Wise Earth
JOHN HOFER & BRENDA PATERSON
Wise Earth Farm
Wise Earth Farm is a small-scale sustainable farm in Kelowna specializing in organic and biologically intensive cropping practices. By emphasizing intelligent farm design, appropriate technologies and harnessing the power of soil biology, the farm is able to produce over 40,000 lbs. of vegetables per year on 1.5 acres. These are sold through the farm’s CSA program, at farmers’ market and to Okanagan restaurants and wineries.
We are proud to be farmers today because it’s exciting to be part of the trend of the local food movement and knowing farmers are becoming recognized for their value to society. We enjoy providing a service for our community that is both healthy and sustainable.
A good day at the office includes having a good team and accomplishing our goals. We have a productive, caring team that shares our passion for quality healthy food. We love to have local chefs come to the farm, seeing them become super excited about our produce and planning their menus around our products.
A hard day at the office includes dealing with unpredictable weather such as the hail storm that hit our farm in 2013 and destroyed tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of vegetables in a matter of minutes. Farming can feel really hard when your back hurts, the weather is awful, you have crop failures, some strange insect infestation and you have unforeseen expenditures.
Our greatest inspiration comes from people such as John Jevons and Elliot Coleman. Our inspiration to start farming came from reading John Jevons’ book, How to Grow More Vegetables than you Ever Thought Possible and we realized we could farm on a small scale.
Our advice to others looking to operate a farm business today is do your research and learn from what others have done. Find out who your customers are (restaurants, farmers markets, CSA box programs, wholesale), make a yearly plan, keep records of everything, diversify, and grow organically.