We have a Farm Stand – June 1st 10am-2pm

Posted on May 30, 2025 | Leave a comment

The Eco-Sense Farmstand is set to open Sunday June 1, 2025. We’re absolutely thrilled to invite our wonderful community and friends to our nursery’s spring plant sale and the grand opening of our cob farmstand. Our gate will open from 10am to 2pm on Sunday June 1st and we hope to see you there!

Our farm stand will carry an array of organically grown seasonal produce from our land, organic rainbow eggs, vegetable starts, herbal remedies, cut flowers and more!

Our farmstand will be stocked throughout the week. For the latest nursery and farmstand updates, visit:
www.instagram.com/EcoSense.Nursery
www.facebook.com/EcoSense.Nursery

Here’s a quick list of the vegetable starts we’ll have for offer at the farm stand. Self serve and open during daylight hours from June 1st onward:

  • Large in bloom tomato plants in 1 gallon pots
  • pepper plants in 4″ pots
  • Pickling cucumber starts
  • Long cucumber starts
  • Romanesco Zucchini starts
  • Yellow bush zucchini starts
  • Oca, Cinnamon Vine, Ground Nut, broad leaved French Sorrel, walking onions, nodding oil, Horseradish, and more.
  • all kinds of cabbage starts
  • Broccoli starts
  • Basil

Having a farm stand right here on the land fits perfectly into our local living goals. We love connecting with people and talking about food and community.  Acting as a resistance to the chaos and offering a return to community-rooted food systems and place-based living. It allows us to share abundance with our community, fostering resilience through accessible, nutritious, and affordable food, while strengthening local economies and food networks. It simply makes sense in a time when scarcity seems all too common.

Our edible tree  nursery remains open by appointment only. To schedule a visit, please email Ann at Ann@eco-sense.ca.

Now for a little spring “UNHINGED” update!
The homestead is bursting with life. This spring, we welcomed three baby goat kids: one beautiful little girl named Nova, born to our goat Dabba, and two kids from our sweet Lena, who freshened for the first time this year.

Nova and Dabba have since found a loving home with another passionate, local homesteader. Meanwhile, Lena’s kids, Nootka Rose (a doe) and Nettle (a buck) are still seeking their forever homes. Please reach out to Ann if you’d like to welcome one or both of our beloved goats into your life.

Bethany has also raised twelve new chickens to increase our flock. Six Moss Eggers, three Rhode Island Reds, and three SLS Browns. We’re so excited for them to start laying, bringing even more rainbow eggs to the farmstand. These hens have been lovingly hand-raised and are so friendly that it’s nearly impossible to enter the coop without a chicken hopping onto your lap.

Ann has been deep in the soil, bringing this years vegetable gardens to life. Right now you can often find her with dirt on her hands and a cat by her side. Gord is still busy working on various projects on the land (doing the heavy lifting), and at his desk designing water systems and fulfilling his duties as Chair of CRD Water.  Gord is amazing…and luckily, he caved in to our farm stand dreams.

Gord initially put up barriers for the farm stand…then this appeared:

Still no farm stand.  Then Bethany put the pressure on:

Poor Ann cannot un-see this…

Gord caved…and the farm stand began.  Then Bethany went back to her desk for a more creative image:

Bethany is truly unhinged.  Our life is indeed full of humour…a coping mechanism for the state of the world.

The new farm stand is still being finished but the cob and earth plaster have been applied and the living roof is beautiful.  Gord is just installing a walking gate for farm stand customers and we are redoing our rolling gate.  The address sign will be reinstalled on a new driveway sign.

This year we look forward to to keeping our farm stand stocked with all the abundance on this beautiful land.

Hope to see you on Sunday June 1st.

Ann, Gord and Bethany

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Bethany is Here.

