FarmStart

Please join us in Brampton at FarmStart’s McVean Farm Grand Opening this coming Sunday!

For directions and more information, please check out our Flyer or our website at www.farmstart.ca/McVeanGrandOpening.

We are also still looking for a few more volunteers for the event on Sunday for general help, face-painting, etc. If you would be interested in helping facilitate this event, please email info@farmstart.ca or call Keturah at 519-836-7046 x103.

We are really excited about this opportunity to show you our beautiful urban farm, let you get to know the farmers on our land and share some of the wonderful produce the farmers have been growing this season! Don’t miss this chance to come out to the ground-breaking at McVean farm.

Come rain or shine (preferably shine), we hope to see you there!

The FarmStart Feast and fundraiser was a huge success – with over 200 people coming out for a magnificent supper.  Click here to see some of the photos taken by Laura Berman.

We want to thank all the farmers, chefs and volunteers who put together such a beautiful meal and wonderful evening, as well as all those who came out to support FarmStart and a new generation of farmers! 

An especially huge THANK YOU to Matchbox Garden farmers, Hannah, Adrian and Eric, and to Cross Town Kitchens, who brought this wonderful evening to life and fed us all.

All proceeds from this fundraiser will go towards improving the facilities at the McVean incubator farm so that we can accommodate more new farmers. 

Sincerely, 
Christie Young, FarmStart Director

Diverse harvest for budding farmers

Immigrants learn basics of growing crops here; others benefit with fresh callaloo, okra, garlic

Nicole Baute, TORONTO STAR
Oct 13, 2008 

Anan Lololi shows off rows of callaloo growing in a Brampton field. The plants are closely shorn, with leaves that look like spinach, but bigger.

“They call it pigweed … but it is one of the most popular foods in the Caribbean,” Lololi says, still incredulous at the inglorious name after living in Canada for almost 30 years.

Lololi, who is originally from Guyana, likes to sauté his callaloo in garlic and olive oil.

“There definitely is a market for it, you know? We’re importing callaloo from Jamaica and the Philippines and it grows wild here.”

Callaloo is just one of the crops being grown by the non-profit Afri-Can FoodBasket and other groups at the McVean Farm. The new 35-acre incubator farm is owned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and rented to a Guelph-based not-for-profit organization called FarmStart, which teaches new farmers the agricultural basics and rents them land and equipment at steep discounts

Continue reading…  

If you’re curious about Community Supported Agriculture, you won’t want to miss Rachel and Carolyn’s talk at Toronto’s Pape Public Library this week. The Beet Street team will be discussing CSA’s and their contributions to healthy rural economies. They’ll also be accepting new members for their own CSA. Beet Street’s shares are sure to sell out soon, so Toronto residents would be well advised to drop by the library on Wednesday night, meet the farmers, and sign up for a season of gorgeous, fresh veggies!
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Wednesday, May 14

6:30 – 8:00 pm

Presented by: Canadian Organic Growers (COG)

With: Rachel Climenhaga and Carolyn Bailey, BeetStreet CSA,

and Phil Anderson,COG member and farmer in Stouffville

Location: Pape Public Library, 701 Pape Ave (Danforth and Pape)

Cost: COG members free; non-members $5

The McVean Farm will soon support four new farm enterprises

FarmStart is all about new farmers getting started on the land, so we are very excited to welcome a new group of incubator farmers for 2008. This season will see six new farmers working at our farm facilities: two at the Ignatius Incubator Farm near Guelph, and four at the McVean Farm, our new research and training farm in Brampton. This brings the total number of new farmers working the land this year to eight, including two farmers continuing farm operations started in 2007.

Follow this link to read on

FarmStart’s New Farms Incubator Farm Program supports new farm enterprises by offering access to land, equipment, and infrastructure at reasonable rates, and by providing participants with mentorship and training in business planning, technical skills, and ecological farming methods.

The following profiles introduce our participants, a group of new farmers whose diverse entrepreneurial strategies contain the seeds for a more just and sustainable regional food supply.

(Please click on each participants name to download their profile)

Mike Driscoll –

A second-career farmer and small business consultant with an innovative vision for a regional system of organic hops and barley production.

Matt Reeves –

A young grower with a background in biodynamics and horticultural therapy, and a strong belief in the healing power of sustainable vegetable production for marginalized people.

Simon Jacques –

A young farmer and organic inspector, and a pioneer in organic coloured bean production in Ontario.

Tarrah Young –

FarmStart’s first graduate, who is drawing from skills honed in the New Farms Incubator Farm Program to develop an organic vegetable, pork and turkey operation on land she recently purchased close to Hanover, Ontario.

