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Land Access Stories: Yellow Boot Farm – Black Creek, BC

Yellow Boot Farm is a regenerative diversified vegetable farm in Black Creek, BC. Leasing farmer Jaclyn Kirby was matched to ¼ acre of land through the B.C. Land Matching Program in September of 2021, and Yellow Boot Farm is now entering its third season on the land.

Jaclyn and her family use regenerative practices to grow vegetables for the Comox Valley Farmers Market and Yellow Boot’s farm stand and a seasonal CSA, in addition to supplying peppers for hot sauce companies and produce for restaurants through the LUSH Valley Food Action Society. Jaclyn sources seeds for Yellow Boot’s 42+ varieties of vegetables locally from Good Earth Farms and BC Eco Seed Co-op. Yellow Boot is committed to soil regeneration and protection, contributing to local food security and using practices like integrated pest management and perennialization to support a thriving on-farm agroecosystem.

HOW YELLOW BOOT CAME TO BE

Jaclyn did not expect to become a farmer. Though Jaclyn remembers harvesting potatoes on her grandfather’s potato farm in Newfoundland as a kid, Jaclyn’s parents moved far away from their childhoods in Newfoundland because they didn’t want to be farmers. Growing up in B.C, farming did not come back into Jaclyn’s life until decades later when she had kids of her own. After going to school for archaeology and then working in payroll administration for many years, Jaclyn and her partner had two sons, and she started feeling a persistent need to get outside. She started out volunteering at gardens in and around Vancouver, and then things ramped up – the next thing she knew, Jaclyn was running educational gardens and working as a farmworker and gardener at Earth Apple Farm and the Vancouver Botanical Gardens Association. Finally, at Cropthorne Farm, Jaclyn found her farming role model, farmer-owner Lydia Ryall. 

Having found a model in Lydia of the land-based and community-rooted future she wanted, Jaclyn started seeking resources to start her own farm. Jaclyn and her family moved to the Comox Valley in 2019, and as she got roots in the ground on her family’s small garden plot, she also got connected with Young Agrarians. She started attending YA events, participated in the Business Bootcamp, and linked up with Azja Jones Martin, the Vancouver Island Land Matcher at the time. Azja walked Jaclyn through the journey towards land access, providing her with a variety of land options throughout the Comox Valley. After considering a few different opportunities, Azja and Jaclyn settled on ¼ acre of land in Black Creek. Landholders Libby and Jim were two retired school teachers who were passionate about regenerative farming and reducing plastic pollution, and were excited to share their land with Jaclyn and her family. Their initial connection and shared vision blossomed into a mutually beneficial relationship full of respect and reciprocity.

Access to land in September of 2021 meant Yellow Boot Farm’s first full growing season in 2022, and like any farm’s first year, it was not without its challenges: flooded fields, learning to work with clay-based soil, navigating weed and pest pressures and building up on-farm infrastructure simultaneous with establishing a new business. Luckily, Jaclyn had the backing of the Comox Valley farming community: LUSH Valley Food Action Society helped immensely with establishing sales channels for Yellow Boot’s produce, and Jaclyn found support from farmers throughout the region, especially women farmers – whether that was words of encouragement, tractor rentals or sharing seeds. Jaclyn says that her farm probably wouldn’t exist today without help from Jill at Shorewolf Farm, who lent Jaclyn her walk-behind BCS tractor in the early days. In Yellow Boot’s second season, Jaclyn participated in the Young Agrarians Business Mentorship Network (BMN), where she received mentorship from rockstar farmer Robin Tunnicliffe at Sea Bluff Farm to take Yellow Boot to the next level. Now about to enter her third season, Jaclyn says that Yellow Boot would not have been possible without support from Young Agrarians and her Comox Valley farming community.

TENDING THE NEXT GENERATION: WHY JACLYN FARMS

Jaclyn’s grandparents were farmers, but her parents chose not to be – what brought Jaclyn back to the land?