Posted on April 1, 2025 | 1 comment

It’s spring and the Farm Fetus has arrived.  For anyone who has watched Clarkson’s Farm this will conjure up images of a young strong, bright and stubborn young person.  What you might not know is she is taller than Ann and I, and has meant all our pruning over the past years to the 5’8” height are being adjusted up a bit.  Rather than us explain this in a post we will extend the farmbilical cord to the fetus.  

Hello everyone, I would like to introduce myself. I’m Bethany, the newest member of the Eco-Sense clan! I am a passionate horticulturalist, permaculture teacher, herbalist and all-around plant nerd. I run an organic gardening company called Garden Alchemist and when I’m not in a garden or teaching at the Pacific Horticulture College, you will usually find me on a hike (taking photos of wildflowers or mushrooms) or on the back of my motorcycle.

I love to teach classes, workshops and have regular speaking engagements. The next one on April 12th is on Wildfire Resilient Gardening.

Registration and more information can be found HERE.

Stay tuned for possible workshops and volunteer opportunities on the Eco-Sense homestead.

It’s been a while since we’ve shared an update, and I wanted to fill you all in on what we’ve been up to here on the homestead. It’s been a busy year at Eco-Sense, to say the least. Thankfully it’s been such a joyful one, filled with laughter, community building, and of course… goats!

For over a year, I had been volunteering at Eco-Sense, helping Ann in the garden and nursery and lending an extra hand to Gord with whatever projects he had going on. Over time, we all realized we had found a family-like bond in each other and in September 2024, I officially moved onto the land and into the house with Ann and Gord. Now, it feels like each day we share meals, skills, stories, and laughter. Every day I learn something new including carpentry skills, learning to graft fruit trees, ferment garden harvests, milk the goats, raise chickens and even how to plot the perfect snowball ambush on Gord… which is a story for another day. I’m grateful for the chance to share my passions with them as well from making herbal medicine, homemade salves and soaps, going foraging on hikes and lending a hand with my technological expertise.

Many evenings are spent with a glass of homemade cider, brainstorming ideas for the land and conversing about the state of the world. Despite the political, environmental, and economic uncertainty of the moment, life is rich, and our sense of community feels strong. I think I can safely speak for all three of us when I say that we all share the view that one of the best ways to build resilience in a fragile world is through community. Surrounding yourself with kind, like-minded people who can uplift you when things get tough is one of the most powerful forms of resilience…that and building integrated local food systems.

I had mentioned that much has been going on here this past year and it’s hard to know where to begin, I suppose a good place to start would be last spring after we shared our last update. Spring 2024 brought an abundance of new life to Eco-Sense, mostly in the form of goats! Two of our does, Lyca and Gemma, gave birth to healthy twin kids, doubling our goat population seemingly overnight. Moss, Milo, Mica, and Marble have since found new loving homes across Vancouver Island, where they’re thriving in their new herds.

After the kids were weaned, we were swimming in milk — not literally, but it sure felt that way some days! Thanks to Ann’s constant efforts, we now have a fully stocked cheese cave, and we’ve enjoyed many evenings eating homemade goat milk ice cream. What abundance this land shares with us!

We also raised a new batch of chicks to grow our flock. Some of them didn’t have the easiest start in life and others didn’t have the easiest end, thanks to a Cooper’s Hawk that has taken up residence nearby. Thankfully the hawk has moved on.

The gardens have been equally abundant. The fruit and nut trees that Ann and Gord began planting 18 years ago are now producing massive harvests and, on some days, food is literally falling from the sky! Ann experimented with a few new crops in the garden last year, like watermelons and eggplants, and I added my own touch to the gardens with more flowers and copious amounts of pepper plants. My seemingly uncontrollable habit of bringing home new varieties of pepper plants led us to making our first batches of homemade fermented hot sauces and making our own cooking spices like smoked paprika, and chipotle, which we can’t imagine living without now. 

We’ve been sharing the land’s abundance with our local Highlands community at the spring, summer, and fall markets and although I’ve lived in the Highlands for 10 years, it’s only recently that I’ve started to feel connected to the community here. After meeting so many smart, nature-loving people, it fills my heart with even more joy and reminds me how special this little-known part of the world is.

