About 100 students a day visit from late April to the end of June, then again from the first week of September to the end of October.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got it down to a science,\u201d said Johannson. \u201cAbout an hour-and-a-half a session, two hours. They come in, they get a welcome speech. We have picnic tables up in the main season. We do a 12-station immersive tour, partnered with BC Agriculture in the Classroom [Foundation], so it\u2019s all specific to the curriculum of the province.\u201d<\/p>\n There are elementary and intermediate student groups who do the sessions. Participants receive workbooks and, every six or seven minutes, a cowbell rings and they move to the next station, where another agriculturalist meets them. University students lead the programs.<\/p>\n The farm also runs harvest projects for the kids. \u201cRadishes were a big hit this year,\u201d said Johannson. There were six beds of radishes planted and harvested.<\/p>\n Over the summer, it\u2019s camp, church and other groups that come to the farm, said Belzberg, and they have different reasons for doing so: perhaps to see the bees, or the butterflies. \u201cThis summer, we kept the amount of guests down because we are developing and changing so many things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The growing process begins indoors. \u201cWe\u2019re able to push the season in that way,\u201d said Johannson. \u201cWe start all our plants indoors in the nursery tunnel and that way we get a 30- to 60-day head start, and then it allows us, in a short season, to get two crops of most produce.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the planting beds, there are gardens. Belzberg\u2019s friend David Bogoch, another member of the Jewish community, started the Biblical Garden, as well as a couple of other flower beds, which Bogoch maintains with the Stable Harvest Farm team.<\/p>\n \u201cRabbis normally spend 20 to 30 minutes in here,\u201d said Belzberg of the Biblical Garden, which features four of the seven plants the Hebrew Bible uses to describe the land of Israel \u2013 wheat, barley, figs and grapes. \u201cWe can\u2019t grow dates, pomegranates or olives, but we\u2019re working on pomegranates and olives!\u201d said Johannson, referring to a greenhouse that\u2019s under construction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Johannson also noted that there was a \u201cvery happy, healthy \u2018Tree of Knowledge,\u2019\u201d an apple tree, but though the \u201cFujis are looking very good,\u201d the fruit is not quite ready for harvesting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Vancouver Talmud Torah probably brings the most kids to the farm, said Belzberg. Grade 3 students, for example, may come in and plant vegetables in spring and then they come back in the fall, as Grade 4s, to harvest what they planted.<\/p>\n When students participate in an education tour, they leave with something the farm produces. That might be honey from one of the 30 hives on the farm (1,500 pounds of honey was extracted a few weeks ago by 40 to 50 volunteers) or bee-forage bookmarks with seeds embedded in them.<\/p>\n \u201cYou take the bee off [the bookmark] and plant it in the ground and they [still] have our bookmark with all our information on it,\u201d explained Johannson. \u201cBasically, you have a bunch of kids guerrilla gardening, chucking paper and pouring water on it and having plants that turn into bee forage. Then, they also get popcorn from us or they get sunflower seeds, so, if you\u2019ve got a garden at home, you can plant the corn and plant the sunflowers. If you don\u2019t, you can eat the sunflower seeds and pop the corn.\u201d<\/p>\n Johannson and Belzberg have been working together since the retrofit in 2020, when the farm was converted from housing horses to growing produce.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do lots of cover crops and set-asides,\u201d said Johannson, standing next to a field (block) that is lying fallow for a year. \u201cThat\u2019s how we build fertility here organically. There are three different types of clover \u2026 and all this clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere in the ground and then all of this down here will be our organic matter for the next season. We\u2019ll do that on rotation. There are five blocks, so this block here was a cover crop last year.\u201d<\/p>\n Farm heritage chickens and Nigerian Dwarf goats, as well as other animals that pass through or unofficially make their home somewhere on the farm, help keep the soil healthy. \u201cThey\u2019ll end up eating all this down and then pooping it [around],\u201d explained Johannson.<\/p>\n We drove past some wheat, which is grown especially for Lubavitch BC\u2019s Model Matzah Bakery.