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Our early season crew has been super busy at both our farm properties this spring. Our unheated seedling greenhouses are chock-a-block full of infant plants, which eventually will be transplanted out into the field: The crew repaired our many wooden … Continue reading
Dear Nanaimo-ians,
After many years of getting to know you better through our booth at the fabulous Bowen Road Farmers’ Market, we’d like to take our relationship to the next level.
Specifically, we’d like to offer you our vegetable delivery service: we will bring you a generous share of our farm’s fresh, organic, uber-high-quality vegetables every week from early June to late October, all for a rather reasonable $24/week.
We know that you love and appreciate good food, and we think you’ll find this service useful in your busy lives.
For all the deets, please check out our official webpage here. It would be our pleasure to grow for you this season.
Love,
Heather & Brock
Sign up today for Makaria Farm’s vegetable delivery service!
These chewy gingersnaps (aka molasses cookies) are super dooper. Heather’s been baking these bad boys for over a decade, and has made many cookie lovers happy as a result. MIX/CREAM TOGETHER: 1 1/2 cups butter 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup molasses 2 … Continue reading
We’ve wanted to offer a winter CSA program for years. Our spring-summer-fall CSA members have told us how hard it is to return to mainstream produce in the grocery stores when CSA season ended. And we know how hard it can be to source local, organic produce in the late fall and winter months.
So we’ve been working on our farming skills for years, trying to get better at growing late-season crops and storage crops. We hunted for more land to grow these fall crops on, in order to give our summer crop land time to rest and recuperate under a bed of green manures.
Food Security Club orders, ready for pick up.
In 2012 we started our Food Security Club, which allows us to offer bulk amounts of storable and preservable vegetables to folks who want to fill their cupboards, fridge and freezer with local food.
Our Food Security Club has been a success, but we often hear from folks who can’t sign up because they just don’t have the space to store large amounts of food through the winter months.
Finally, thanks to seven seasons of farming experience and oodles of new, leased land to grow on, we feel ready to offer a winter CSA program.
A sample winter CSA vegetable delivery: carrots, cabbage, kale, squash, onions, broccoli, beets.
We’ll be delivering hefty bags of carrots, beets, garlic, squash and much more to homes in Victoria and the Cowichan every two weeks for eight weeks, with our first delivery on Tuesday, November 11. (Our main CSA program ends the week before.)
Our winter CSA costs the same as a Full Share in our main CSA program, at $20.25/week plus $3 per delivery, for a total of $174.
We’re excited to offer a new way for folks to access our tasty, organic produce.
For more details on our winter vegetable delivery program, or to sign up, please check out our winter CSA page here.
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After six years of growing food we’ve learned that different crops thrive in different years, depending on the weather. So far, 2014 is The Year of Berries. It caught us by surprise this June. Suddenly our lush green plants had … Continue reading
It’s a beautiful Saturday and you have someone you want to entertain: friends, family, yourself. You’re in luck. The Duncan Farmers Market runs from 9am to 2pm every Saturday through the summer months, and it’s a wonderful place to shop, … Continue reading
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It’s too bad these pages don’t have a scratch-and-sniff feature. If they did, you’d be able to huff that warm, oxygen-rich smell of tomato plant leaves. I inhale that incredible smell every time I peek into one of our seedling … Continue reading
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Do you love reading? Do you love eating local, organic vegetables, conveniently delivered to your doorstep? Let’s put those two loves together into a tasty love sandwich and raise some money for Literacy Now Cowichan. The Auction Prize: 1 Full … Continue reading
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When we bought our 10 acres of pasture in 2007, we never thought we’d use all the land. But six years later, thanks to our customers and farm supporters, we’d expanded our production to the point where we were using … Continue reading
In order for us to grow more food, Makaria Farm will be moving from our 10 acre property to a much larger acreage over the next few years. This transition involves installing a well, hydro and irrigation lines, as well as building a fence, packing area, cooler and other infrastructure.
In order to make these investments in our new farm property, we need financing. We have a healthy history of borrowing from individual lenders: to help build our current farm’s capacity, we’ve borrowed $60,000 from private individuals over the years. We’ve never missed a payment and have now paid back the majority of those loans.
