Tucked into the east end of this city's Greenbelt lies a 60-hectare space where dozens of people — some with no previous experience in farming — spend days and weekends harvesting, weeding and growing something new.
As part of CBC Ottawa's series City Farmers, we'll introduce you to some of those people putting their passion for food sustainability into practice at the Just Food Farm.
Sun Shan, Li Bo and Jerry Li
The chickens eagerly circle around Li Bo as he ties a bunch of dandelion weeds for them to chew on.
It’s feeding time and the birds are released to hunt for bugs, slugs and snails to eat.
“Those are good for eggs,” Li explains with a smile. “Very nutritious. Food from nature.”
It’s one of the tasks keeping Li busy at the family’s nearly half-hectare plot in Ottawa’s east end.
Li and his family have been growing their garden business part-time over the past three years, selling their signature greens mix at the farm stand on Sundays.
This summer, the farm has also become a safe space for him, his wife Sun Shan and their son Jerry.
Li Bo is immunocompromised, and because his work as a sustainability consultant involved international travel, he has been unable to work since the pandemic began.
The farm also kept 12-year-old Jerry occupied when schools closed this spring. So what does he do at the farm?
“Whatever he tells me to do,” Jerry said, pointing to his dad. “Feeding the chickens, picking the diversity salad.”
New tastes
Chi Garden’s “diversity salad” features a mix of 15 kinds of greens including familiar lettuce varieties and Asian vegetables such as bok choy.
Sun says that’s intentional, part of their mission as farmers to introduce different cultures, flavours and traditions through farming.
In this case, they see their salad mix as a way of introducing people here to new flavours from home.
“Mustard green is a wonderful one, and radish greens,” Sun said, adding that if you sold each one individually it might take time for people to acquire the taste.
“A little bit familiar, a little bit less familiar, but then in combination it is wow. People look at it and say, 'This is excellent. It’s really tasty.'”
Farming wasn’t familiar for Li and Sun, who arrived as new immigrants to Canada from China in 2015.
The couple were environmental professionals working on ecological preservation.
But they wanted to “walk the talk and use our hands and heart a little bit more than using our brains and computer screens,” Sun said, explaining why they made the jump into farming despite having no background in the field, other than what Li learned at home.
“I kind of watched my father do a bit of backyard gardening,” Li said. “I remember him kind of mixing everything…. I liked that.”
A farming couple in Kincardine, Ont., offered them a piece of land to try it out before purchasing their own farm.
They learned a lot, Sun said, but felt lonely.
“We were looking for a more vibrant community of farmers,” she explained, adding that they found that at Just Food in Ottawa, where they’ve leased a plot.
Sun particularly likes the diversity of people, many of whom are also learning to farm and are teaching each other along the way.
Nourishing the body and spirit
Li and Sun are offering lessons too, teaching a fermentation technique that comes from the mountainous region in Yunnan province where Li grew up.
Li says it works well with the tougher texture of kale, which grows abundantly here. The idea is to adapt those techniques of preserving food and preventing food waste for local crops, especially since the vegetables from home aren’t available.
Sun also works as a certified interpreter, and three days a week she’s the community garden's coordinator at Just Food.
Sun says though the farm doesn’t allow the couple to live off the land financially — and probably never will — they consider it a success.
It’s allowed them to find a niche in the local food community, and it’s given them an outlet during COVID-19.
That’s especially important for Jerry, who’s back in school now.
Sun said her son was in constant contact with nature and the land over the summer, an experience she hopes will have a lasting impact.
“The satisfaction, the sense of accomplishment [is] a way of nourishing your heart and your spirit in the long run.”
City Farmers
The pandemic has put food security in the spotlight as many look to better understand where the food they eat comes from, or even start growing it themselves.
CBC Ottawa is taking a closer look at a program for startup farmers at Just Food Farm. The Blackburn Hamlet plot is a place where they can experiment with new techniques and teach others some of what they’ve learned.
Click here to meet the the public servant turned beekeeper hoping to pass on his fascination with those tiny pollinators, or the Burmese refugee family who says COVID gave them time together for the next generation to learn their traditional farming practices.