Havenrow is 240 acres of certified organic ground in the Vancouver valley. Eleven full-time growers work it, and everything that leaves the pack shed is cut, washed and packed the same morning.
Havenrow sits on old floodplain ground that had been row-cropped flat for forty years. We spent the first six seasons rebuilding it — cover crops, compost from our own dairy neighbours, and long rest for the tired blocks. Organic matter has climbed from 1.8% to 4.6%, and the fields now hold water through August without irrigation on two-thirds of the acreage.
See what's in the groundIn 2009 two of us leased a corner block and planted 4,000 heads of Music garlic. We sold every bulb at the Saturday market and learned the thing that still runs the business: when the person growing the food knows the person eating it, quality stops being a marketing claim and starts being a reputation you can lose in a week.
Meet the growersWe're converting a neighbouring parcel to organic certification by 2029 and putting sixty acres into perennial hedgerow, orchard and pollinator strip. Alongside it we're building an open seed library of regionally adapted varieties — the peppers, beans and squash that actually want to grow in this valley — free to any farm within a hundred miles.
Read the field numbersEvery box is packed the same morning it goes out. If a crop comes up short we tell you before delivery rather than filling the gap with something bought in. And if what arrives isn't right, we replace it on the next run without asking for the evidence — we've never needed to.
Read common questions
Inspected annually since 2009. Every input, seed lot and field record is open to members who ask to see it.
Cover cropping and compost rebuilt this ground over sixteen years. It now holds roughly 90,000 extra litres of water per acre.
This is the actual sequence a bunch of carrots follows on a Thursday. Nothing in it waits in a warehouse.
Every bed is mapped a season ahead so successions land weekly. We plant what the boxes need, not what stores longest.
Harvest starts at first light while field temperature is still under 14°C. Sugars stay in the leaf instead of burning off.
Cold-water rinse, hand grading, and straight into your named crate. No plastic film, no gas ripening, no re-packing down the line.
Two electric vans run four fixed routes. Crates come back the following week and get used again for years.
Everyone on the crew is salaried year-round. Winter is for pruning, planning and paid training, not layoffs.
Runs the crop plan and the rotation map. Sixteen seasons here, and the reason our garlic still sells out in April.
Keeps the compost programme and the sixteen-year soil record. She'll happily show you the graph.
Raises every transplant that leaves the glasshouse and selects the seed we save each autumn.
Runs the Thursday cut and the pack shed. If a crate is short, he's already called you about it.
The corn arrived still cold from the field. I've never had to explain to my children why vegetables taste different — they just noticed.
We build the menu off their eight-week crop list. It's the only supplier relationship where I plan around what's coming rather than what's cheap.
A hailstorm took half their brassicas one August. They emailed everyone that night, explained it, and refunded the week. Nobody left.
I cook for a nursery, so the produce has to be spotless and it has to arrive on time. Two years in, they have never once been late.
We joined for the vegetables and stayed for the Sunday note. Knowing what failed that week is oddly the part I trust the most.
The farm walk changed how my family eats. My son now argues about which block the carrots came from, which I did not expect.
One note each Sunday: what's ready, what failed, what's coming in three weeks. Share places are released to this list first.