While working as a farmworker and gardener in the Vancouver area, Jaclyn was falling in love with farming not just as a lifestyle but as an avenue for creating change in the world. When she moved to the Comox Valley with the intention of starting her own farm, she started thinking about where, how, and for whom she wanted to grow food – how farming could make an impact. One of her early ideas was to create an educational garden for kids, but Jaclyn soon learned that kids in the Comox Valley were already learning about land, ecology, and farming from a young age.

Jaclyn brought her desire to nurture youth through farming to the YA Business Bootcamp, where she was able to develop a vision of the farm of her dreams: a 10-acre, closed-loop mixed livestock and vegetable farm dedicated to providing space for people who had aged out of the foster care system to work as apprentices. She imagined providing farmworker-apprentices the education and resources they needed to subsequently pursue stable, full-time, long–term work on other farms. 

Jaclyn saw farming as an opportunity to create better futures for a younger generation growing up in a complex and challenging world. But when she looked towards purchasing land to start a youth support farm business of that magnitude, Jaclyn was promptly confronted with the harsh reality of land access in British Columbia. This was a pivotal moment for Jaclyn, where she realized that the cost and implications of purchasing land in service of creating a land-based educational space for the next generation would come at the cost of her own kids’ future – trading her finances and the health of her family. Like so many young farmers and business owners, Jaclyn had reached the moment of clarity where she knew her farm vision needed to integrate into and complement her existing life, family, and community, rather than completely reconfiguring her life to fit the farm dream.

Jaclyn made the decision to build Yellow Boot Farm as the world she wanted her kids to grow up in, localizing her desires to use farming as a tool for advocacy and education within her family and her community in the Comox Valley. She would grow the kind of food that she wanted her kids to have access to: nutrient-dense foods with no pesticides, grown with love, care and attention. Now, Jaclyn reports that growing up on a farm has been a great education tool for her sons, and that they are both “foodies” who have a lot of knowledge about plants and the skills to grow their own food when they’re older. Having found a sustainable farming model for her lifestyle, Jaclyn knows that she will always be able to farm, making what was once an uncertain and exciting dream into a lasting and rewarding reality.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YELLOW BOOT FARM?

This year, Jaclyn is excited to continue developing Yellow Boot’s infrastructure, fine-tuning her farming practices and streamlining her farm inputs and sales channels. She’s looking forward to building beds and prepping her fields early in the season, in addition to striving towards becoming plastic-free. Jaclyn and her family are also thrilled to be building a walk-in cooler, which means they won’t have to borrow cooler space and will free up flexibility in their week (rather than having to harvest crops directly before market or CSA delivery to sell fresh). Jaclyn also hopes to plant more varieties this year, do more crop rotation and continue learning about the insects on the farm. In terms of sales, she has made the decision to sell weekly at the Comox Valley Farmers’ Market this year in lieu of a CSA due to concerns about consistent water availability with the ongoing drought. 

In the future, Jaclyn would love to improve her farm’s water infrastructure and explore collection and catchment options. She also still dreams about creative ways to support the next generation of farmers: with more funding and an expanded land base, she would love to invite kids aging out of the foster care system to stay, work, and learn at the farm. We can’t wait to see what the next few years will bring for Jaclyn and Yellow Boot Farm!

CONNECT WITH YELLOW BOOT FARM:

Facebook: Yellow Boot Farm

Instagram: @yellowbootfarm

Website: visit yellowbootfarm.ca for information about Jaclyn’s CSA, her farming practices and tasty recipes.

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Got Land? Want Land?

Through the B.C. Land Matching Program, Young Agrarians offers support to farmers looking for land for their farm business, and landholders looking for farmers to farm their land. We’ve made more than 307 matches on over 12,084 acres to date! To learn about available land opportunities, and to learn about the B.C. Land Matching program on Vancouver Island & the Gulf Islands, please visit youngagrarians.org/land or contact the Vancouver Island Land Matcher, Kiyomi Ito, at kiyomi@youngagrarians.org.

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