Another exciting way we’re planning to share the abundance is through a farm stand at Eco-Sense! Ann and I are buzzing with excitement about this project even though Gord doesn’t talk about it all day, every day like Ann and I do... I know he is excited too, (Gord’s input: What farm stand…news to me).  We hope to offer fresh fruit and veggies, annual vegetable starts, cut flower bouquets, homemade teas, herbal remedies, dried fruit, hot sauces, cartons of organic rainbow eggs, and much more. We don’t have an official opening date yet, but we’re hoping for late spring or early summer 2025. 

The farm stand will be in the existing Eco-Sense nursery, which we’ll continue to run but with a few changes. This year I am being mentored on how to manage the nursery, and in 2026 I will be primarily responsible for it. We have recently updated our nursery stock list (check it out here) and I’ve also created new social media accounts for the nursery and future farm stand. I encourage you to follow us at @EcoSense.Nursery on both Instagram and Facebook to see what we get up to and to keep your eyes on what’s for sale. I hope to see some of your smiling faces around the nursery and farm stand soon!  For now, you can still contact ann@eco-sense.ca to set up a plant appointment.

Thank you for keeping up with our journey, I promise to write more regular updates since we have some other big projects in the works, which we’ll share more about soon, so stay tuned!

With gratitude, 

Bethany

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Limits to Goats

Posted on April 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

Well here we are at the end of April 2024 and all hell is about to break loose both here on the homestead and with record breaking heat, droughts, and fires in BC and around the world.

But first…a quick note from our sponsor…Mother Earth…

Please plant more trees.  hehe.  The Eco-Sense Nursery is open for one day (no appointment required).

  • WHERE: 3295 Compton Road
  • When: April 28th from 10am – 2pm
  • What: Plant list
  • Why:  We don’t want to try and keep all these plants in pots alive in a very hot/dry summer AND we want you to grow food AND Mother Nature wants you to sequester carbon.

Gemma

On the homestead, hell breaking loose is not really the right phrase…unless you’re talking about baby goats breaking loose from pregnant momma’s. Or breaking loose when I forget to latch the barn door.  Our biggest momma goat is Gemma and this is her second “freshening”, meaning she is very likely to have 3 or more “kids”… little hellions.  Gemma is due in 3 weeks on May 18th.  This is the same day as Bob’s 100th birthday party… Highlands legendary centarian.

Four days earlier on May 14th, “Cloud” our momma hen, is due to hatch eggs.  This is the same hen who tried to kill “Chickie Dudes”…3 times last year when she wouldn’t accept her last born…that I helped out of his shell after cloud left the nest with the other chicks. After a rough start in life, Chickie Dudes is now the rooster and “dad” to all the eggs under Cloud.  Now the white hen (Snow drop), has been slipping into Clouds nest laying more eggs…meaning there very likely will be late hatchers.  May 14th is is also our 19th wedding anniversary.  Quite amazing considering we only new each other 3 months before getting engaged and then married a few months later.  We had our first anniversary living in a trailer, with my step kids, my parents in their own trailer, a boarder collie puppy Boo, our first chickens, pooping in a bucket (before it was legal), and building a mud house.  What could go wrong?  Everything!  But everything also went right.  We are still madly in love, kids are grown and doing well, we’re on our third dog (Pumpkin who followed Nina), my Dad died, mom is still going strong, and soon we’ll have lots of goats.

2nd anniversary…living in the trailer while building our MUD home.

Limits to Goats. Did I mention that our 1 year old Lyka is also pregnant?  Due on July 4th and will probably have 1 or 2 goat kids (hopefully not 3).  That’s a lot of goats.  Anyone want some goats and natures perfect milk?  Seriously, we’ll be looking for homes for all of the new cuddle kids.  We have limits.

