Growing by Design

While their troubles might not melt like lemon drops, Zach Loeks and Kylah Dobson are living and working the land they once dreamed of and singing their own lullabies. This hard-working, food-loving, husband-and-wife team own and operate Rainbow Heritage Garden, an innovative farm with award-winning practices, located on this side of the rainbow. That's right: it's in Cobden, Ont. By their ingenuity and creativity, they are cultivating a life for their young family on a farm that is digging deeper into that magical connection between the soil and the food it produces.

Loeks and Dobson are ardent practitioners of permaculture, a set of agricultural and social-design principles inspired by the patterns that occur in natural ecosystems. In fact, permaculture principles drive virtually everything they do on their 50-acre farm, from cultivating quality produce for their CSA members to caring for the land and educating people about food and farming.

Permaculture centres on the idea of working with nature instead of against it, observing it thoughtfully and maximizing useful connections among land, plants, wildlife and other elements to create a designed, synergistic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Loeks says it’s an approach that helps reduce waste, makes better use of local resources, builds better soil and ecosystem health and works with nature to grow more food with less work.

Take a carrot, for example. One bite out of a fresh-picked carrot and you get a mouthful of tasty, nutritious food. But making food isn’t all the plant does. For one thing, its colourful taproot helps break up the soil. Its feathery green tops make good mulch and its white flowers produce nectar for pollinators. “Once you’re aware of all the services a crop provides, you begin to see how it works with other crops in mutually beneficial ways,” says Loeks. “Then you can start to design a sustainable food landscape, whether you’re a farmer or a backyard vegetable gardener.”

"Permaculture applies to farming and gardening, but you can apply it to anything,” he adds. “It promotes long-term sustainability by allowing you to get multiple functions from any one investment.” And when he said anything, he meant it — he even applies it to the farm’s use of Rubbermaid storage bins. “Not to get hippy-dippy about it, but a storage bin has innate energy that should be-respected. For example, in winter, we use the bins to make ice blocks for our root cellar that keep the produce cool all summer. Later on in their lifecycle, when the bins aren’t as good for carrying things, we store veggies in them.”

The couple’s dedication to permaculture, along with their energy and hard work, has yielded impressive results. In the 10 years since they launched the CSA, they’ve grown it to 150 regular members. They raise more than 100 kinds of vegetables (plus many varietals of each), along with fruits, nuts, grapes, berries and seeds and also cultivate 80 types of garlic, making them perhaps the most biodiverse garlic producer in Canada.

Their farm and time is devoted to educational purposes too. Each year, they train apprentice farmers onsite and host thousands of visitors who come to the farm for seasonal celebrations, kids’ camps and workshops on cooking and wellness, organic gardening, permaculture, farm design, root cellaring and off-grid living.

The pair has won two Premier’s Awards for Agri-Innovation — one in 2010 for its unique off-grid energy system, and the other in 2014 for the 640-square-foot commercial in-ground root cellar where they store produce at optimal temperatures year-round. These innovations have made Rainbow Heritage Garden one of a handful of farms in North America that operates almost entirely with renewable solar, geothermal and gravity-fed energy.

Besides farming and teaching, Loeks consults on farm and market garden development, teaches soil science at Algonquin College, and is in the throes of writing and illustrating his first book, The Permaculture Market Garden, slated for publication this fall.

Dobson has just become a certified holistic nutrition therapist, adding further value to the cooking and nutrition classes she conducts in the farm’s commercial kitchen. A trained yoga instructor, she intends to introduce yoga to the farm’s roster of classes this year.

In line with their permaculture beliefs, she and Zach regard their various food production and education activities as mutually beneficial ways to enhance the farm’s resilience and profitability. “Resilience depends on balancing your profit centres,” Zach points out. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket... and have more than just eggs in it!"