Wildhaven Farm

Project Type

Project Summary

This project is a small scale permaculture farm that I have been developing since 2016. My goal with this project is to create a place that people can see permaculture in action and learn about regenerative methods of production. It is completely off grid - no power and no water other than what I harvest from the land and sky. It has certainly presented some challenges but also some great rewards and plenty of learning!

Project Description

This project started in 2016 when I located a property in Pritchard, BC to move my animals and garden to when the property we were renting in town was sold. I ended up staying at the original property when the new owners offered to let me continue with the same arrangement as the previous owner. However, I decided to move the sheep and some chickens up to Pritchard as I was unsure at that time how things would work out and I wanted a larger space to work with. 3yrs later I now manage both projects with the dairy goat herd and some chickens and the majority of my vegetable crops in the smaller location in town and the sheep, more chickens, ducks and occasionally a couple of pigs all live in Pritchard and that farm has been slowly developing into a fabulous demonstration of maturing systems. It is interesting working in both places at the same time as the challenges and strengths are quite different! Even the climate difference is significant with Pritchard being classified as a humid climate where as just down the mountain and a few minutes west we are in a semi - arid climate. The amount of rainfall, snow accumulation, frost dates and many other factors are different and each location requires different management to see the systems work well. The main systems we are working on at the Pritchard farm are developing livestock grazing cells in a silvoculture setting and planting large areas of food forest with a strong emphasis on livestock feed production. At this time we still supplement heavily with hay and grain (and water!) from off farm. Each year we get a little more feed from the land. The biggest challenge is the lack of water. The longterm plan is to put in several ponds and swales to capture the significant amount of spring runoff that currently just flows through the northern part of the property. We plan to capture much of this and store it for use as irrigation during dryer times. This is a large project that will involve machinery (or MANY hands?!) and funds that are not currently available so we are learning just how much we can do using water saving techniques such as soil improvement and heavy mulch instead! We have developed a section near the barn into garden beds and are currently using the area to grow some experimental crops and crops that we hope to adapt to drier conditions. We plan to get some water catchment systems in place on the coop, barn and shelter roofs in 2019. We currently have two permanent sheep paddocks with shelters, a large chicken coop, a pallet barn with a couple lambing stalls and a feedroom and a small mobile chicken tractor. Plans for this summer include a duck house for our trio of eldery muscovies! A greenhouse with an attached shelter, pen and grass paddock for our ram, an additional, larger chicken tractor and the addition of some rabbit housing within the coop. We are hoping to start work on fencing for a several more grazing paddocks in the silvopasture area as well. We will also be moving the goat herd to this farm and expanding the vegetable production areas. We will be building a sheltered area for hosting workshops and plans are being made to start doing some workshops now that we have some more established systems in place as demonstration sites The projects here are ultra low budget! It would certainly be faster to invest a bit of money into some fencing and infratructure but that isnt an option so we work with slow and steady!

Updates