Andrew McClelland
The Advocate
Nicolas Audet knows that great farming technique comes from experience.
But, as this Gaspé-based market gardener, who runs Ferme la cigale et la fourmi, is quick to point out, gaining experience is never easy.
“Making good decisions comes with experience, but experience often comes from making bad decisions!” Audet said with a laugh as he shared his experience with participants of a videoconference hosted by the Quebec Farmers’ Association on July 24.
“I’ve made a couple of mistakes in my career – and I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years. But now, I think I’m starting to make good decisions,” he said.
One of the best decisions Audet ever made was getting into market gardening to sell community-supported agriculture (CSA) memberships early in the game. In 2005, he and his partner Melanie started their farm in Carleton-sur-mer, on the south shore of the Gaspé peninsula, where they grow a huge variety of vegetables and herbs. Today, they deliver baskets to over 200 clients.
That started their family – now grown to include four children — on a life divided between the growing season from July to October and spending November to April in the kitchen turning their harvested produce into products for their loyal clients.
“Our main goal is for our kids to live a good life and have fun on the farm,” Audet said. “They don’t really work on the farm yet, but they can appreciate all the good stuff that comes from living on the farm.”
Audet decided to make the investment into using heated greenhouses after he observed that it just made sense from a business perspective.
“If you don’t have a heated greenhouse, you’re going to have your products at the same time of year as your clients already have them,” Audet said. “You’re going to have tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers at the same time as your clients who have gardens, so your supply will be high when demand is low.”
Nicolas and Melanie started growing in non-heated tunnels in the summer of 2006. But in Gaspé, where summer nights can easily drop to 10 degrees Celsius, growing in non-heated structures won’t produce the size of harvest that can support a CSA business.
“In our non-heated tunnel, we would come up with cherry tomatoes by the 10th or the 15th of August,” Audet explained. “So you don’t have a big harvest and it’s not the best moment.”
La cigale et la fourmi grows most of its produce in a 30-foot-by-100-foot heated greenhouse made of double polythene. Its foundations and end walls are made of sturdy polycarbonate to hold up against the Gaspé winds, and the 10-inch-by-10-inch cement footings keep the structure stable.
“We also have a garage door, because you have to be able to bring a vehicle in there,” Audet said. “And the height of the rafters has to be a minimum of 10 feet if you’re going to grow cucumbers and tomatoes.”
Audet says one of the keys to success is to seek out a consultant or agronome who knows heated greenhouse production. At the start of La cigale et la fourmi, an agronome would visit for several hours every week, advising on cultivar types and production methods.
“For our whole first year, we had an agronome visit every two weeks. It was a huge help! You should definitely look around your region and see what service is available before investing in the greenhouse.”
Having a technician nearby who can fix and troubleshoot a variety of problems is essential for operating a heated greenhouse, Audet said, explaining that he was lucky to have a close friend able to do repairs at a moment’s notice.
“Of course, the most important thing is what you grow,” he said. “That’s where your value is. You want to be different from what your clients can get in the supermarket, so that when they taste your tomatoes, they say, ‘OK, that’s something special.’”
That’s why Audet grows “Big beef plus,” “Beorange,” “Favorita,” “Sunpeach” and “Sunsugar” tomatoes – types that aren’t as common in grocery stores. And the farm doesn’t do things the easy way. If a type of crop is easy to grow, but tasteless, it doesn’t end up in clients’ baskets.
“Varieties like Rebelski or Sakura tomatoes are easy to grow, and they’re easy to ‘read’ and know what’s going on with them,” Audet explained. “But we don’t like to eat them, so we don’t grow them.”
And that’s what it all comes down to at La cigale et la fourmi — being different from the supermarket competition and being proud of what they do. So far, it has been a recipe for success.
“That’s the main factor for us. Of course, you need the productivity, you need the conservation aspect, but what makes us different? Why do people choose us? Because we have something more special than the supermarkets.”