About our farm

Our farm

We are striving to build the very best highly diverse and regenerative farm that we can. We want to grow great food and bring as many people as possible onto our farm to feed, educate and share the experience of forming deep connections with food and the landscape in which it grows. If you look at other sections of our website, you can learn more about our operations, our cattle, chickens, garden, orchard, and more.

We have a wonderful site of more than 200 acres, which includes 80 acres of fields and over 100 acres of hilly mature forest. The farm is split in half by the major highway, Route 105. Also running through the entire farm is the picturesque Stag Creek, which empties into the Gatineau River at the east end of the farm. At the main farmstead there is quite an assortment of barns and sheds, some of which date back to the late 1800s. To see details about the geography and layout of our farm, check out the following interactive map.

 

Our team

Craig Anderson. Craig does a bit of everything around the farm, from creating its vision, managing the farm’s finances, working with our customers, all the way to picking and planting in the fields. He has always been interested in agriculture, land management and biology. He has lived in other places and worked in other domains, but now plans to be with this farm for many years to come.

 

France-Pascale Ménard. France-Pascale has three wonderful children with Craig, and also works full time for Statistics Canada, which leaves less time than she would like for working at the farm. She brings a sharp mind to the big picture decisions that need to be made, does a lot with customer relations, and intends to get more hands-on with the farm as other responsibilities permit.

Paul Rockwell. Paul shares many management duties with Craig as well as being the farm’s resident plant expert, planning and managing the orchard and garden. He has twenty five years of horticultural experience at nurseries, in landscaping and on farms, and brings all of that knowledge to his work at L’eau du ruisseau. He has also owned a number of small businesses, including the hunting and fishing shop that he still runs just a kilometre up the highway from the farm, Manitou Chasse et Peche.

Simon Beaudry. Simon brings many skills to the farm. While he also works full time as the manager of research infrastructure for the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, he finds the time to do much of our technical computer work, building our website, doing some graphic design, and more. As a people person, he also does a lot of outreach for the farm. Going forward, he will be instrumental in setting up the educational and entertainment activities that we will be adding as the farm matures over time.

 

Our Mission

We don’t think of ourselves as just another farm, and didn’t get into farming lightly. Though of course we need the farm to earn enough income to be viable long into the future, we are driven much more by our values than by a profit motive. These are the things that we really hope to accomplish at L’eau du ruisseau, and they are to:

Grow and share great food: The food that we grow unites all of things that we do. High quality food is an end in itself, and we pride ourselves on our great food, but it is so much more than that. Around that food we are able to build our community, promote human health, and protect and improve our environment.

Build and sustain strong community: We are building a community around our farm, of both the longtime residents of the region as well as those from the city who want to connect with farms, food, and nature. We enjoy welcoming people to our events, to pick their own produce, share great food with us, to experience the local flora and fauna, and to spend time outdoors with each other. We love to share the knowledge that we have, to teach people what we can about good food and good living.

Promote human health: This is a big draw for many new farmers, to be eating healthful food and spending more time outside rather than always indoors. In a time when ‘best’ recommended diets keep changing, one thing that everyone agrees on is that eating home-cooked meals made from high quality unprocessed ingredients is good for you. We grow food the way that we do for our families - eating well is good preventative medicine. Spending time around a beautiful farm, both for us as farmers and for all of our visitors, does wonders to keep us fit and happy. We all need to keep and renew our connections with the natural world.

Protect and improve our environment: There are global challenges of climate change, species loss, and dangerous pollution, and what we do about these problems matters. We may not be able to change huge corporations or governments, but we can be stewards at the scale of our farm and our lives. We practice ‘regenerative agriculture’, which means that we are trying to regenerate our landscape, have healthier soil, pastures, forests and food, more wildlife and biodiversity. We cut out pesticides, adopt the best agricultural practices available, and reduce our use of fossil fuels as much as possible. The more people that join together to make the world a little better, the bigger an impact we can have.