Limits to Growth.  This is probably when everyone stops reading, but did you know that Tofino (a tourist town on the west coast) struggles to  have enough water.  It’s a rain forest.  It relies on regular rain.  It’s not raining.  Staff made a recommendation to council,

“That staff develop a scope for a “limits to growth” policy for Councils consideration to address the raw water supply deficit identified in the 2024 Tofino Water Master Plan”.  

This is ground breaking policy.  Gord brought this to my attention when he read the Tofino Water Master Plan for the work he is doing in Tofino.  Here’s a link to my council report from April 22nd…coincidentally also Earth Day… coincidentally also Gord’s birthday.

So, as we brace for what is almost certainly a Hell on Earth kind of summer on our Mother Earth, we are blessed with abundance on this land we call home.  Gord and I are the happiest and busiest we’ve ever been.  Our life is full of friends, family, community, meaningful work, and abundant healthy food.

We have many projects coming up this year including building a small home for Bethany.  We are just working through the municipal process like anyone else and will share more as plans evolve. We’ve had to adjust the proposed building site a bit due to set backs and will have to take our request to council to address the covenant.  The same covenant that we placed on the land in 2006 to protect it.  Oh…the irony…Stay tuned. Oh… and don’t forget the plant sale on Sunday April 28th from 10am-2pm.  Sorry, no tours of the homestead as after 19 years of claims free no problem home insurance, we can no longer purchase insurance because we have a living roof on our house, a small plant nursery, and have goats.  Irony strikes again.

Laughing at the insanity of this world,

Ann and Gord

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The power of story

Posted on March 1, 2024 | 2 comments

First the advertisement…then the blog post

Spring nursery season is open and ready for business.  Contact ann@Eco-Sense.ca to set up a private appointment.  Plant list is here:

It’s a perfect time to plant fruit trees, hazelnuts, and all kinds of berries…and potatoes (more about potatoes below). If you want to start planting edible beautiful gardens and don’t know where to start…why not contact Bethany at Garden Alchemist to help you plan.  Here’s her website:  https://www.gardenalchemist.ca

Story time

Gord and I are not very active on social media these days…we’ve been busy with so many good things happening…and even a new project we’ll mention later in this post. But once in a while we still post something.  Usually something funny, a farm animal (goats, Husky dog, cats, a fuzzy husband), fruit or veggies, or a 100% farm meal.  The algorithms reward us with a dopamine hit and some fun comments. When we post something serious (like climate or deep podcasts on system complexity) the algorithms are not kind and we observe very few engagements.  Here’s some examples.

Gord’s recent FB post with NO photo:

“Tonight’s discussion at dinner:  Ann says in a contemplative manner “Gord, I think we will become eccentric as we get older”. Gord looks over at Ann with a quizzical look over top of his glasses and says “No shit Sherlock. We live in a mud house, shit in a bucket and have more than two goats”.  Ann responds…oh…and I guess it doesn’t help that two of the goats are pregnant.  Lots of comments followed that agreed that our eccentricity is a present tense. Result: 120 likes

Ann’s recent FB post with photo of salad greens and homemade cider:

I really had to forage for our salad tonight. Not much out there right now… especially after yesterday’s snow. Finding the apple blackberry cider was much easier. Result: 55 likes

Then there was the video of Gord chopping wood and flirting with Ann. (No chest hairs were harmed in this video). Result: 60 likes

 

We also posted this upcoming course by Bethany, our friend and farm helper: Sadly, the algorithms were not kind with only 6 likes

“Permaculture for Ornamental Gardeners” online course on Saturday March 2.  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/permaculture-for-ornamental-gardeners-tickets-793813817497?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid=IwAR3R2OuNUd2ifd4m8RCqUE4Z2gPiYiZmD69DW7PVfuJWRyclSOZZyxK_abY

It’s no surprise that people love fun stories more than graphs of rising CO2 but the algorithms sure don’t help.

So, what do all these items have in common?  Happiness and potatoes!  Here’s the story.

