January 16, 2024 • 61 mins
Join Dan Oostenbrink and Aaron Pete on a journey into sustainable farming, exploring the intersection of biodiversity, soil health, and community-driven agriculture for a healthier world.
Dan Oostenbrink, co-operator of The Local Harvest Market, combines his educational background with a passion for regenerative farming, producing a diverse range of crops using no-till methods. His decade-long journey in organic gardening is driven by a commitment to healthy soils, nutrient-dense foods, and the belief in building resilient communities through sustainable agriculture.
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Episode Transcript
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Dan Oostenbrink (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger
than Me podcast.
Here is your host, aaron.
Aaron Pete (00:07):
Today, we'll be talking about the important role
that farmers play in stewardingthe land In indigenous culture.
It is very important to us tomaintain the land for future
generations and that's exactlywhat we'll be talking about
today.
My guest today is DanOsterbrink.
Dan, you've described yourselfas a designer, gardener, soil
(00:28):
expert, plant person,entrepreneur, biologist,
educators, computer scientists.
Would you mind introducingyourself for people who might
not be acquainted?
Dan Oostenbrink (00:37):
For sure, my name is Dan Osterbrink.
I'm from local harvest marketand, together with my wife and
our children five kids weoperate a market garden
producing food for thiscommunity and for restaurants in
the area, and we also educatepeople on the importance of
producing food using land thatthey own or lease or rent or
(01:01):
borrow or whatever, and teachingthem how to garden better and
produce more food on less spacewith less work.
Aaron Pete (01:09):
When did this become something that you were
passionate about?
Where take us back to excusethe pun, the roots of where this
began.
Dan Oostenbrink (01:18):
Yeah, so I'm 42 right now and we got married
young and we always had a gardenand there was a lot of joy in
gardening and sharing food withothers.
So we send the kids down theroad when they were really small
with a wagon full of food andthey would sell the food to
(01:39):
neighbors, and slowly we're like, hey, this is something we
could maybe do for a living andnever had the opportunity
because we didn't have the landavailable to us to make this
happen.
And I was also in education atthe time, teaching secondary
school, and so there was, youknow, the opportunity just
(01:59):
didn't exist.
And then, when I was 32, sothat's about 10 years ago, 11
years ago the dad approached us.
So he owned a chunk of land onLickman Road, a busy
intersection, and asked if wewanted to start farming there.
And so we, you know, we said yesand it was a pretty big
(02:20):
decision because our kids werequite small and I didn't realize
how much work it would be andhow much, how exhausting it
would be and how much that woulddrain, you know, the energy
from.
You know our energy should havebeen expended towards our
children and I think they gotlost a little bit in this.
But yeah, so we started farmingon this piece of land and
(02:44):
slowly converted what I wouldconsider a fairly nutrient
deficient piece of land Didn'thave a lot of fertility Dairy
farm, which was existing pastureland into you know what looks
today like a you know, foodproducing enterprise who would
grow a lot of different types offoods, vegetables, fruits and
(03:05):
nuts and seeds and all the restfor this community.
Aaron Pete (03:09):
You strike me as a wholesome person, and that's a
word that I care a lot about.
Going door to door.
How did that sort of come about?
We think of old photos andvideos of milk deliveries, and
this seems like it's going backto that idea of neighborly
connection.
Dan Oostenbrink (03:29):
Yeah, I think that what probably keeps us
going on a day-to-day basis isthe fact that we're nourishing a
community and, at the same time, building a community and
becoming somewhat of a communityhub.
And so when you go door to door, these are your neighbors.
You look them in the eye,they're people in your community
, you care about them, and soproducing food for them is, you
(03:53):
know, exchanging a gift for them.
You know giving them a gift andof course there's you know, in
a sense there's no expectationof return.
The return comes about throughtheir thankfulness and happiness
and joy, which is where itreally started.
But then, of course, if you'rerunning a business, it has to
(04:14):
return some financial gain,there has to be some financial
sustainability behind it.
And so you know, really youknow people want our food bad
enough that they'll give ustheir money in return and we're
able to invest that money backinto the farm, into the business
, and do even greater things.
So, yeah, community mindednessreally is at the root of what
(04:37):
we're doing, and we see it whenthere's people milling a boat on
a busy Saturday outside themarket, just having a
conversation.
They just happen to meet thereand it brings together.
It really does bring peopletogether and yeah, so it's a
really amazing feeling.
Aaron Pete (04:54):
One of the interesting things is that food
is often described as bringingus together, so I'm curious as
to what principles you bringthat are unique to you.
What are your vision when youstarted this, when you started
farming, what were some of yourbasic tenants, the rules that
you wanted to follow?
Dan Oostenbrink (05:12):
I think we more or less fell into it, like it
was not as if we went in therewith a list of principles or
values and we said we're goingto embody these principles in
our farming techniques, in ourfarming methods, in our day to
day, you know, going about as wewent day to day.
I don't think that's what itwas really about.
(05:34):
It was just you kind of fellinto it, and so a good example,
I guess, of that is one of therules of agriculture, one of the
universal principles of farmingand gardening and home
gardening is that youincorporate biodiversity on your
property, so you have manydifferent types of plants
growing at the same time.
And initially we didn't reallystart out that way, like we were
(05:57):
more in tune with you know, wewere going to head the
commercial agriculture directionbecause people really said that
you can't grow great foodwithout the use of herbicides
and pesticides.
And I had bought into thatdoctrine and we started growing
and I had bought chemicalfertilizers.
(06:19):
I had bought the herbicides andpesticides that I was told were
needed in order to grow foodbecause you couldn't do without
it.
That was, you know, what wewere told, and early on in our
first year we kind of.
We were literally in the weedsand we were grasping for ways to
(06:40):
keep the farm under control.
We planted two acres ofblueberries, two acres of corn,
or probably more like ten acresof corn, two acres of
raspberries, and we were goingto run a market that would
provide the community with someof the local foods that were
commonly grown in this area, andthen we would supplement with
(07:01):
Mexican, californian food.
You know that we'd import andwe'd just be a market like a lot
of other markets.
So that's kind of where westarted.
And then, you know, we got theweeds, got out of control and
the farm was unmanageable.
And so I hired somebody in Juneof the first year this goes
(07:21):
back to 2013, and he had done aone acre market garden
organically.
And when I hired him I didn'treally know the direction he was
going to go.
All I knew is that he hadexperience in producing food and
I had very little other than ahome garden.
And he said I'll work for you,provided you allow me some
(07:44):
flexibility in how we producefood here.
And the first thing that hesaid was we're going to get rid
of all the chemicals.
And I was.
I mean, I don't really have achoice.
Because he was a good worker,he had some experience and he
had done this before.
So we got rid of all thechemicals.
I managed to, you know, add adiscounted discount.
(08:05):
I returned him back to theprovider and he said the second
thing we're going to do isprobably get rid of a lot of
this equipment that I hadpurchased.
So commercialized equipment.
You know corn planters, you knowbig, big skill stuff,
cultivating equipment, planters,cedars and things like that.
Not that this was a moveagainst technology, but it was
(08:28):
saying our skill was not such,our skill was too small to make
these pieces of equipmentbeneficial to us on this farm.
And he said you know, I'm notgoing to farm on the 20 acres 30
acres that we had, we werecultivating.
He said I'm just going to doone acre.
And I was like well, that'svery little.
(08:49):
You know, how are we going tomake money doing that?
He said I need to show you whatwe can do on one acre, what one
person can do.
And so he took one acre, whichis just under 50,000 square feet
, and he started seeding andplanting in June and by July we
had salad mix, spinach andradishes and things like that
and by June or August we werecoming into you know, some early
(09:12):
carrots and beets and some ofthe early onions and greens that
he had planted were, you know,we were starting to market these
and it, over time, that firstyear, completely shifted my
mindset about how we convertedfood.
Like I remember some of theearly cauliflower that we had
planted, I thought you can'tgrow this without chemicals,
(09:33):
that's what I was told.
You had to cover them withplastic to keep the insects off.
And it turned out that Iremember my son running back
from the field one day, you know, probably August, september,
saying it's ready, it's ready,and he was holding a beautiful
head of cauliflower which wehadn't sprayed.
And it was just a complete mindshift for me that we could
(09:56):
produce a lot of food on verylittle land without the use of
chemicals, without the use ofsprays.
And it completely shifted howwe did food and I'm very
thankful for that awakening.
And I started reading the worksof John Martin Forche.
He was a small market gardener.
Elliot Coleman some of theseother really you know famous
(10:19):
market gardeners who were, youknow, elliot Coleman was doing
market gardening in Maine of theUnited States before.
It was even cool and a novelty,you know and so completely
changed how we did food, and sowe started to observe how nature
grows things, and it does sowith lots of biodiversity, and
(10:43):
so, you know, we incorporate alot of biodiversity on the farm
and, yeah, it's just amazingthings that happen.
So I guess we started off thistrain of thought by you asking
the question you know, whatvalues did we instill or embody
on the farm?
What did we go in with?
We didn't really go in with any.
They developed over time, andso one of those is care for the
(11:06):
land and nourish the land, andthen land will give back to you
abundantly.
Aaron Pete (11:15):
The big one that's standing out to me, though, is a
willingness to change yourperspective.
So many people, they've beendoing things this way, and this
is the way they're told thatit's done and it's hard to buy
into that, and the fact that youtrusted this person making some
bold claims before you wereable to do all of this reading,
before you had all of theevidence that it was going to
work, and then to see it result.
(11:36):
It seems like that would besuch a meaningful experience to
go through and watch thetransition and see the evidence
before your eyes.
Dan Oostenbrink (11:43):
Yeah, dare to be different and dare to try
things that you know one of thefunnest things to do is if
people say it can't be done.
I've learned that you ought totry it and you'd be amazed.
You know you might not succeedentirely, but you might take you
down a different path.
But this, by all means I thinkhas been a big push from Big Ag
(12:04):
is to really, you know, say itcan't be done any other way.
And then there are farmers outthere who are doing it a
different way and are successfulin doing so.
And so, yeah, dare to bedifferent and try new things, to
be surprised what you can do.
Aaron Pete (12:17):
When you moved on to this land, you were in a
trailer and that sounds like itwas a humbling experience.
It was a challenging experience.
Would you mind walking usthrough that?
Because you were willing toface some adversity and then now
everybody's like you're killingit.
You're doing such great work,but you were willing to put all
your values to the test and movein and do this when people
(12:41):
might have said like that'scrazy, that's not a good idea,
that's not comfortable.
Can you tell us about thoseearly days?
Dan Oostenbrink (12:46):
Yeah, we moved from a large home in the country
that was well established, ontwo acres you know, a beautiful
little hobby farm and we movedinto a mobile home that we put
on the property with five kids.
You know it was very tight andwe made it work because we could
recognize a future here andsaid this is a place that we
(13:09):
want to raise a family and growfood for the community.
So, yeah, there was, you know,quite a bit of humility in that
step.
For sure, At the same time,looking at what other people in
our community you know, some ofthe impoverished neighborhoods
in our community, and whatpeople have to endure, we had so
(13:29):
much and so much more.
And so, from that perspective,you know, the amazing thing was
living on great land.
Sure, small little house, butwe had so much because there was
a future here and we wanted tocarve that future and change the
food producing landscape onthat 35 acres of land.
Aaron Pete (13:53):
Your family is a truly strong unit.
When we talk about family, Ifeel like you embody so many of
the important aspects If you'regoing to refer to someone, your
ability to bring your childrenin, support them, and then now
they're working on the farm.
Can you talk about how thatsort of came about?
Dan Oostenbrink (14:12):
To be honest, I'm quite surprised that they're
still working on the farm,because I'm very hard on my kids
.
I think I'm fair, but I demanda lot and I have demanded a lot
over the years and some of thatI regret at this point.
You know there's really earlymornings when you're shaking the
kid awake at.
(14:32):
You know he's 14, 15 years oldand it's a Saturday morning in
the summer and you're trying towake him up at 4 o'clock or 5
o'clock because you know thesun's up and work's got to be
done.
And you put a hoe in their handand you say, okay, let's go at
it, we got to clean up this bedof weeds here.
But at the same time I thinkwhat my kids have seen in myself
(14:55):
and in my wife is a tenacity, adetermination that is addictive
and contagious.
