Who: My name is Bob Whitmore and I operate Whitsend Market Garden, located near Lanark, Ontario.
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| Bob arrives at Elm Tree |
In the spring of 2009, I accepted an internship at Elm Tree Biodynamic Farm in Elm Tree, Ontario. For six months, I lived and worked with the farm family.
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Upon my return to Ottawa in fall 2009, I volunteered at Rockdale Farm in Carp and began developing the business plan for Whitsend Market Garden and Craft.
In February 2011, I met the owner of Littledown Farm through Farm Link – a program that matches farmland owners with new farmers looking for farmland.
I contiued to farm that property until 2021. (See below for some of our very early years)
In autumn of 2018, we purchased a farm in Lanark County. For the past few years, we have been repairing and building the farm to suit our needs. During this time, we have reduced our CSA deliveries to focus on preparing the farm.
In autumn of 2018, we purchased a farm in Lanark County. For the past few years, we have been repairing and building the farm to suit our needs. During this time, we have reduced our CSA deliveries to focus on preparing the farm.
As of winter 2023, we are currently planning an expanded CSA, farm gate store, and looking for a farmers market to sell food from our newly developed growing fields. Time permitting, we would like to take part in another local farm fair - hopefully taking another reward for our honey!
Where: Whitsend Market Garden is located in western Lanark County, Ontario.
What: Whitsend is a small business selling vegetables based on the CSA farm model. Our produce is grown locally, from seed to sale, applying standard organic methods. We offer a range of produce from the familiar kitchen varieties to gourmet and heirloom vegetables. We also raise pork some seasons, and have successfully kept honey bees and produce award winning honey.
What: Whitsend is a small business selling vegetables based on the CSA farm model. Our produce is grown locally, from seed to sale, applying standard organic methods. We offer a range of produce from the familiar kitchen varieties to gourmet and heirloom vegetables. We also raise pork some seasons, and have successfully kept honey bees and produce award winning honey.
We are currently NOT certified organic. The cost of annual application and inspection was becoming prohibitive. While we continue to use organic methods (and a few bio-dynamic concepts), there will be a couple of minor deviations from the organic standard.
We use PVC plastic as a cover for our outdoor hardening off shelter, and will probably have to use it if/when we build a couple of small hoop houses in the next few years. PVC plastic is prohibited under the Canadian Organic Regime, due to the concern of chlorine leachng into the soil from thematerial. However, I found that there is a remarkable difference in the working longevity of PVC and the permitted polyethylene plastic.
Given the choice between having to replace this quatity of sheet plastic once every 2 or 6 years, I felt that the landfills would be better off using the ethylene polymer.
I hope that there are alternative materials available soon...
Under the organic standard, farm seed must be used that is produced with organic certification.
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Bob Whitmore, prop.
Whitsend Market Garden and Craft
Early Years of Whitsend:
This is where Whitsend started. Half of a hay barn, a well, one electrical circuit, and a recently plowed field.
The field was only fenced on two sides, there was a tangle of thistles around the barns exterior, and not much else.
I came across these pictures while updating the website. This would have been one of our first visits.
There were a few days in which all I did was walk around with a note book, trying to envison what could be.
It looks like I am explaining some plans or possibilities with Julia (taker of the photo) about placing the harvest prep station here.
I see in the background a pile of gravel that I purchased to create a raised pad to work on.
Yes, Whitsend started with a pile of rock!
Within two years (and another pile of gravel, augmented by a few hundred pounds of stones pulled out of the growing field), I had a raised work pad on two sides of the barn.
But for the first year (2011, five customers) this was where the produce was cleaned and prepped.
I see that I now have a trestle table (but no sawhorses yet). So I made do with a water cistern donated by Dick and a hay bale to hold it up.
I see my back pack here as well, which reminds me that we had the farm before I had my car licence. (I'd been a city dweller up to that point and got around by bike all the time.).
So after my morning shift at Byward Fruit Co., I would bus home, grab a pre-prepared lunch and snacks, take my bike on the bus to Stittsville, and cycle 7 km to the farm. Not every bus had a bike rack back then so it could be a long ride home.
The field was slowly starting to take shape. Surveying the field was (and still is) a time consuming task: dragging a pair of 25' ropes everywhere to stake out my beds, checking and re-checking that a plot of beds were square, and that the beds were making the best use of space possible.
These were the first two beds I forked up, removed stones from, and planted crops in.
By mid-season of year one, I had some carrots sprouting - the first time I had grown so many. It was thrilling to see some sort of success.
This was two years after my internship at Elmtree.
It had taken us about 18 months to find the opportunity at Littledown Farm.
Farm Link was an invaluable resource. Without it, Dick would not have had the opportunity to assist the next generation of farmers, and I would have not had the land to start with.
Back at the barn, more developments. This is likely year three, as I already have the toolshed; another shed for storing produce is being built.
The gravel pad is also expanding, you can see the field stone base in the near corner, with the gravel surfacing of most of the pad.
It seems I spend a lot of time on my blog writing about the infrastructure, but a farm must be more than just a field.
This could be spring year two, judging by the new fence up on the south side of the field and the area I am working up for the first time.
I can thank Dick for showing me how to fence a field. When I started the fence here at Iron Mine, I recalled much of what he explained - skin the posts to about a foot above ground level; use a fence tensioner to make the page wire taught, etc.
We used the auger on his tractor, and that was helpful for when I rented an auger to dig post holes for our new fence - I knew what size to get, for instance. They'll always try to rent you something bigger than you actually need.
This is likely 2017, the first year I had productive beds in the west half of the field.
A year before, there had been a pair of pigs roaming this half of the field, eating weeds, digging up roots, and tearing up the turf.
This is probably spring 2015. I started 4 years previous and finally had beds from the bottom of the field all the way to the top by the road.
I can recognise amaranth flowers and nicotiania, but I can't recall which herb is growing at the right foreground.
The stone paths are actually about 2 feet deep, loosely filled with large stones from the field and capped with shale which is the foundation beneath this ground. This bed required little watering as it was basically surrounded by water (beneath the path and border) most of the year.
I recall building this in the spring while wearing a T-shirt. It was about 5 degrees celcius everywhere except around the stone foundation I was building, which by afternoon was comfortably warm.
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By midsummer 2017, I had all but given up. We had been searching for land to purchase for two years and found nothing affordable. I quit prepping beds for next year when crops were harvested from them. I was wondering what I was going to do. I thought we'd made our best effort, now Dick was mentioning that he was thinking of selling his farm (way too pricey and big for our needs) and the farm dream was finished.
Then along came Iron Mine Road...