Last year, Bethany started volunteering here every week and it didn’t take long for us all to become besties.  We are learning as much from Bethany as she is from us. There’s no end to her desire and capacity to learn, her innumerable skills, and her deep love for nature.  She is well suited to live here and amplify the joy and care of this permaculture homestead.

 

Potatoes: So let’s bring this all together.  We face accelerating climate disruption where tipping points are occurring at all levels.  We are living through what Nate Hagens calls the great simplification…we don’t know exactly how this will play out and in what time frames but all one has to do is listen to the news to know everything is unraveling.  (Ann copes with bad news by planting potatoes – we have a LOT of potatoes).  We are lucky, privileged, and hard working (and well fed with potatoes)…but this doesn’t explain our enthusiasm for life (and potatoes) and our sense of well being. Why are we so damned happy?

We are having so much fun building resilience, laughing at ourselves and this crazy world, learning more skills, mulching, composting, sweating, looking after plants, growing food, milking goats, eating cheese and yogurt, creating beauty, and enjoying homemade berry and apple ciders.  And since Bethany loves milk (and potatoes) as much as Gord we are expanding our small herd to become crazy goat people.

The BIG NEWS.  We have begun planning for Bethany to live here on this land with us are are building her a new small home by the pond…and yes, there will be MUD involved…and more potatoes…and more goats…and more fun…and more love.

Stay tuned,

Ann and Gord

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Woohoo…August Rains

Posted on August 31, 2023 | 1 comment

With a big sigh of relief we welcome the late August rain…and some thunder too. Not much rain, but it’s damp, the air is less smoky, and it’s finally under 30 deg C on our hilltop homestead in the Highlands. Of course Gord, as the Chair of CRD Water, gets a little anxious when lightening strikes over our regions water shed in the Sooke Hills when the forests are the driest they have ever been.

Nature’s in charge. With the change in weather from desert dry and smokin’ hot to cool and moist we welcome the fall planting season…and the opening of the Eco-Sense Nursery.  This year we are prepared.

Help in the Nursery. For the first time, we have accepted regular volunteer help on the farm and homestead. Bethany has been a gift from the permaculture god of abundance.  She’s coming out to help once a week in the nursery or anywhere on the land we need help.  In exchange for sharing in the lands abundance and some teaching, we have been gifted Bethany’s help and enthusiasm to build upon her many skills and interests…including her patience with our now 1 year old Pumpkin Pie.

Pumpkin Pie on her 1 year Birthday – Bethany’s photo

Bethany has weeded nursery pots, removed grafting tape, done some summer bud grafting, helped install a small grey water system, blackberry removal, milked a goat, and helped with garden harvests.  We are looking forward to her help through the fall season where she will be pruning some of our fruit trees, potting up lots of nursery plants, mulching for winter, and much more.

NURSERY OPEN Saturday September 2nd from 9am to 1pm. Here’s the poster Bethany made for Saturdays big fall sale in the nursery.   We will all be there to help you pick the perfect plants.  We are ALWAYS available for private plant appointments…just email ann@eco-sense.ca to set up a time.

APPLES-PEARS-PLUMS: We are extremely well stocked with a wide variety of healthy large Apples, Pears, and plums all grafted right here by Gord.  Prices range from $25-$45 (including GST) depending on how large the trees are – Gord in his childish way suggests they are well hung.  (Ann rolls eyes)

ON SALE – HAZELNUTS:  We are overflowing with hazelnut trees and have priced to sell. These should be sold in groups of 3 or more for maximum pollination… normally this would be $110 for 3 trees… but we are reducing to $80 for 3 trees, $100 for 4 trees, and $120 for 5 trees.  Please save us from having to pot up all the hazelnuts into larger parts…Bethany thanks you in advance. 

