vancouver visit - sole food farm in the fall

In late October, after our farmer's market finished up for the season, I got to head out west to spend time with Andrew in Vancouver. First stop was Sole Food, the farm I apprenticed at in 2012. I spent a day helping at the pacific site, then Lissa and I drove around to the other sites to see how they look. These farm sites will always be some favourite spots of mine. It's interesting to feel so tied to this city land - to feel so at home in a parking lot or old gas station. They mean a whole lot to me. The spaces and the people.

Artichokes were a new crop at the Hastings Site this season. Lissa gave
me these two to take home and they were completely delicious.

Visiting the four high tunnels we built at Vernon Drive. Memories of our
rag-tag crew trying to install these monsters in a month straight of pouring rain. 

The new orchard that was installed at the Main & Terminal site. I helped write
the grant for this so it was extra special to see it live and in person.
Meyer lemons, unreal.

View of the Pacific site from up on the bridge -
memories of laying out 2,000+ pallet boxes for weeks on end.

I owe a lot to Sole Food - not only did they teach me so much while I was there farming, but Seann and Lissa answered my constant questions when I was trying to put together the farm plan for School Grown last winter. I still call Seann on the regular with questions about irrigation or low tunnels. They are good people.

And on the subject of Sole Food, here is a recent short film about the farm's work. Pretty great. There's a shot of me too! 

farm trucks.

Early Sunday mornings pre-farmer's market in Vancouver usually meant trying to jump one novelty sized farm truck with another.  Only the finest. 

September, 2012.

crimson clover.

Crimson clover cover crop and a bee from Sole Food's Astoria site 

at Hastings & Hawks, September 2012. 

Sweet Treats - Sole Food Farm & Earnest Ice Cream

Working at the farm gave me a constant supply of fresh produce, totally delicious. We especially had a steady stream of eggplant, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, and greens that didn't sell at market. So many delicious savoury dishes - ratatouille, stir fry, pizza, frittata, salads. 

My ultimate favourite though was when we had friends visit in August and served chocolate buttermilk Sole Food zucchini cake and strawberry basil ice cream from Earnest Ice Cream made with Sole Food basil. So good!

Earnest Ice Cream started this summer - they make ice cream by hand and focus on using local ingredients in seasonal flavours. Andrew made a video for them and as a result, we got free ice cream all summer. They were always at the farmer's market and sold glass pints at independent shops. If you are Vancouver - check them out! 


Here is the video - it will make you seriously want the ice cream!

Earnest Ice Cream from Andrew Norton on Vimeo.

Sole Food Farm

The farm I am apprenticing at here in Vancouver is called Sole Food. Originally a project of the organization United We Can, Sole Food started as a way to provide employment for residents of the downtown eastside - folks that are often working through addictions and mental health challenges. Seann Dory was the Manager of Sustainability at United We Can and he recruited Michael Ableman to help him start this project. The first farm was built on a half acre parking lot beside the Astoria hotel, an SRO (single room occupancy) hotel on East Hastings.

Farm site at the Astoria Hotel

The downtown eastside neighborhood is an interesting place. There are disproportionately high levels of homelessness, material poverty, drug use, Hep C, HIV and diabetes. It is an incredibly food insecure place. Housing is mainly SRO units, transitional housing and BC social housing. Most folks do not have access to a kitchen and there is one grocery store in the entire DTES. If interested, this report from the DTES Kitchen Tables Project has lots of good info on the food security of the DTES.

The neighborhood is also a warm place full of people that care about their community and care about their neighbours. They say hi on the streets and check in with each other. It's been a fulfilling place to farm. I'll share more thoughts about the complexities of this place in another post. 

With only a half acre parking lot to work with, the farm was able to accomplish a lot. They grew year round, crops of delicious veggies - kale, rainbow chard, beans, peas, melons, tomatoes, beets, herbs, strawberries, lettuce, arugula, spinach. They sold at Farmer's Markets and to some restuarants, genereting over $60,000 in sales in year 3. An impressive feat for a small scale urban operation.

The farm has always relied on community grants to operate and to be able to employ folks from the neighborhood. This winter, they dreamed up a plan to expand their acreage to be able to grow enough to become commercially viable. With lots of hard work and serious planning, the farm worked out a model that would see expansion into a network of small farm sites (totalling 4 acres,) that would allow the farm to be completely self financing within four years. This is big, folks. Lots of urban farming projects in North America still rely heavily on grant money or private funders. They are often symbolic demonstration sites or teaching gardens (and these are good!) But this here is a real honest-to-goodness farm with high production levels.

This season we have worked so hard - dragging 3,000 pallets across a 2 acre site to set up growing boxes, building 4 greenhouses in a month of pouring rain, setting up 1.5 acres of farm on contaminated brownfields, growing massive amounts of produce that had to be cooled in fridge space located on the second floor of an historic building with a broken elevator. But! It has been so wonderful and I have learned massive amounts. More stories to follow.

Pallets being laid out - soon to become growing boxes.