How two couples in the Shuswap are cooperating to be the change they want to see—a future where farming thrives by being environmentally and socially altruistic while also producing delicious, natural food in abundance

By Tyler Olsen

I visit Left Fields Farm, just outside of Sorrento, on April 1. Technically, it’s spring—has been for a couple weeks—but you wouldn’t know it by looking around. There’s still six inches of snow on much of the ground and planting season is a distant thought. It looks, feels and smells like January, which is to say there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on.

Given that Patrick Steiner and Colleen O’Brien make their living from this farm, you might expect them to be panicking at Mother Nature’s lame April Fool’s joke. Instead, I find these proprietors of Stellar Seeds sitting in a cold greenhouse looking as calm as monks at a spa.

The pair is sitting behind a makeshift ladder-turned-table that holds several trays of soil-filled planters. With numb fingers, Patrick and Colleen are delicately moving the puny plants into empty trays, giving them more room to breathe. I’m told the plants are tatsoi, an Asian lettuce that makes a mean salad, and that they are destined for neither a farmers’ market nor a seed packet but rather the couple’s own salad bowls.

As I learn about organic farming in the 21st century, it’s becoming clear that practicing agriculture the green way is as much a lifestyle as a business decision.

Left Fields Farm is actually home to two businesses and two couples; Patrick and Colleen run Stellar Seeds while their neighbours, Brian MacIsaac and Rebecca Kneen, churn out tasty organic brews under the Crannog Ales label.

Brian and Rebecca own the land, but both couples live on-site, sharing the fields, various duties and a house garden for themselves. In the summer, free-range hens will scamper amongst hop fields while Colleen and Patrick tend an alphabet-soup of vegetables, flowers and herbs, from arugula to tomatillos. But when I visit, there’s far more white than green and the bulk of plant life can be found inside a warmer, closed-off portion of the greenhouse where certain plants get a head start on the growing season.

The greenhouse is needed because on an organic seed farm the plants need a boost, albeit a chemical free one. Growing seeds is very different from growing vegetables for food, Patrick tells me as he and Colleen lead me into the warmer part of the greenhouse. For most vegetables, by the time you’re ready to bite into their crisp exteriors, the plants are still months or even years from producing seed.

“Seed growing takes a longer season than just growing vegetables for food,” says Patrick. “Often the lifespan to grow seeds is an extra two months or so.” And sometimes it takes a lot longer: many root vegetables like carrots and onions are biennials, which means they take two full growing seasons to begin producing seeds.

Because most of the fields we see are growing food for our consumption, rather than plant reproduction, most of us have no idea what a garden of seed-producing vegetables looks like.
“A garden for seed production is totally different looking than a normal garden for eating because you have all these plants in the second phase of their life,” says Patrick.

Sharing a Farm and a Cause
As Patrick and Colleen give me a tour of the 10-hectare farm, it begins to snow, leaving the three of us shaking our heads. Looking at fields crusted with the white stuff makes it hard for me to imagine the pictures Patrick and Colleen are painting in my head.

By summer, they tell me, free-range hens will be roaming fields filled with dozens of different plants, herbs and flowers. Sheep and pigs will bring the farm to life, while hop vines climb towards the summer sun. Seeds and hops will dry in a cubic, wooden building filled to the rafters while a farm apprentice will live in a tiny cabin across a dirt road.

Yes, the farm will be bustling in the summer, but it is hardly a seasonal operation that has just sprung up overnight. Rather, Left Fields is a by-product of nine full years of cooperation and teamwork.

Patrick, 38, moved to the farm in January of 2001 at the behest of Brian MacIsaac, a social worker with a growing reputation as a home brewer, and his partner Rebecca Kneen who grew up on a sheep farm in the Maritimes and was itching to return to the rural life. The pair had been looking for someone to assist in growing produce for the farmers’ market and help them pay the mortgage on the small Sorrento farm they had just bought. In Patrick, who the couple knew from food security events in BC, Rebecca says they found the ideal partner.

“It took a while to find the right person,” says Rebecca, “but when you find the right person it’s surprisingly easy.” Sharing a farm has many advantages—including the sharing of labour, land and equipment costs—but it’s a less tangible side-effect that Rebecca points to that seems most indicative of the farm and its farmers.

“Just having somebody else to bounce ideas off of is a huge advantage,” says Rebecca.
You probably don’t think too much about ideas—particularly the more ethereal sort concerning values and politics—when you drive by a farm. But for the four people living on Left Fields Farm, values and political beliefs aren’t just incidental to their foray into organic agriculture, they’re an essential element.