Note: There is still space in the Toronto course… please contact Mike Shook at 519 836-7046 ext 102 to sign up. You can also email Mike.

FarmStart has just started offering the FarmStart Business Planning course in both Guelph and Toronto.

These two sessions run once a week from now through December. At the end of the course you will have prepared a business plan that is ready to take to a bank or to submit to FarmStart to be a participant in the New Farms Incubator Program.

Download the Course Overview – PDF

Toronto Details -

Date: Thursday Evenings from
October 4th to December 12th.
Time: 6:30-10:00
Location: FoodShare Offices – 90 Croatia Street (Map)

Guelph Details -

Sorry – The Guelph Course is now full.

If you would like to be notified of future courses, please sign up for the newsletter.

When the older folks retire, will there be anyone left to till the soil and grow our crops?

Catherine Porter
Environment Reporter – the toronto star When Kurtis Andrews walks into his family’s barn, he can’t just ask one of the employees where his dad is. He has to ask for “Mr. Andrews.” That’s because few of the market staff know Kurtis anymore. They think he’s another customer.

Andrews spent 20 years working on the farm. When he was seven, he bought a bicycle with the money he’d saved weeding the fields by hand for $1 an hour.

He’s climbed the trees, built a swimming raft for the irrigation pond, and rumbled across the fields on a tractor.

But now, he’s a stranger here.

“It feels odd,” says Andrews, 34, examining a 20-year-old family portrait that hangs in the barn. In it, he, his two sisters and their folks pose in a raspberry field, each of them dressed in red-and-white checkered shirts and holding a basket of berries. It’s full of joy and optimism – hardly the picture of farming today.

“I do feel nostalgia about the farm,” he says.

Andrews is no longer a country boy. He lives six hours away, in Ottawa, where he’s in his second year of law school. And he has no plans to return to the fields.

Full Story from The Toronto Star

Immigrant farmers face steep learning curve, many barriers to working the land in Canada

Sep 07, 2007 04:30 AM

Catherine Porter
Environment Reporter
You’ve heard about the Indian doctor driving a cab in Toronto. But how about the Indian farmer making ends meet as a lawyer?

When Lakwinder Gill came to Canada 11 years ago, he was both a qualified lawyer and farmer. Amazingly, he found it easier to navigate his way into the Canadian legal system than work the land as a farmer.

“There is no way to get into it, unless you’re a millionaire. I couldn’t find anyone to guide me,” Gill said yesterday.

That’s about to change. Two new training farms will open soon in Greater Toronto to help immigrant farmers. Yesterday, the non-profit Greenbelt Foundation announced a $400,000 grant to start one in Ajax. And in Brampton, two non-profit organizations are negotiating to lease a 20-hectare piece of land.

Come next spring, both farms will be opened for immigrant farmers to learn about the Canadian climate and growing season, and try their hand at growing crops indigenous to their home countries.

Full Article

The Rodale Institute’s New Farm website has some great stories. One in particular is written by a fellow who was full time organic dairy farming for two years…and then had to cut his losses and sell everything. It is a great account of some of the pitfalls facing new farmers and the lessons to be learned.

Follow the link below to read ‘The End of Farming For Me, For Now” by Mark Lichtenstein:

http://www.newfarm.org/features/2007/0807/endoffarming/lichtenstein.shtml

From the Guelph Mercury – Full Story

Tarrah Young knows that most kids don’t dream of growing up to be farmers.

But this 30-year-old from the suburbs is about to make that leap.

She admits it’s an unusual career choice in an era of factory farms. But the idea came to her in an epiphany, via a fourth-year organic agriculture class at the University of Guelph.

It’s been a long and winding road. Next growing season, Young will quit her day job and set out as the first graduate of the FarmStart program at Ignatius Jesuit Centre.

Full Story

Mike Shook, FarmStart’s Program Manager, was recently a guest on CBC’s Ontario Today. You can listen to the clip and then please come back and add your comments below.

• What are your views on local food?
• What do we need to do to ensure more local production?
• What crops would you like see grown locally?

Add your 2 cents to the mix. Just click on ‘Comments’ below to get started.

Click on ‘Listen to the Clip’ above and it will open in Real Player. Don’t have Real Player? Click Here

We would really like to hear what you have to say about The New Farm’s Incubator Program.

There are many many people from farmers, to retailers, to consumers that will have great ideas about how to improve opportunities in the agricultural sector.

This is our chance to hear from you. Please add your 2 cents below.

If you would rather sent us a message directly contact us.