Our Farming Practices
We take pride in mindfully managing our farms to minimize negative environmental impacts, promote plant health and productivity, and prioritize cultural pest control methods to minimize the need for chemical applications to our fields. We are not a certified organic operation, but we hold ourselves accountable to high standards in terms of farming practices. We work in conjunction with a certified agronomist to manage our fields and pest management programs and undergo an annual third-party on-farm audit evaluating these programs we have in place.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Regime
Our farm management protocols follow what is called an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) regime, which is a holistic approach towards preventing and managing pest concerns using economical and environmentally considerate methods. We conduct regular nutrient sampling on our farms, annually by sampling leaves and bi-annually by sampling our soils. The goal of this is to tell us what our plants need, similar to your regular physical, so we can optimize our production while limiting negative impacts to the environment by over-fertilizing.
We also contract a local professional pest management company, ES Cropconsult, to conduct weekly surveys of our fields throughout the growing season using visual inspections and insect traps. We get a weekly report on pest activity and make our management decisions based on that, only applying chemicals if our pest pressure is above set thresholds that will be detrimental to our crop health. Such problematic, detrimental pests include aphids, spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), various fruit rots, scorch virus, and shock virus. These pests can spread extremely rapidly if above threshold without chemical applications, not only endangering our fields but also endangering neighboring farms.
We aim to use cultural control methods as our main means of pest management, which includes mowing weeds, suppressing weeds using mulch, pruning diseased parts of plants, and maintaining biosecurity measures to minimize pest transmission amongst farms. If we do need to use chemicals to manage pests, we use a list of approved pesticides and fungicides that are recognized by provincial governing bodies and our consulting agronomist. We actively avoid unnecessary chemical applications and strictly follow application and harvest guidelines. We do not use any chemicals deemed to be "high-risk" by pest management regulatory agencies and we track each application using a digital spray record system. We rotate between active ingredients and chemicals to reduce concerns related to chemical resistance in our problematic pests.
Though we have to use chemicals at times to manage our farms, there are key things we do not do. Firstly, we do not apply any chemicals when pollinators are present and active in our fields. We love our worker bees and they are critical to all aspects of the ecosystem, on our farm and elsewhere. Secondly, we do not aquatic or wetland areas or spray during high winds to avoid drift of sprays to areas outside of our fields. Lastly, we do not harvest berries that are not past their "pre-harvest interval", a time period set for each of our sprays by regulatory agencies that tells us when fruit is safe to harvest and is safe to be consumed without concern about residual chemicals.
Why do we use chemicals on our farms?
Fortunately, as global populations rise and prime agricultural land turns into urban areas, agriculture has continuously adapted crops to become increasingly efficient and feed more people using less plant matter, water, overall resources, and land. On the unfortunate side, this has increased the density in which crops are grown. As we know from studying human health, higher densities = increased transmission of disease. This is the same concept for crops as well, and unfortunately, we have seen the rise of many invasive species and detrimental diseases to our blueberries since we have started farming. While research is being put into finding biological, or "natural", controls of these pests, this takes time and not currently as effective as we need it to be. So we have to spray to protect our farms, take care of our plants, and continue to be able to produce quality fruit for our community.
We also contract a local professional pest management company, ES Cropconsult, to conduct weekly surveys of our fields throughout the growing season using visual inspections and insect traps. We get a weekly report on pest activity and make our management decisions based on that, only applying chemicals if our pest pressure is above set thresholds that will be detrimental to our crop health. Such problematic, detrimental pests include aphids, spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), various fruit rots, scorch virus, and shock virus. These pests can spread extremely rapidly if above threshold without chemical applications, not only endangering our fields but also endangering neighboring farms.
We aim to use cultural control methods as our main means of pest management, which includes mowing weeds, suppressing weeds using mulch, pruning diseased parts of plants, and maintaining biosecurity measures to minimize pest transmission amongst farms. If we do need to use chemicals to manage pests, we use a list of approved pesticides and fungicides that are recognized by provincial governing bodies and our consulting agronomist. We actively avoid unnecessary chemical applications and strictly follow application and harvest guidelines. We do not use any chemicals deemed to be "high-risk" by pest management regulatory agencies and we track each application using a digital spray record system. We rotate between active ingredients and chemicals to reduce concerns related to chemical resistance in our problematic pests.
Though we have to use chemicals at times to manage our farms, there are key things we do not do. Firstly, we do not apply any chemicals when pollinators are present and active in our fields. We love our worker bees and they are critical to all aspects of the ecosystem, on our farm and elsewhere. Secondly, we do not aquatic or wetland areas or spray during high winds to avoid drift of sprays to areas outside of our fields. Lastly, we do not harvest berries that are not past their "pre-harvest interval", a time period set for each of our sprays by regulatory agencies that tells us when fruit is safe to harvest and is safe to be consumed without concern about residual chemicals.
Why do we use chemicals on our farms?
Fortunately, as global populations rise and prime agricultural land turns into urban areas, agriculture has continuously adapted crops to become increasingly efficient and feed more people using less plant matter, water, overall resources, and land. On the unfortunate side, this has increased the density in which crops are grown. As we know from studying human health, higher densities = increased transmission of disease. This is the same concept for crops as well, and unfortunately, we have seen the rise of many invasive species and detrimental diseases to our blueberries since we have started farming. While research is being put into finding biological, or "natural", controls of these pests, this takes time and not currently as effective as we need it to be. So we have to spray to protect our farms, take care of our plants, and continue to be able to produce quality fruit for our community.