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 up the entire 8 acres of growable land. Check out this Google satellite shot of our farm in August 2012, with our patchwork of crops filling the growing area:
(Are those crop circles?! … No, they’re the sprinklers that were irrigating at the time of this satellite shot.)
Because we were so tight on land, we weren’t growing as much broccoli, squash, garlic and other crops as we wanted. And we stopped planting risky or experimental crops, such as celery, because we had to maximize our growing space. Our well supplies 15 gallons of water per minute, which (while abundant) isn’t enough for our way-too-intensively-farmed 8 acres of vegetables, and some of our crops suffered as a result.
We wanted to be able to grow more food, and grow it well. But we were already using all our available land, and we knew that in order to expand we would need to find more land to grow on.
Vegetable farming requires a long-term lease to justify investing in water infrastructure, fencing, storage buildings, etc. For two years we searched for a suitable property with owners willing to lease it. Finally, in February 2014, we signed a multi-year lease for a large section of prime agricultural land in Cowichan Bay, only five minutes away from our current farm.
Members of our 2014 farm crew pace out the new farm to get a sense of the dimensions.
Thanks to the new property we’re leasing, we not only have lots of room, but lots of water. We will be able to pamper our crops, and grow more of the things that we didn’t have enough space or water for before, such as Brussels sprouts and sweet corn. The extra room and water also mean we can plant large areas in green manures, providing natural fertility to the soil and reducing pest and weed pressure.
Farmer Brock shows baby Isaac our new backyard.
Needless to say, we are very excited about the coming season. The lease will allow us to increase the diversity of our Vegetable CSA Program shares and grow more of the things we all love, such as sweet corn. We might even be able to offer an 8 week winter CSA in November and December, in addition to our popular Food Security Club.
We’re water-rich at the new farm! (That’s a 20 foot geyser.)
Over the next few years we’ll be transforming the flat meadows of our new acreage into a bustling vegetable farm. That involves installing a well, hydro and irrigation, building a fence, packing area, cooler and other infrastructure, establishing a new strawberry patch, and planting as many seeds as we want. While the idea of starting a farm from scratch (again) is exhilarating, it’s also intimidating — mainly because all those steps are expensive. To help us afford these start-up costs, we (Brock and Heather) are now investigating different financing options. If you or someone you know is interested in lending money to a green business, please click here for details.
After a great deal of thought, we’ve also decided to move our farm onto this new, larger property over the next few years. It doesn’t make sense to hold onto our current 10 acre property (and its mortgage) while having all the land and water we need on the new, leased property, and so we will likely be selling our 10 acres in the next year or two. If you know of anyone looking to buy farmland in the Cowichan, our land is all set up for someone to do some vegetable farming or just enjoy a rural lifestyle and a big garden. Interested buyers can click here.
We’re excited to grow celery again, now that we have room to play!
So what does this mean to our farm friends and customers? It means we’ll have much, much more food to offer, and a greater diversity of it, in the years ahead. We look forward to sharing the abundance with our ever-supportive CSA members, our fabulous farmers market customers and our grocery store friends.
As for our farm stand, it will remain at our current property as Makaria Farm Market for the foreseeable future. We’ll keep you posted should that change.
Thank you very much to our customers and farm friends for being part of our growth over the past 6 years. We hope to continue feeding our Island community for many more years to come.
[UPDATE as of spring 2015: the transition to our new farm property is going as planned, thanks to our supportive customers and the amazing individuals who have loaned us funds. We continue to seek out private lenders to help us fund the capital investments in our new farm property: we offer 5% interest on 5 year loans of $5,000 or more. We’ve never missed a payment, and have excellent references. For details on lending to Makaria Farm, please click here.]