Madeline Lake

And so we arrive at our second placement - just a short plane ride over to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. We purposefully picked a few places up north that were quite remote - it's a part of Canada we were really keen to visit, but it's not that easy to do on the cheap. Wwoofing seemed like a good option. Although Yellowknife itself is fairly isolated and remote, it's big enough that we didn't feel at all isolated even out of town on Madeline Lake.

Our host, France, lives 25km out of Yellowknife on the road to nowhere in the summer, but extends to an iceroad in winter! Her farm is immediately impressive - up here, soil is hard to come by so all the beds are contained and artificial with a lot of effort going into creating good soil for growing. Which France and Marie (her business partner) do in abundance! We couldn't even count the number of beds or types of produce they're growing, but the whole thing took the two of us 3 hours to water everyday if that gives you an idea of the scale!

France and Marie sell their wares (produce, cheese, baked goods) at the Yellowknife Farmer's Market once a week. We were parachuted right into the market as soon as we stepped off the plane and to say we were impressed is an understatement! It's a huge affair with 30-40 stalls all selling a wide wide variety of foods. It's a really popular social event too and hundreds of people turn up each week. France and Marie have a queue every week at least 10 minutes before the starter bell goes and there can be some tension in the queue as to who gets the beautiful Romanesco! France is currently the president of the market and she founded it 5 years ago amid conversations about food security in NWT. She's a great activist and well known figure in Yellowknife! We even met someone in the Rockies who knew her!

We learnt a hell of a lot from France and Marie about growing and have taken plenty of ideas for ourselves. Marie has signed up along with Cory to come and set up our farm for us when we get back to the UK :) We were fortunate to be there when all the produce was reaching full growth and we really really enjoyed picking and preparing the produce for market. But I think we have a long road ahead of us before our growing can match theirs!Read more