Simone McIsaac had a problem. For the owner and operator of Rootdown Organic Farm, finding workers every season was hard because she could offer only six months’ worth of work. Her solution was to find a crop to even out the peaks and valleys of the growing season so that farmhands’ contracts weren’t so short and intense. But what crop would flourish through the shoulder seasons and let her keep staff on for 10 months a year?
The answer was wrapped in plastic. A polytunnel, to be precise, on her one-acre homestead in Pemberton Valley near the farm. Inside the plastic: mixed salad greens. A crop she could place in the centre of a complicated Venn diagram of attractiveness, value, nutrition, growth to maturity, soil support and yield.
It has worked. This season, most of Rootdown’s nine employees are returning, which means the farm starts ahead of the curve, with muscle memory and built-in crop knowledge.
Not that this is a guarantee of anything else staying the same. “It’s a dynamic thing, a farm,” says McIsaac. “It’s the complete opposite of stepping into a climate-controlled office nine-to-five.” The only constant is the utter dependency on daylight. “The sun moving through the sky dictates everything we do.”
Rootdown is a small six-acre certified organic farm celebrating its 17th year. Founded by fellow UBC Farm grad, former farmer and ongoing landholder Sarah McMillan, it has evolved into McIsaac’s operation, growing and maturing alongside her family: partner TJ Reaves and 11-year-old daughter Marisol. The farm grows a huge range of organic vegetables — including garlic, carrots, celeriac, beets, radishes, hakurei turnips, tomatoes and kale — for direct sale to restaurants and grocery stores, as well as their now-signature bags of mixed greens.
Baby kales, mizuna and mustards have a super high turnover in the summer, when Pemberton’s infamous heat turns the growth hormones up to ninja level. “We seed, they pop out of the ground within four days, and we’re harvesting three weeks after that. We harvest that generation for one or two weeks, then weed whack it, tarp it, and two weeks later, we seed right back into it.” Cover cropping with a high-succession crop produces a significant amount of biomass that can go right back into the soil, and this has turned McIsaac’s field from a sandy overgrazed horse pasture to a thriving earthworm-juicy zone. In just six years.
The finely tuned system is not only good for business and the soil. It’s also a win for the salad connoisseur — because you can’t fake fresh when it comes to greens. They’re not shelf-stable, as anyone who has waded through a newly opened but slimy box of store-bought salad can attest. The DTM (farmer code for “days to maturity”) of baby greens is fast, and their demise, once picked, is equally fleet. The trouble with the “artisanal” greens in that box is that they’ve been shipped from California and Mexico, and no amount of cheerful “farm fresh” labelling can claw back those days in transit.
Greens, those little nutrient powerhouses, should be bought and consumed as close to their field of origin as possible. They’re tender little babies and not meant to be world travellers.
Farming is McIsaac’s second career. A former outdoor educator with a biology degree and a love for natural systems, she spent 10 years travelling to beautiful mountains to work before craving a place to put down roots. Motherhood as a working farmer, with a baby napping in the germination chamber or playing in the earth beside the crops, taught her how to prioritize. “If you have a young child who’s dependent on you and you also have all these baby plants, you get done what you need to get done and walk away, because you need to go be a mom. It teaches you to let go.”
This season, after 10 years of supplying families with a community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription, she made the call to let go of Rootdown’s weekly harvest box, simplify some of the mixed vegetable crops and double down on the salad greens.
“I love the CSA but I am striving for life balance — for myself and the team. It was needed.” A collaboration with Naomi Martz of Four Beat Farm will put Rootdown salad in the Four Beat CSA. The greens will also find their way to your salad bowl via a network of Sea to Sky grocery stores. This new distribution will add a few more packaging steps for the team, but will also give McIsaac the chance to get even better at what she does: finding solutions and growing outcomes that are win-win-win — for the farm, farmers and the future.
Find Rootdown greens in Pemberton at Pemberton Valley Supermarket, Stay Wild, North Arm Farm, Helmer’s Organic Farm Stand and HappiLife Farm Stand and in the Four Beat Farm CSA; in Whistler at Fresh St. Market, Nesters and Creekside Market; and in Squamish at Stong’s and Nesters.
The Dynamic Nature of Eating Local
Three Pemberton farms have stepped out of the CSA game this season: Rootdown, Laughing Crow Organics and Blackwater Creek Orchard. After losing their lease, 14-year-old Laughing Crow, which supported 250 households through their CSA program and were a stalwart of the Whistler Farmers’ Market, are closing. Blackwater Creek will be focusing on the Pemberton Farmers’ Market instead of offering a CSA.
After 30 years, the owners of Willowcraft Farm, who provided garlic and flowers at the Pemberton Farmers’ Market, have embraced retirement. And although Pemberton Valley Farms was on family land, they’ve made the tough decision to move closer to medical support services for their child, who has a neurological condition. “Farming here was not just work for us,” they shared in a social media announcement. “It was our dream. We put everything we had into it.… We’ve experienced firsthand the challenges of small-scale farming in Pemberton such as shortage of labour, affordable land, ability to compete with large-scale growers, etc., and hope that farms continue to overcome these hurdles and thrive in the valley.”
(K-pop) Party in a Bag
There’s so much more to salad than lettuce. Other types of greens add mouthfeel, texture and tang to your bowl. Just like an engineered boy band, the Rootdown salad mix is thoughtfully convened so that each member adds something unique — including looks. At the height of the season, 14 varieties add to the harmony. New members are always being auditioned, but it’s a tough gig to get. They need to peak in sync with all the other members.
“They all have their personality,” says Simone McIsaac. “Spinach is the early season workhorse. It loves the shoulder seasons. In the summer, mizuna is the backbone because it’s the fastest grower. It puts on a lot of volume. Red lace and ruby are mustards that add a flash of colour. They’re fun shapes for frilliness and they have moderate spice.… In the fall they’re really red and really spicy. The pizzo and golden frills are mild in flavour but add a different texture to the mix. Some leaves we choose because they’re more open and rounded, and some we choose because they’re very frilly and give a nice contrast. Red Russian is a little more hardy, a tougher, thicker leaf. We grow the lettuces for different colours, different shapes and frilliness. Some have a buttery flavour.… And the more diversity we can get in the mix, the better. In spring, the greens are mild and sweet. In summer, they grow fast, and when we get the lettuce mix in there, so much is going on. It’s like a party in a bag. In fall, the light changes — the reds deepen, flavours intensify. Every week, every mix is different. Only we really know the story behind that bag.”