Duncan Chambers (MLA ’20) is an educator, adjunct professor here at the University of British Columbia, and urban farmer with City Beet Farm. In this conversation, he shares stories about the beauty of community connection, goes through a week in the life of an urban farmer, and reflects on the intersection between design and urban agriculture.
Thank you so much, Duncan, for joining me today! So let’s start at the beginning, how was City Beet Farm created?
So this is our fourth season, so our relationship with the farm started in 2021. As I was doing my GP in 2021, the farm went up for sale. I had been farming in Ontario for four years before I did landscape architecture. Leanna (Duncan’s partner) had graduated from SCARP and found that she didn’t want to work in an office, but still wanted to do something urban planning and landscape design-adjacent.
We had a friend who went to undergrad with who was going to go in on the business with us, but then she backed out at like the last minute. It was too big a move for her from Ontario. I wanted Leanna and (our friend) to be the face of the farm. I was like, ‘I’ll just keep you in the background.’ But then all of a sudden Leanna and I are the face of the business. But before us, it was run by two women named Maddie and Alanna for four years. And then, before that, the people who have started it, Katie and Ruth, for four years.
It was started in 2013, which is amazing. It was started with just urban plots and from door-knocking over on 19th between Columbia and Manitoba – there’s a hub of four and used to be five gardens there. We’ve tried door knocking to get more lawns recently, but I think that there was something in the climate back then where people were a little more into community sharing or different types of economies. Maybe the economic bracket of some people was different. But those homeowners have been with us since that first season.
“(City Beet Farm) was started in 2013, which is amazing. It was started with just urban plots and from door knocking…those homeowners have been with us since that first season.”
How involved are those homeowners in your farming?
Some of them are really supportive and some of them just don’t want to mow their lawn.Our form of lawn maintenance is so much quieter. And it’s more beautiful. I’d rather have a vegetable farm in my front yard for sure. These homeowners really want to have a say. They always say, can you plant something exciting? For example, Paul* has eggplants and peppers this year, and he’s so excited because they’re covered in shiny fruits. People walk by and take pictures and just so get stoked. We have the 13 plots in the city and then one peri-urban one. We’ve added four in our time in the four years and lost only one.
*name changed for confidentiality
So what’s your pitch to homeowners when you’re trying to sell them on converting to a City Beet Farm yard?
We give an option to the homeowners. We have a little flyer that we’ve been dropping off to pitch people that says that either they can get a half-off CSA share, otherwise, we just drop vegetables at their door, and it’s usually whatever’s leftover from market and from CSA. We drive around on our market days to each house and drop off a paper bag with four items in it each week. But a lot of them find us through outreach.
We worked with Little Mountain Neighborhood House and we had a grant to do two other food banks last year and one of them helped us find one plot. Otherwise we have signs that we put on our plots that say, ‘Here’s our Instagram and this is urban grown produce’, and so on. Then they reach out to us mostly.
“…what I often think about in community design is that there are so many people who are engaged and excited about it and interested in lawn alternatives.”
We get lots of offers too that are like too far away, too small, too shady. You can kind of be a little bit more selective at this point with what you want to choose. It’s gotta be just right. But what I often think about in community design is that there are so many people who are engaged and excited about it and interested in lawn alternatives.
That actually brings me into my next question. You mentioned Little Mountain Neighbourhood House and some other organzations that are involved in a similar way. What types of partnerships do you engage with within your organization?
The Little Mountain has been the most longstanding and they reached out to us. They said, ‘We know you grow in the city and we’d love to like get fresh food to people.’ It’s been three years’ partnership with them, and every week we drop off 80 items. It’s not much, but it’s fun that it’s grown in the neighborhood. That’s what it’s all about. So we’ve got a lot of great things going on with people where you know their names and that sort of thing.
Then I’d say it’s the people who sign up for CSA boxes (are partners). They are often 50 or 60% return people, and some of them have been with us from the very beginning and even back with the first owners. Those are long-standing partnerships. With these households, you memorize their names, and then they start having babies, and then the babies get strawberries from our farm. There are all these sweet moments (from these CSA partnerships). The CSA distribution and pickup on Wednesdays is really special.
It’s so nice that you have had this relationship with these people for years now, so you can see the evolution of their families too. And with those kids, they’re going to remember that forever. And eating those strawberries will influence the way they look at food.
Yeah, some of them are even learning. To see little toddlers excited about, even carrots and cucumbers recently, makes me think, ‘wow’.
“There are all thes sweet moments…to see little toddlers excited about, even carrots and cucumbers recently, makes me think, ‘wow’.”
Do you have any interactions with homeowners or shoppers that particularly stick out in your mind?
One of our homeowners is an intergenerational household, which is really sweet. Their little kids come out and ask us about what’s happening there, and what we’re growing, and they say, ‘Oh, can you save some onions for us?’ The matriarch of the household makes amazing Indian food. Whenever we’re there, she’ll bring us entire meals. So that’s really sweet when they feed you and they’re excited about the farm. Yeah, the homeowner relationships are so nice.