To help us develop this new property, we’re now asking anyone who would like to invest in local, organic agriculture to consider making a loan to support this next stage of our farm’s growth.
We can offer 5% interest on loans that are repayable over 5 years. We are looking for individual loans of $5,000 or more. If you would like to discuss this option further, please contact us (Brock & Heather) at 250-597-3276 or makariafarm@gmail.com.
Help us grow even more food with a loan to Makaria Farm.
Shaw TV’s Go Island South team has produced a wonderful spotlight on our vegetable delivery CSA program, featuring our partnership with the super-fab Cowichan Recyclists. Thanks so much to Meg and her Shaw peeps for helping us spread the word … Continue reading
A farm is a good place for a relationship to blossom. When we decided to buy our farm in 2007, Heather and I had not even been together for a year. It seems rather rushed and crazy looking back, and you would think we would’ve had lots of people telling us so, but the question we got was “what are you doing buying a farm?,” rather than “what are you doing buying a farm together”?
But the farm has proven to be as good of a place for growing a relationship as it has for growing organic vegetables. Part of what makes organic vegetables healthy is that they have to face adversity, from pests above and below ground to moulds and plant diseases that are constantly seeking to turn a plant back into soil. A healthy plant produces compounds that help it defend itself against these attacks. It is these compounds that, when eaten by humans, helps us fight off things that work to decay our own bodies.
We were married April 9, 2012.
And so it is with the organic farm family. Owning and operating a farm is very challenging, from the long, hard hours and limited ability to take holidays or even days off to spend with one another to the financial strain of building a business in an industry not known for its economic viability. But it is these things that can make a healthy relationship stronger. From getting creative to find ways to spend time with one another to ensuring good communication when the stress of paying the bills adds up, we have grown together in a way we wouldn’t have in our comfortable life in downtown Victoria.
After seven years together, our relationship is well rooted. This past September we welcomed our first child, Isaac, into our family. How fitting that he arrived during the hectic harvest season.
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I love winter on the farm. Not for the weather, but for the natural opportunity it allows us to take stock of the past year and plan ways to improve the following year. Every year at this time we work … Continue reading
In 2009, Brock and I hosted a series of workshops at Makaria Farm on how to grow wheat and other grains on a garden scale. Over 50 families from all over the islands participated in the Island Grains workshops. We didn’t realize it at the time, but similar projects were in the works across North America. Canada’s first grain CSA had launched the year before in the Kootenays. A bakery in Massachusetts was handing out grain seeds to its customers for planting, in a community-wide act of guerrilla gardening. Wheat was being planted in the aisles of California vineyards, and public ovens were under construction all over the continent.
Early last year, Sarah Simpson and I were asked to investigate this local grain revolution by New Society Publishers. We spent many months interviewing bakers, farmers, environmental activists and other project leaders, and soon realized that these projects weren’t about growing grain: their common goal was actually to build community. Faced with economic recession, climate change and food security challenges, individuals were turning to the most basic skills of civilized society — growing grain and baking bread — as a way to empower themselves and their communities.
Our book, called Uprisings: A Hands-On Guide to the Community Grain Revolution, shares these tales from the front lines in communities from Alaska to Arizona, as well as information on how to grow grain, make bread and perform other revolutionary acts. We hope it will inspire a new wave of uprisings.
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We usually just eat our green beans raw as a snack or cut up into a salad, or saute them for 10 minutes or so in butter and crushed garlic. For fancier recipes, here are some good ideas we’ve found: … Continue reading
Our “100 Mile Diet” breakfast
When we moved to Cowichan Station to start Makaria Farm back in the spring of 2007, our goal was to be as self-sufficient as possible. We thought “success” would mean a meal where we’d produced all the ingredients ourselves, from the eggs to the bacon and fried tomatoes.
But over the past six years we’ve learned that community sufficiency, not self-sufficiency, is a much more rewarding goal.
These days, a perfect meal is one where we can name all the people who provided the ingredients, from our tea (Victor and Margit of Teafarm) to our fish (Anne and Gregg of Cowichan Bay Seafood).
Lush Eco Lawns drops off another load of lawn clippings from their organically-minded customers.