And I think they have also cometo recognize the importance of
the work, because I don't thinkwe wouldn't be doing what we're
doing if there wasn't a greaterpower pushing us forward to
(15:20):
change the way food is done inthe valley.
I mean, we live in one of themost fertile valleys in the
world and you know our land isso great and we have so much
fertility built in.
You know, the Fraser River usedto flood its banks in this area
, and so we have theseincredible mineral deposits and
(15:40):
we have, you know, a lot ofgrowing days, good, great
growing days.
We have rain and abundancetypically I mean, even in the
last couple of years have beenfairly dry, but typically we get
even, you know, these goodsummer rains.
So, and we have, you know, ourcoastal climate allows us to
grow food through the winter, atleast grow food in the summer
and then preserve it in thewinter in our gardens, on the
(16:03):
farm.
So such a great area to live.
We have so much abundance, andyet most of our food is coming
from afar.
You know, if you look at thesupermarkets, there's very
little grown in BC food, letalone, you know, grown in Canada
, I mean.
And then the Fraser Valleybeing just this, you know,
(16:25):
abundantly lush area, and yetwe're producing relatively
little food for this community.
And so I guess that's thedriving force behind what we're
doing is we're trying totransform our food landscape,
and we didn't want to just dothat with talk.
I think there's too much talk,you know.
(16:45):
We wanted to do it with strongaction, and it's easy for me to
be critical of other farms, andI am critical of other farms and
I'm, you know, quiteunapologetic in doing it.
I like my neighbors, I justdon't like a lot of their
practices, and but the best wayto move forward is to stop
(17:06):
talking and start working.
And that means modeling whatyou believe good food production
looks like, and that's whatwe've really tried to do.
And my wife is always sayingstop talking so much.
You know she's always scared ifI come on a podcast or if I do
an interview.
(17:27):
You know someone wants tointerview me.
She warns me beforehand andthreatens me.
You know that.
You know don't stop blasting.
You know knocking other farmersand things like that.
And she's right to some degree,you know.
But sometimes I do want to getmy word in edgewise and just say
the current system we're on isnot sustainable, like in general
(17:49):
, how we're producing food todayis not going to keep working
year after year after year.
We are, you know, we're goingto run out of fertility and the
cost are too great to theenvironment and human health and
all these other things.
So no, we need to change ourcourse.
And so the way I only own, youknow we own 38, I'm going to
(18:11):
call it owning 35 acres.
I'm a steward of 35 acres, youknow I'm not, because when I'm
gone someone else will be onthere.
Is it my kids, is it someoneelse?
I don't know.
But all I know is that duringthe time that I'm given, I'm
going to do whatever I can torejuvenate land, regenerate the
(18:33):
land, produce as much food as Ican, sequester as much carbon as
I can try to bring in, you know, native birds, species of birds
, back onto the farm by growingtrees and snakes and reptiles
and beetles and all the rest.
So I really restored a mindset,right, a stewardship mindset.
So those are the things thatkeep us going every day.
(18:55):
I mean, when land prices werereally high.
They're still really high.
You know, the easy thing for usto do was to capitalize on
those incredible gains thatfarmers had through their land
value, sell it, move on, live ina little home, little property
somewhere else and not work aday in my life.
(19:15):
I mean that was open to us, butwe didn't want to do that.
Number one we love the land toomuch and we got too much work
to do.
So we have no choice but tokeep going and work hard.
So, yeah, together my wife,myself, our kids and some really
really great employees who arehelping us in this endeavor and
(19:39):
there is a there's this reallygreat bond we have with each
other as we work towards thiscommon goal.
It's pretty amazing.
It's really great.
Aaron Pete (19:49):
I'd like to go back to the family thing, but first I
just want to understand this,because from what you're saying,
I feel like people generalcitizens have abdicated their
responsibility to stay informedon many of these issues.
So, it's placed individuals likeyourself as responsible.
And if I went to farmer A andsaid you should be doing it this
(20:10):
way, you should be doing it theway you do it, or something
they're going to go, what do youknow about farming?
So you're put in this positionof actually understanding that
it is possible and this is howyou go about doing it, so you're
one of the only credible voicesthat could talk about this.
Yet you're a humble person.
You're working hard, you'redoing what you want to do for
the betterment of society.
Yet we need to see thesechanges long term.
(20:33):
And I interviewed an individualby the name of Paul van
Westendorp who's interested inbeekeeping.
He's a provincial apoculturistand he talked about how, like
our pollinators are still goingdownhill and ever since the Bee
Movie which is kind of, I think,people's peak understanding of
it it's still been going downand we don't talk about it.
And he proposed for cranberryfarmers and various farmers that
(20:53):
you just leave a few plantsuntouched so bumblebees can stay
and live there and still getnutrients throughout the year.
And the response he got fromfarmers was I can harvest that
and make an extra couple hundredbucks.
Like I'm not going to botherwith your stupid plan, even
though it would be better forbees, pollinators and for my
harvest in future years.
Not worth it because I can getmore money today.
(21:13):
And to have those conversationsas a general citizen, we don't
have the credibility that youhave.
So to me you're put in thistough situation of being humble
and doing what you want to dowith your land, to steward it
and take care of it, just seeingother people and knowing that
they're ultimately, in the finalanalysis, going to have a vast
impact on the valley when wesuck out all of the nutrients
(21:36):
out of it.
Paul Van Westen talked abouthow the soil used to be very
rich in nutrients a meter downand that's just been going down
and down and one day it's goingto be, he said, sand, but it's
not going to have any nutrientsin it for us to pull from and it
doesn't feel like there'senough people talking about this
issue.
So to me it just seems likethis back and forth you have of
(21:56):
like talk about it, don't talkabout it is impossible because
it's like, you know, there's anasteroid heading for our earth
and people don't want you totalk about it or judge them for
how they're approaching it, andit's like, well what?
Dan Oostenbrink (22:07):
are you supposed to do?
I mean, yeah, I think it's whatwe need to do is we need to
recruit more followers, and thebest way to recruit followers
and believers in this movementis to get people to actually do
it themselves.
And the challenge with that isthere's so few landowners out
(22:28):
there, you know, and there's alot of land.
The land is in the hands ofvery few.
Our farm is 35 acres.
There are farms in the valleyhere that are 1000 acres, you
know, owned by a single familyand not far particularly well,
(22:48):
and so there is some reformnecessary.
I'm not sure how that reformhappens, but really to rest the
land from the wealthy and todistribute it equitably amongst
the poor, I mean that soundslike a very socialist program
and I'm not in that train ofthought.
I'm, you know, I like thecapitalistic idea.
(23:12):
At the same time, there needsto be a way to bring land from
the few into the hands of many.
But there are people who do ownland, and so maybe that's where
I need to begin is those who doown land need to grow food for
this community on that land, and, I think, modeling and
(23:32):
educating people on how muchfood they can actually produce,
first for their own family andthen for their neighbors, will
eventually pay off.
And I think it has to beprofitable, because if it's not
profitable, few people willfollow it, you know.
And so that's kind of where wehave to begin.
So in order to get more peopleon the movement on this train,
(23:57):
we need to show them thesuccesses and how they can
change a bare piece of land, anold driveway, you know, a
dilapidated, overgrown, weededyou know, weed infested part of
their yard into a verdant foodproducing garden.
And when people see what theycan do and how much food they
(24:22):
can produce on a small space,you know you can change whole
communities.
So we do have entireneighborhoods.
You know people owning smallpieces of land Maybe they only
have an eighth of an acre togrow on, or maybe only a
sixteenth of an acre that canproduce a lot of food and
encourage people to do frontyard gardening right.
So rather than, you know, haveyour garden in the back yard,
(24:44):
put it in the front yard, allowyour neighbors to see and
hopefully other neighbors willcatch on.
And I really do think that thismovement is a grassroots
movement.
It starts from the bottom upand eventually, hopefully, what
happens is we can get morepeople owning land.
(25:04):
How exactly that happens, Idon't know.
Sometimes it takes a crash forsomething like that to happen,
right, not that I'm hoping forany kind of crash or a
catastrophe, but something needsto change.
We need to.
You know milk is a great food.
You know I have cream in mycoffee in the morning and you
(25:25):
can make great cheeses andthings like that.
Our industry in Chillowack andAbbotsford and Langley is very
heavy on dairy.
It's very heavy on blueberries,it's very heavy on, you know,
raspberries is going toAbbotsford and a few other
commodity type foods and I thinkthat's great, you know, I think
that's great agriculture.
(25:46):
But I think we need to be inbalance.
There needs to be a balancehere, and I also think that you
know doing 100 acres of corn tofeed cattle, even though you
know cows need to eat, obviously, and corn is a great food for
cows.
We have a monoculture, and amonoculture is going to invite
problems and the problems aregoing to come in the form of
(26:08):
pest, and then you know, asfarmers we need a one-up on the
pest and that's a pesticide andeventually a stronger pesticide,
and so I'd like to see somebalance in how we do things.
Now the question, people are theretort that people often have
when they, you know, when Iadvocate for this type of
(26:31):
farming that we're doing, whichis, you know, I can best
describe it as growing many,many different types of food on
one property, in small amountsspread out through the year, but
getting abundant yields usingno chemical fertilizers, no
herbicides or pesticideswhatsoever, not even organic
(26:51):
herbicides and pesticides.
So when I advocate for thattype of agriculture, the
response is well, we can't feedthe world like that.
And my response is well, Idon't know about feeding the
world and that's too big of aproblem for me, but I can feed
my neighborhood, and I thinkthat's where we need to begin.
(27:11):
We need to feed ourneighborhood and then our you
know our city, and then, oncewe've achieved doing that, then
we can go beyond.
And the reason that I thinkthere's an unwillingness to head
in this direction of feedingpeople from our own land in this
area is because the labor is,you know, we need a lot more
(27:37):
laborers on the land.
We need to populate the foodproducing landscape.
We know a lot of people on theland, which is exactly what I'm
pushing for, to say, you know,instead of having a 1,000 acre
farm or 500 acre farms, let'ssay there's a you know a 200
acre farm out there, I would wayrather see 10 families on no
(28:01):
100 families farming each twoacres, and farming it very, very
well, because on two acres youhave enough land to feed your
family, you've enough land toput a home, you can become
self-sufficient on two acres.
You might have to live a littlemore modestly, in other words,
(28:21):
the fancy car, but what do youneed the car for?
You're on the land, you'repretty soon enough food.
And then that neighbor nextdoor, if you're short on, say,
they maybe focus more on eggsand proteins, and the next one
focuses more on bees.
Then you can trade within thesystem.
And so when I present this,everybody says well, you're
(28:42):
getting a little romantic aboutthis, aren't you?
How are we ever going to dothat?
Well, by giving up certainthings that we believe is
necessary in our life and livinga more humble, holistic,
neighborly, caring lifestyle,which nobody wants to argue that
that might be a good thing.
(29:03):
So I really do think we, andnot only that, we have the
Fraser River running right nextto us, teaming with fish.
I think we need to fish moresustainably as well.
Then we have the mountain sitesfull of vegetation, a lot of
which is edible and medicinal.
(29:23):
Then we have mushrooms, and wehave deer and elk and bear and
other animals roaming themountains, which harvested
sustainably.
We have so much food in thisvalley.
So can we feed the world usingthis type of agriculture?
No, but I'm very sure we canfeed, we're sure feed using the
(29:47):
land that we have from Hope toVancouver.
We can feed all the inhabitantswithin that area.
We can feed them really, reallywell, and we can have a very
vibrant food system and one thatalso, financially, would be a
huge boon to this area, hugeboost.
Aaron Pete (30:07):
The problem I have with those people who go like,
oh, you're romanticizing this,oh, you're thinking of it this
way, is you're not understandingthe gravity of the problem
because it's getting worse andwe're going to start to
experience it more and more andhave a deeper understanding of
how this is impacting us.
As people's soil becomes dustand becomes unusable, you'll
(30:28):
understand the problem more.
Second is we have to have anarrative.
We have to have a story we tellourselves of where we're going.
If you're going to say you don'tlike this one, give a different
one but, you have to bringsomething to the table, or
disagreeing with you or sayingthat might be a romanticization
is like okay, so then what?
What is your alternative?
You can't just say you don'tlike my idea because I think
(30:49):
yours is right and this issomething we just tell ourselves
.
It used to be you'd say you'regoing to get a home one day and
you're going to own that.
Now we're going.
Maybe that narrative isn't foreveryone.