They’re different with each person. Some people are very hands-off. You never see them. Some people want to pull weeds. I think that because it’s 14 homeowners, and then our CSA is 86 families, so connecting with those families is the most exciting. So that distribution is the most, most special.
That’s so wonderful.
And what is your schedule like – a week in the life at City Beet Farm?
We start at eight and work until four. It’s different in the early season, but now we’re into a rhythm harvesting in the city on Monday. If there’s time, we’re doing maintenance and replanting. Then Tuesday, we have an insulated trailer – like a fridge – and we we fill up with the city harvest. We drive that on Tuesdays to our Southlands garden. It’s so sweet. And such good habitat – you see owls and hawks and eagles and muskrats. We drive that down and fill it up with what’s there, and then drive it back to Main. Wednesday has recently been mostly processing and bagging.
Then we drive to the Federal Store, set up by 4. 4 to 6:30, and we do the market. Thursday has been city maintenance and homeowner deliveries, which Jackie has been doing. Friday is Southland’s big quarter-acre garden maintenance, and you can spend a whole day there and still not get everything done. That’s the whole week, and… It’s busy. It’s really quite something. It’s pretty much 8 to 4, Monday to Friday.
That schedule sounds pretty nice, especially compared to the overtime involved with many design professions. As someone who has experienced both the crunch of the design lifestyle and the life of an urban farmer, what differences have you seen?
This is my project recently, asking myself whether this counts as landscape design. I don’t use drawings. I don’t use computers. It’s done on the land, but you still make (design) decisions. And it’s a little bit modular, just by virtue of what it is. But I think farming before and after doing design school has made me think and realize that, historically, so many things were built on the land with the immersive, tactile, multi-sensory experiences. That’s the drawback of the computer if you don’t be really intentional about getting that or factoring it in, especially with deadlines looming. I’ve been really interested in connecting the two and seeing what can landscape designers learn from farmers and vice versa.
“(Farming is) done on the land, but you still make (design) decisions…it’s a little bit modular, just by virtue of what it is. But I think farming before and after doing design school has made me think and realize that, historically, so many things were built on the land with immersive, tactile, multi-sensory experiences. That’s the drawback of the computer if you don’t get really intentional about (factoring it in).”
I still like thinking about the urban fabric and that sort of thing. But more physical, hands-on, in the sun. Design and build are the same thing together, which is something I like. If I worked in a farm, I would want it to be a design-build. And people get (City Beet Farm) right away. They understand what we’re doing in a way that landscape architecture has always had a problem with. With landscape architecture, people are like, ‘Wait… What? You’ve… So you’re making, like, environmental architecture or… Uh-huh.’
And I think that’s a bonus of it, too. I like that you can kind of do good by stealth when people don’t really recognize all the trees and shrubs as being designed as the result of people’s decisions, analysis, and so on. So I think (farming) is more similar than it is different.
You talk about whether or not farming is design which is interesting – it certainly is because so many people are trying to do what you are doing with pen and paper. You’re eliminating that middle step of the plan in the design process. How do you think this has informed your practice?
That makes me think about how our annual vegetables are very flexible – a ‘They can be done anywhere’ form of agriculture. And it’s different every season.
But when you want to take more consideration in getting a line exactly right, or building a wall, or planting a tree, then having that kind of planning involved with pen and paper is very valuable. A hybrid between the two is kind of my vision. And people do (hybridize), landscape architects, historically and today.
A hybrid sounds great. Do you see City Beet Farm going toward this hybrid model you describe?
When I was first signing up, I was thinking I could make my side wing of this as a design business or consulting. There’s some opportunities for this through connections I’ve had through UBC. But…I don’t know. I’ve been farming in the summer has been for years and years and I feel like I want to commit to one thing. I’m going to keep trying to work my way into academia as much as I can, but this is the problem – you do one thing for a bit, and you’re, like ‘Oh, I’m way too deep in theory, I got to go do some practice, hands on work’, but then doing that makes the theoretical more appealing again. I’ve just been thinking about a balance between the two.
Well it sounds like you have your hands in both places already, so that’s a good place to start.
Speaking of teaching and pedagogy, you have all these families connected to your organization. Do you ever try to encourage people in the community to get involved with the farming process? Or how do you engage people with the farm?
That’s a great question. I think it comes down to the structure of the business. It’s very little active reaching out. We post the CSA for sale and it sells out in two months. And then just being (at the Federal Store) from four to six thirty for twenty weeks straight, on the street corner, our friends know where to find us.
Some people come every week to the market. One of them was very pregnant, and I didn’t know if her due date had past but eventually she was not there. When asked another community member why she wasn’t there, and they explained that the baby was here. And that was just a market-goer who used to be a CSA member. Some people are really committed. You start to remember names and faces.
the two and seeing what can landscape designers learn from farmers and vice versa.
