Producer/Supplier of the Year: Hazelmere Organic Farms

By David Godsall

For Gary and Naty King, organic farming is not a new idea. They’ve been doing it on their six-acre South Surrey farm since 1984 and the techniques they use are older still. Gary grew up on a Veteran’s Land Allowance property in Abbotsford where his father kept a robust vegetable garden. When he and Naty decided to abandon their corporate careers (Gary had a commodities trading business and Naty was a VP at a foreign exchange firm) and start Hazelmere Organic Farms, the plan was to grow enough food to provide family, friends and neighbours with fresh produce without using industrial fertilizers or pest control agents, relying instead on traditional soil husbandry methods.

Gary chafes at the notion that farming is something that’s done either the “conventional” way or the “organic” way. Although Hazelmere’s beets, leeks, celery root and rhubarb (and more than a hundred other species of flora) are certified organic, they are the product of farming practices that predate the distinction by centuries. He acknowledges that what he and his wife do is far from “conventional,” but stresses that Hazelmere is really just about taking care of the soil. They plough as rarely as possible—usually only to turn over a cover crop—and, for added nutrients, use the highest quality compost available.

Hazelmere is also, for Gary and Naty, about a lifestyle. At its biggest the farm spanned 40 acres, but it’s been incrementally downsized: the couple felt they’d become “administrators” when they wanted to be farmers. With devoted customers like John Bishop and Aurora’s Jeff Van Geest, more than two decades as a supplier to Capers markets, and products featuring regularly in award-winning dishes, they’ve clearly sown the right seeds.

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