Maybe not everybody owns a home, and so we're just reducing
what people can expect fromtheir life.
I think that there's a tragedyto that.
With my generation, there'sminds that you're not going to
own a home.
You might as well just give upon that, just rent your space,
(31:11):
and it's like well, where's thehope?
100%.
Even if it's an uphill battle.
You certainly looked at thisand went this is going to be an
uphill battle worth fighting.
We have to agree that there's adirection we want to go in.
It's not going to be easy, butit's going to be meaningful.
It's going to reconnect us withcommunity.
I love being able to go graborganic eggs from a little egg
(31:31):
stand that are $5, and then I gointo a big grocery store and
they're $9 for the exact samequality eggs and you go.
Wait, I thought organic eggswere supposed to be more
expensive, but if you buy themfrom your neighbor it's a
completely different price thangoing into the big place.
That actually does bring us toRestaurant 62, and somebody who
looked at it.
It's so shocking to think aboutbecause we talk about shopping.
(31:54):
Local is more expensive, but hesaw working with you as a more
cost-effective way of doingbusiness.
How did that relationship startfrom your perspective?
Dan Oostenbrink (32:03):
Yeah, that's an interesting one, because we're
up against as a small farm.
We're up against the GFS andthe Cisco's of the world, which
are the big food distributorsthat bring their food from
California, mexico, southAmerica wherever South Africa to
restaurants at bargain prices.
The question is why would arestaurant want to buy from us
(32:27):
as a small farm 20 kilometersaway?
Well, the restaurant 62 is oneof our big supporters, as are
quite a few other restaurants inthe downtown Vancouver area.
The answer is I think it startsfrom a deep conviction that
this is the right thing to do,because they see supporting the
(32:50):
local economy, the local foodsystem in its infancy, which is
where it's at right now, as theonly way to provide hope and a
future for the local area.
Plus, they're feeding localpeople.
But they're also buying fromfarms like us, because they're
(33:11):
getting less food waste, becausethey can order amounts that
lend themselves to what they canuse.
They don't have to buynecessarily a case size amount.
They can buy smaller amounts.
The quality is higher and thefood is fresher, and so there's
necessarily less waste becauseof that and the taste is better.
(33:31):
I think you put those alltogether, plus you got a story
to tell when the customer comesin, if they say this was grown
from Kiesbrecht, this meets fromKiesbrecht farms, the cheeses
from Creekside Dairy and theeggs are from here and the
produce is from local harvest.
(33:51):
That's a much more powerfulmessage you're conveying to your
customers in the store.
You're not just quick and dirty, you care about the people that
are coming into your restaurant.
You want to feed them well, youwant them to have a great
experience and you want tosupport a local economy.
So restaurant 62 has done this,and our pricing is higher on
(34:13):
quite a few items.
We might be lower on items aswell, but amazingly we're able
to compete at a much bettertoday than we have been in the
past, because inflation ispushing food prices up for the
big distributors, but not somuch for us.
My only increasing cost on thefarm is labor, but that comes at
(34:39):
the same time as improvingefficiencies on the farm, so
making those laborers much moreproductive, because we're
learning, we're gaining so muchmore experience, and so our
workers are twice as productive.
But I have an increase, or wage, by twice.
In the last 10 years it mighthave gone up 30%, but so we're
(35:02):
much more productive on the farm.
Compare that to the bigdistributors.
Their prices are way up.
Look at fuel prices.
The instant fuel prices go upthey tag on that fuel surcharge.
You can see on every invoiceand the food that's being
produced in Mexico, california,that are dependent on chemical
(35:24):
fertilizers.
Well, we've seen the price ofnitrogen fertilizer going way up
in the last little bit.
So price of diesel for thefarmers, plus a lot of these
workers in what we often term asthird world countries sometimes
I think that's a misnomer, butwe'll call them what they're
being called right now butthey're demanding higher wages.
(35:46):
So workers are coming forwardsaying I'm not going to work for
pitons anymore, I want a higherwage.
And so all these dynamics areactually working in our favor
because our food prices arepretty much not quite stable.
They are increasing a bit, butso we're able to compete in a
much better way.
Aaron Pete (36:07):
I want to take it really briefly back to family,
because you talked about like Ican't believe they still work
for you.
But I find it so admirablebecause in a time where it seems
like anxiety rates are throughthe roof, depression rates for
young people are through theroof, they're dealing with all
these mental health issues.
It seems like hard work,determination, grit is something
(36:29):
that we're missing.
I used to talk about it fondly,but right now obviously there's
a tragedy going on in Israel,but they have the draft and not
right now.
But one of the benefits of thatis that you work hard and that
you have to be put to the testand you have to put in your best
effort.
And again, that's not sayingthat it's a good thing during
this period, but in shaping aperson, having to go through
(36:52):
tough times is a really goodthing when you're a young person
.
But on top of that, having yourdad being willing to be out
there with you, there's someparents who go, oh, you should
go run around and do stuff anddo your chores and stuff, and
it's more of like you do thatand I don't have to do it.
You being out there with themreminds them that we're a team
in this, we're a family in thisand we're going to work hard.
(37:12):
So I'm just wondering if youcan lay out your family's
involvement in the farm, whatthey do, because people have
taken up jobs that they'reinterested in and then they get
to kind of chase it like thebakery.
Are you able to talk abouttheir work on the farm?
Dan Oostenbrink (37:24):
Yeah, so the kids on the farm.
You know we do everythingtogether and what I've embodied
on the farm is that if there'sdirty work to be done, I'm going
to be in there first, and sothey've kind of copied me in
that and we do the tough workalong right along with our
employees.
And you know, the greatestsuccess comes through adversity,
(37:49):
and there has been adversity onthe farm.
I mean financial.
Meeting our financialobligations is probably the
biggest one over the years.
I mean my dad.
He was very supportive for usthroughout and he covered us
financially and acted as ourbank essentially was really
starting to ask questions afteryear five, six and seven, when
(38:12):
the profits just weren't thereand basically the message was
you make this thing work or wejust can't do it.
It's not a hobby, there's a lotof money going into this, and
so we really had to figure outhow we could stay with our
mission of producing local foodfor the community and at the
(38:34):
same time, making thesefinancial obligations that were
required.
And we did it and it justhappened.
I think people in the communityvalue the hard work they really
do.
Like people who drive by,they're happy to see us in the
field and I think nothing givesthem greater joy because often
(38:54):
it brings them back to theirchildhood, when they worked hard
and struggled, and that's onereason they also know their food
is grown with love and it'sgrown with care, and I think
that makes food taste better,you know.
So those are things that theother challenges that we've had
(39:17):
is just staying on top of theweeds.
You know like it isintimidating when you've got
acres and acres to go throughand you're not using a herbicide
.
You're pulling those weeds,each one individually, and how
do you over?
You know, how do you reduceyour labor.
And so we started incorporatingwhat we call a maltrin or no
(39:38):
tail.
We went the no tail route andthat had huge benefits for
reducing weed pressure, but alsofor higher productivity, more
fertility, and so every time weovercame an adversity, we seem
to be stronger for it.
And so now the kids are, theysee the farm as there's, you
(40:01):
know, and I want it to bethere's because I'm not going to
be here forever and I wantsomeone to take it over who
cares and loves for it, and Ithink nobody cares for and loves
for it like the people who workit and know it and have an
intimate relationship with it,which, again, we're kind of into
the romanticizing of foodproduction, but I cannot
separate the two.
(40:22):
You know, it is really a laborof love.
It's not just a cliche.
That is what's happening on thefarm.
So, yeah, the family's anintegral component of what we do
.
Plus, they know the story of thefarm and we've we know how to
farm the land because we've wehave farmed it wrong in the past
(40:46):
.
We have made mistakes, andbecause the kids were part of
those mistakes, they're notgoing to replicate them.
And and we have had, you know,manure piles that were leaching
into the ditch, which is a youknow happens on a lot of farms.
We've corrected that problemand there have been other
(41:06):
problems on the farm that we've,you know, drainage issues been
a big problem and so we'vecorrected these problems and now
we're higher, you know, moreproductive for it.
Aaron Pete (41:15):
Can you talk about their development and finding
their own passions on the, onthe farm and what they do?
Dan Oostenbrink (41:21):
Yeah, so we, we we have a bakery on the farm.
We we buy all our grains from aneeded organic mill and it
needs organics.
Buys, gets a lot of theirgrains from BC, different parts
of BC and also the prairieprovinces.
So we're using an organic grainand they mill fresh and so that
(41:43):
when they mail you know we'regetting you know flour that's
been milled either the daybefore or two days before and
we're producing sourdough breadswith that.
Now Dustin is the head baker inin the business, and so we've
we've paired the.
The one thing that people cannotdo without is convenience in
(42:04):
shopping.
So if you go to a place foryour, your, your vegetables, and
next place for your eggs andnext place for your, you know
you could be busy all dayshopping around.
People want more or less a onestop shop, and so the bakery was
, was an integral part of thebusiness, and so he learned how
to produce food from, or how togrow, how to bake bread from,
(42:24):
magpie's Bakery, which was abakery that worked with us in
our early days, and Magpie'sBakery is still around in
Chilohack today.
Nick is the head baker there,and so Nick and Chris, they
helped Chris, helped Dustinlearn how to mix sourdough bread
in a wood fired oven.
We were using a wood fired ovenin the early days, which you
know requires you getting up atone in the morning, get the fire
(42:46):
started, get it hot.
By nine o'clock you can do yourfirst bake.
And that's how Dustin had hadgone through his training and he
was 16 at the time he washomeschooled for the last year
grade 12, and that allowed himto to really hone in and gain
his expertise.
Now he also wanted to have afun life that most teens teens
(43:09):
want.
So I, you know, we did what wecan to keep him focused, but
there was a time there when heactually left.
You know, I said I can't dothis, not for me, I don't want
this, it's too exhausting and.
But within a couple of years,around the age of 19, he
returned and he took, took thebakery back and now he's built
it into an, into an amazingbusiness and producing just top
(43:32):
quality.
Like we don't, we don'tcompromise anywhere.
Like we don't buy cheapingredients.
We use real butter from BC,real cheese on the pizzas from,
you know, creekside Dairy, or asmidge cheese down the road.
We use farm ingredients and thepizza toppings are all farm
ingredients.
The meat is from our, our pigson the farm.
(43:54):
So there's there is nocompromise in this work.
You can't substitute forsomething inferior.
It's the best.
You have to only provide thebest in whatever you do, like
with the ingredients, with youreffort.
Yeah, so every aspect is and II think it comes through and in
(44:14):
the taste and people appreciateit.
Aaron Pete (44:18):
When did you go all in?
Because, as you kind ofdescribed, you started from this
position.
You started to see that therewere maybe other benefits.
But now you're all in and youcan see the benefit of putting
yourself 100% into it, not goinghalfway on anything.
When did that become like okay,it's, it's all in, it's not
halfway in anymore?
Dan Oostenbrink (44:38):
Yeah.
So when we we moved intono-till agriculture about eight
years ago so we've been inoperation for I think we've gone
through 11 seasons now so atabout year three, four, we
switched to no-till.
We really we, we we observedwhat nature does.
What nature does is it keepsthe ground covered with a mulch,
like a composting mat over theforest floor.
(45:00):
We simulate that on the farmwith a compost, a breaking down,
a broken down plant material,whether that be in the form of
animal manures or straws or woodchips or anything like that.
We strew the ground with that,with this material.
The second thing we we did waswe we incorporated a lot of
(45:21):
biodiversity in the form ofperennial plants, trees, flowers
to attract beneficial insects.
And you ask, when did you getall in at, at when we started to
see success in that approach?
So when we noticed that wecould come past through the
incorporation or the addition offlowers on the farm you know
(45:44):
from earliest flowers, startingalready in probably May, all the
you know we still have flowerson the farm, we're in late
October with facility and youknow some late blooming
Acanaceas and when we, when wenoticed that we could combat
past and weeds and producegreater food for the community
(46:08):
and recognize the community'sgratitude for that, then at that
point in time we, we were allin.
So I guess that we've been allin for sure for nine years, 10
years, and you know kind of fromthose those early days when we
changed, and I don't think Iwould have been all in if I had
been gone.
If I had gone with the chemicalroute like I talked about
(46:29):
earlier, I don't think it wouldbe far me today.
Number one it wouldn't have beensuccessful.