<\/p>\n \u201cOriginally, we would just supply the wheat and they would do their thing,\u201d said Belzberg. \u201cIn the last year, we changed it\u2026. Everything here was planted by the kids in May. They\u2019re coming back Sept. 8 to harvest it. Then we will store it for them and, at Pesach time, they\u2019ll use it \u2026 [in] making the matzah with the bakery, so they\u2019ve got the full cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n For the Lubavitch BC program, some of the wheat harvested by the kids in September won\u2019t be put through a thresher, but rather, in the weeks before Pesach, at the Matzah Bakery, the kids will learn how to remove the grain from the chaff by hand. They\u2019ll put the grain in a stone mill and grind it into flour. \u201cFor the sake of expedience, we already have the dough ready,\u201d noted Johannson. \u201cAnd the kids grab it, it goes onto some sheets and then goes into a pizza oven. They are so good, very efficient,\u201d he said of Lubavitch BC. \u201cThey\u2019re the same as our [education] project out here, you\u2019re in and out in an hour and 15.\u201d<\/p>\n Stopping at several \u201ctunnels,\u201d in which there are rows of flowers alternating with produce \u2013 melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. \u2013 Johannson picked some treats for the Jewish Independent<\/i> while talking about the layout.<\/p>\n The flowers are good for pollinators, but also attract the aphids and other bugs, he said. \u201cWe come through when they\u2019re all pest-affected, we bag [the flowers] up and remove the pests out of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been challenges over the years \u2013 notably, in 2021, both the heat dome and the atmospheric river \u2013 and there have been some less successful crops. Johannson pointed to a field of Phacelia. \u201cIt\u2019s still going to flower, but \u2026 it was too hot when they went in. A lot of the time, with vegetables, with life, with people, if you don\u2019t have a good start to things, things don\u2019t end up well.\u201d The area will become a different cover crop next year, he said.<\/p>\n And there have been other learning opportunities. \u201cThis we called the Coyote Area,\u201d said Belzberg as we passed another part of the property. \u201cBut we had to change it about a month ago because we had a group of kids out and they were afraid to come [see it]. Now it\u2019s called Beaver Park.\u201d<\/p>\n Belzberg would like to see even more school groups come to the farm, and he\u2019d like to see multiple events happening at one time. In progress are many significant initiatives, from planting more trees (for birds and shade), to grooming an area of the farm for scavenger hunts and orienteering, to building a nature-based playground, to creating an overnight camping section, to adding a picnic area, and to converting what used to be a riding arena into a place where kids can come and do educational projects when it\u2019s raining.<\/p>\n The education aspect of the farm gives Belzberg the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment, he said. \u201cThat\u2019s my passion.\u201d<\/p>\n While all the activities at the farm are at no cost to visiting groups, busing kids out to Langley can be expensive, so the farm takes some of their programs to the schools themselves. Belzberg gave Talmud Torah as an example: a program held at the school can reach 500 kids in one or two days, he said.<\/p>\n As well, Belzberg and his team are trying to get funding for a program that would help schools with the cost of busing. \u201cWe\u2019re looking to be able to subsidize some or all of that cost,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As to what Belzberg gets from all these efforts?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a work of love,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s coming out here, developing it and seeing it grow and become more beautiful [and], mostly, when you get the kids out here.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Syd Belzberg, left, founder of Stable Harvest Farm in Langley, and farm manager Kristjan Johannson. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay) The Jewish Independent visited Syd Belzberg at Stable Harvest Farm in Langley last week, taking a tour of the 65-acre property with Belzberg and farm manager Kristjan Johannson. Much has happened since the JI last visited, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[21481,3076,2845,5761,23453,9856,23452,400,23451,20694,4365,1558],"class_list":["post-44867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-agricultural-goods","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-farming","tag-kristjan-johannson","tag-lubavitch-bc","tag-organic","tag-passover","tag-stable-harvest-farm","tag-syd-belzberg","tag-vancouver-talmud-torah","tag-vtt"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/aug-23-BTS.23.Stable-Harvest-Farm-tunnel-20240814_104140.jpg\")
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