Many people dream of quitting their office jobs and transitioning to a life lived off the land, growing their own food and raising children, but not many people actually take the plunge.
Kailyn and Adam Sherk started Mulhaven Farm nine years ago as a hobby project on their property in Central Saanich. At the time, they both worked office jobs in town, but it was two years ago that Kailyn quit her IT job to focus on Mulhaven full-time. As a first-generation farmer, Kailyn is learning as she goes, growing flowers and vegetables, raising poultry and pigs, and starting a nut and fruit orchard on their property.
When the couple first decided to start a hobby farm they had a clean slate – they could grow whatever they wanted and the options were endless. Their first, and biggest, challenge during this initial phase was figuring out what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it.
“We also had no idea what we were doing,” says Kailyn, “so we had to do a lot of learning along the way.” They opted for a nut and fruit orchard to start. Since trees take time to start producing at scale, they figured that by starting with the orchard they would have time to up-skill and learn more of what they needed to know while the orchard came to life.
Kailyn and Adam had been raising chickens and growing a few vegetables already, so it was an easy decision to expand those areas. With no prior experience farming at scale, they embraced the trial and error stage. Quickly befriending their neighbours, most of whom have been farming for over 40 years, they came to rely on their expertise and experience. Their closest neighbour (a veteran farmer with over 60 years of experience!) has become Kailyn’s mentor in growing flowers, something she became drawn to during the pandemic.
The local farmers’ market has played a beautiful part in Kailyn and Adam’s relationship since the early days. First, it made a cute Saturday morning date, shopping for local produce and sipping on coffees while music from a local band drifted through the stalls. Once they had kids, the farmers’ market became an excuse to get out of the house, pushing a stroller at first, then later letting the boys wander up and down the stalls searching for the “best berries”.
“I grew up in the suburbs with my community being my school friends’ houses and families.” reflects Kailyn. “As an adult, that sense of community was harder to find in everyday life, but the market always provided a consistent set of faces and familiar surroundings.” Living and working in the country, Kailyn finds it harder to recreate the sense of community that she found as a child. Luckily, however, it is places like the farmers’ market that create a familiar sense of place and give her a chance to strengthen her ties to her community and the land.
As a vendor, Kailyn has come to appreciate the farmers’ market and its community even more, seeing both the tangible and intangible benefits it brings to those around her. On top of amplifying her presence through their marketing channels, being a consistent vendor has given her easy, direct access to clients and allowed her to build up a following of dedicated people who come week after week to chat and buy her flowers.
Farming in a sustainable, small scale manner helps reconnect Kailyn with the process of it all. She loves being able to encourage friends, family, and even strangers to question the things they take for granted and reconsider the impact of their buying habits.
“Food mass produced in factories or flowers grown with chemicals and flown in from across the world are commonplace in our society, so creating opportunities to highlight the opposite (locally grown produce, low carbon footprint flowers, etc.) is so important” says Kailyn. Teaching her children where food comes from is also an important motivating factor for her.
“Farming and this lifestyle is just as much about the experience as it is about the opportunity to provide education and consideration to the process – first and foremost to my kids, but also to my community at large.”
During the 2024 BC Farmers’ Market summer season, Mulhaven Farm could be found in the Hatch + Hype tent at the Peninsula Country Market on Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm. You can find out more about them and where they’ll be next on their website. We wish them continued success!