“Nature is feeding us”: market garden farm’s diversity practices includes permaculture principles

Branching Path Farms sells vegetable and herb seedlings at regional markets such as this one at the Paris Wincey Mill.

By Diane Baltaz

Branching Path Farm grows such a diversity of food, they even have a goji berry bush that is descended from a slip taken from Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow’s garden.

“I was working for a landscaper and she gave the landscaper boss permission to take one,” explained Adam Mohammed, who co-owns Branching Path Farm along with business partner and co-parent Nica VanBeuzekom.

Tucked inside Simcoe’s northern boundary, Branching Path Farm is a vibrant, diversified market garden that produces in demand produce such as salad mixes, kale, chard, peas, beans, winter squash, cucumbers and assorted berries to smaller amounts of occasional novelties such as red, black and white josta berries and different colour varieties of currents and gooseberries. They grow other greens, including Asian mustard greens (bok choi, tatsoi, mizuna, komatsuna), fruiting crops like ground cherries, and roots such as daikon radish. Japanese burdock (kodo), an Asian favourite, grows on some of the driest soil on the land.

The 6.7-acre property is located at the dead end of Culver Lane, a quiet residential laneway. The land includes the former Culver Village two-room school house, which operated between the 1930s to the 1960s before being converted into a duplex in the 1970s.

Every portion of the land around the old schoolhouse is utilized, especially its two acres of eight quarter-acre garden plots which are interspersed by “permaculture strips”. These have strategically planted fruit trees, small nut trees and berry bushes such as gooseberries, red and black currents, peach-apple grafts, raspberries and sumac.

There are also more than 1,000 trees planted on nearly three acres, much of it being in an “eco-forest” restoration project on former lawn. Many of them are native species, including Carolinian, obtained from the Long Point Conservation Authority. Mohammed said that some native flowers such as trillium and bloodroot “found their own way to this spot” after it was allowed to naturalize.

Others, like mulberry trees and black walnuts, self-planted in garden rows and the wild area.

“We’re working with the squirrels!” said Mohammed. “The mulberries are different plantings from ours, but the birds like them. It’s a cover crop tree shading that shows up on own and digs up minerals from deep in soil.”

Two hoop-style greenhouses extend the growing season, enabling Mohammed to grow items such as salad mixtures with plantings beginning in March. The lettuces start their lives on greenhouse tables, and later in the spring, Mohammed moves these trays beneath the table in order to propagate early season tomatoes.

These greenhouses also enable Mohammed to grow novelty items such as figs, which he sells if he has sufficient quantity.

“In past I’ve had turmeric and ginger, but there’s none for sale this year, I have just a small amount for self-consumption.”

The farm’s diversity and use of space attracted so much local interest that it became part of the Simcoe Horticultural Society’s annual garden tour in June of this year.

Branching Path Farm sells its produce at the Ottawa Street Farmers Market on Hamilton’s East Mountain, held on Saturdays from mid-April to the end of November.

“I’ve got six tables of produce there,” said Mohammed. “We do well there. The Ottawa Street market is very established. Some customers told me that their grandparents took them there. I have regular customers after 10 years of selling there. We sell from late April until late December, or until we are sold out.”

Many of the Ottawa St market’s regulars are elderly Europeans who enjoy haggling over Branching Path’s prices.

“One of them, after I said that I put lots of labour into growing them, took my hands and said, ‘No soft hands – you do work!’”

Mohammed also sells vegetable and herb seedlings, including from the farm and at occasional spring markets, such as the Paris Farmers’ Market at that town’s Wincey Mill.

During the winter, he offers garden consultation services to neophyte vegetable gardeners.

The farm uses organic growing principles although the owners have not sought official certification. Their webpage explains why:

“We prefer to rely on the transparency of showing our customers what we do. … The only fertilizers we use are leaf compost, worm castings, mushroom and (organic) turkey compost, our own household compost, organic granulated poultry (turkey) manure, mineral dusts and a foliar (leaf) spray of fish emulsion on some crops. We also make compost teas to inoculate our soil with good bacteria and improve its health.”

