EAT YOUR (WINTER) GREENS
Local farm thrives despite the cold
While other farmers harvest the last of their salad greens, Swiss chard and kale, Leela Ramachandran and Brad Wright at Bluegrass Farm are just getting theirs going.
Did they hopelessly miss the boat on the growing season? Not at all. In fact their year-old operation is so clever and unusual, it has attracted widespread attention and awards from provincial and federal funding programs aimed at encouraging innovation.
Wright, 35, first started farming in the Wakefield area in 2012.
“I was working 14-hour days, but when I’d go to chefs with my tomatoes, they’d say, ‘I’ve got six other growers bringing me tomatoes.’ I wanted to do something different.”
Now, along with his partner Ramachandran and their threeyear-old son, Wright gets to relax a bit in summer, but grows more than 40 crops in winter, in greenhouses heated by tubes of hot water running under the soil. A woodfired boiler heats the water, with Wright pushing in firewood several times daily.
“We’re trying to carve out a niche in the market that we think Ottawa is ready for,” says Ramachandran, 36, who, like Wright, has a graduate degree in environmental studies.
“It’s different, really different,” adds Wright. “We wanted to complement what other growers in the area can provide, so we’re offering fresh, local, organic produce from October to March.”
Last year, in Bluegrass’s first year of operation, more than 20 Ottawa restaurants and shops — including Bridgehead, Fauna and Red Apron — bought their fresh, leafy greens.
They also had 75 families subscribed to their CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) boxes, in which the consumers paid upfront and got boxes of fresh vegetables biweekly all winter.
This year, the couple is expanding their offerings with late-season crops such as carrots, kohlrabi, cabbage and squash grown in their field, to be kept in a cold-storage facility Wright is building using panels he snapped up inexpensively from a Toronto library that no longer needed them for microfilm storage.
Wright travelled to farms in northern New York state and Vermont to research how to do things differently.
As far as he knows, they are the only ones in the Ottawa area using this type of greenhouse to grow through the off-season and one of only a handful of farms offering CSA boxes throughout the winter.
“We’re not talking about using hydro or propane to heat a greenhouse until it’s hot enough to grow tomatoes in the middle of winter,” Wright says.
“We’re just heating the soil to six to 10 degrees, so we can grow coolseason crops.”
11 WAYS TO EAST LOCAL THIS WINTER,
We wanted to complement what other growers in the area can provide, so we’re offering fresh, local, organic produce from October to March.
— Brad Wright
1 Ottawa Farmers’ Market: Now goes year-round at Lansdowne. It moves indoors, into the Aberdeen Pavilion, on Sunday, Nov. 15. Christmas markets will be held Saturdays and Sundays Nov. 28 and 29, Dec. 5 and 6, Dec. 12 and 13 and Dec. 19 and 20. It will take just two weeks off, then start again on Sunday, Jan. 10, moving back outdoors in May. See ottawafarmersmarket.ca.
2 Ottawa Organic Farmers’ Market: Also goes year-round, on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Care Canada Medical Centre, behind the Canadian Tire at Bank and Heron. This market is not restricted to local produce; you’ll find everything from fresh eggs to olive oil. See oofmarket.ca.
3 Savour Ottawa Online: Order food online from more than two dozen local farms by Friday noon, then pick up your produce at the Parkdale Field House, beside the Parkdale Market, the next Wednesday or Thursday. See SOonline.com.
4 MSRO: Marché de solidarité régionale de l’Outaouais is the Quebec-side equivalent of Savour Ottawa Online, with 42 Quebec producers and pick-up points in Gatineau. See marcheoutaouais.com.
5 Retail stores: From McKeen Metro in the Glebe to Manotick Village Butcher, more Ottawa-area food stores are stocking more locally grown produce. Find a list of a halfa-dozen that are certified as buying a significant proportion of their produce from Savour Ottawa members at savourottawa.ca.
6 Restaurants: About a dozen restaurants and take-home food businesses — from The Green Door and Château Laurier to Thyme & Again and the Red Apron — are Savour Ottawa certified; See savourottawa.ca.
7 Other CSAs: Nearly four-dozen area farms now offer Community-Supported Agriculture boxes; a handful, such as Arc Acres (with grass-fed beef) and Bryson Farms (with fresh and frozen heirloom vegetables and even chef-prepared dishes) go year round. See: http://ottawacsa.ca/
8 Ottawa Valley Food Co-op: Operates year-round with products from about 30 Valley producers, from Dobson’s Grassfed Beef to Coronation Hall Cider, and pick-up spots from Deep River to Ottawa. It’s holding a fermented foods workshop in Eganville on Wednesday, Oct. 21. See ottawavalleyfood.org.
9 Two Rivers Local Food Baskets: Two Rivers Food Hub, an ambitious new not-for-profit project aimed at supporting agriculture in Lanark, Leeds and Grenville counties, is now offering winter baskets of local produce and food products — like a CSA, but including products from more than half a dozen farms as well as some prepared foods such as kale chips, sausages and kimchee. Pick-up points are in Carleton Place, Perth, Kemptville and Smiths Falls. See tworiversfoodhub.com.
10 Christmas markets: Area Christmas markets, such as the ones put on by the Ottawa, Carp and Metcalfe farmers’ markets, the Locavore Artisan Food Fair (LAFF) and Ottawa Specialty Food Association’s holiday markets are festive ways to find delicious local produce and products. Watch for them starting in late November.
11 Living Locally Fair: This lively sprawling event sponsored by the Russell and District Horticultural Society takes over a Russell high school one Saturday in mid January, attracting hundreds of food vendors selling everything from bargain-priced baked goods to sheep’s milk yogurt. russellgardeners.ca