This month’s CR-FAIR meeting was held out at Sooke, where we got a look at Sunriver Community Garden,

officially unveiled a week ago, and already thriving. It was created with the energy and guidance of Sooke Food CHI, who are in the process of handing its management on to a garden committee. They’ve done a dazzling job of raising funds and finding donations of everything from labour to garden sheds.

We sat beneath the gazebo

enjoying some excellent cookies – in a burly bowl by the Food CHI’s Phoebe Dunbar –

before moving on to discuss the garden, which was on land set aside by the the Sunriver housing development. Half the 65 plots are intended for residents of the development with the rest for people from Sooke. It’s an organic garden, so participants must sign agreements to hold to organic growing principles, and they are bound by a ‘use it or lose it’ guideline. The community has embraced the idea and given generously of time and in-kind donations so it’s off to a good start.

We were treated to a lunch that included local bread and ALM Farm greens – in another of Phoebe’s bowls – and then departed.

The Canadian Organic Growers, with chapters across the country, has a lively membership on Vancouver Island, which includes summer farm tours in the area. Yesterday’s tour took us to Cobble Hill to see a lavender farm, and on to Cowichan Station to visit a CSA operation that offers grain and vegetables to subscribers.

We started at Damali Lavender Farm and B&B;,

where they grow lavender

and grapes (Castel) – which they had been selling to winemakers but are now turning to premium wine vinegar.

There’s a labyrinth there, used occasionally for workshops and special events

We had a good look at the lavender still,

which is used to extract essential oils. Not an inexpensive piece of equipment, they invested in it after making do with a smaller version their first couple of years, and it’s reduced the workload hugely; from 16 eight hour days to one. It’s portable (they have a trailer to allow them to move it) making it possible to lease it out to others who want to press essential oils from various sources such as fir.

After an aromatic turn round the gift shop – everything from essential oils and soaps to teas (chocolate mint and lavender being a popular one) and vinegars – we departed for our tour of Makaria Farm in Cowichan Station. It’s a 10-acre fruit and vegetable farm, famed for its peas and strawberries, and also for its innovative grain CSA which it started last year, born of Brock and Heather’s desire to learn about small-scale grain production. They’d come across a copy of Gene Logsdon’s 1977 classic Small Scale Grain Raising:An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers and were inspired to experiment with its concepts, while bringing in local experts like Tom Henry to offer on-the-spot guidance; by bringing in 55 other families they were able to share the knowledge, and workload, more widely. This year the grain CSA is more streamlined, with participants coming in to help with the harvest instead of maintaining their own plots.

This year’s plantings have been hugely damaged by pests above and below the soil. Wireworm has devasted the couple’s plantings,

as have ravens which have been descending in droves to pull seedlings out of the soil –

they suspect in search of wireworms. This has led to a heavy investment in modern scarecrows – motion-sensitive water pumps –

and experiments in stringing off portions of the fields in an effort to keep the birds off.

Here’s a field that they planted and worked and then forgot to turn the scarecrow back on for just one night: by the following morning this was the scene:

They have done some epic work in soil-blocking, using old bread crates to hold them,

and a fancy machine (designed to plant into plastic mulch, in fact) to plant them.

Their peas (climbers on one side of the net and bush on the other)

and strawberries are thriving.

The barley looks healthy

but the Red Fife wheat

has been stricken by rust.

But the beneficial insects seem happy and fruitful, at least.