But community sufficiency extends beyond our plates. For years, the Community Farm Store and True Grain have allowed us to take their organic food waste so we can feed our compost and, in turn, the soil in which we grow our vegetables. Lush Eco Lawns adds grass clippings to our compost piles multiple times each week.
This year, we’ve created a new partnership: Aaron and Katie of Cowichan Recyclists will provide bicycle delivery to some of our Vegetable Share CSA members this summer.
As a result, the folks who eat our broccoli and carrots this year could be eating the results of at least five different eco-friendly, local businesses working together.
Now that’s “success.”
One of the things I love most about farming is spending my winters brainstorming how to make our farm better, from coming up with more sustainable ways to heat a greenhouse to considering more attractive ways to package and sell our vegetables to better meets people’s needs.
Last winter, for example, we created our Food Security Club, which helps people eat local, organic produce all winter long by providing bulk amounts of vegetables that are easy to store or preserve.
So what have we cooked up this winter? We were looking over a map of where our customers who pick up a pre-ordered weekly bag of vegetables (CSA) from our farm were coming from. We realized that the vast majority lived where it was convenient for them to stop by and pick up their bag of veggies on the way home from work or a visit to town. Of course!
Many people don’t have the time to drive from one side of the Valley to the other to get a bag of vegetables each week. They’re busy. That’s why grocery stores are located close to the various communities in the Valley. So, short of starting a Makaria Farm grocery store in every neighbourhood, what could we do?
We could deliver.
We are offering delivery of our weekly bags of produce to your home or office for 21 weeks this summer. So from June to November, regardless of where you live in the Cowichan Valley (from Chemainus to Mill Bay at least), you can conveniently enjoy some of the freshest produce the Warmland has to offer, delivered to your door, for less than $23/week.
We’re also expanding to offer our Vegetable Share CSA Program (with delivery) in the Victoria area, for just under $24/week.
As an organic farm, we strive to be environmentally friendly, so we’ll be working on making our delivery service more sustainable over time. If you know of anyone selling a bio-diesel van, for example, please send them our way. And, of course, if you know of anyone looking for local, organic, fresh-picked vegetables delivered to their door this summer, send them our way too!
[February 15 update: Makaria Farm has partnered with Cowichan Recyclists to pilot bicycle delivery of CSA bags in summer 2013 to homes and businesses in downtown Duncan! Please click here for details …]
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Love garlic? Try growing your own! Garlic doesn’t need to be watered, deer don’t eat it and, if you treat your plants to some mulch, weeding isn’t a big issue either. Here’s what you do: Step 1: Get Your Seed … Continue reading
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A good salsa recipe can be hard to find, so here’s ours. We’ve eaten entire jars in a single sitting. Combine in a very large pot: 3 cups chopped onions 3/4 cup chopped sweet peppers 6 chopped hot peppers 1 … Continue reading
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We grow 10+ different kinds of tomatoes at Makaria Farm, from cherry tomatoes to heirlooms to traditional red slicers. When we choose which tomato varieties to grow each year, we prioritize flavour over ship-ability and aesthetics. If you spy an … Continue reading
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When it’s bean season, watch out: they are abundant! Luckily, there are many ways to make the most of the harvest. These snappy treats are delicious raw as well as cooked, and can even be pickled for off-season enjoyment. Fresh … Continue reading
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There are thousands of potato varieties grown around the world, and it can be exciting to see (and taste!) the differences when you use different potatoes in your everyday recipes. In addition to baking, roasting or lightly boiling potatoes, two … Continue reading
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Think of leeks as a super-tasty onion. They can be used instead of (or in addition to) onions in any meal, or can be cleaned, cut up and BBQed or sautéed and served as their own delicious side dish. Leek … Continue reading
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The classic recipe for this staple vegetable is to steam it and serve it with cheese sauce, or to serve it raw with veggies and dip, but cauliflower can do much more. Try steaming or boiling the florets until they’re … Continue reading
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Three cheers for cabbage! It fueled the workers who built the Great Wall of China, kept seafaring explorers from getting scurvy, and is jam-packed with vitamin C. If you have an older cabbage hiding in your fridge, just peel off … Continue reading
