Syd Belzberg

Education a main focus

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, in 2021, just a year after the reimagined farm opened.

The land had laid empty for many years, having previously been a horse farm. An organic produce farm for the past four years, its focus is education. (See jewishindependent.ca/hands-on-learning-at-farm.)

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.

“We’ve got it down to a science,” said Johannson. “About 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’s all specific to the curriculum of the province.”

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.

The farm also runs harvest projects for the kids. “Radishes were a big hit this year,” said Johannson. There were six beds of radishes planted and harvested.

Over the summer, it’s 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. “This summer, we kept the amount of guests down because we are developing and changing so many things,” he said.

The growing process begins indoors. “We’re able to push the season in that way,” said Johannson. “We 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.”

photo - Rows of produce are planted alongside rows of flowers, so that the flowers take the brunt of the bug activity — Rows of produce are planted alongside rows of flowers, so that the flowers take the brunt of the bug activity. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

In addition to the planting beds, there are gardens. Belzberg’s 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.

“Rabbis normally spend 20 to 30 minutes in here,” said Belzberg of the Biblical Garden, which features four of the seven plants the Hebrew Bible uses to describe the land of Israel – wheat, barley, figs and grapes. “We can’t grow dates, pomegranates or olives, but we’re working on pomegranates and olives!” said Johannson, referring to a greenhouse that’s under construction.

Johannson also noted that there was a “very happy, healthy ‘Tree of Knowledge,’” an apple tree, but though the “Fujis are looking very good,” the fruit is not quite ready for harvesting.

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.

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.

“You take the bee off [the bookmark] and plant it in the ground and they [still] have our bookmark with all our information on it,” explained Johannson. “Basically, 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’ve got a garden at home, you can plant the corn and plant the sunflowers. If you don’t, you can eat the sunflower seeds and pop the corn.”

Johannson and Belzberg have been working together since the retrofit in 2020, when the farm was converted from housing horses to growing produce.

“We do lots of cover crops and set-asides,” said Johannson, standing next to a field (block) that is lying fallow for a year. “That’s how we build fertility here organically. There are three different types of clover … 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’ll do that on rotation. There are five blocks, so this block here was a cover crop last year.”

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. “They’ll end up eating all this down and then pooping it [around],” explained Johannson.

We drove past some wheat, which is grown especially for Lubavitch BC’s Model Matzah Bakery.

“Originally, we would just supply the wheat and they would do their thing,” said Belzberg. “In the last year, we changed it…. Everything here was planted by the kids in May. They’re coming back Sept. 8 to harvest it. Then we will store it for them and, at Pesach time, they’ll use it … [in] making the matzah with the bakery, so they’ve got the full cycle.”

For the Lubavitch BC program, some of the wheat harvested by the kids in September won’t 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’ll put the grain in a stone mill and grind it into flour. “For the sake of expedience, we already have the dough ready,” noted Johannson. “And the kids grab it, it goes onto some sheets and then goes into a pizza oven. They are so good, very efficient,” he said of Lubavitch BC. “They’re the same as our [education] project out here, you’re in and out in an hour and 15.”

photo - Stable Harvest Farm has Jewish and non-Jewish community partners — Stable Harvest Farm has Jewish and non-Jewish community partners. *(photo by Cynthia Ramsay)*

Stopping at several “tunnels,” in which there are rows of flowers alternating with produce – melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. – Johannson picked some treats for the Jewish Independent while talking about the layout.

The flowers are good for pollinators, but also attract the aphids and other bugs, he said. “We come through when they’re all pest-affected, we bag [the flowers] up and remove the pests out of the game.”

There have been challenges over the years – notably, in 2021, both the heat dome and the atmospheric river – and there have been some less successful crops. Johannson pointed to a field of Phacelia. “It’s still going to flower, but … it was too hot when they went in. A lot of the time, with vegetables, with life, with people, if you don’t have a good start to things, things don’t end up well.” The area will become a different cover crop next year, he said.

And there have been other learning opportunities. “This we called the Coyote Area,” said Belzberg as we passed another part of the property. “But 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’s called Beaver Park.”

Belzberg would like to see even more school groups come to the farm, and he’d 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’s raining.

The education aspect of the farm gives Belzberg the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment, he said. “That’s my passion.”