Patrick embodies the notion of the political farmer.

Raised in Woodstock, Ontario, a city a little larger than Salmon Arm, Patrick was pursuing a degree in international development when he accidentally fell in love with farming. While still finishing up his schooling, Patrick travelled to Ecuador in the early-90s to assist on development projects, many of which turned out to be agriculturally-oriented.

“I fell in love, one, with the people and the rural farming lifestyle,” he says. “And, two, I was really interested in the issues around farming and sustainability,” he says. That included farming the organic way—growing a diverse crop without pesticides or other chemicals.

After graduating from university in 1994, Patrick apprenticed at farms around Canada for five years, before developing a business plan for a farm that would sell seeds in the winter and fruit and vegetables in the summer. That led him towards the fateful discussion with Rebecca and Brian and, soon thereafter, Sorrento.

Colleen entered the picture relatively recently, in 2007. Like Patrick, Colleen was an urbanite who caught the farming bug in university. Attending UBC, she was jumping between programs when she found herself drawn toward students in the faculty of agriculture studying international agriculture and resource practices.

“They were likeminded people,” says the sprightly 25-year-old. “It was a whole bunch of people who were all very interested in world issues and global issues and interested in how what we did here affected people all over the world.”

Soon Colleen was studying sustainable agriculture in Latin America, volunteering on the UBC farm and visiting farms in Cuba. Like Patrick years before, by the time she picked up her degree, Colleen had decided she wanted to get her hands dirty. So in 2007, she moved to the BC Interior to apprentice on an organic farm—one just five kilometres down the road from Left Fields. While working at that farm she would attend farmers’ markets, where you can apparently pick up more than just tasty veggies.

“The farmers’ market is a good dating service for single farmers,” says Patrick. “It’s where you find people with your own, you know?…,” he pauses.

“Your own interests,” Colleen finishes.

The two farmers’ interests turned out to include each other and after juggling work at the two farms, Colleen spent the second-half of last year working full-time with Patrick. This year, they have been touring the province together selling seeds at events around the province and riding a growing wave of enthusiasm for organic seeds.

No GMO Here
With the snow coming down at a February rate now, we retreat inside to ginger tea and organic carrot cakes. Not long after, Megan Andersen shows up on the porch. An aspiring farmer with nine hectares near Monte Lake, Megan made the hour drive through the snow to Sorrento to pick up a shoebox full of every type of seed Patrick sells.

Asked why she made the trip to see Patrick, she says simply: “He guarantees me no GMO.” GMO, for non-organic types, is short for genetically modified organism(s). For organic growers and their passionate customers, GMO is despised with the same level of anger that animal lovers direct towards fur coats. For those unfamiliar with the topic, it requires a bit of a primer.

Genetically modified organisms and the seeds that produce them are created by adding and subtracting certain genes from the plant’s DNA. Scientists can thus “Frankenstein together” plants that look perfect, stand up well to certain conditions or taste a certain way. It sounds benign but has generated controversy and suspicion amongst consumers and farmers.

There are concerns that GMO seeds promote industrial-scale farming and that they prize appearance above taste. But there’s another reason GMO seeds stir fury in socially-aware people like Patrick and Colleen. Each time a company engineers a new type of seed, a new plant is technically invented. The seeds, then, can be protected by a patent that gives the holder exclusive rights to use (or sell) the seeds.

The system is supposed to reward innovation and is fairly straightforward when you’re talking about inventing light bulbs and radios. The issue gets sticky, however, when you start inventing life.

For most life forms, the purpose of life is to reproduce as much as possible over a wide territory. But if you’re a multi-national seed company with a patent on a new breed of popular, delicious-looking tomatos, free plant love can hurt the bottom line. Ditto for seed-saving farmers. In the past decade, patent-holding seed companies—of which Monsanto is the most notorious—have filed suit against hundreds of farmers they say have used their seeds without acquiring a license.

Unsurprisingly, the corporatization of seeds has bred animosity among farmers and equality-junkies like Patrick. Tack on a host of other issues and seed growing has become a politically hot topic ripe for impassioned activists.

As Patrick talks about the business model underlying his farm, it’s apparent that his political and social values are as much a driver of Stellar Seeds as any other factor. Indeed, it’s his belief in the need for diversified organic farming that has led him to be a passionate advocate for saving organically-grown seeds.

