Our story
Meet Emeric &
Sylviane
Emeric and Sylviane met by chance on Granville Street, in Vancouver, BC in January 2010, when Emeric was in Canada on a working-holiday visa and Sylviane was on a 1-year coop working as a translator for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. The rest, as they say,
is history! The couple has travelled across the globe, lived and worked in London, UK, in Ottawa, ON, and in Vancouver, BC before settling down in Williamstown, ON with their two children.
In The News
When a French-Canadian country gal crosses paths with a down-to-earth Frenchman, everything is possible.
Emeric grew up on the rugged Corsican coastline of Ajaccio, France and Sylviane, on a quaint hobby farm in Sarsfield, ON. Add a decade of living in beautiful British Columbia, and nature was forever engrained in their lifestyle. Vancouver also exposed them to organic, sustainable and small-scale agriculture. This is where Emeric volunteered at Farmer’s on 57 th , an organic urban CSA farm, and where their love affair with gardening and using fresh,
nourishing, low-impact organic produce to feed their family started. Emeric completed his permaculture diploma and the family spent many weekends visiting inspiring farms on Vancouver Island, the BC and US Gulf Islands and Washington State before choosing to come settle closer to family. They still
dream of one day spending half the year on Salt Spring Island or have a Chateau with sprawling rooms and gardens in Provence, but all in due time…
Nathalie, Emeric’s mother, is also the “force tranquille” helping to keep the weeds at bay and the children happy. She’s become a key player on the farm team and things would definitely not be running as smoothly without her!
Au plaisir de vous rencontrer.
Our Farm Philosophies
Our gardening is inspired and influenced by regenerative, organic, and permaculture philosophies. We are not organic certified, but our inputs and methods are aligned with organic agriculture. We're always happy to have you come visit the farm (by appointment) to see how we grow your veggies! As a family, we strive to reduce our impact on the environment. We're also trying to reuse as much as possible. Lucky for us, we're stuck with remnants from multiple previous owners, which means we have ample opportunities to find creative ways of working with an already existing item on the farm. We love sharing resources with other farming and homesteading neighbours to reduce shipping and environmental impacts.
Regenerative Practices
When we bought the farm, we told ourselves we'd avoid breaking ground (tilling) as much as possible. We have had to create new gardens and till the surface, but we use a BCS and other tools like the broadfork to avoid any disturbance of soil composition. We're lucky, our soil was already in pretty good shape, as previous owners were also keen in being stewards of the land and kept all soil
covered. We opt to use biodegrable matter that already exists on the property: dead vegetable plants themselves, dead leaves, organic straw from Ferme Houle Farm, and our own compost! Our chickens also help us out with their natural scratching and fertilizers. We are also integrating cover crops into our crop plans and are constantly educating ourselves on how to naturally maintain our soil healthy and nutrient-dense.
Permaculture Philosophy
With permaculture, you can grow food in harmony with nature while making use of available resources. Did you know that Emeric actually completed his
Permaculture Diploma at Langara College in Vancouver in 2017, and that the family has visited countless small-scale farms to see how the philosophy has been applied?
Here are some of the founding values:
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Care for the earth
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Care for the people
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Reinvest the surplus
We are grateful the previous owners had been aware of these philosophies and did an excellent job integrating varied indigenous species on the property. As the years go by, our goals include integration of multiple foods forests spread around
the property.
Organic Methods
Although we aren't organic certified, we definitely practice organic methods. We
source all organic-approved inputs, from seeds, to compost, to physical inputs
like mulch and tarps. We use natural companion planting methods and all-
natural solutions (like insect netting) to help prevent pest invasions.
We welcome questions and visits from our customers, as we believe transparency is key to a great relationship with your farmers. We love learning new things and being challenged to revisit our methods to make them even better for the soil and our nutrition. In the end, we are not only feeding your families and ensuring the perennity of the Earth for your great-grandchildren, but for our own as well. :)
We believe small-scale, sustainable farms like ours are part of the solution for our children's and our planet's future.
It's perfectly imperfect, just like nature.
