Our Story


When we started our life together in 1972, we had a dream of finding a place where we could try to create a self-sufficient homestead. To reduce our impact on the environment, we wanted to live on a voluntary low income, and grow as much of our own food as possible.

Forty-seven years ago, we found that place, on a forested property 32 km. northwest of Castlegar, BC, and created our homestead, “Bright Ridge Farm”. In 1976, we arrived on that piece of land with two young boys, Eric, aged three, and Shane, aged one month, several milking goats, and some laying hens.

At that time, the land had no infrastructure in place. So, in the first year we were there, we hand dug, and installed one km of pipeline, cleared about two acres of land using an axe and a crosscut saw, and built our first home, a rustic log cabin (cost, $100.) It was a busy year, as we also built a small garden, put up a rail fence and put in a young orchard of berries, fruit and nut trees. We put in lots of berries, so we could have fruit until our orchard came into bearing.

Over the years, we have tried many varieties of vegetables to find ones that we liked the best and that would produce the best in our area.

Many years ago, we began to grow legumes, and we produce all of our own dry beans, peas and soybeans. In the last ten years, we have added grains to our repertoire, and have tried wheat, hull-less oats and barley, quinoa, amaranth, flax and sunflowers. We also save as much of our own seed as we can.

The first cabin was only meant to be temporary, so eventually we built another house. This one was a more substantial, earth-sheltered house, built of stones, cement and recycled lumber. It took us about five years before we could move in, as we still had to maintain the rest of our farm, and take care of, and teach our boys. As more time went by, some out buildings were added, including another, better built shed for the freezer and power house, a covered woodshed and outdoor kitchen, and a garden shed.

That was the start of our lifelong project, and the intervening years have seen many changes to our homestead. In the early years, we installed a small micro-hydro (waterwheel) system, and created a bigger garden. Our kids were growing up, and we started to homeschool them. We continued to do that until they chose to go to high school in Castlegar.

Wanting to have our homegrown food year round, we grew and processed a lot of produce. We modified a freezer that would run directly off the waterwheel, so we froze, canned and dried that produce.

As our orchard came into production, we found that we had too much fruit for our own consumption, so we began to sell some of it. We had only planned to be subsistence farmers, but we miscalculated how many fruit trees we would need for our own use. The orchard has seen its share of changes over the years. We got interested in the art of grafting fruit trees when we found we wanted to try more varieties, but did not want any more trees. We now have about 60 fruit and nut trees, with about 120 different varieties.

When we came here, we had a vision of what we hoped to achieve on our homestead. With lots of work and perseverance, we now have a beautiful, small farm. Things didn’t always work out as planned, and we learned a lot through trial and error. Most of the skills we now have, we learned by reading about and doing. After 47 years, we continue to learn and live our values.