News and Features
Green Acre
By Darcy Smith published Apr 1, 2011
A farming collective takes back the soil on East Hastings Street
Ken Vallee makes an unlikely farmer. But after the many career paths he's wandered down (chef, massage therapist, builder), this one seems to be sticking. The 40-year-old Downtown Eastsider was hired in 2010 as a farmer and fix-it man for SOLEfood-the first downtown farm in Vancouver capable of full-scale food production, meaning (unlike community gardens) it sells its produce. The farm itself occupies a half-acre lot next to the Astoria Hotel on East Hastings; if you linger by the fence, as many curious passersby do, you'll see earth in raised beds, hoop houses, and a greenhouse, all built and maintained by local folks like Vallee, who says-coming off two surgeries and what he calls the worst year of his life-that he's proud of his work. "Most people talk like their lives make a difference," he says, surveying delicate late-winter sprouts of kale. "Mine actually does."
Three years ago, SOLEfood (the acronym stands for "Save Our Living Environment") was just an idea germinating in the minds at United We Can. The enterprising Downtown Eastside eco-pioneer best known for the Hastings Street bottle depot wanted to expand its green initiatives. Progress was slow, but when it brought Salt Spring Island-based urban farming guru Michael Ableman onboard, he took project manager Seann Dory and friends in hand. They had too many goals: feed the community, green the city, hire the locals. Ableman forced them to focus on priorities (local jobs), and a year in, the discipline is paying off. SOLEfood grows kale, radishes, spinach, tomatoes, and peppers to sell at the Trout Lake, Kits, and Terminal Avenue farmers' markets and to local restaurants like Boneta, Radha, and wine-and-cheese bar Au Petit Chavignol just down the block.
The farm donated a small portion of the food it produced last year (1,000 pounds) to community groups like the Potluck Café, but it's no charity. Though it appreciates donations, mostly from Vancity and Nature's Path, and has received money and land from the green-minded city government (grants subsidized construction and initial setup), it already supports its eight employees with revenue gained selling 10,000 pounds of food in 2010. Ableman predicts it will be economically self-sufficient in three years.