The population would not havebeen pleased with us, the local
population.
They're looking for food that'sgrown with care.
Like I can.
I can put cauliflower on theshelf.
Today we're October.
What do we have?
October 13.
Cauliflower, we should havethat all the way up until
(46:49):
Christmas time.
That is pure.
It didn't require any sprays.
And typically commerciallygrown brassicas like cauliflower
, broccoli, kale are sprayed.
Brussels sprouts are sprayed,you know, every 10 days with a
concoction of different spraysto combat.
You know the aphids and thecabbage butterfly and you know
(47:10):
club root, and you could startlisting off all the pests you
have to deal with.
We didn't have, we don't have.
Well, we have those pests, butthey're in balance with the
predators and and so we can putthat out in the store.
Like I can pick carrots thatdon't have carrot rust, fly.
You know, disease free carrots,pure, perfect products grown on
(47:31):
fertile land, like oh, sothere's no return anymore.
So I think that had I gone thechemical route, we would have
ended up with soils that weremore depleted.
We would have had increasinglyhigh cost on pesticide,
herbicide use, because when you,when you apply a pesticide,
pests get, get get smart andthey, they adapt.
You know, and then you get, youget what you call super pest.
(47:53):
We would have had an unhappypopulation saying you know
what's going on.
We can eat your food if it'sall sprayed.
You know we want you to bedifferent.
You know you got to bedifferent.
And we wouldn't be able tocompete with the, with the other
farms in the area and the bigcommercial farms.
So we would have been done, wewould have been exhausted.
So, yeah, had we gone thechemical route, we wouldn't be
(48:15):
farming today.
We'd have a valuable piece ofland that we could sell, and
that's what a lot of farmers see.
You know they don't look atland for its its.
You know abundance andfertility, the biodiversity on
the land.
You know the worms and thebeetles and the critters that
are in the soil.
They don't look at soil health.
They don't determine that whendetermining the, the, the value
(48:39):
of the land, it's irrelevant.
It's a square footage or the.
You know the acreage and it'sso much per acre, like if we
sold our farm today I couldn'tsell it for any more than you
know my neighbor's 35 acre farm.
They would you know say they'reabout the worth the same,
because it but one has trees onit, not burying trees as an
(49:01):
orchard on it.
Aaron Pete (49:02):
That's a crazy point .
Dan Oostenbrink (49:03):
You know, like they don't look at it that way,
because I know that if, if, ifour farm would sell tomorrow,
probably the first thing thatwould happen is all the trees
would be chopped down and itwould be planted with corn and
grass next year in a monoculture, almost for sure.
So yeah, they're, they're.
I'm not sure how I got ontothat.
Aaron Pete (49:24):
Can you talk about the the health benefits of not
using these pesticides and stuff?
We hear about it, but from yourperspective, having your hands
in that dirt, what are thehealth benefits people are
getting by eating organic, noGMO, no added stuff to it?
Dan Oostenbrink (49:39):
Yeah, so it just allowed me to give a little
, a short little science lesson.
So plants plants areessentially sugar factories.
Sunlight hits the plant leaf,combines it with carbon dioxide
and water and other componentsand produces carbon sugars or
carbohydrates.
So plants are really carbonfactories and they produce these
carbons and a lot of the carbonthey use to grow, you know,
(50:02):
healthy stems and leaves andflowers and roots and fruit, but
a lot of the carbon sugars thatplants produce they push down
into the soil to feed themicrobes in the soil and
bacteria and fungi in particular, which are kind of on the lower
end of the food web.
They move in to feast on thesecarbon sugars that the plant is
sharing.
(50:22):
Now why is the plant doing this?
Has an ulterior motive.
What happens is these bacteriaand fungi gorge on the sugars
the plants providing and theyreproduce really quickly.
We know bacteria in a petridish can reproduce very, very
quick under the right conditions.
Same thing underground aroundplant roots.
They reproduce and thepopulation of bacteria and fungi
(50:43):
blooms In response to that.
Other critters on the soil foodweb or the food chain come
along to start to absorb these,you know, nutrients into their
bodies.
So these bacteria and in thebodies of bacteria, in the
biomass of bacteria and fungi.
You have a whole host ofdifferent elements and
components.
You could go to the periodictable of elements and start
(51:06):
listing them all off Nitrogen,potassium, sodium, phosphorus,
magnesium.
Everything on the periodictable of elements is locked away
in the bodies of these minuteorganisms, microscopic organisms
.
So when the nematode or theprotozoa or the next level
organisms come along to eat them, they extract the nutrients
(51:26):
they need for their own benefitSome of the carbon, some of the
nitrogen they'll need, butthere's vast amounts of nitrogen
that they don't need.
The nematode, when it eats abacteria, will excrete massive
amounts of nitrogen and so thatyou know, poop or excretions is
deposited around plant roots inthe form the plant needs at
(51:50):
exactly the right time.
So you get this little sugarfactory or this sugar.
What initiated is a sugarfactory, a fertilizer factory,
happening right underneath ourfeet, around plant roots.
So plants, they absorb thesenutrients that are the
excretions of myriads, millions,billions of different organisms
(52:11):
in the soil.
So they're all eating andfeeding and we get this crazy
web that happens Until you comeup to the organisms that you can
see within the naked eye, likemites, small little springtails,
very small organisms that areskittering around on the surface
(52:31):
and below the surface.
They're all eating and feedingon the nematodes of perzo and
lower level organisms andthey're also excreting
plant-available nutrients.
And then you move up to thebeetles and the centipedes and
the millipedes and the spidersand other micro-arthropods that
are on the surface skitteringaround and they're all eating
each other and pooping andexcreting all plant-available
(52:54):
nutrients.
So what the plant initiated assugar that it deposited around
its plant roots now in turn getsthe soil activity, the soil
life, replenish the soil lifebelow the surface and on the
surface.
Because the next you get, youknow, earthworms, for example,
are bacteria consumers, nematodeeaters, fungi eaters, so
(53:18):
earthworms from deep down.
You can take a trench four,five, six feet down.
You're going to find earthwormholes.
They're coming up from deepdown and they are starting to
take in soil around the plantroots because that's where the
carbon is and they need carbonfor their existence, as we do,
because they can't produce itthemselves, because they can't
do photosynthesis.
So they start to absorb thesebacteria, all the soil, into
(53:41):
their bodies, they extract whatthey need and then they excrete
these worm castings which arevery high in magnesium and
sulfur and all kinds of othernutrients, and they're
depositing that right aroundplant roots, they're aerating
the soil, they're creating thesemassive networks and tunnels
around soils and now we getoxygen-rich soil, an oxygen-rich
(54:02):
environment, and birds comeonto the scene, because birds
like worms, birds like beetles,birds like all these other
insects they're depositing largeamounts of phosphorus on the
surface, and so you have thisamazing food web in the soil
that develops from this.
Now why this is so important iswhen farmers apply chemical
(54:23):
fertilizers, plants shut offtheir sharing capacity with
microbes.
Plants are like, oh, I got myfix of NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus
, potassium, I don't need toshare anymore.
I kind of have themacronutrients I need to survive
, not thrive, survive.
So they say, ok, I'm not goingto share anymore, I'm not going
(54:45):
to share any more of thesenutrients with the microbes in
the soil.
So they stop sharing thecarbohydrates that they produce
and the organisms down below thesurface start, and so the plant
doesn't get all thesemicronutrients that it needs the
zinc, the cobalt, more the rareboron, the more rare things on
(55:07):
the periodic table of elements.
And when plants no longer getthose trace minerals now they're
nutrients they get nutrientdeficient, and a nutrient
deficient plant is a banquetfeast for pests.
Pests move in to clear out theweek.
Plants are weak, they can'tfend off these pests.
(55:28):
Pests move in.
A farmer's response to pests isa pesticide, further weakening
the plant, and you could seewhere this all goes.
And so understanding the soilFood web, which is an integral
part of what I talk about in mygardening course when I teach
the gardening course in thespring, is informing people of
the importance of the soil foodweb.
(55:49):
So why don't we tail?
Why don't we take the tillerthrough the field?
Because I don't want to destroythose networks and pathways the
earthworms and the millipedesand the centipedes have created.
I don't want to destroy that,and I don't want to A tiller.
What it would do is someonecoming into your living room and
flipping over the table andbreaking the lights and just
(56:11):
destroying the room, and you,coming home, you can't live in
that environment, and so thenyou have to fix it up first, and
so that's what happens when yourun a tiller through our
gardens.
And so, instead of tilling,what we do is we layer on top.
Just like leaves falling in theforest onto the surface, they
decompose, and that's how we.
(56:31):
That's a system that we engagein on our farm.
So understanding the soil foodweb is crucial to becoming a
good gardener, a good steward ofthe land and a good farmer.
Plus, when we tail, we breakopen the surface of the earth.
Carbon and nitrogen are veryvolatile.
The carbon from the soilimmediately wants to return into
(56:52):
the atmosphere as carbondioxide, nitrogen into the
atmosphere as N2.
So we lose our nitrogen andcarbon, the exact elements that
we need to keep locked away inthe soil.
Everybody's talking aboutclimate change today.
Well, the best way to reverseclimate change is to take the
carbon from the atmosphere andget it back into the soil.
(57:13):
How do we do that?
With plants working inconjunction with soil microbes.
So there's this symbioticrelationship plants have with
organisms down in the soil iskind of a metaphor for life as
well.
I mean us sharing with othersgives us in a measurable return.
(57:34):
The amazing thing with plantsis they're able to, based on
their needs, to change the tastytidbits they put into the soil.
So if a plant needs, say, moreboron or something like that,
then the plant is able to senddown a certain taste, certain
kind of carbohydrate combination, to attract bacteria that have,
(57:57):
say, more boron locked away intheir bodies and then those ones
will produce, and then they canunlock that when they're eaten
by higher level organisms andthen the plants can absorb that
boron in order to produce, say,better flower or better fruit or
better.
Maybe it's really hot outsideand they need a bit more UV
(58:20):
radiation protection and theplant can immediately respond to
those changing environments byasking for help from the
community of life in the soil.
Aaron Pete (58:31):
This has been one of the craziest conversations.
That whole piece right therejust blew my mind.
I love learning about naturebecause we get so distant from
it when we're going to thesuperstore and we're grabbing
our apples.
And, to your point, about thelove and the connection and
seeing you working on the land.
There's something about gettingsomething for nothing Like you
paid $5 or whatever for yourstuff but there's something
(58:52):
about not knowing the value ofit.
That, I think, makes us feelempty inside, that we're not
grateful for it because we don'tunderstand the work that went
into it.
So when we see someone out thereactually working on it, we're
like, man, I wouldn't want to dothat job.
And then our head we're like,well, I need to be grateful for
that, because I don't want thatjob, or I wouldn't be able to do
that myself, or my job is thisand I couldn't do that, and so I
(59:15):
think this is so valuable forpeople.
I'd love to do this again inthe future, because I feel like
we really have scratched thesurface of your knowledge,
specifically with the scientificelements.
I feel, like you have a reallygood grasp on that.
Can you tell people how theycan connect with your
educational resources and followalong on your journey?
Dan Oostenbrink (59:30):
Yeah, so I teach a gardening course every
spring and I used to do a lotmore writing and I love writing
and it allows me to put mythoughts down for myself
primarily, but I haven't beendoing that too much on social
media.
But I teach a gardening courseevery spring and people that are
interested should visit ourwebsite, and it's usually
(59:54):
February, march, april, justbefore the growing season begins
, and I touch on what I call thesix, seven principles of
gardening basic ideas that youcan apply in your garden today
to get instant results.
I mean that sounds likeeverybody wants to sell that to
us, but it really does improveyour ability as a gardener to
(01:00:18):
work with nature and nature'splan, nature's pattern, in order
to produce more food on lessland without inaking back, and
work in harmony with nature andgrow nutrient dense food year
round, like even push foodproduction into those really
lean months like January,february, march, like what are
(01:00:39):
you going to harvest in yourgarden in those months?
Well, it's surprising this area.
You can produce a lot of foodin that area.
So we're also thinking of anonline gardening course.
We've done one in the past andthat kind of fell with a wayside
.
I probably want to resurrectthat again, but for now it's
just an in-person gardeningcourse.
Aaron Pete (01:00:57):
Where would they find that?
Dan Oostenbrink (01:00:59):
Local harvest on our web page.
Just Google local harvest tofind it.
