Our farm

The collective

Coop les Jardins de la Résis­tance was born out of two collectives—les Jardins de la Résis­tance (2004) and Récolte Sol­idaire (2006)—which merged in 2006. The new col­lec­tive, com­posed of ten peo­ple, prac­ticed small-scale eco­log­i­cal agri­cul­ture. Their goals were to learn, to donate pro­duce in sol­i­dar­i­ty, and to cre­ate links between the city and the coun­try. The project was vol­un­teer run and finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed through the sale of veg­etable bas­kets.
In the fall of 2007, the col­lec­tive had to leave the small plot of land they had been rent­ing in God­man­ches­ter. They moved to Sainte-Barbe, rent­ing about an hectare of land with black soil. By the sum­mer of 2008, the col­lec­tive had four remain­ing mem­bers who were all still vol­un­teer­ing. At the end of this sea­son, the lim­it­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties of the land in Sainte-Barbe and the desire of the col­lec­tive mem­bers to earn their liv­ing in agri­cul­ture led to the deci­sion to buy land in Orm­stown in Novem­ber 2008.

The founding of Coop les Jardins de la Résistance

In the win­ter of 2009, Guil­laume, Poya, and Olivi­er found­ed the work­er coop­er­a­tive les Jardins de la Résis­tance. There was a lot of work to do on their near­ly aban­doned land: ren­o­vate the barn (the foun­da­tion and struc­ture); build a green­house and an indoor seed­ing space; pre­pare the fields, a space to wash veg­eta­bles, and a refrig­er­at­ed space. In 2010, the coop became cer­ti­fied organ­ic with Eco­cert Cana­da. In 2012, they obtained 50 beehives.

Today

La Coop compte aujourd’hui 5 mem­bres et quelques employé·es saisonniers·ères. La vente des légumes et miel suit prin­ci­pale­ment le mod­èle d’agriculture soutenue par la com­mu­nauté (ASC), soit une livrai­son heb­do­madaire de paniers de légumes at dif­fer­ent deliv­ery points.