Creek Ranch →

Being open to being changed: Reflections on kinSHIFT’s Elements of Truth workshop

Posted by Melanie Walker on November 27, 2024

This is a guest blog post from Melanie Walker of Many Microbes Soil Lab located on the swiya of the shíshálh people. Melanie shares her experience taking kinSHIFT’s Elements of Truth: Before Reconciliation workshops. We recommend that all farmers take this essential training! As I joined the first session of the kinSHIFT’s Elements of Truth workshop, I was open to learning. I knew it would be a process of change. I think most people who grow food appreciate change: the cycle of a growing season, the transformation from seed to fruit, and of course the many times we have to modify … Continue reading Being open to being changed: Reflections on kinSHIFT’s Elements of Truth workshop →

Discussion Paper on Indigenous Food Sovereignty by Tea Creek

Posted by Michalina Hunter on November 21, 2024

Interested in Indigenous Food Sovereignty (IFS) in BC? This discussion paper by Tea Creek covers the agrarian heritage of First Nations, the importance of IFS and how to scale it up, and showcases 13 Indigenous food projects across the province.  Supporting IFS benefits everyone by improving environmental, social, and economic outcomes, as well as fulfilling the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and other provincial and federal government commitments. Background This discussion paper was prepared by Tea Creek, an Indigenous-led, land-based, culturally-safe Indigenous food sovereignty initiative located in Gitxsan territory near Gitwangak, between the settler communities of … Continue reading Discussion Paper on Indigenous Food Sovereignty by Tea Creek →

Touring Indigenous-Led Farms in BC

Posted by Mary Modeste on November 19, 2024

This blog post is a contribution from Mary Modeste, a participant of Tea Creek’s farming program. “My name us Mary Modeste. I had the opportunity to go up to Kitwanga, BC to experience and learn new tools at Tea Creek. As part of the program this summer, we travelled for a few days to visit several new Indigenous-led farms across the province and learn how they run. In the clip below, Dixon Terbasket of Ntamtqen Community Garden & Food Hub was showing us his gardens and explaining to us that he was in the process of building a food hub … Continue reading Touring Indigenous-Led Farms in BC →

RECAP: Quw’utsun Estuary Field Day

Posted by Michalina Hunter on November 19, 2024

“This was our grocery store,” says Jared Qwustenuxun Williams, traditional foods champion and chef, educator, and consultant at Qwustenuxun Consulting, gesturing to the estuary land we are standing on. This area where the Quw’utsun (Cowichan) River meets the sea was an incredibly productive food source. It provided food and medicine in such abundance that it supported a population of at least 25,000 people, with extra to trade with neighbouring communities. Each family had a specific area they owned and stewarded where they could harvest. The land was a maze of tidal streams, with salmon weirs and duck nets, each structure … Continue reading RECAP: Quw’utsun Estuary Field Day →

NOV 30, 2024: OLIVER, BC – Tea Creek Film Screening with Ntamtqen Community Garden & Food Hub

Posted by Michalina Hunter on October 30, 2024

Ntamtqen Community Garden & Food Hub is proudly hosting a screening of the Tea Creek documentary. Doors open at 5:00 with refreshments. The screening begins at 6:00 with a Q&A to follow with Jacob Beaton, Dixon Terbasket, and others to be announced. Against the backdrop of colonization and the climate crisis, Jacob Beaton, a passionate Indigenous entrepreneur, has embarked on a remarkable journey. His vision is to transform his family farm into a beacon of hope for Indigenous Food Sovereignty. In a world where the connection to the land has been fractured, Jacob aims to revive the abundance that once … Continue reading NOV 30, 2024: OLIVER, BC – Tea Creek Film Screening with Ntamtqen Community Garden & Food Hub →

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Posted by JoHana Harcourt on September 29, 2024

Content warning: This post includes mentions of genocide and the residential school system. Today on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, our hearts go out to the survivors of residential schools, and we remember the children who did not make it home. We recognize the intergenerational impacts that these schools and the colonial policies that accompanied them have on Indigenous communities –  the reverberations of which continue to this day. Also known as Orange Shirt Day, we wear orange as a symbol of how generations of Indigenous children had their cultures, families, and freedoms stripped from them. Orange Shirt … Continue reading National Day for Truth and Reconciliation →

Reconciliation Training is Available for BC Farmers

Posted by Michalina Hunter on September 18, 2024 1 Comment

Are you a farmer located in B.C. wondering how to honour the Indigenous lands you steward? kinSHIFT hosts essential online trainings about cultivating stronger relationships with Indigenous peoples and places, and we’ve received funds to subsidize the cost for BC farmers. Discount codes of 50% or 90% off are available for people who work on farms or otherwise provision food in B.C. Not sure if you qualify? Send us a message at community@youngagrarians.org For every B.C. farmer who participates in a kinSHIFT training, funds will go to IndigenEYEZ, an Indigenous youth arts empowerment program! Elements of Truth: Before Reconciliation Immerse … Continue reading Reconciliation Training is Available for BC Farmers →