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.

As well, Belzberg and his team are trying to get funding for a program that would help schools with the cost of busing. “We’re looking to be able to subsidize some or all of that cost,” he said.

As to what Belzberg gets from all these efforts?

“It’s a work of love,” he said. “It’s coming out here, developing it and seeing it grow and become more beautiful [and], mostly, when you get the kids out here.”

Hands-on learning at farm

Syd Belzberg talks with Vancouver Talmud Torah kids at Stable Harvest Farm. (photo by Shira Sachs)

“The children loved to take their harvest home to share with their families. Many children helped to prepare the family meals, including washing, chopping and plating their meals. There was so much to learn – how healthy food can taste so yummy, how I can help my family make dinner, how the food can make my body feel good.”

“This is from some cute kid, and I see his picture in front of me,” Syd Belzberg told the Jewish Independent in a recent phone interview. “That’s heart-warming. That’s where it’s all at. That’s beautiful.”

photo - Vancouver Talmud Torah Grade 1 students have a plot on Syd Belzberg’s farm, where they grew scallions and other vegetables — Vancouver Talmud Torah Grade 1 students have a plot on Syd Belzberg’s farm, where they grew scallions and other vegetables. *(photo by Jessie Claudio)*

The note came after Vancouver Talmud Torah Grade 1 students visited Belzberg’s Stable Harvest Farm in Langley last month.

Belzberg got the idea for the farm about a half dozen years ago. He read a newspaper article about Vancouver Sun reporters who had started a breakfast program for schoolchildren in the 1980s. “I got in touch with them and got involved a bit, supporting some of the schools with money,” said Belzberg.

But he wanted to have more of an impact and, after he retired a couple of years ago, he decided to reinvent his Langley acreage, which had been home to his many horses several decades ago, but had laid empty for some 17 years. He based his concept on that of Coastal Roots Farm, “a nonprofit Jewish community farm and education centre” located near the home he has in California. “They do a lot of wonderful things,” said Belzberg, “and I thought this would be a heck of a thing to try and copy in a way.”

He hired Kristjan Johannson to manage the farm and the first crop was planted in January 2020. Despite flooding on the property, they gave away about 90,000 pounds of organic vegetables to a half-dozen food banks, as well as to community meals programs.

“This year, we decided to try and double it,” said Belzberg. And they more than doubled it, giving away an estimated 250,000 pounds of food, while continuing to work on the property.

Belzberg established the Stable Harvest Farm Society, he said, “to make this a legacy for my family.” Of his five kids, only one lives in Vancouver, and that daughter, Tammi Kerzner, “has been a massive help to me to build this,” he said.

“There are many facets to what I want to do,” said Belzberg, “but I wanted to get the food thing right because I didn’t know what we’d have to go through to be successful.”

Belzberg’s approach with this project has been similar to that which he has taken with his other endeavours.

“When I started in the car business [Budget Rent a Car] in ’62, I had trucks and other things in mind, but I wanted to rent cars and learn about that first,” he said. “It’s the same thing here. I wanted to prove we can get the vegetables right before I started to do anything else.”

Educational programming is a main component of the farm. “David Bogoch had a lot to do with teaming up with TT. He is such a supporter of it,” said Belzberg about collaborating with the school. “And my children went there. I have a great-granddaughter now who goes there. So it was a natural [fit]. The part that really put us over the top was Emily [Greenberg], because she’s fantastic. She’s so on top of it, and she’s got Jessica [Claudio] there, who goes to another level.”

“Mr. Belzberg has been a very generous supporter of VTT,” said Greenberg, who met Belzberg for the first time when he first saw the school’s rooftop soccer pitch that he funded. That was in her second week as head of school, she said.

“And we’ve had close relationships with David Bogoch, who is quite close to Mr. Belzberg, and he kept talking to me about this farm that Mr. Belzberg was creating … that Mr. Belzberg had a dream to make this farm a centre for Jewish education and Jewish values and the Jewish community and that he would love to see children using this farm, in addition to how it supports the needy in Vancouver.”

Belzberg eventually invited Greenberg for a visit and they spoke about his vision and she “went away and thought about how we could make that happen from our end and, ultimately, bring kids out there.”

