Pandemic inspires veggie farmer to switch gears and find new crop of customers

Saskatoon's Julie Maxwell spends all of her days cultivating a two-acre garden plot full of unique vegetables.

The veggies were supposed to be grown specifically for Odla, a Saskatoon restaurant. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the restaurant had to close, and Maxwell had to reimagine who her customers would be.

The idea for the veggie garden began with Odla chef Scott Dicks, who wanted to serve all local food.

The restaurant is partly owned by Farm One Forty, a self-proclaimed holistic farm just outside of Saskatoon. They provide the meat, the eggs and honey. But they needed someone to grow the vegetables.

That's where Maxwell's green thumb came in.

The plan was for Maxwell to come out to Farm One Forty to grow the veggies for Odla.

"[Dicks] wanted me to grow things that he couldn't find anywhere else," Maxwell said. "So I had bought seeds for all sorts of really weird vegetables like purple carrots and strange herbs and stuff that the general consumer might not always want to buy because they might not know what it is."

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Maxwell had to pivot quickly to find people willing to buy these unique vegetables.

Their solution was to start a Community Shared Agriculture [CSA] program.

"It's a model of direct to marketing food," Maxwell said. "It kind of works like a subscription program. Customers pre-pay at the beginning of the season for a share in the harvest and then I grow for them as much as I can and as much variety as I can.

"Once harvest season starts, every week I bring each customer a box of veggies. It's kind of a farmer's choice. But I really try to make it as nice and diverse as I can," Maxwell said.

So far Maxwell has signed 30 families up for the CSA.

"It's pretty exciting," she said. "I'm always trying to push myself to do more and grow more. But I mean 30 [families] is pretty good. 

"If there is a good handful of farmers growing food for 30 or 50 people in every neighborhood, that's all we need right?"

Up until this past week when she hired a summer student, Maxwell had been doing all of the work herself.

"Yeah it's my whole life," Maxwell said, but added it is a labour of love.

"And the thing about COVID is that it was easy to just put my head down and work because there was literally nothing else going on and I had nothing to distract me," Maxwell said.

"It's the most satisfying job in the world. It gives me so much drive … and purpose in life. I just wish that more people could experience it because I have a secret bias ... that anyone that tries veggie farming is gonna fall in love with it." 

Maxwell is growing about 30 per cent more vegetables than she needs for the CSA.

That's good news for Odla, because the restaurant has re-opened and they will be using the extra veggies.