Buy Canadian First - Your destination for good shopping

Back in June 2003 we bought our 100 acre farm near Marmora. After a year of driving to the farm every weekend from Toronto, which takes 2 hours, we decided to take the plunge, and in July 2004 we sold our home in the big smoke and moved to the country. We hadn't planned to make the move so soon, but we found that once had our spot in the country, we couldn't bear to be in the city any longer.

Life on the farm has been a big change for all us. Matt continues to do evaluate the energy efficiency of homes for the ecoENERGY Retrofit - Homes program. Karen no longer has to bike through downtown Toronto traffic to get to her job in a large American software company. Now she gets her hands dirty in the fields, farming with Thomas, five years old, in tow, and calling to their dog, Molly, to stop chasing airplanes and birds. Jack, a recent addition, is still intent on chasing Molly and doesn’t even know that there’s something to watch in the sky. Martin, 14, left a large, multi-cultural public school in downtown Toronto and now attends a small country school where you know everyone by name. Matt's daughters, Janie (14) and Annabel (17), spend their long weekends and holidays with us, a big change from their daily life in Toronto.

On our farm, there is the cheese factory, a large concrete building measuring 30 by 100 feet, erected in 1907. It was run as a cooperative by the local farmers until the 1950s. Now it serves several purposes: we have an area to mix our tea blends, a workshop, a storefront from which we sell our products, a huge storage area, and a living area for our WWOOFers. (WWOOF stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms or World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Check out WWOOF Canada if you're curious.) We also have a great old barn, which, until we find time for livestock, currently stands empty. We erected our greenhouse on the south side of the barn to benefit from solar gain.

When we first moved to the farm, we lived in the former cheesemaster's house, which is located right next to the cheese factory. It was a small home for all of us, but over the last three years we finished renovating the old brick farmhouse, that we moved into on February 14, 2008.

Why herbs, you ask? We have both always been avid gardeners, and we have both always been interested in the properties of herbs and the use of herbal remedies. We both knew we wanted to work outdoors, be independent, and expand our knowledge of herbs.