Glenryan Farms
Glenryan Farms, located in Southwest Margaree, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is owned and operated by Glen Covey and Kimberly Tilsley. Together, they farm 126 acres at their home and 99 acres at Kimberly’s parents’ house in Lake Ainslie, with approximately 5 acres under cultivation and the rest woodland.
“We have always gardened for ourselves, then we started raising a few chickens for meat and eggs, and neighbours and friends started to get us to raise a few birds for them as well, and then things sort of snowballed from there,” says Kimberly. They have now been farming seriously for about nine or ten years.
Neither Glen nor Kimberly had a background in farming - Glen’s education is geology, while Kimberly is an elementary school teacher. Kimberly says that they learned through doing, lots of reading, workshops, and “picking anyone’s brain that they could”.
At Glenryan Farms, they produce certified organic garden vegetables, including garlic, shallots, lettuces and greens, greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes, as well as natural lamb and free-range chicken,. Glen and Kimberly also have the only on-farm, government inspected poultry abattoir on Cape Breton Island. Products are sold at the farm gate, the Cape Breton Farmers' Market in Sydney year-round, and at the local Co-op Food stores in Margaree and Inverness.
“It just makes sense environmentally, sustainably, and ethically,” says Kimberly about farming organically; however, their primary reason for going organic is for the health of their family.
Glenryan Farms is certified with Maritime Certified Organic Growers , and have been certified since 2002. “A benefit of being certified,” according to Kimberly, “is the credibility of having a third party verify that we are doing what we say we are and what we should be doing.”
At Glenryan Farms, the biggest challenges are the weather and the time - the weather is very unpredictable and there is never enough time! In the future, they would like to continue to diversify the produce they grow. They are also planning on adding another greenhouse, so that they can concentrate on producing during the off-season.
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