“The urban form of Vancouver helps. Front yard setbacks are quite big…you could call this business Front Yard Harvest because we’re on the street directly…so nmany people walk by, and stop, and want to talk to you…but I like that part of it. It feels like activism to me…’Farming in your Face’.”
The urban form of Vancouver helps. Front yard setbacks are quite big – 30 feet. In Hamilton, Ontario, it was mostly backyards. The business was actually called Backyard Harvest…but you could call this business Front Yard Harvest because we’re on the street directly. There’s very few jobs where you are out in the city all day long. We’re at the same pieces of land, every year, for four years. So many people walk by, and stop, and want to talk to you, so much so that it keeps you from getting your work done…but I like that part of it. It feels like activism to me, to be…I think a couple of years ago I called it, ‘Farming in your Face’. Like, ‘this is what an organic farm looks like, and there are lots of people around to see it.’
I like that as a slogan. ‘Farming in your Face’.
Yeah, like a demonstration garden. In my GP, I made the pitch that a demonstration garden is a garden with something to prove. It was about a regional park. I was looking at Case City Nation, and specifically land practices and an interpretation for a new regional park.
“A Garden with Something to Prove.” Amazing. On that note, what garden plot have you found to be your favourite of the ones City Beet Farm tends to?
This is a funny answer. Right next to T-Swamp Park is our seedling greenhouse where we start our plantings. There’s a little garden there next to it. We just harvested fennel from there, and there’s some raspberry bushes on the side, and we plant perennials on it. It’s just this experimental zone. That’s my favourite place, because it’s not connected to production agriculture. It’s just seeing what unfolds. That garden had sentimental value to the homeowner, because his late dad was a big gardener. It’s nicely built with a sixteen inch walkway and concrete edges on the whole garden – a clearly intentional design and productive garden. It has been gardened for years and years, and his rhubarb is there, and his garlic, and his fruit trees. (The homeowner) is happy we can be there (for these plants). He lets us use his shed too, which is a game changer. It’s so sweet…so that’s my favourite.
“…it’s just this experimental zone. That’s my favourite place, because it’s not connected to production agriculture. It’s just seeing what unfolds.”
And then at (redacted – secret location!) there’s our strawberry patch, which, who couldn’t love that? It has a fence behind a fence which is locked, so nobody gets to see all the strawberries, otherwise I’m sure they would be all gone. Historically we haven’t had much theft, but sometimes even when we’re there, people will pick from the plots on their edges. We have to be like, ‘Please don’t do that!’.
The audacity for people to take from your plots when you’re actively garden. How do you even start to build up trust with the community around not harvesting from your plots?
I think our signs help, so people know it’s a business. I put one up next to the tomatoes. But it’s just like one of the things that’s always on the back burner. We know the neighbours and have eyes on the street. And they’re in pretty well trafficked areas, and people having just a general awareness of what’s going on seems to help.
Well this has been amazing getting to learn about your organization. I see you brought a book* with you, maybe we can end off that and with talking about what projects and people are you inspired by personally?
*Duncan brought Karl Linn’s “Building Commons and Community”, discussed further in the ‘Community Engagement Strategies’ section of this blog.
Karl Linn is kind of like my research subject. He was the second full time professor at the University of Pennsylvania Landscape Architecture Department with Ian McCarg. I started thinking of him as like the anti-Ian McCarg. In a talk he gave in ‘74, he said, ‘To really understand the landscape, you can’t just fly over it in a helicopter and use all these fancy computers and map overlays. You also have to smell and taste and touch it.’ Right? Very much what Daniel Roehr is into (shoutout to our leading professor of this project, Prof. Daniel Roehr!) And so whereas Ian McHarg was ver regional scale, Karl Linn (was) spreading gravel (onsite). In his retirement he did community gardens, because they’re by definition a cared for space and were a fast way to take vacant land and transform it into a cared for space. People are in charge of their plot, they’re responsible for it, they’ll return to it. He would walk around and pick up garbage and saw himself as a caretaker as a profession.
I went to a charrette at Little Mountain Neighborhood House. They like made that weird painted sign. It says, ‘Never Demolish or Remove…Always Add, Transform, Reuse.’ Just a little group of community members care for this space and they run their little open mics here, and have events. The proximity to the cafés and stuff is good too. If you can get food and community events together, you can create a commons pretty easily.
That’s so great and so true. It is all about the food and the small community groups. To end off, can you let people know where to find you?
City Beet Farm – we’re outside the Federal store from 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm every Wednesday until mid October. If anybody has a big, sunny piece of land in the city in the Riley Park neighbourhood and wants to convert it let us know!
Well thank you so much, Duncan, for taking the time to chat today!
Thank you!