Frontenac Farming Life: Bear Root Gardens

Feb 25, 2015

By Jonathan Davies

Pat Joslin doesn't call what he does “farming” so much as “homesteading in a village.” Joslin, along with his wife Kate, owns Bear Root Gardens, which began operation in 2014 from their backyard plot in the center of Verona. An Environmental Studies graduate, he has been in the agricultural field in various forms for the past three years and his current focus is on intensive growing, primarily for seed, with the balance going to market vegetables.

The intensive focus is particularly important to Joslin, given the small scale of land he currently has, and it is an approach that is gaining ground, particularly among young farmers and homesteaders with limited space.

“Sustainable farming means many small farms versus a few huge ones,” he says.

However, sustainability in food production is not merely a matter of which system, whether small or large-scale, diversified and organic, or conventional mono-crop, works most efficiently and ecologically. The question of financial sustainability for the farmers themselves is also pertinent in an age where more and more small farms are going out of business.

A recent article in Salon magazine entitled “What nobody told me about small farming: I can't make a living” sheds light on the realities of running a farm business. The author, Jaclyn Moyer, notes that according to USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) statistics, about 90% of American farms rely on outside income to stay afloat.

Likewise, Statistics Canada's most recent data shows that over three quarters of the average Canadian family farm's income is gained off-farm.

Joslin is happy with his location and the challenge of using his yard effectively, and he is happy with the progress they have made thus far. “We're showing what you can do on about a third of an acre,” he says. They are in close proximity to the Frontenac Farmers Market – mere blocks away – which served as Bear Root's main vending point in the 2014 season. Perhaps most importantly, they are a reasonable

distance from Kingston, where Kate works full-time for a seed technology company. Pat, meanwhile, will be entering his second season working at the Kitchen Garden, a certified organic vegetable farm in Wilton this coming spring.

While Joslin hopes to be able to devote himself full-time to his own business down the road, he sees value in having the kind of steady, assured income that off-farm work brings. The threat of crop failures combined with worries about marketing opportunities, which are sometimes sluggish, lend credence to this view.

While working at the Kitchen Garden has helped him gain knowledge and experience that will translate to building a better farm business, he admits that working long days on another farm can mean little energy at the end of a long day for his own gardens. “Our farm always suffers first, ” he says.

Asked if he has any concern that the business will never achieve its potential, given the temptation to leave the weeding to another day or give up after a hard frost when vital income is not at stake, Joslin says that his passion for farming will drive the business forward. “Creating our own model, we can still have our non-farming lifestyle,” he says.

He has the option of going camping in August when most farmers would not dare, and the mantra, “farmhands often make more money than farm owners” currently favours him more than it works against him.

Joslin's approach gives food for thought to farmers and aspiring farmers alike. Certainly, the quest for quality of life at the sacrifice of financial certainty is a difficult balance for most anyone getting into agriculture. “For now, if we look at it as a hobby that we make money at, it's awesome,” he says. “I'd like that to change, but what we are getting out of what we are doing is more than if we were not doing it.”

Jonathan Davies is a farmer himself. He operates a small farm at Harrowsmith with his partner X.B. Shen. Jonathan is contributing a series of articles called Frontenac Farming Life, which profiles the lives of local farmers who are trying to make a living through farming, navigating struggle and hope. If you would like to have your story considered, please contact Jonathan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..