A Family Farm

Randy Vanden Broek is a professional teacher and a passionately curious learner who loves having his 5 children with him as he learns. Pam was homeschooled on a farm with a variety of animals and plenty of chores. Together Randy and Pam have been working since 2016 to build the best family life that is both resilient and healthy for growing children. 

Tristen was a Lego engineer already at age 3. Darren is a quick wit who will be the first to catch on to a joke, and the last to get his head out of his toys. Sonia is a true farm girl who will out work her brothers on a challenge, but she still has her dolls to tuck in before bed. Keegan has spent the majority of his 3 years in the kitchen searching for food and helping mom bake. Greg is our constant joy who insists on the most mommy cuddles. Perhaps he knew what mommy needed in her busy days. 

Together we all play our part to keep up with our many animals, veggies and crops. Our goal is to provide the best possible setting to raise truly capable, confident, curious, productive and self-respecting children.

A Natural Farm

From before we got married, Pam and I really wanted to build a life of resilience. Our goal from day one was to get onto a farm that provides for us. We spent our first few years as a family growing into a small rented place where we gardened, composted, and began a small garlic growing business. Our goal at this time was to be sustainable and to eventually have a farm that pays for itself. This goal turned out to be only a pitstop, once our YouTube University exposed us to permaculture. After finishing my degree and starting my job as a high school teacher we began saving aggressively to be able to buy an acreage. 

In September 2021 we finally moved into our beautiful location near Keho Lake. In the first year we completed a lot of projects, and improvements, but we still lacked direction. In January 2022 we signed up to an online permaculture course where we were exposed to many more examples that pointed to the kind of life a small farm could really provide for us if we work with nature. We are now focused completely on adapting nature farming techniques for our region and using the permaculture principles to compound our footsteps into a flywheel of ecological momentum.

A Community Farm

The location we are at gives us several unique challenges. First our soil is very poor because of high salt levels and long periods of neglect. Water is very limited since we have to pump all our fresh water from a nearby canal, and our well water is too salty for irrigation. Our place has no trees to help create climate buffers, and the subsoil does not support easy tree establishment.

This led us to begin to notice the many blessings of this location. We are blessed to have neighbours who are helpful and generous with their time. Our nearby towns and villages are filled with many people who love to be part of a growing story. The challenges we have are becoming blessings now because of what we are learning as we overcome them. Our community has been so supportive of our efforts, and we have always been able to find happy hope for our surplus produce. 

With what we have gone through so far, we are now positioned well to be a hub of the community where we test and fine tune natural farming techniques. I really enjoy researching and learning new strategies to solve little challenges, and we notice many others will benefit from this. Our vision is to give back what we learn so that our whole community of gardeners, homemakers and farmers can become closer to a natural way. Our goal is to bring advanced biological solutions from all over the world, and make them available as refined, affordable products and services. Come join us as we begin to push on the flywheel. Read our first Blog post to learn more about our philosophy.