Farewell to Village Greens
By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG
After five years of offering locally-grown leafy greens to Valemount residents and nearly a year of stocking fresh vegetables on IGA shelves, Village Greens is ending its operations.
An organization under the umbrella of the Valemount Learning Society, the initiative was meant to provide fresh, nutritious food to Valemount residents, Village Greens coordinator Korie Marshall told The Goat. Locals could drop in to the organization’s office once a week and pay for the vegetables that had been harvested that week, usually leafy greens like lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard.
“At the end of the week, anything left over we would donate to the school food programs… We donated usually at least every two weeks, and sometimes more than that, to the Meals on Wheels program,” she said. “[We were] just trying to get healthy, local greens to people.”
Another goal of the organization was to make money for the Valemount Learning Society, Marshall added. The hope was that by selling locally-grown produce to residents, they could improve access to nutritious food in Valemount and generate more revenue for the Society’s other programs, which include literacy programs and the farmers’ market.
“Our original hope was that [Village Greens] would be a social enterprise, that sales from this would help go into our other programs,” Marshall said. “We’ve never been able to get the sales high enough to be a social enterprise, but we were happy to try to run it for a bit longer to try to get the sales up and because we think a big benefit for the community is having local delicious greens.”
While the Society began discussing the idea of a local growing program a few years before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the vision did not come to fruition until 2020 when a hydroponic growing container was installed, according to Marshall. Hydroponic growing is an agricultural technique in which plants are grown in mineral-rich water, rather than a bed of soil – allowing growers to grow leafy greens in tight environments, like shipping containers.
The Society purchased its hydroponic growing system from Growcer, a company specializing in providing hydroponic growing systems to organizations throughout Canada, and set it up beside the Valemount Community Forest’s office. The building resembles a shipping container, and its humble metal-clad walls belie an interior still abuzz with activity – the gentle hum of LED lights, the whirring fans of its HVAC system, a pervasive earthy smell from the freshly-irrigated plants – but all that activity comes with a hefty power bill, Marshall says.
“We underestimated the cost of the power when we started the whole program,” she said. “The lights run 18 hours a day… HVAC is running constantly, and the pumps are running constantly.”
The organization has made several attempts to save money, such as cutting down staff and installing solar panels, but those measures haven’t been sufficient, Marshall said. The solar panels only produce about a fifth of the power the operation needs at the best of times, and produce even less than that in winter, she added. While Marshall and others have looked into getting grants for maintenance and repair costs, or power bills and growing supplies, there are no grants that cover operating costs and utilities, according to her.
While Valemount residents and businesses have been supportive of Village Greens, the economic ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic, the end of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, and the lull in tourism after the Jasper wildfire have made it difficult to sustain the organization, Marshall said.
Marshall is working to tie up the remaining loose ends of the program. The non-profit that funded the purchase of their hydroponic system, Northern Development Initiative Trust, said Village Greens has fulfilled all its commitments to the Trust, according to Marshall. That means Village Greens gets to decide what to do with the building, she said.
“We could even sell it to somebody and move it out of here if it comes to that, but we don’t want to do that. It’s an asset that can be used for something in the future here,” she said.
Marshall is also in touch with Columbia Basin Trust, the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, and the Village of Valemount, which have also funded assets such as the organization’s electric vehicle and solar panels. She said she is still waiting to hear back about what funders would like to do with these assets.
In the meantime, the group is going to harvest and sell whatever produce it can over the next two weeks, then pull the plug on the growing system, Marshall said. Ideally, the building will be sold to a local operator so it can keep benefiting the community, she added.
“If somebody has an idea for tons of bok choy, this thing grows bok choy like crazy,” she joked. “We’ll see what options we can come up with, but really, it’s got to be a plan that’s going to cover the full power bills.”