The first thing that happened, said Greenberg, was that Johannson came to the school and helped the kids plant seedlings. “Then we had, basically, a little nursery there at the school and watched them grow and supported them.” The plan was for the kids to plant the adolescent seedlings in April at the farm but COVID restrictions had increased, “so we weren’t able to bring the kids to Langley because it was cross-boundary.” But the planting was filmed and a multi-series educational video was made.

“Thankfully, the regulations changed again and we were able to go in the third week of June and send all of our Grade 1 kids out there,” said Greenberg. “They were able to help reap the harvest and they each brought home a bag of veggies from Mr. Belzberg’s farm and made the most amazing salads and soups and all sorts of things and we’ve got some great pictures of what they made that night. We had parents who were ecstatic, watching their kids eat raw vegetables – including scallions.”

The kids had grown the scallions, as well as lettuce and radishes, and their bags were supplemented with some other vegetables from the farm, such as tomatoes and carrots.

On their visit, the kids also got to see the part of the property that will become a bird sanctuary – “there’s a hundred and some odd different types of birds and owls that feed there and it became a natural habitat,” said Belzberg.

Another aspect of Stable Harvest is bees. Belzberg works with beekeeper Carolyn Essaunce, who owns the Honest to Goodness Farm Co. Essaunce also made a trip to VTT and spoke to each senior kindergarten class.

photo - Beekeeper Carolyn Essaunce speaks to VTT senior kindergarteners about bees and honey — Beekeeper Carolyn Essaunce speaks to VTT senior kindergarteners about bees and honey. *(photo from VTT)*

“She brought a whole honeycomb with live bees,” said Greenberg. “She helped them understand how, when you take a honeycomb and you put it in a machine and spin it, how you get the honey out…. They understood what it was to produce honey and then they all went home with some of Mr. Belzberg’s honey…. That is definitely something we hope to repeat yearly.”

Experiential learning is the future of education, said Greenberg. “For us, we want to prioritize learning through nature and to exposure to nature, but also, of course, finding ways to make sure that Jewish values are part of that…. So this has been a tremendous opportunity for us. It’s only the beginning – we look forward to bringing many more of our grades out to Stable Harvest Farm next year. There’s obviously a science aspect but we also want our kids to be shomrei adamai, guardians of the earth, and understand the power of nature. There’s an empowerment that happens when they’re part of growing a plant and the excitement that happens. And the understanding of the life cycle and how that eventually nourishes us and nourishes those in need – it’s a tremendous marriage of all of the values we have as educators, but also as a Jewish day school.”

VTT has invested a lot of time in iSTEAM over the last two years, she said, “integrating the innovations that have been coming out of Israel and using that as the platform from which to explore science, technology, engineering, art and math. A great example that you have at Mr. Belzberg’s farm is drip irrigation, which is an Israeli innovation…. We love the fact that our kids can be proud of a technology that’s come out of Israel and understand how innovation can revolutionize an entire industry and, ultimately, help people live a better, healthier life.”

photo - All the workers show off the produce reaped during the VTT schoolchildren’s visit to Stable Harvest Farm — All the workers show off the produce reaped during the VTT schoolchildren’s visit to Stable Harvest Farm. *(photo by Galit Lewinski)*

Greenberg’s goal is to get all of the VTT students out to the farm at least once over a two-year span. “We have a lot of ideas,” she said, “and Mr. Belzberg, thankfully, is very flexible. He just says, ‘Tell me what works for you and we’ll make it happen.’ He always says that: ‘We’ll make it happen.’”

And there is lots that Belzberg plans to make happen. Next year, for example, he hopes to build a large kitchen on the farm for cooking classes, education and other activities. Already, the farm has had its first stand, on June 19, and joined its first farmer’s market, in White Rock, on June 20.

“It’s a helluva way to give back and it fills a vast need and I can afford to do it,” said Belzberg when asked why the farm is important to him. “It’ll hopefully continue forever,” he said.

“When I sat there with the TT kids, and they’re coming up to me and shaking my hand, and when I see the letters that are coming back, the salads, the fact that these kids are into food, I give TT all the credit in the world,” said Belzberg. “It was one of the 10 happiest moments of my life when I sat there a week or so back and watched the kids being in the ground, getting their hands dirty. What could be better than that? And the smiles on their faces.”