Home

Welcome to the Arlington Gardens website.  2012 will be our third season providing CSA (“Community Supported Agriculture”) shares. You will find all the information necessary for becoming a member of our organic basket distribution network, as well as additional details about our raison d’être, namely, vegetable and small fruit organic farming.

In The Farmer’s Blog, the idea is to keep you abreast of farm happenings and the ups and downs of country life.  Because we have a strong interest in agricultural matters local and international, we will also share information, and our occasional musings thereon, relating to agricultural policy and economics, and other rural issues. All blog posts are open to comment.  Any questions about the farm and our CSA basket, or share, program, should be sent to info@arlingtongardens.ca, as should any recipes you would like us to share with others on our Recipe pages.

We hope you find the blog and this site interesting, and filled with good things to read…and eat.

Nasser & Claire

The Farm

Arlington Gardens is a member of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) network of Equiterre.  We are located in Stanbridge East, in the Eastern Townships.  The farm produces baskets (shares) of vegetables and small fruits, primarily for the Greater Montreal market.  Weekly deliveries are made from the end of June through mid-October at pre-determined drop-off locations, to partners registered for the season.

We acquired the farm in 2008. The previous owners had lived on the farm for almost 50 years, during which time it had served successively as a dairy, horse and large crop (hay, oats, etc.) farm. We spent the first year working on the farmhouse and surrounding grounds. Our focus the following year was on the other farm buildings: an old coach house and two barns – a large double-doored red barn, and a somewhat smaller one which has been re-purposed into the main work area, warehouse and cold storage facility for the business.

The farm sits on 130 acres of mostly arable land on the oustkirts of the village of Stanbridge East. While Stanbridge East is not officially on the register of the Association des Plus Beaux Villages du Québec, we think it should be. Its beautiful setting on the banks of the Pike River, between Dunham, Frelighsburg and Bedford, in the winemaking region of Brome-Mississquoi, makes it a convenient stopping point for anyone motoring or cycling through the area. Check out directions to the farm under Contact Us, and come see what’s growing.

The Fields

There were a lot of them…fields, that is.  Our first recognizance visit, before we purchased the farm, was on snowshoes, in December 2007.  The farm’s 130 acres are comprised of mostly arable land, with some wooded areas near the river bed and between large expanses of field.  The fact that “a river runs through it” (a branch of the Pike River meanders through the fields behind the farmhouse and the main barn) was a key feature for us.

We have split the fields in two. The farmhouse is surrounded by approximately 35 acres bordering both sides of the main road out of the village of Stanbridge East.  We have reserved this acreage for our main organic vegetable crops, berries,  and fruit trees over the next few years. The balance of the property is currently conventionally farmed, but we hope to convert it to organic pasture and/or cereal crops over time.

We spent 2008 and 2009 remedying 25 years of de minimis field maintenance (cleaning out ditches, planting windbreaks, repairing drain pipes, cleaning ponds, etc.) to ensure the fields were in good shape for our purposes. The fields are relatively well-drained, stone-free and gently sloping. The soil is sandy loam, which is typical for the region, and ideally suited to organic vegetable and fruit production.