A brief history…
Crooked Horn Farm began in the spring of 2009 when two brothers, Gord and Dean, and their partners Ange and Rebecca, finally decided to put years of animated talk into action. Ditching our former city lives in Vancouver and Victoria, we found a beautiful farm on the pristine Slocan River in the town of Winlaw, BC. We jumped right into farming, eager to start our new lives as market gardeners. Our growing practices have come about through the desire to lead a healthy, sustainable, veggie-filled lifestyle, along with concerns about our increasing lack of food security, the prevalence of unlabeled GMOs in our food system, and increased chemical use in agriculture.
We believe that small-scale farming, using the most natural organic techniques, is one of the most significant things that we can do to contribute to a local economy, diverse ecosystem, and healthy lifestyle. Avoiding synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, we instead focus on a diversity of food crops, a well-planned crop rotation, and a variety of green manure crops (grown solely to add nutrients and organic matter to the soil). Large wild areas of our farm are left alone, in order to encourage a rich ecosystem of beneficial insects and birds for pest control. We have a special interest in heritage and heirloom vegetable varieties, and hope to share our enthusiasm for purple cauliflower, pink carrots, dragon tongue beans and purple potatoes. We are now Certified Organic (through KOGS).
We are located just south of Winlaw in the Slocan Valley, right on the pristine Slocan River. We have about 6 acres of fenced land for cultivation and a greenhouse, along with wooded areas, streams and ponds. There is an abundance of wildlife on the farm, including turtles, frogs, snakes, muskrat, deer, bears, coyotes, red squirrels, foxes, bald eagles and dozens of other birds. We produce a wide variety of fresh market produce including carrots, beets, squash, spinach, chard, kale, broccoli, turnips, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and more. Gord produces organic oyster and shiitake mushrooms.
Thanks for supporting your local young farmers!
-Gord Spankie, Angela Weir, Dean Spankie, and Rebecca Sargent