Aaron Pete (01:01:04):
And I know people can follow you on Instagram,
facebook and keep up with yourjourney.
Thank you again for beingwilling to do this, yeah you're
welcome, my pleasure.
Dan Oostenbrink (01:01:10):
It's a fascinating conversation, thank
you.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger
than Me podcast.
Here is your host, aaron.
Aaron Pete (00:07):
Today, we'll be talking about the important role
that farmers play in stewardingthe land In indigenous culture.
It is very important to us tomaintain the land for future
generations and that's exactlywhat we'll be talking about
today.
My guest today is DanOsterbrink.
Dan, you've described yourselfas a designer, gardener, soil
(00:28):
expert, plant person,entrepreneur, biologist,
educators, computer scientists.
Would you mind introducingyourself for people who might
not be acquainted?
Dan Oostenbrink (00:37):
For sure, my name is Dan Osterbrink.
I'm from local harvest marketand, together with my wife and
our children five kids weoperate a market garden
producing food for thiscommunity and for restaurants in
the area, and we also educatepeople on the importance of
producing food using land thatthey own or lease or rent or
(01:01):
borrow or whatever, and teachingthem how to garden better and
produce more food on less spacewith less work.
Aaron Pete (01:09):
When did this become something that you were
passionate about?
Where take us back to excusethe pun, the roots of where this
began.
Dan Oostenbrink (01:18):
Yeah, so I'm 42 right now and we got married
young and we always had a gardenand there was a lot of joy in
gardening and sharing food withothers.
So we send the kids down theroad when they were really small
with a wagon full of food andthey would sell the food to
(01:39):
neighbors, and slowly we're like, hey, this is something we
could maybe do for a living andnever had the opportunity
because we didn't have the landavailable to us to make this
happen.
And I was also in education atthe time, teaching secondary
school, and so there was, youknow, the opportunity just
(01:59):
didn't exist.
And then, when I was 32, sothat's about 10 years ago, 11
years ago the dad approached us.
So he owned a chunk of land onLickman Road, a busy
intersection, and asked if wewanted to start farming there.
And so we, you know, we said yesand it was a pretty big
(02:20):
decision because our kids werequite small and I didn't realize
how much work it would be andhow much, how exhausting it
would be and how much that woulddrain, you know, the energy
from.
You know our energy should havebeen expended towards our
children and I think they gotlost a little bit in this.
But yeah, so we started farmingon this piece of land and
(02:44):
slowly converted what I wouldconsider a fairly nutrient
deficient piece of land Didn'thave a lot of fertility Dairy
farm, which was existing pastureland into you know what looks
today like a you know, foodproducing enterprise who would
grow a lot of different types offoods, vegetables, fruits and
(03:05):
nuts and seeds and all the restfor this community.
Aaron Pete (03:09):
You strike me as a wholesome person, and that's a
word that I care a lot about.
Going door to door.
How did that sort of come about?
We think of old photos andvideos of milk deliveries, and
this seems like it's going backto that idea of neighborly
connection.
Dan Oostenbrink (03:29):
Yeah, I think that what probably keeps us
going on a day-to-day basis isthe fact that we're nourishing a
community and, at the same time, building a community and
becoming somewhat of a communityhub.
And so when you go door to door, these are your neighbors.
You look them in the eye,they're people in your community
, you care about them, and soproducing food for them is, you
(03:53):
know, exchanging a gift for them.
You know giving them a gift andof course there's you know, in
a sense there's no expectationof return.
The return comes about throughtheir thankfulness and happiness
and joy, which is where itreally started.
But then, of course, if you'rerunning a business, it has to
(04:14):
return some financial gain,there has to be some financial
sustainability behind it.
And so you know, really youknow people want our food bad
enough that they'll give ustheir money in return and we're
able to invest that money backinto the farm, into the business
, and do even greater things.
So, yeah, community mindednessreally is at the root of what
(04:37):
we're doing, and we see it whenthere's people milling a boat on
a busy Saturday outside themarket, just having a
conversation.
They just happen to meet thereand it brings together.
It really does bring peopletogether and yeah, so it's a
really amazing feeling.
Aaron Pete (04:54):
One of the interesting things is that food
is often described as bringingus together, so I'm curious as
to what principles you bringthat are unique to you.
What are your vision when youstarted this, when you started
farming, what were some of yourbasic tenants, the rules that
you wanted to follow?
Dan Oostenbrink (05:12):
I think we more or less fell into it, like it
was not as if we went in therewith a list of principles or
values and we said we're goingto embody these principles in
our farming techniques, in ourfarming methods, in our day to
day, you know, going about as wewent day to day.
I don't think that's what itwas really about.
(05:34):
It was just you kind of fellinto it, and so a good example,
I guess, of that is one of therules of agriculture, one of the
universal principles of farmingand gardening and home
gardening is that youincorporate biodiversity on your
property, so you have manydifferent types of plants
growing at the same time.
And initially we didn't reallystart out that way, like we were
(05:57):
more in tune with you know, wewere going to head the
commercial agriculture directionbecause people really said that
you can't grow great foodwithout the use of herbicides
and pesticides.
And I had bought into thatdoctrine and we started growing
and I had bought chemicalfertilizers.
(06:19):
I had bought the herbicides andpesticides that I was told were
needed in order to grow foodbecause you couldn't do without
it.
That was, you know, what wewere told, and early on in our
first year we kind of.
We were literally in the weedsand we were grasping for ways to
(06:40):
keep the farm under control.
We planted two acres ofblueberries, two acres of corn,
or probably more like ten acresof corn, two acres of
raspberries, and we were goingto run a market that would
provide the community with someof the local foods that were
commonly grown in this area, andthen we would supplement with
(07:01):
Mexican, californian food.
You know that we'd import andwe'd just be a market like a lot
of other markets.
So that's kind of where westarted.
And then, you know, we got theweeds, got out of control and
the farm was unmanageable.
And so I hired somebody in Juneof the first year this goes
(07:21):
back to 2013, and he had done aone acre market garden
organically.
And when I hired him I didn'treally know the direction he was
going to go.
All I knew is that he hadexperience in producing food and
I had very little other than ahome garden.
And he said I'll work for you,provided you allow me some
(07:44):
flexibility in how we producefood here.
And the first thing that hesaid was we're going to get rid
of all the chemicals.
And I was.
I mean, I don't really have achoice.
Because he was a good worker,he had some experience and he
had done this before.
So we got rid of all thechemicals.
I managed to, you know, add adiscounted discount.
(08:05):
I returned him back to theprovider and he said the second
thing we're going to do isprobably get rid of a lot of
this equipment that I hadpurchased.
So commercialized equipment.
You know corn planters, you knowbig, big skill stuff,
cultivating equipment, planters,cedars and things like that.
Not that this was a moveagainst technology, but it was
(08:28):
saying our skill was not such,our skill was too small to make
these pieces of equipmentbeneficial to us on this farm.
And he said you know, I'm notgoing to farm on the 20 acres 30
acres that we had, we werecultivating.
He said I'm just going to doone acre.
And I was like well, that'svery little.
(08:49):
You know, how are we going tomake money doing that?
He said I need to show you whatwe can do on one acre, what one
person can do.
And so he took one acre, whichis just under 50,000 square feet
, and he started seeding andplanting in June and by July we
had salad mix, spinach andradishes and things like that
and by June or August we werecoming into you know, some early
(09:12):
carrots and beets and some ofthe early onions and greens that
he had planted were, you know,we were starting to market these
and it, over time, that firstyear, completely shifted my
mindset about how we convertedfood.
Like I remember some of theearly cauliflower that we had
planted, I thought you can'tgrow this without chemicals,
(09:33):
that's what I was told.
You had to cover them withplastic to keep the insects off.
And it turned out that Iremember my son running back
from the field one day, you know, probably August, september,
saying it's ready, it's ready,and he was holding a beautiful
head of cauliflower which wehadn't sprayed.
And it was just a complete mindshift for me that we could
(09:56):
produce a lot of food on verylittle land without the use of
chemicals, without the use ofsprays.
And it completely shifted howwe did food and I'm very
thankful for that awakening.
And I started reading the worksof John Martin Forche.
He was a small market gardener.
Elliot Coleman some of theseother really you know famous
(10:19):
market gardeners who were, youknow, elliot Coleman was doing
market gardening in Maine of theUnited States before.
It was even cool and a novelty,you know and so completely
changed how we did food, and sowe started to observe how nature
grows things, and it does sowith lots of biodiversity, and
(10:43):
so, you know, we incorporate alot of biodiversity on the farm
and, yeah, it's just amazingthings that happen.
So I guess we started off thistrain of thought by you asking
the question you know, whatvalues did we instill or embody
on the farm?
What did we go in with?
We didn't really go in with any.
They developed over time, andso one of those is care for the
(11:06):
land and nourish the land, andthen land will give back to you
abundantly.
Aaron Pete (11:15):
The big one that's standing out to me, though, is a
willingness to change yourperspective.
So many people, they've beendoing things this way, and this
is the way they're told thatit's done and it's hard to buy
into that, and the fact that youtrusted this person making some
bold claims before you wereable to do all of this reading,
before you had all of theevidence that it was going to
work, and then to see it result.
(11:36):
It seems like that would besuch a meaningful experience to
go through and watch thetransition and see the evidence
before your eyes.
Dan Oostenbrink (11:43):
Yeah, dare to be different and dare to try
things that you know one of thefunnest things to do is if
people say it can't be done.
I've learned that you ought totry it and you'd be amazed.
You know you might not succeedentirely, but you might take you
down a different path.
But this, by all means I thinkhas been a big push from Big Ag
(12:04):
is to really, you know, say itcan't be done any other way.
And then there are farmers outthere who are doing it a
different way and are successfulin doing so.
And so, yeah, dare to bedifferent and try new things, to
be surprised what you can do.
Aaron Pete (12:17):
When you moved on to this land, you were in a
trailer and that sounds like itwas a humbling experience.
It was a challenging experience.
Would you mind walking usthrough that?
Because you were willing toface some adversity and then now
everybody's like you're killingit.
You're doing such great work,but you were willing to put all
your values to the test and movein and do this when people
(12:41):
might have said like that'scrazy, that's not a good idea,
that's not comfortable.
Can you tell us about thoseearly days?
Dan Oostenbrink (12:46):
Yeah, we moved from a large home in the country
that was well established, ontwo acres you know, a beautiful
little hobby farm and we movedinto a mobile home that we put
on the property with five kids.
You know it was very tight andwe made it work because we could
recognize a future here andsaid this is a place that we
(13:09):
want to raise a family and growfood for the community.
So, yeah, there was, you know,quite a bit of humility in that
step.
For sure, At the same time,looking at what other people in
our community you know, some ofthe impoverished neighborhoods
in our community, and whatpeople have to endure, we had so
(13:29):
much and so much more.
And so, from that perspective,you know, the amazing thing was
living on great land.
Sure, small little house, butwe had so much because there was
a future here and we wanted tocarve that future and change the
food producing landscape onthat 35 acres of land.
Aaron Pete (13:53):
Your family is a truly strong unit.
When we talk about family, Ifeel like you embody so many of
the important aspects If you'regoing to refer to someone, your
ability to bring your childrenin, support them, and then now
they're working on the farm.
Can you talk about how thatsort of came about?
Dan Oostenbrink (14:12):
To be honest, I'm quite surprised that they're
still working on the farm,because I'm very hard on my kids
.
I think I'm fair, but I demanda lot and I have demanded a lot
over the years and some of thatI regret at this point.
You know there's really earlymornings when you're shaking the
kid awake at.
(14:32):
You know he's 14, 15 years oldand it's a Saturday morning in
the summer and you're trying towake him up at 4 o'clock or 5
o'clock because you know thesun's up and work's got to be
done.
And you put a hoe in their handand you say, okay, let's go at
it, we got to clean up this bedof weeds here.
But at the same time I thinkwhat my kids have seen in myself
(14:55):
and in my wife is a tenacity, adetermination that is addictive
and contagious.
And I think they have also cometo recognize the importance of
the work, because I don't thinkwe wouldn't be doing what we're
doing if there wasn't a greaterpower pushing us forward to
(15:20):
change the way food is done inthe valley.
I mean, we live in one of themost fertile valleys in the
world and you know our land isso great and we have so much
fertility built in.
