Community Farming Options in the Ottawa Region

The days are getting longer and sunnier, and we’re starting to see the soil again—now is the time to think about growing and gardening! You’ve likely heard of community gardens and community supported agriculture (CSA) vegetable box subscription programs. But have you heard of a community farm?

Our region is lucky to have two community farm programs. They work like a combination of a CSA and a community garden to be a sort of grow-your-own CSA veggie box. In this way, community farms offer a different range of benefits that could be a better fit for some growers/eaters.

Community gardens are wonderful ways to grow food in the city. But they may not be a great fit for everyone interested in growing food. For example, community garden beginners can feel overwhelmed if they need to figure out the basics by themselves or with the help of books, videos, or friends and family with more experience than you. While some community gardens are well-attended—with friendly and knowledgeable people, or learning events that can help you get started and provide knowledge of what to do throughout the growing season—others are smaller and don’t have those resources. In comparison, a community farm program offers a more structured way to grow vegetables while learning within a group of people. It can be a great fit for beginner growers.

The community farms in our area are essentially six-month long weekly or bi-weekly gardening and farming workshops. When you sign up, you’ll pick a “home shift” on a day of the week where you’ll come to the community farm at the same time as about ten other participants and one or two shift coordinators who host the shift. Shifts are at different times throughout the week and last 3.5 hours, and missed shifts may be made up by coming a different day. But coming on a consistent day can allow you to work with the same group of people week after week.

Meanwhile, shift coordinators work together behind the scenes to develop a farm planting-and-harvest-plan and figure out which farming tasks need to be completed by each shift group each week. This means that community farm program members are able to just show up for your shift and learn a bunch of new farming and gardening tasks and skills, like bed preparation, soil fertility, weeding techniques, direct seeding vs transplanting, mid-season plant care, thinning, and harvesting. The set of tasks will change each week, and the coordinator’s job is to find a match between the tasks that need to get done, and the skills, knowledge, weather, and accessibility needs of their group.

Experienced gardeners or farmers, as many community farm participants are, might still find community farm programs to be a great fit, and their knowledge and skills are valuable contributions to the overall learning environment of the program. Some participants know a lot about certain crops, or have experience with managing insects, or know how to cook a certain crop.

The diversity of skills and knowledge in the groups provides an opportunity for everyone to be both a teacher and a learner, to give and receive based on our strengths. This idea points to my favourite aspect of community farm, which is that it combines so many experiences that humans need on a regular basis in one! I love that I can get to know a variety of people with different life experiences than me and see them every week. I love that I can use my body, often getting real exercise if I want it, to do purposeful tasks. I love the “comm farm magic” of having a seemingly huge task like spreading a 100 ft long tarp or weeding a giant patch of carrots, and getting it done so fast because many people are working on it together and feeling the shared accomplishment. I love seeing the same land change throughout the season. I love having my hands in the soil and eating the food that I grew with the help of others. I love getting to share my skills and learn from others. I feel like I belong and matter at community farm. And finally, but very importantly, as food prices continue to rise and more and more people rely on food banks to get by, community farm programs are the most affordable and fun source of fresh, organic vegetables in the entire region!

If any of this sounds exciting for you, I invite you to explore the two community farm programs in our area. There is the Growing Together Community Farm (formerly a program of Beetbox Farm Cooperative) located in the west end of Ottawa off of Carling Ave, which is the original program and has been running since 2020. Communication at Beetbox is conducted in English. New this year is the Veggie Collective/Collectif Végé, which has been started by some of the same people behind the original program. This program is located between Hull and Aylmer in Gatineau and is conducted in French and English.

Each program is $350 for the whole season of weekly veggies. Growing Together Community Farm also has half shares, where you can come every other week, priced at 60% of a full share, as well as multiple price points to help make the program more affordable to more people. Registration for both programs is open now via the links above. The program season starts in early May and runs into October.

Emily LeGrand has been a coordinator of the Beetbox Community Farm/Growing Together Community Farm program since 2022 and is a coordinator with the Veggie Collective/Collectif Végé program.