Destined to Farm
Sometimes, there’s just no escaping your destiny. For Luke Sheldrick and Dana Moores, there was no avoiding the life that they are now living. The pair, now married with two young children, agrees “there were just so many serendipitous things that made us feel that it was meant to be.”
It all began with love; a passion for visiting Sheldrick’s family farm near White Lake to the west of Ottawa, when they were not working at their restaurant jobs at The Whalesbone and The Manx Pub in the city. They relished helping with the chores and the harvest. As this love for the land, the produce and the process grew, so did Sheldrick and Moores’ relationship and their informal text list of early CSA box members. At first, there were about five, then 20. During COVID, the food boxes grew to 120 and have now settled back to approximately 80 customers, happy to receive a weekly dose of organic vegetables.
Their destiny was sealed by a book. Sheldrick found a signed copy of The Market Gardener by Quebec author Jean-Martin Fortier on a shelf at The Whalesbone. He was hooked.
So, as their CSA list grew, the two began to consider making farming their life. First, they rented a piece of family land, then, in 2015, they formalized their garden shares and CSA program. They asked Sheldrick’s parents if they could continue to use the family farm name, Terramor.
Then they started to look for a property of their own. One farm they considered didn’t work out, which was a good thing, “as it was too close to Ottawa and we’d never have cut our ties to our full-time restaurant jobs,” Moores says. Then another farm fell through, “which was destiny because although we lived only five minutes away, we’d decided we had to live where we worked,” Sheldrick says.
In the late fall of 2016, their offer was accepted on a three acre farm near Burnstown, 50 minutes west of Ottawa. “Luke didn’t even look at the house,” Moores recalls. “He just took soil samples because he wasn’t even sure we could get the zoning we needed.” Luckily, the southern slope and sandy loam soil proved excellent for growing vegetables, the zoning was already in place and the house was perfect for a growing family.
They took possession Oct. 29, 2016, and the pressure was on. “By the next season, we had to be producing enough vegetables to meet our mortgage payment and supply 60 CSAs, a market and various restaurants,” Sheldrick says.
That first season on their own land, “the locals thought we were crazy. They kept popping in to check on our progress,” Moores says. However, many of their restaurant industry colleagues came out to help and support them. “We just could not have done it without them,” she says. They were paid in vegetables and team lunches. “It was so much fun,” Sheldrick recalls. To this day, a certain amount of the farm labour is still paid in vegetables. Eight people from the surrounding area exchange 48 hours of farm work, for their CSA farm share. This includes eight hours of work that that Terramor food matches and donates to the Parkdale Food Centre; a value of $3,000 in 2023.
With their deep ties to the restaurant industry, Sheldrick and Moores were well set at the outset to supply their former colleagues. “We really love food. It was a nice way to transform our interests,” Moores says. “It happened organically, but still being connected to that world was great. We love to see what chefs do with the food we grow; we like to go and taste it if we can.” Currently, they supply perfect, small vegetables and salad leaves all season long to Arlo, Aperitivo, North & Navy, Whalesbone, Sterling, Cantina Gia, Corner Peach, Play, Beckta, Lumbertown, The Cheshire Cat, Le Poisson Bleu, St. Elsewhere, Heartbreakers, Supply and Demand and Parlour.
On a warm and sunny late September day, Terramor still looks ship-shape. A half-acre of mixed flowers including dahlias, zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons, lisianthus and celosia wave their heads in a gentle breeze as bees buzz happily among them. Thirty-foot-long lines of vegetables sown with military precision disappear in all directions. A couple of large greenhouses are home to tomatoes and peppers, and there’s few signs of the typical hairy end of season gardens that characterize fall. This is thanks to diligent planning for succession planting and the work of eight full time employees, using a minimal-till approach to the job. “What we are doing is incredibly intensive,” Sheldrick explains, “and we want it to be refined and efficient.”
That it is. Moores handles the flowers, while Sheldrick takes care of the vegetables. “There are so many variables with flowers,” Sheldrick explains. “They need to be planted so that they have the same days from seeding to maturity, same height, similar spacing. Whereas with vegetables, it’s easy. I plant a row of lettuce, a month later I harvest and replant with the next crop.” Terramor boasts at least 50 varieties of flowers and about that for vegetables, too.
In the past, the complexity of the chess moves, and planning required to grow from seed, plant, harvest and re-plant over and over again through the short growing season was a painful task saved for the fall; a time when farmers are particularly exhausted. “But I’m so excited,” Sheldrick says with a huge smile. “I’m teaching people to use a new software called Heirloom, a crop-planning program to accomplish this task.”
“I’m getting a second wind: I’m reinvigorated by this software,” Moores says. “One of the most difficult elements of farming is crop planning. It will lift a bug burden from farmers, as a lot of farmers [have small farms] like us and they want to get the most out of their acreage.”
While all seems in perfect harmony at Terramor, it’s been years of back breaking, physical work to reach this place of apparent order and relative tranquility. “We’ve really bootstrapped it,” Sheldrick says. “Each year, we’d ask ourselves how many new tarps we could afford, how many blue boxes we had to buy, how much insect netting and row cover. We are only just getting winter water in the greenhouse, and we dream of another greenhouse, one day, for flowers and a committed nursery.”
Three years ago, the couple managed to install automated rolling sides on their greenhouses. “It’s one of the best investments we’ve made,” Moores says, “because our life revolved around rolling up and down the sides. It’s given us a more balanced life and done wonders for our mental health. Farmers are renowned for burnout, and this changed it for us.”
Certainly, Moores, Sheldrick and their crew seem an exceptionally happy bunch with high morale. Six of the eight employees are returning team members from last season. “We are passionate about a positive working environment,” Moores says. “We make a concerted effort to keep it light and happy.”
For Sheldrick, there’s another sign that he’s living his best life — it’s come full circle. This winter, once he’s hung up his gloves and spade for the season, he’ll be teaching a course for The Market Gardening Institute.
What is more, the two feel a certain security in what they are doing these days. COVID produced a boom, with people rushing to secure their CSA boxes, “then a COVID hangover as demand dropped. Other sales avenues are growing — retail and market stalls. Some people like the surprise of a box, but there’s a growing percentage of people who like the culture of going to the market, much as they do in Europe,” Moores says. They sell at the Burnstown, Carp and Arnprior Farmers’ markets. “The stores are so over-priced, and people are waking up to the issues of food security,” Moores explains. “People are realizing that food from their local farmer is better, healthier, tastier and has comparable pricing.”
Terramor Farm
1004 Dickson Rd., Renfrew
terramorfarm.com | @terramorfarm
