Posted on December 24, 2015
Shirlene Cote farms Earth Apple Farm, formerly in Burnaby and now in Abbotsford, BC. In the beginning of my mentorship I set some goals for the year and beyond. My goal planning was three-fold (1-year, 3-year and 8-year) and ended up being a page long, so I will offer the condensed version. In the first
...Continue reading →Posted on December 22, 2015
Name, Farm, Location? Granite Bay Farm, Quadra Island What were your goals for this season and how did you work to achieve those? To find some kind of balance between raising a young family and growing a farm. The secret for me was simplifying the growing. Focusing on 2 or 3 crops that were easy
...Continue reading →Posted on December 20, 2015
As most farmer’s seasons are slowly winding down, mine begins. I’ve finally made the leap and moved on Minto Farm here in the Comox Valley to begin my career as owner/operator of Lentelus Organics. Lentelus, Afrikaans for “Spring Joy”, is a nod to my late philosopher/farmer grandfather who named our family farm Lentelus back in
...Continue reading →Posted on December 18, 2015
Some apprenticeship alumni on why, and how, the apprenticeship model needs to be tweaked. Audio contained within!
...Continue reading →Posted on December 15, 2015
Name, Farm, Location? Brianna van de Wijngaard, Puddle Produce Urban Farms – Williams Lake, BC What were your goals for this season and how did you work to achieve those? My goals were: to start a CSA program with at least 15 subscriptions, to have 10,000 sq ft in production, and to gross at least
...Continue reading →Posted on December 11, 2015
Name, Farm, Location? Tristan Cavers, Michelle Tsutsumi, Annelise Grube-Cavers, Kelsey Snelgrove, Paul Matheson, Golden Ears Farm, Chase, Unceded Secwepemc Territory What were your goals for this season and how did you work to achieve those? Our goals for the season were: To navigate a new model on the farm (shifting from a model of everyone who lives
...Continue reading →Posted on December 10, 2015
Name, Farm, Location? Gemma McNeill and Doug Zaklan, Zaklan Heritage Farm, Surrey BC. What were your goals for this season and how did you work to achieve those? This season our goal was to increase our CSA box program from 25 boxes to 50 boxes. As the spring drew near we realized that we probably would have
...Continue reading →Posted on November 20, 2015
An exciting new post-secondary certification program is launching in BC at the Thompson Rivers University (TRU) Williams Lake campus this coming January, and there couldn’t be a better time or place. The TRU Applied Sustainable Ranching (ASUR) program is the first of its kind in British Columbia, and located in the oldest ranching region in Canada – the
...Continue reading →Posted on November 13, 2015
Article written by Olivier Labrie I remember desperately looking to find a way to get my hands in rich organic soil during a six month search for any type of apprenticeship opportunity that involved organic farming. That was almost three years ago. At the time, I was working on my second bachelor’s degree in Ecological
...Continue reading →Posted on November 10, 2015
Story by Eva Verbeeck This summer Spencer MacDonald and I worked and lived together with young farmers. All of them are first generation young farmers on small scale organic farms. Some of the farmers went straight from college to farming and growing food. I used to find this a strange choice but my perspective has
...Continue reading →