Welcome to our market garden.

As you look to your right, you’ll see our fenced-in garden, and just to your left is our hoop house. And as you continue along the path, you’ll come to another growing plot that looks very similar to the one on your right.

Now, a little warning before we go any further—the vegetables may look delicious, but please ask us before picking or taking anything. This garden currently feeds about 18 people, and we are pretty much at capacity!

We grow our vegetables using a raised-bed system, with ten beds that are each about 60 feet long. The beds are 32 inches wide, which allows us to work them efficiently with our walk-behind tractor and grow as many veggies as we can on the smallest piece of land.

We’re continually working on building healthy, living soil, and we're still learning what works best here. Gardening in a boreal climate comes with its own challenges—and every season teaches us something new.

You’ll notice that one of our gardens is fenced, while another is open.

We originally fenced the garden because we assumed the deer and other critters would have a field day in here. But this year, we learned something interesting: maybe we didn't need the fence quite as much as we thought! The vegetables in our open plot actually did remarkably well.

So, like much of farming, we're experimenting, observing, and adjusting as we go.

🍅 The Hoop House

The hoop house was installed last year, and this is our first full growing season using it.

And we’ve learned a lot.

Our eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers have absolutely thrived in here. The extra heat and protection have given us a chance to extend the growing season and grow crops that can sometimes struggle in our climate.

The hoop house is also connected to our irrigation system, which makes watering much more efficient.

Our next experiment is to see just how far we can push the season. We’re hoping to grow some late-fall and winter crops, potentially keeping things going into November and even early December.

🌿 What's Next

We're still learning what grows best in our boreal climate and our particular soil, and that's one of the things we love about this garden.

There are plans to expand the market garden over time and, more importantly, to make it more efficient and productive without simply making it bigger.

For us, the goal isn't just to grow more vegetables.

It's to build healthy soil, grow nutrient-dense food, extend our season, and create a system that works well here at Boreal Ranch.

And, of course, we're learning as we go—because that's farming.