Summer Success in 2024!

2024 was the Airdrie Urban Farm Collectives (AUFC) fourth growing season, and it’s most successful! For those of you new to the AUFC, we are an urban farm collective in Airdrie, Alberta. Rather than rent out growing plots like many community gardens, we all plan, plant, grow, and harvest together. We all share the vegetables that are grown, and the excess gets “sold” to fund the farm and the rest is donated to the Airdrie Food Bank.

Thanks to a huge donation of garden soil and compost from Bluegrass Garden Nursery in Balzac, AB, we have built just over 24 garden rows that average 40 feet long and 3 feet wide, which makes almost 3000 square feet of growing space! Thanks to a few generous donors last year, including a substantial financial donation from Daybreak Community Church, we have been able to install drip irrigation on all these garden beds which has increased our ability to grow, and reduced our water use.

Because we believe healthy food should be accessible, we “sell” our food by inviting locals to the farm and helping them harvest what they want to eat. We then ask for a donation to the farm based on what they believe the produce is worth to them. Some people can’t pay much, and that’s ok! We’re happy local families are getting healthy food on their tables. Some pay grocery store prices or more, and those are the people that fund our ongoing costs for this amazing venture! You know who you are. Thank you!

Overall, 2024 was our most successful growing year. We had more people working at the farm than ever before and we (almost) doubled our donations to the food bank compared to the year before with about 760lbs of fresh vegetables donated. In total we estimate we grew between 1500lbs and 2000lbs of fresh produce. Unfortunately, we also had some major setbacks that significantly reduced our harvest. We planted around 600 heads of lettuce, but due to insect and animal infestations, we only harvested around 30. This was hundreds of pounds of fresh salad that we lost, much of which would have gone to the food bank.

For 2025, we are applying for grants and looking for donors to help us in a few areas. We want to purchase and install special netting that would protect two to three of our rows from various pests. This would allow us to increase both the diversity of crops we grow, as well as the success of those crops. We also want to build hoop houses, which are miniature, low-cost greenhouses that cover individual garden rows. They can be assembled and disassembled in a very short amount of time and moved each season where required. Several hoop houses would allow us to expand our growing season by one to two months allowing us to grow a wider variety of produce, and a larger amount of weather sensitive produce like tomatoes.

Both the row cover (netting) and hoop houses are industry standard methods of growing produce and have a proven track record. Because of this, they are a low risk, high reward investment that will help us reach our goal of growing over 1000lbs of produce for the food bank next year.

We would also like to add a picnic table and some comfortable seating to relax in. This would increase the capacity of the farm to be a center for community gathering and allow a space for our senior volunteers to rest in the summer. Our operating budget is extraordinarily small, under $1000 per year. We are able to make this small amount of cash grow a huge amount of vegetables and we believe we are a valuable asset to Airdrie.

If you are interested in donating to us, or just want to volunteer next year to fill your fridge with fresh, healthy vegetables, please contact us. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

We want to thank Daybreak Community Church who has donated the their land and water to the farm. None of this would be possible without their ongoing, generous support! Thank you!