Similarly, their web page adds that they follow basic principles of permaculture -- a contraction of “permanent culture.” It’s a system of gardening that involves observing and replicating patterns of growth and harvest that occur naturally, limiting human alteration of the landscape as much as possible. Permaculture encompasses recycling, reusing, succession planting and soil preservation through different methods of composting.

They buy untreated seeds with a mixture of open-pollinated and hybrid varieties. Weed control involves hand tools, wheel hoes and tarps. Fabric row covers control insect pests and leave a smaller ecological footprint than plastic mulch covers do, as well as companion planting to provide habitat for beneficial predatory insects.

Mohammed tries to reduce his use of a gas-powered roto-tiller to break ground and prepare beds, preferring low-till options whenever possible.

“We also use silage tarps in the practice of stale seed bedding, a method of weed control and bed prep,” he added.

Even the chickweed and dead nettle that grow between some garden rows serve a purpose, says Mohammed. “They double as a winter cover; and I see bees around the dead nettle so it seems beneficial for the insect life.”

These efforts work, said Mohammed. Last year, for example, the farm grew an estimated 2,000 cabbages, 80 bushels of winter squash and several thousand lettuce heads. From June until September, Mohammed succession plants some best-sellers in the field including several hundred heads of lettuce every two weeks while new carrot plantings go in monthly.

“My point of pride this year is my garlic,” said Mohammed while standing beside knee-high blue-green garlic plants, which he planted with a broad fork and top-dressed with compost. “I’ve got one eighth of an acre planted – that’s one-sixteenth of the market garden area.”

One of Mohammed’s “fun” crops is two American persimmons planted in one of the permaculture strips: “They’re here just for fun and are not commercial. We live at the northernmost end of their range.”

From 2018 to 2023, Branching Path Farm had a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) vegetable subscription, which Mohammed discontinued.

“While its diversity (of produce) is good, people are only willing to try novel veggies or herbs once or twice,” he explained. “Now we just grow the basics that are in demand.”

Branching Path Farm began in 2017 with assorted vegetables grown on rented land owned by friends and mentors Ann and Mike Lanigan of Simply Thyme Organic Farm outside Freelton. Mohammed previously studied Simply Thyme’s agriculture and business practices in 2009 after graduating from York University with a degree in Environmental Science.

“I wanted to experience organic farming.”

The Freelton plot grew from 8,000 square feet in 2017, to 28,000 square feet (approximately 2/3 of an acre) by 2019.

That’s when the co-owners sought their own land, preferably within a reasonable drive to the Ottawa Street Market, where they had built a fledgling customer base over their three growing seasons.

“We agreed that our enterprise had built up enough equity. We also knew that hobby farms in Norfolk County could sell for approximately $500,000 at that point. We submitted a plan to the Farm Credit Corporation (FCC) and got approved for a mortgage.”

They chose the Culver Lane offering because it had different sections of sand, “silty” and loam soils appropriate to specific plantings. Also, the duplex could be rented.

The business partners moved to Culver Lane in October 2019.

They’ve had some involvement with other Norfolk farmers. Mohammed works with other local small growers for needs such as the collective purchasing of sweet potato slips. He belongs to the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario and the local unit of the National Farmers Association. Last spring, he assisted in organizing a local farmers meeting with MPPs Bobbi Ann Brady and Mike Schreiner to discuss the MPPs’ Bill 21 – which deals with creating “food belts” to preserve Ontario farmland.

Mohammed hopes to plant more intentional fruit and nut trees into Branching Path’s forest ecosystem and plant additional plant varieties, such as pawpaw.

“I am thinking more about bush-craft and economic development,” he mused. Pointing at part of the old lawn on the east side of his house which now is primarily a black walnut “forest” with a blackcap berry understory. “Nature is making food for us.” 