You know, the Fraser River usedto flood its banks in this area
, and so we have theseincredible mineral deposits and
(15:40):
we have, you know, a lot ofgrowing days, good, great
growing days.
We have rain and abundancetypically I mean, even in the
last couple of years have beenfairly dry, but typically we get
even, you know, these goodsummer rains.
So, and we have, you know, ourcoastal climate allows us to
grow food through the winter, atleast grow food in the summer
and then preserve it in thewinter in our gardens, on the
(16:03):
farm.
So such a great area to live.
We have so much abundance, andyet most of our food is coming
from afar.
You know, if you look at thesupermarkets, there's very
little grown in BC food, letalone, you know, grown in Canada
, I mean.
And then the Fraser Valleybeing just this, you know,
(16:25):
abundantly lush area, and yetwe're producing relatively
little food for this community.
And so I guess that's thedriving force behind what we're
doing is we're trying totransform our food landscape,
and we didn't want to just dothat with talk.
I think there's too much talk,you know.
(16:45):
We wanted to do it with strongaction, and it's easy for me to
be critical of other farms, andI am critical of other farms and
I'm, you know, quiteunapologetic in doing it.
I like my neighbors, I justdon't like a lot of their
practices, and but the best wayto move forward is to stop
(17:06):
talking and start working.
And that means modeling whatyou believe good food production
looks like, and that's whatwe've really tried to do.
And my wife is always sayingstop talking so much.
You know she's always scared ifI come on a podcast or if I do
an interview.
(17:27):
You know someone wants tointerview me.
She warns me beforehand andthreatens me.
You know that.
You know don't stop blasting.
You know knocking other farmersand things like that.
And she's right to some degree,you know.
But sometimes I do want to getmy word in edgewise and just say
the current system we're on isnot sustainable, like in general
(17:49):
, how we're producing food todayis not going to keep working
year after year after year.
We are, you know, we're goingto run out of fertility and the
cost are too great to theenvironment and human health and
all these other things.
So no, we need to change ourcourse.
And so the way I only own, youknow we own 38, I'm going to
(18:11):
call it owning 35 acres.
I'm a steward of 35 acres, youknow I'm not, because when I'm
gone someone else will be onthere.
Is it my kids, is it someoneelse?
I don't know.
But all I know is that duringthe time that I'm given, I'm
going to do whatever I can torejuvenate land, regenerate the
(18:33):
land, produce as much food as Ican, sequester as much carbon as
I can try to bring in, you know, native birds, species of birds
, back onto the farm by growingtrees and snakes and reptiles
and beetles and all the rest.
So I really restored a mindset,right, a stewardship mindset.
So those are the things thatkeep us going every day.
(18:55):
I mean, when land prices werereally high.
They're still really high.
You know, the easy thing for usto do was to capitalize on
those incredible gains thatfarmers had through their land
value, sell it, move on, live ina little home, little property
somewhere else and not work aday in my life.
(19:15):
I mean that was open to us, butwe didn't want to do that.
Number one we love the land toomuch and we got too much work
to do.
So we have no choice but tokeep going and work hard.
So, yeah, together my wife,myself, our kids and some really
really great employees who arehelping us in this endeavor and
(19:39):
there is a there's this reallygreat bond we have with each
other as we work towards thiscommon goal.
It's pretty amazing.
It's really great.
Aaron Pete (19:49):
I'd like to go back to the family thing, but first I
just want to understand this,because from what you're saying,
I feel like people generalcitizens have abdicated their
responsibility to stay informedon many of these issues.
So, it's placed individuals likeyourself as responsible.
And if I went to farmer A andsaid you should be doing it this
(20:10):
way, you should be doing it theway you do it, or something
they're going to go, what do youknow about farming?
So you're put in this positionof actually understanding that
it is possible and this is howyou go about doing it, so you're
one of the only credible voicesthat could talk about this.
Yet you're a humble person.
You're working hard, you'redoing what you want to do for
the betterment of society.
Yet we need to see thesechanges long term.
(20:33):
And I interviewed an individualby the name of Paul van
Westendorp who's interested inbeekeeping.
He's a provincial apoculturistand he talked about how, like
our pollinators are still goingdownhill and ever since the Bee
Movie which is kind of, I think,people's peak understanding of
it it's still been going downand we don't talk about it.
And he proposed for cranberryfarmers and various farmers that
(20:53):
you just leave a few plantsuntouched so bumblebees can stay
and live there and still getnutrients throughout the year.
And the response he got fromfarmers was I can harvest that
and make an extra couple hundredbucks.
Like I'm not going to botherwith your stupid plan, even
though it would be better forbees, pollinators and for my
harvest in future years.
Not worth it because I can getmore money today.
(21:13):
And to have those conversationsas a general citizen, we don't
have the credibility that youhave.
So to me you're put in thistough situation of being humble
and doing what you want to dowith your land, to steward it
and take care of it, just seeingother people and knowing that
they're ultimately, in the finalanalysis, going to have a vast
impact on the valley when wesuck out all of the nutrients
(21:36):
out of it.
Paul Van Westen talked abouthow the soil used to be very
rich in nutrients a meter downand that's just been going down
and down and one day it's goingto be, he said, sand, but it's
not going to have any nutrientsin it for us to pull from and it
doesn't feel like there'senough people talking about this
issue.
So to me it just seems likethis back and forth you have of
(21:56):
like talk about it, don't talkabout it is impossible because
it's like, you know, there's anasteroid heading for our earth
and people don't want you totalk about it or judge them for
how they're approaching it, andit's like, well what?
Dan Oostenbrink (22:07):
are you supposed to do?
I mean, yeah, I think it's whatwe need to do is we need to
recruit more followers, and thebest way to recruit followers
and believers in this movementis to get people to actually do
it themselves.
And the challenge with that isthere's so few landowners out
(22:28):
there, you know, and there's alot of land.
The land is in the hands ofvery few.
Our farm is 35 acres.
There are farms in the valleyhere that are 1000 acres, you
know, owned by a single familyand not far particularly well,
(22:48):
and so there is some reformnecessary.
I'm not sure how that reformhappens, but really to rest the
land from the wealthy and todistribute it equitably amongst
the poor, I mean that soundslike a very socialist program
and I'm not in that train ofthought.
I'm, you know, I like thecapitalistic idea.
(23:12):
At the same time, there needsto be a way to bring land from
the few into the hands of many.
But there are people who do ownland, and so maybe that's where
I need to begin is those who doown land need to grow food for
this community on that land, and, I think, modeling and
(23:32):
educating people on how muchfood they can actually produce,
first for their own family andthen for their neighbors, will
eventually pay off.
And I think it has to beprofitable, because if it's not
profitable, few people willfollow it, you know.
And so that's kind of where wehave to begin.
So in order to get more peopleon the movement on this train,
(23:57):
we need to show them thesuccesses and how they can
change a bare piece of land, anold driveway, you know, a
dilapidated, overgrown, weededyou know, weed infested part of
their yard into a verdant foodproducing garden.
And when people see what theycan do and how much food they
(24:22):
can produce on a small space,you know you can change whole
communities.
So we do have entireneighborhoods.
You know people owning smallpieces of land Maybe they only
have an eighth of an acre togrow on, or maybe only a
sixteenth of an acre that canproduce a lot of food and
encourage people to do frontyard gardening right.
So rather than, you know, haveyour garden in the back yard,
(24:44):
put it in the front yard, allowyour neighbors to see and
hopefully other neighbors willcatch on.
And I really do think that thismovement is a grassroots
movement.
It starts from the bottom upand eventually, hopefully, what
happens is we can get morepeople owning land.
(25:04):
How exactly that happens, Idon't know.
Sometimes it takes a crash forsomething like that to happen,
right, not that I'm hoping forany kind of crash or a
catastrophe, but something needsto change.
We need to.
You know milk is a great food.
You know I have cream in mycoffee in the morning and you
(25:25):
can make great cheeses andthings like that.
Our industry in Chillowack andAbbotsford and Langley is very
heavy on dairy.
It's very heavy on blueberries,it's very heavy on, you know,
raspberries is going toAbbotsford and a few other
commodity type foods and I thinkthat's great, you know, I think
that's great agriculture.
(25:46):
But I think we need to be inbalance.
There needs to be a balancehere, and I also think that you
know doing 100 acres of corn tofeed cattle, even though you
know cows need to eat, obviously, and corn is a great food for
cows.
We have a monoculture, and amonoculture is going to invite
problems and the problems aregoing to come in the form of
(26:08):
pest, and then you know, asfarmers we need a one-up on the
pest and that's a pesticide andeventually a stronger pesticide,
and so I'd like to see somebalance in how we do things.
Now the question, people are theretort that people often have
when they, you know, when Iadvocate for this type of
(26:31):
farming that we're doing, whichis, you know, I can best
describe it as growing many,many different types of food on
one property, in small amountsspread out through the year, but
getting abundant yields usingno chemical fertilizers, no
herbicides or pesticideswhatsoever, not even organic
(26:51):
herbicides and pesticides.
So when I advocate for thattype of agriculture, the
response is well, we can't feedthe world like that.
And my response is well, Idon't know about feeding the
world and that's too big of aproblem for me, but I can feed
my neighborhood, and I thinkthat's where we need to begin.
(27:11):
We need to feed ourneighborhood and then our you
know our city, and then, oncewe've achieved doing that, then
we can go beyond.
And the reason that I thinkthere's an unwillingness to head
in this direction of feedingpeople from our own land in this
area is because the labor is,you know, we need a lot more
(27:37):
laborers on the land.
We need to populate the foodproducing landscape.
We know a lot of people on theland, which is exactly what I'm
pushing for, to say, you know,instead of having a 1,000 acre
farm or 500 acre farms, let'ssay there's a you know a 200
acre farm out there, I would wayrather see 10 families on no
(28:01):
100 families farming each twoacres, and farming it very, very
well, because on two acres youhave enough land to feed your
family, you've enough land toput a home, you can become
self-sufficient on two acres.
You might have to live a littlemore modestly, in other words,
(28:21):
the fancy car, but what do youneed the car for?
You're on the land, you'repretty soon enough food.
And then that neighbor nextdoor, if you're short on, say,
they maybe focus more on eggsand proteins, and the next one
focuses more on bees.
Then you can trade within thesystem.
And so when I present this,everybody says well, you're
(28:42):
getting a little romantic aboutthis, aren't you?
How are we ever going to dothat?
Well, by giving up certainthings that we believe is
necessary in our life and livinga more humble, holistic,
neighborly, caring lifestyle,which nobody wants to argue that
that might be a good thing.
(29:03):
So I really do think we, andnot only that, we have the
Fraser River running right nextto us, teaming with fish.
I think we need to fish moresustainably as well.
Then we have the mountain sitesfull of vegetation, a lot of
which is edible and medicinal.
(29:23):
Then we have mushrooms, and wehave deer and elk and bear and
other animals roaming themountains, which harvested
sustainably.
We have so much food in thisvalley.
So can we feed the world usingthis type of agriculture?
No, but I'm very sure we canfeed, we're sure feed using the
(29:47):
land that we have from Hope toVancouver.
We can feed all the inhabitantswithin that area.
We can feed them really, reallywell, and we can have a very
vibrant food system and one thatalso, financially, would be a
huge boon to this area, hugeboost.
Aaron Pete (30:07):
The problem I have with those people who go like,
oh, you're romanticizing this,oh, you're thinking of it this
way, is you're not understandingthe gravity of the problem
because it's getting worse andwe're going to start to
experience it more and more andhave a deeper understanding of
how this is impacting us.
As people's soil becomes dustand becomes unusable, you'll
(30:28):
understand the problem more.
Second is we have to have anarrative.
We have to have a story we tellourselves of where we're going.
If you're going to say you don'tlike this one, give a different
one but, you have to bringsomething to the table, or
disagreeing with you or sayingthat might be a romanticization
is like okay, so then what?
What is your alternative?
You can't just say you don'tlike my idea because I think
(30:49):
yours is right and this issomething we just tell ourselves
.
It used to be you'd say you'regoing to get a home one day and
you're going to own that.
Now we're going.
Maybe that narrative isn't foreveryone.
Maybe not everybody owns a home, and so we're just reducing
what people can expect fromtheir life.
I think that there's a tragedyto that.
With my generation, there'sminds that you're not going to
own a home.
You might as well just give upon that, just rent your space,
(31:11):
and it's like well, where's thehope?
100%.