INVENTORY LIST is online and quite accurate (Bethany did inventory too). Here’s the full list.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j-GtX_ufCTWu8muXbCjqAYfc-cIP7WKl/view 

In Other News…

  • Age and transitions seem to go hand in hand.  As we navigate through life now in our mid 50’s, we have developed some freedom from judgement.  This has come from a curiosity of different perspectives, and exploration with a deeper dive into the complexity of the human predicament. Not that we always agree with the different perspectives, but we are able to find connection in the commonalities, and enable engagement without becoming all judgy.  Being judgy only degrades our own well-being.  
  • Our favourite podcast/video interview series is by far Nate Hagen’s “The Great Simplification”.  The learning and interesting guests have been very rewarding for both of us…even on topics we wouldn’t normally pursue.  https://www.thegreatsimplification.com. We never…ever…run out of things to talk about.  Drives Gord crazy sometimes…
  • We laugh a great deal these days.  Even as the daily news can be crippling to one’s spirit, we are living a life of abundant joy and finding such great pleasure in our daily experiences…laughing at pretty much everything.  Here’s one such video where Gord and I are spitting plum pits and collapsing in laughter…and before you ask, no we were not smoking anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7GkZcRc0yo 
  • We’ve been going to the monthly Highlands’ farm market at the Caleb Pike Heritage site.  Next one is Sunday Sept 11th from noon to 4 pm…at the same time as the Highlands annual Fling.
  • Water has become the focal point of Gord’s work, to the point where approval of taking on any new jobs has to be passed by Gord’s red-headed visionary goddess.   We may further select work and clients for those that have maximum impact, change policy, or employ conservation measures such as only working for clients that include conservation strategies in their water plans. (compost toilets anyone?). We heard about a great book out there written by this crazy aging couple that do everything together and live in a MUD house.

At the market

GRAPPLING WITH NEW 

As noted above we are on a continual learning journey.  The more we learn, the more we recognize how little we know.  We started with the idea that we could learn skills and demonstrate mitigation and adaptation for the broader region and the wider world.  Our focus these days is still very similar, yet we are focussed less on mitigation and more of resilience.  Ironically, being more resilient is actually a lower carbon lifestyle.  We dislike the culture that has evolved from fossil energy abundance – yet understand the continued role it plays in all the unseen products, from pharmaceuticals, plastics, and other durable goods – our house and farm would not function without the simple plastic bucket, the wheels for our e-bikes, the technology we type on and communicate with or the pumps that pump our water.  Everyday we have gratitude for something…today…for Ann it’s window screens to keep the mosquitoes out.  For Gord, it’s the first taste from our Rescue Pear tree’s first fruiting, with the thick yogurt Ann’s made from our most precious Gemma and Dabha. 

What are you grateful for today?

Going for evening walks was never so much fun

Our western economies and cultures are beholden to energy, debt, technology and extraction from all the 5 capitals to carry on with business as usual. We have become a society that is too reliant on (or expectant of)  things that 50 or 100 years ago were non existent or a luxury.  As a result, our culture is far from resilient as we face ever increasing stresses and impacts that test our infrastructure and our well-being, our culture is increasingly vulnerable.   Here on our homestead, we’ve extracted ourselves from some of this, though often feel buffered from supply chain issues, the impacts of inflation on food, or the fear of loss from a catastrophic event like fire or earthquake.  The resilience that we’ve built into our systems over the past 2 decades is as much mental as it is physical…we know that we can find joy no matter what.  If our homestead were to experience a massive fire…we would figure it out, make due, and find joy.

A quick and colourful dinner from the garden. Scrambled eggs, beans with garlic, thick yogurt, tomato, broccoli and cauliflower.

As we grapple with the new, we are more intrigued than ever in what tools we have to deal with it – inner tools, social tools or physical tools.  Knowledge and broadening our understanding of those who are more informed on different topics or hold different views is one of our newest tools.

So often in our culture we hear how views/values /ideas separate us, yet what we have recognized is that this is how we bring people together.  This is the philosophy that we employ repeatedly around food, politics and water.  It’s fun…try it!

Gord Installed a sonic well monitor.  Gives us knowledge of how our well is handling a drought and how fast it recharges under different usage conditions.  Tree frog approved!

 

 

 

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