Farming has never been about selling a product to someone we don’t know. Farming, is our way of giving to the community. Our job is to stop runoff in the winter so we can provide it to the watershed in the summer. We don’t pollute the water by using man made chemicals or fertilizers, and we see the animals that live with us as contributing members of our farm. They provide us with compost, eggs, meat, milk, and companionship. We provide them with big open spaces, lots to eat, and a caring hand.

We searched for a long time for the 12 acres of bush that we adopted. And yes, we were those people. We moved our 3 teenagers, 3 dogs and 3 cats out of the city of Nanaimo to just outside of Qualicum. We shoved everyone into a single RV…and a very long month later we kicked the oldest two boys and the oldest dog into their own RV connected to us by a wood pallet deck and an awning.

We lived in those two RVs, surrounded by the plants that I had to take with us from our old house. The goal of that first year was to not kill each other…and we managed…sometimes barely…and to have our house built and moved in.

The “year of the RVs” we had two garden beds and a failure of a corn field. I think that first year we did an amazing job at feeding the rabbits, birds and local deer. We did manage to get our first chickens. Twenty-four Sweet Little Sussex ladies that still give us our brown eggs.

Since then, we’ve added our Beautiful Blue Egg Layers, and our Pretty Little Red Hens. They take their scratching job of pasture patrolling very seriously. These are truly pastured hens which means they produce the most beautiful and very delicious eggs.

We had some amazing people help us along the way to creating 60 annual beds, 10 perennial beds, and the start of our orchard (currently there are 30 very small fruit bearing trees). We farm regeneratively, with constant thoughts about returning water to the watershed, and not polluting it. We fertilize with compost and our insecticides are lady bugs.