Even if it's an uphill battle.
You certainly looked at thisand went this is going to be an
uphill battle worth fighting.
We have to agree that there's adirection we want to go in.
It's not going to be easy, butit's going to be meaningful.
It's going to reconnect us withcommunity.
I love being able to go graborganic eggs from a little egg
(31:31):
stand that are $5, and then I gointo a big grocery store and
they're $9 for the exact samequality eggs and you go.
Wait, I thought organic eggswere supposed to be more
expensive, but if you buy themfrom your neighbor it's a
completely different price thangoing into the big place.
That actually does bring us toRestaurant 62, and somebody who
looked at it.
It's so shocking to think aboutbecause we talk about shopping.
(31:54):
Local is more expensive, but hesaw working with you as a more
cost-effective way of doingbusiness.
How did that relationship startfrom your perspective?
Dan Oostenbrink (32:03):
Yeah, that's an interesting one, because we're
up against as a small farm.
We're up against the GFS andthe Cisco's of the world, which
are the big food distributorsthat bring their food from
California, mexico, southAmerica wherever South Africa to
restaurants at bargain prices.
The question is why would arestaurant want to buy from us
(32:27):
as a small farm 20 kilometersaway?
Well, the restaurant 62 is oneof our big supporters, as are
quite a few other restaurants inthe downtown Vancouver area.
The answer is I think it startsfrom a deep conviction that
this is the right thing to do,because they see supporting the
(32:50):
local economy, the local foodsystem in its infancy, which is
where it's at right now, as theonly way to provide hope and a
future for the local area.
Plus, they're feeding localpeople.
But they're also buying fromfarms like us, because they're
(33:11):
getting less food waste, becausethey can order amounts that
lend themselves to what they canuse.
They don't have to buynecessarily a case size amount.
They can buy smaller amounts.
The quality is higher and thefood is fresher, and so there's
necessarily less waste becauseof that and the taste is better.
(33:31):
I think you put those alltogether, plus you got a story
to tell when the customer comesin, if they say this was grown
from Kiesbrecht, this meets fromKiesbrecht farms, the cheeses
from Creekside Dairy and theeggs are from here and the
produce is from local harvest.
(33:51):
That's a much more powerfulmessage you're conveying to your
customers in the store.
You're not just quick and dirty, you care about the people that
are coming into your restaurant.
You want to feed them well, youwant them to have a great
experience and you want tosupport a local economy.
So restaurant 62 has done this,and our pricing is higher on
(34:13):
quite a few items.
We might be lower on items aswell, but amazingly we're able
to compete at a much bettertoday than we have been in the
past, because inflation ispushing food prices up for the
big distributors, but not somuch for us.
My only increasing cost on thefarm is labor, but that comes at
(34:39):
the same time as improvingefficiencies on the farm, so
making those laborers much moreproductive, because we're
learning, we're gaining so muchmore experience, and so our
workers are twice as productive.
But I have an increase, or wage, by twice.
In the last 10 years it mighthave gone up 30%, but so we're
(35:02):
much more productive on the farm.
Compare that to the bigdistributors.
Their prices are way up.
Look at fuel prices.
The instant fuel prices go upthey tag on that fuel surcharge.
You can see on every invoiceand the food that's being
produced in Mexico, california,that are dependent on chemical
(35:24):
fertilizers.
Well, we've seen the price ofnitrogen fertilizer going way up
in the last little bit.
So price of diesel for thefarmers, plus a lot of these
workers in what we often term asthird world countries sometimes
I think that's a misnomer, butwe'll call them what they're
being called right now butthey're demanding higher wages.
(35:46):
So workers are coming forwardsaying I'm not going to work for
pitons anymore, I want a higherwage.
And so all these dynamics areactually working in our favor
because our food prices arepretty much not quite stable.
They are increasing a bit, butso we're able to compete in a
much better way.
Aaron Pete (36:07):
I want to take it really briefly back to family,
because you talked about like Ican't believe they still work
for you.
But I find it so admirablebecause in a time where it seems
like anxiety rates are throughthe roof, depression rates for
young people are through theroof, they're dealing with all
these mental health issues.
It seems like hard work,determination, grit is something
(36:29):
that we're missing.
I used to talk about it fondly,but right now obviously there's
a tragedy going on in Israel,but they have the draft and not
right now.
But one of the benefits of thatis that you work hard and that
you have to be put to the testand you have to put in your best
effort.
And again, that's not sayingthat it's a good thing during
this period, but in shaping aperson, having to go through
(36:52):
tough times is a really goodthing when you're a young person
.
But on top of that, having yourdad being willing to be out
there with you, there's someparents who go, oh, you should
go run around and do stuff anddo your chores and stuff, and
it's more of like you do thatand I don't have to do it.
You being out there with themreminds them that we're a team
in this, we're a family in thisand we're going to work hard.
(37:12):
So I'm just wondering if youcan lay out your family's
involvement in the farm, whatthey do, because people have
taken up jobs that they'reinterested in and then they get
to kind of chase it like thebakery.
Are you able to talk abouttheir work on the farm?
Dan Oostenbrink (37:24):
Yeah, so the kids on the farm.
You know we do everythingtogether and what I've embodied
on the farm is that if there'sdirty work to be done, I'm going
to be in there first, and sothey've kind of copied me in
that and we do the tough workalong right along with our
employees.
And you know, the greatestsuccess comes through adversity,
(37:49):
and there has been adversity onthe farm.
I mean financial.
Meeting our financialobligations is probably the
biggest one over the years.
I mean my dad.
He was very supportive for usthroughout and he covered us
financially and acted as ourbank essentially was really
starting to ask questions afteryear five, six and seven, when
(38:12):
the profits just weren't thereand basically the message was
you make this thing work or wejust can't do it.
It's not a hobby, there's a lotof money going into this, and
so we really had to figure outhow we could stay with our
mission of producing local foodfor the community and at the
(38:34):
same time, making thesefinancial obligations that were
required.
And we did it and it justhappened.
I think people in the communityvalue the hard work they really
do.
Like people who drive by,they're happy to see us in the
field and I think nothing givesthem greater joy because often
(38:54):
it brings them back to theirchildhood, when they worked hard
and struggled, and that's onereason they also know their food
is grown with love and it'sgrown with care, and I think
that makes food taste better,you know.
So those are things that theother challenges that we've had
(39:17):
is just staying on top of theweeds.
You know like it isintimidating when you've got
acres and acres to go throughand you're not using a herbicide
.
You're pulling those weeds,each one individually, and how
do you over?
You know, how do you reduceyour labor.
And so we started incorporatingwhat we call a maltrin or no
(39:38):
tail.
We went the no tail route andthat had huge benefits for
reducing weed pressure, but alsofor higher productivity, more
fertility, and so every time weovercame an adversity, we seem
to be stronger for it.
And so now the kids are, theysee the farm as there's, you
(40:01):
know, and I want it to bethere's because I'm not going to
be here forever and I wantsomeone to take it over who
cares and loves for it, and Ithink nobody cares for and loves
for it like the people who workit and know it and have an
intimate relationship with it,which, again, we're kind of into
the romanticizing of foodproduction, but I cannot
separate the two.
(40:22):
You know, it is really a laborof love.
It's not just a cliche.
That is what's happening on thefarm.
So, yeah, the family's anintegral component of what we do
.
Plus, they know the story of thefarm and we've we know how to
farm the land because we've wehave farmed it wrong in the past
(40:46):
.
We have made mistakes, andbecause the kids were part of
those mistakes, they're notgoing to replicate them.
And and we have had, you know,manure piles that were leaching
into the ditch, which is a youknow happens on a lot of farms.
We've corrected that problemand there have been other
(41:06):
problems on the farm that we've,you know, drainage issues been
a big problem and so we'vecorrected these problems and now
we're higher, you know, moreproductive for it.
Aaron Pete (41:15):
Can you talk about their development and finding
their own passions on the, onthe farm and what they do?
Dan Oostenbrink (41:21):
Yeah, so we, we we have a bakery on the farm.
We we buy all our grains from aneeded organic mill and it
needs organics.
Buys, gets a lot of theirgrains from BC, different parts
of BC and also the prairieprovinces.
So we're using an organic grainand they mill fresh and so that
(41:43):
when they mail you know we'regetting you know flour that's
been milled either the daybefore or two days before and
we're producing sourdough breadswith that.
Now Dustin is the head baker inin the business, and so we've
we've paired the.
The one thing that people cannotdo without is convenience in
(42:04):
shopping.
So if you go to a place foryour, your, your vegetables, and
next place for your eggs andnext place for your, you know
you could be busy all dayshopping around.
People want more or less a onestop shop, and so the bakery was
, was an integral part of thebusiness, and so he learned how
to produce food from, or how togrow, how to bake bread from,
(42:24):
magpie's Bakery, which was abakery that worked with us in
our early days, and Magpie'sBakery is still around in
Chilohack today.
Nick is the head baker there,and so Nick and Chris, they
helped Chris, helped Dustinlearn how to mix sourdough bread
in a wood fired oven.
We were using a wood fired ovenin the early days, which you
know requires you getting up atone in the morning, get the fire
(42:46):
started, get it hot.
By nine o'clock you can do yourfirst bake.
And that's how Dustin had hadgone through his training and he
was 16 at the time he washomeschooled for the last year
grade 12, and that allowed himto to really hone in and gain
his expertise.
Now he also wanted to have afun life that most teens teens
(43:09):
want.
So I, you know, we did what wecan to keep him focused, but
there was a time there when heactually left.
You know, I said I can't dothis, not for me, I don't want
this, it's too exhausting and.
But within a couple of years,around the age of 19, he
returned and he took, took thebakery back and now he's built
it into an, into an amazingbusiness and producing just top
(43:32):
quality.
Like we don't, we don'tcompromise anywhere.
Like we don't buy cheapingredients.
We use real butter from BC,real cheese on the pizzas from,
you know, creekside Dairy, or asmidge cheese down the road.
We use farm ingredients and thepizza toppings are all farm
ingredients.
The meat is from our, our pigson the farm.
(43:54):
So there's there is nocompromise in this work.
You can't substitute forsomething inferior.
It's the best.
You have to only provide thebest in whatever you do, like
with the ingredients, with youreffort.
Yeah, so every aspect is and II think it comes through and in
(44:14):
the taste and people appreciateit.
Aaron Pete (44:18):
When did you go all in?
Because, as you kind ofdescribed, you started from this
position.
You started to see that therewere maybe other benefits.
But now you're all in and youcan see the benefit of putting
yourself 100% into it, not goinghalfway on anything.
When did that become like okay,it's, it's all in, it's not
halfway in anymore?
Dan Oostenbrink (44:38):
Yeah.
So when we we moved intono-till agriculture about eight
years ago so we've been inoperation for I think we've gone
through 11 seasons now so atabout year three, four, we
switched to no-till.
We really we, we we observedwhat nature does.
What nature does is it keepsthe ground covered with a mulch,
like a composting mat over theforest floor.
(45:00):
We simulate that on the farmwith a compost, a breaking down,
a broken down plant material,whether that be in the form of
animal manures or straws or woodchips or anything like that.
We strew the ground with that,with this material.
The second thing we we did waswe we incorporated a lot of
(45:21):
biodiversity in the form ofperennial plants, trees, flowers
to attract beneficial insects.
And you ask, when did you getall in at, at when we started to
see success in that approach?
So when we noticed that wecould come past through the
incorporation or the addition offlowers on the farm you know
(45:44):
from earliest flowers, startingalready in probably May, all the
you know we still have flowerson the farm, we're in late
October with facility and youknow some late blooming
Acanaceas and when we, when wenoticed that we could combat
past and weeds and producegreater food for the community
(46:08):
and recognize the community'sgratitude for that, then at that
point in time we, we were allin.
So I guess that we've been allin for sure for nine years, 10
years, and you know kind of fromthose those early days when we
changed, and I don't think Iwould have been all in if I had
been gone.
If I had gone with the chemicalroute like I talked about
(46:29):
earlier, I don't think it wouldbe far me today.
Number one it wouldn't have beensuccessful.
The population would not havebeen pleased with us, the local
population.
They're looking for food that'sgrown with care.
Like I can.
I can put cauliflower on theshelf.
Today we're October.
What do we have?
October 13.
Cauliflower, we should havethat all the way up until
(46:49):
Christmas time.
That is pure.
It didn't require any sprays.