For organic farming to succeed, Patrick says, you can’t just use the same seeds industrial growers use. “If we want seeds to work well in an organic farming system, you have to be growing (the seeds) within that context on small-scale diversified organic farms,” he says.

“The kind of seed development that is going on these days is moving more and more towards genetically engineered seeds or, at very least, hybrid seeds that are bred to perform well in the kinds of agriculture system where you have high water input, lots of fertilizer and pesticide inputs.”
Patrick, thus, has turned into a passionate advocate for saving seeds. He’s written a 40-page handbook on the subject and, the week before I visited the farm, found himself speaking in Revelstoke on the topic.

Hearing him say, “I think we need a lot more people growing seeds,” sounds at first blush weird and like bad business, kind of like hearing your local coffee shop saying, I think we need a lot more people selling java.

But as he expands, it begins to make sense.

“I never fear that I’m going to lose a market just by sharing how to save seeds. If anything it might grow because it gets people more interested in the seed growing process,” he says.

That’s because even if farmers save seeds from one or two crops, Patrick says most diversified organic farmers are simply too busy to grow the 20 or 30 varieties they need. On the other hand, for growers like Patrick and Colleen who specialize and invest the time, Mother Nature pays them back by the thousands.

“Nature’s really generous. When a plant produces seed they don’t just produce one seed, they produce thousands or tens of thousands,” says Patrick. “As a seed grower you have the benefit that when plants actually make seed they produce a lot, so it warrants spending two years to produce onion seed because they’re going to produce a lot.”

Food Security and the Boom in Organics
I head out into the snow once again, following Patrick as he gives Megan, the farmer from Monte Lake, a quick tour of the farm. Soon, we’re standing in the greenhouse, as another issue crops up.
Megan recounts going to a grocery store and encountering bare racks for vegetables. Imagine, she asks, if the power were ever to go down or we were to be cut off from our food supplies a world away. What would happen then? How would we eat? What would we eat?

Concern over what is known as food security is no fringe worry. Politicians routinely discuss it, and there have been town hall meetings, documentaries and books published on the subject. Rebecca, from Crannog Ales, is one of those deeply concerned about the issue.

“A lot of cities have less than a day’s worth of food stockpiled—it’s horrifying,” she tells me.
The fear is that if your region, province or country cannot feed itself, it is at risk if transportation or trade networks break down. It’s a legitimate concern and one shared by those at Left Fields Farm. But it’s just one of the reasons organic food has taken off in recent years.

Rebecca says demand for organic brews has never been greater. When Crannog Ales started it was the only organic brewery in the country. Today, it is one of many. And when Rebecca talks about operating on a zero-waste system, where the leftover grain is fed to the farm animals and the waste-water is treated and re-used in the fields, she’s not describing a one-of-a-kind operation but a model that other breweries have followed.

“Over the last nine years we’ve found the suppliers have moved to meet the demand,” says Rebecca. “In the last four years I’ve seen a huge number of new (hop) growers starting up.”
The rise of organic farming has mirrored that of these breweries. But you don’t need beer to stay alive, and beer security isn’t exactly a hot-button issue. Concerns over security, then, have probably less of an impact on organic farming than do concerns for the environment.

So it goes for seeds. Many communities hold Seedy Saturday fairs in the first weeks of spring, where seed growers can sell their products to local gardeners and farmers. Colleen says that already, in the first months of this year, Stellar Seeds hasn’t been able to keep up with the demand, particularly in the cities.

“This year the Seedy Saturdays have been bigger than they’ve ever been before,” says Colleen. “You don’t get time to have lunch, you’re just bombarded by people for however long the Seedy Saturday is.”

Colleen points to urban demand, a flagging economy and the popularity of the 100-mile-diet as reasons for the boom.

“People are interested in it right now and they want to grow their own garden. And there seems to be a consciousness too about supporting local farmers and also supporting your local seed companies,” says Patrick.

A Lot to Digest
These farmers are all correct, of course. But it’s also worth noting that they don’t claim responsibility for the rising fortunes of organic farming. No, when organic farmers talk about their success, they talk about you and me and our growing desire for organic products. The success of an organic, sustainable food system isn’t solely dependent on smart business people. In a capitalistic society, it’s contingent upon our demand for such commodities.

I visited Left Fields thinking I’d learn about where my food comes from. But it turns out visiting an organic farm is just the second step to a more complete understanding of the complex relationship between what you eat and the health of yourself, your community and the world. The first is a trip to your own refrigerator.