For three years, Dave Carlson has been running Burnaby's Common Ground Community Farm, growing a variety of crops for shareholders, but the farm's salad greens will be sprouting up in Choices Markets across the Lower Mainland.
At a recent Farm Folk City Folk "Meet Your Maker" event, Carlson met representatives from Choices Market who were interested in selling his salad greens in their stores.
"They want my salad greens for all their salad bars in all their stores," he said. "That's pretty awesome. They want over a hundred pounds of lettuce a week."
This is a big deal for the farmer who only took over the CSA (or community supported agriculture) farm three years ago.
"You don't really make any money with CSAs, it's more to provide people with healthier foods, so this way I can actually support the farm with a little income coming in," he said.
By choosing to take the farm in a slightly different direction, Carlson is scaling back the amount of shares available in the CSA farm this year. Instead of 50 shares, like previous seasons, there are only 40 shares available this year. He's already sold about 25 of them.
"That's still a lot of food, and it sill makes us feel good that we're providing it for people," he said.
In addition to the Choices deal, Carlson - who also runs a catering business serving local film productions - plans on selling produce and ready-made meals from his catering truck at the farm.
"People could buy fresh produce and they could also eat the produce that I'm growing. So it's really branching out," he said.
The road outside the farm, which is located at 7354 North Fraser Way, is being paved and Carlson hopes when it's finished more people will stop by the farm for lunch or breakfast, or a bag of produce. The catering truck would be open during the day, from Monday to Friday, he said.
"I've been doing film catering for like 25 years and I own the catering truck so it just only makes sense to utilize (it for) my products," he said.
In an article last year, Carlson told the NOW he was looking forward to the introduction of a goat for cheese and maybe some chickens for eggs. The goat was a success for Carlson, and he's excited about another season of fresh goat cheese.
"They'll be due in June, so I'll be doing cheese again this year," he said.
Carlson has also secured some chickens for fresh farm eggs, and he's installed a number of beehives for honey products, which he'll be selling once they're ready in the fall.
On top of all that, Carlson said he has already started working on this season's crops, which will include peppers, eggplants, carrots, corn, beets, kale and more.
"I've got a huge crop of garlic this year," he said. "I did garlic last year but it didn't work so well. This year I planted it earlier, so hopefully that's working."
Last season, Carlson learned that not every crop thrives in the B.C. climate. Crops such as tomatoes will be cut back this season. He's also avoiding planting crops too densely in order to give them more room to grow.
Common Ground's salad greens will be available at Choices Markets all year. Otherwise people can purchase produce by registering as shareholders for this season.
Those interested in buying a share can do so by visiting cgorganicfarm. com and selecting the "Click to Enroll" button.