And typically commerciallygrown brassicas like cauliflower
, broccoli, kale are sprayed.
Brussels sprouts are sprayed,you know, every 10 days with a
concoction of different spraysto combat.
You know the aphids and thecabbage butterfly and you know
(47:10):
club root, and you could startlisting off all the pests you
have to deal with.
We didn't have, we don't have.
Well, we have those pests, butthey're in balance with the
predators and and so we can putthat out in the store.
Like I can pick carrots thatdon't have carrot rust, fly.
You know, disease free carrots,pure, perfect products grown on
(47:31):
fertile land, like oh, sothere's no return anymore.
So I think that had I gone thechemical route, we would have
ended up with soils that weremore depleted.
We would have had increasinglyhigh cost on pesticide,
herbicide use, because when you,when you apply a pesticide,
pests get, get get smart andthey, they adapt.
You know, and then you get, youget what you call super pest.
(47:53):
We would have had an unhappypopulation saying you know
what's going on.
We can eat your food if it'sall sprayed.
You know we want you to bedifferent.
You know you got to bedifferent.
And we wouldn't be able tocompete with the, with the other
farms in the area and the bigcommercial farms.
So we would have been done, wewould have been exhausted.
So, yeah, had we gone thechemical route, we wouldn't be
(48:15):
farming today.
We'd have a valuable piece ofland that we could sell, and
that's what a lot of farmers see.
You know they don't look atland for its its.
You know abundance andfertility, the biodiversity on
the land.
You know the worms and thebeetles and the critters that
are in the soil.
They don't look at soil health.
They don't determine that whendetermining the, the, the value
(48:39):
of the land, it's irrelevant.
It's a square footage or the.
You know the acreage and it'sso much per acre, like if we
sold our farm today I couldn'tsell it for any more than you
know my neighbor's 35 acre farm.
They would you know say they'reabout the worth the same,
because it but one has trees onit, not burying trees as an
(49:01):
orchard on it.
Aaron Pete (49:02):
That's a crazy point .
Dan Oostenbrink (49:03):
You know, like they don't look at it that way,
because I know that if, if, ifour farm would sell tomorrow,
probably the first thing thatwould happen is all the trees
would be chopped down and itwould be planted with corn and
grass next year in a monoculture, almost for sure.
So yeah, they're, they're.
I'm not sure how I got ontothat.
Aaron Pete (49:24):
Can you talk about the the health benefits of not
using these pesticides and stuff?
We hear about it, but from yourperspective, having your hands
in that dirt, what are thehealth benefits people are
getting by eating organic, noGMO, no added stuff to it?
Dan Oostenbrink (49:39):
Yeah, so it just allowed me to give a little
, a short little science lesson.
So plants plants areessentially sugar factories.
Sunlight hits the plant leaf,combines it with carbon dioxide
and water and other componentsand produces carbon sugars or
carbohydrates.
So plants are really carbonfactories and they produce these
carbons and a lot of the carbonthey use to grow, you know,
(50:02):
healthy stems and leaves andflowers and roots and fruit, but
a lot of the carbon sugars thatplants produce they push down
into the soil to feed themicrobes in the soil and
bacteria and fungi in particular, which are kind of on the lower
end of the food web.
They move in to feast on thesecarbon sugars that the plant is
sharing.
(50:22):
Now why is the plant doing this?
Has an ulterior motive.
What happens is these bacteriaand fungi gorge on the sugars
the plants providing and theyreproduce really quickly.
We know bacteria in a petridish can reproduce very, very
quick under the right conditions.
Same thing underground aroundplant roots.
They reproduce and thepopulation of bacteria and fungi
(50:43):
blooms In response to that.
Other critters on the soil foodweb or the food chain come
along to start to absorb these,you know, nutrients into their
bodies.
So these bacteria and in thebodies of bacteria, in the
biomass of bacteria and fungi.
You have a whole host ofdifferent elements and
components.
You could go to the periodictable of elements and start
(51:06):
listing them all off Nitrogen,potassium, sodium, phosphorus,
magnesium.
Everything on the periodictable of elements is locked away
in the bodies of these minuteorganisms, microscopic organisms
.
So when the nematode or theprotozoa or the next level
organisms come along to eat them, they extract the nutrients
(51:26):
they need for their own benefitSome of the carbon, some of the
nitrogen they'll need, butthere's vast amounts of nitrogen
that they don't need.
The nematode, when it eats abacteria, will excrete massive
amounts of nitrogen and so thatyou know, poop or excretions is
deposited around plant roots inthe form the plant needs at
(51:50):
exactly the right time.
So you get this little sugarfactory or this sugar.
What initiated is a sugarfactory, a fertilizer factory,
happening right underneath ourfeet, around plant roots.
So plants, they absorb thesenutrients that are the
excretions of myriads, millions,billions of different organisms
(52:11):
in the soil.
So they're all eating andfeeding and we get this crazy
web that happens Until you comeup to the organisms that you can
see within the naked eye, likemites, small little springtails,
very small organisms that areskittering around on the surface
(52:31):
and below the surface.
They're all eating and feedingon the nematodes of perzo and
lower level organisms andthey're also excreting
plant-available nutrients.
And then you move up to thebeetles and the centipedes and
the millipedes and the spidersand other micro-arthropods that
are on the surface skitteringaround and they're all eating
each other and pooping andexcreting all plant-available
(52:54):
nutrients.
So what the plant initiated assugar that it deposited around
its plant roots now in turn getsthe soil activity, the soil
life, replenish the soil lifebelow the surface and on the
surface.
Because the next you get, youknow, earthworms, for example,
are bacteria consumers, nematodeeaters, fungi eaters, so
(53:18):
earthworms from deep down.
You can take a trench four,five, six feet down.
You're going to find earthwormholes.
They're coming up from deepdown and they are starting to
take in soil around the plantroots because that's where the
carbon is and they need carbonfor their existence, as we do,
because they can't produce itthemselves, because they can't
do photosynthesis.
So they start to absorb thesebacteria, all the soil, into
(53:41):
their bodies, they extract whatthey need and then they excrete
these worm castings which arevery high in magnesium and
sulfur and all kinds of othernutrients, and they're
depositing that right aroundplant roots, they're aerating
the soil, they're creating thesemassive networks and tunnels
around soils and now we getoxygen-rich soil, an oxygen-rich
(54:02):
environment, and birds comeonto the scene, because birds
like worms, birds like beetles,birds like all these other
insects they're depositing largeamounts of phosphorus on the
surface, and so you have thisamazing food web in the soil
that develops from this.
Now why this is so important iswhen farmers apply chemical
(54:23):
fertilizers, plants shut offtheir sharing capacity with
microbes.
Plants are like, oh, I got myfix of NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus
, potassium, I don't need toshare anymore.
I kind of have themacronutrients I need to survive
, not thrive, survive.
So they say, ok, I'm not goingto share anymore, I'm not going
(54:45):
to share any more of thesenutrients with the microbes in
the soil.
So they stop sharing thecarbohydrates that they produce
and the organisms down below thesurface start, and so the plant
doesn't get all thesemicronutrients that it needs the
zinc, the cobalt, more the rareboron, the more rare things on
(55:07):
the periodic table of elements.
And when plants no longer getthose trace minerals now they're
nutrients they get nutrientdeficient, and a nutrient
deficient plant is a banquetfeast for pests.
Pests move in to clear out theweek.
Plants are weak, they can'tfend off these pests.
(55:28):
Pests move in.
A farmer's response to pests isa pesticide, further weakening
the plant, and you could seewhere this all goes.
And so understanding the soilFood web, which is an integral
part of what I talk about in mygardening course when I teach
the gardening course in thespring, is informing people of
the importance of the soil foodweb.
(55:49):
So why don't we tail?
Why don't we take the tillerthrough the field?
Because I don't want to destroythose networks and pathways the
earthworms and the millipedesand the centipedes have created.
I don't want to destroy that,and I don't want to A tiller.
What it would do is someonecoming into your living room and
flipping over the table andbreaking the lights and just
(56:11):
destroying the room, and you,coming home, you can't live in
that environment, and so thenyou have to fix it up first, and
so that's what happens when yourun a tiller through our
gardens.
And so, instead of tilling,what we do is we layer on top.
Just like leaves falling in theforest onto the surface, they
decompose, and that's how we.
(56:31):
That's a system that we engagein on our farm.
So understanding the soil foodweb is crucial to becoming a
good gardener, a good steward ofthe land and a good farmer.
Plus, when we tail, we breakopen the surface of the earth.
Carbon and nitrogen are veryvolatile.
The carbon from the soilimmediately wants to return into
(56:52):
the atmosphere as carbondioxide, nitrogen into the
atmosphere as N2.
So we lose our nitrogen andcarbon, the exact elements that
we need to keep locked away inthe soil.
Everybody's talking aboutclimate change today.
Well, the best way to reverseclimate change is to take the
carbon from the atmosphere andget it back into the soil.
(57:13):
How do we do that?
With plants working inconjunction with soil microbes.
So there's this symbioticrelationship plants have with
organisms down in the soil iskind of a metaphor for life as
well.
I mean us sharing with othersgives us in a measurable return.
(57:34):
The amazing thing with plantsis they're able to, based on
their needs, to change the tastytidbits they put into the soil.
So if a plant needs, say, moreboron or something like that,
then the plant is able to senddown a certain taste, certain
kind of carbohydrate combination, to attract bacteria that have,
(57:57):
say, more boron locked away intheir bodies and then those ones
will produce, and then they canunlock that when they're eaten
by higher level organisms andthen the plants can absorb that
boron in order to produce, say,better flower or better fruit or
better.
Maybe it's really hot outsideand they need a bit more UV
(58:20):
radiation protection and theplant can immediately respond to
those changing environments byasking for help from the
community of life in the soil.
Aaron Pete (58:31):
This has been one of the craziest conversations.
That whole piece right therejust blew my mind.
I love learning about naturebecause we get so distant from
it when we're going to thesuperstore and we're grabbing
our apples.
And, to your point, about thelove and the connection and
seeing you working on the land.
There's something about gettingsomething for nothing Like you
paid $5 or whatever for yourstuff but there's something
(58:52):
about not knowing the value ofit.
That, I think, makes us feelempty inside, that we're not
grateful for it because we don'tunderstand the work that went
into it.
So when we see someone out thereactually working on it, we're
like, man, I wouldn't want to dothat job.
And then our head we're like,well, I need to be grateful for
that, because I don't want thatjob, or I wouldn't be able to do
that myself, or my job is thisand I couldn't do that, and so I
(59:15):
think this is so valuable forpeople.
I'd love to do this again inthe future, because I feel like
we really have scratched thesurface of your knowledge,
specifically with the scientificelements.
I feel, like you have a reallygood grasp on that.
Can you tell people how theycan connect with your
educational resources and followalong on your journey?
Dan Oostenbrink (59:30):
Yeah, so I teach a gardening course every
spring and I used to do a lotmore writing and I love writing
and it allows me to put mythoughts down for myself
primarily, but I haven't beendoing that too much on social
media.
But I teach a gardening courseevery spring and people that are
interested should visit ourwebsite, and it's usually
(59:54):
February, march, april, justbefore the growing season begins
, and I touch on what I call thesix, seven principles of
gardening basic ideas that youcan apply in your garden today
to get instant results.
I mean that sounds likeeverybody wants to sell that to
us, but it really does improveyour ability as a gardener to
(01:00:18):
work with nature and nature'splan, nature's pattern, in order
to produce more food on lessland without inaking back, and
work in harmony with nature andgrow nutrient dense food year
round, like even push foodproduction into those really
lean months like January,february, march, like what are
(01:00:39):
you going to harvest in yourgarden in those months?
Well, it's surprising this area.
You can produce a lot of foodin that area.
So we're also thinking of anonline gardening course.
We've done one in the past andthat kind of fell with a wayside
.
I probably want to resurrectthat again, but for now it's
just an in-person gardeningcourse.
Aaron Pete (01:00:57):
Where would they find that?
Dan Oostenbrink (01:00:59):
Local harvest on our web page.
Just Google local harvest tofind it.
Aaron Pete (01:01:04):
And I know people can follow you on Instagram,
facebook and keep up with yourjourney.
Thank you again for beingwilling to do this, yeah you're
welcome, my pleasure.
Dan Oostenbrink (01:01:10):
It's a fascinating conversation, thank
you.
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