The first thing Budgie tells us is to expect bears. “You will 100 percent encounter bears. We all do. It’s part of the job.”
I’d never farmed before. Brighton, UK — the city where I grew up — and the cities where I’ve lived since — London, Montreal, Toronto — have all been major population centres: concrete and asphalt. Farming is a novelty. Something far away and vaguely incomprehensible.
When my partner Simone Currie and I set out for Laughing Crow Organics, a small mixed vegetable farm tucked between the Coast Mountains in the Pemberton Valley of British Columbia, the draw was the great outdoors — the mountains, the wildlife. Everything around the farming itself.
Farm co-owners Budgie and Kerry continue with the introductory rundown, but my mind is busy echoing the bear speech over and over.
That first night, I step out onto the deck of the small off-grid cabin where Simone and I are living on the farm, one of several housing seasonal crew, and I’m met with a sky crowded with more stars than I thought possible. I stare up until my neck goes stiff, in awe. Then I creep back into our cabin, making sure to pull a chest of drawers in front of the door in case of any nocturnal visitors.
My lack of technical farming knowledge becomes immediately clear. I struggle to grasp the knack of harvesting leeks, their fronds slipping through my fingers as I try to yank them from soil where they seem content to stay. As the days stretch into weeks, huge blisters mar my pampered metropolitan hands, evidence of my struggle to find a comfortable way to hold a knife or a pair of snips for extended periods.
Our job is to bring the farm to life. Seeding 128-cell trays in the nursery turns into cruising empty beds on the back of a cherry-red transplanter, lifting the now-sprouted brassica seedlings from their trays and sending them shooting down the transplanter’s tubes and into the earth. More than once, we reach the end of the bed to discover that I’ve planted broccoli where cauliflower should be. The subtle nuances in leaf shape and colour are lost on me.
As May creeps into June, the sun starts making a regular appearance, spilling over the mountaintops and flooding the valley with golden light. Simone and I walk to work belting out Yellow by Coldplay, only to stop in our tracks when we see that those brassicas we planted in week one have doubled, tripled and quadrupled in size.
Not all the crops take the heat so well. One particularly scorching afternoon, we return from lunch and rip back the row cover on the Brussels sprouts, only to find them lying limp and scorched. Despite the crew soaking them with water, two-thirds are beyond saving. Gone, just like that.
Spring edges into summer, and harvest quantity and pace ramp up. My back twists and bends in a variety of interesting and unusual ways as we stoop and crawl and squat-shuffle our way down beds, filling bins to the brim with increasingly glamorous veg. Eggplants swell at the end of their stems, looking mystical with their purple-black skin and their small green berets. Shishito peppers dangle glossy and hollow, like Christmas decorations. On Kerry’s recommendation, I blister them in the pan with a sprinkle of salt. So simple and delicious, it’s a battle to stop myself from stuffing my pockets with them every harvest.
I start to see the full picture of the farm’s community focus. Those who’ve missed the local weekend markets show up to the wash station waving $20 bills, and are greeted warmly by Budgie and Kerry, before being sent home with bulging bags of veg. The CSA program, a weekly box packed every Wednesday morning, connects the people of Squamish, Pemberton and Whistler directly with the provisions of the land. Amy McGrandle, from Xa’xtsa (Douglas) First Nation, drives two hours from Tipella down Lillooet Lake Road to volunteer at Laughing Crow, sharing farming skills with Budgie and Kerry while gathering advice she takes back to her community garden.
Knowing that every blister, every pulled muscle, every exhausting day is in service of feeding an enthusiastic and grateful community takes the sting out of proceedings. What doesn’t get sold gets taken home by the crew, fills a box for the Whistler Food Bank or is composted to grow next year’s crops. When the effort to grow food is felt in your bones, it becomes hard to waste.
Among the heavy-metal-intensity of summer, I find the most peace in the tomato house. Twinkly music floats out of my speaker, the pace is my own, the cherries pop perfectly from the vine into my palm. A full harvest bin, all the colours of the rainbow. I forget the world outside my little alleyway between the towering plants.
The end sneaks up on us. Temperatures plunge, and our staple crops start slowing down. Zucchinis give way to the powdery mildew that has threatened them all summer; I’m lucky if I come away with ten after patrolling their bed. We get used to the white noise of autumn leaves fluttering against each other as they drop.
One late September morning, I wake to find everything silver-tipped and crunchy underfoot. Kerry calls it the “killing frost.” It’s swift and exacting. Most of our crops are crushed, their leaves left hanging limply, different shades of mud. Soon to return to the soil.
We’re ushered into the shuttered wash station and Kerry thanks us for our hard work. One hundred thousand pounds of food sold, all within a 100-kilometre radius of the farm. Laughing Crow is one of the biggest donors to Whistler Food Bank. I feel myself swelling with pride.
Our leeks remain unperturbed by the frost and must be harvested. I’m taken back to my first day, fumbling with a knife, crushing their fronds, struggling to yank them free. Five months on, I keep pace with the rest of the crew, no trouble. We blitz the leeks into soup that evening and bring enough to share for lunch the next day. The crew huddles under a tarp as the rain patters down, hands warmed by steaming bowls, the smell of leeks filling the air. Budgie tells us that a chest of drawers in front of the door won’t do much to stop a marauding grizzly bear, and we laugh. I think about that old proverb: teach someone to fish … Smiling to myself, I greedily slurp another spoonful.