Green Zebra Farm Markets

14/09/2024

We’re at at city hall until 2pm today! With our famous salad mix 🥬; hakurei salad turnips; lacinato kale; rainbow 🌈 chard; tinda, desi, mashed potato, & patty pan squash; and amaing heirloom tomatoes 🍅 Japanese Black Trifele, Black Prince, Green Sausage, Striped Roma, Orange Muskat, Cherry Soileil, Blush Tiger, Orange Strawberry, Grightmare’s Pride

11/09/2024

09/09/2024

Ditch the lawns - plant native plants or food crops instead!

This is why we need to keep our native plants healthy and strong.

07/09/2024

Come visit us at today until 2pm! 🥬 Support your 🍅 🥕

03/09/2024

Tasty squash and eggplant! 🍆 , Cueball squash, Golden nugget squash, , Black Beauty , Listada de Gandia Eggplant, Long Purple Eggplant

10/07/2024

🐝 🐝 🐝

29/06/2024

Link in comments! We are a small farm and the damage to our farm was devastating, stressful, and costly. No amount is too small to help us rebuild to continue to provide the Burnaby community with hyperlocal, fresh, nutritious food. Shares are also super helpful!

28/06/2024

You won’t want to miss the first carrots and Japanese hakurei white salad turnips of the season! Plus don’t forget our tasty radish, pea, and sunflower microgreens and our fan favourite salad mix!

15/06/2024

Tomato workshop by donation! 2pm Thursday June 20th 🍅 Good for beginners and novices - up your tomato game by learning new tips and trellising techniques 🥬 Bring your own gloves, water bottle, hat & sun protection and get ready to get growing!

12/06/2024

The toe beans harvest is plentiful this year 🐱

28/05/2024

I moth ask you a question: which are better pollinators? Moths or bees? Moths are more efficient pollinators at night than day-flying pollinators such as bees according to a new study at University of Sussex. Let’s celebrate these beauties!

27/05/2024

Lettuce celebrate peak salad season! All our leafy greens are loving the cooler weather - you can expect lots of tasty green & red leaf lettuce, super purple ‘darkness’ lettuce, pea & sunflower & radish microgreens, and the return of our famous ‘drunken women’ lettuce from at this Saturday 9am-2pm at Beautiful Easter Egg radishes will also be in attendance ☀️

16/05/2024

The Amazing Nutritious Dandelion 🌱

Dandelions are a classic spring foraging green. The greens are best eaten when young, as all parts of the plant are both edible and bitter. The roots have been considered particularly medicinal for thousands of years, and the flowers are even used as part of a traditional alcohol ferment.

They're also a non-native, so you don't particularly need to be concerned with over harvesting.

Note that because the plant produces latex, people with an allergy to latex can have problems consuming it.

10/05/2024

Brief update: talked with Burnaby city again and they referred me to BC Air Quality to report my concerns, so I’ll be calling them later today

Note to CSA customers:

CSA/veggie box customers are unlikely to be affected by the damage, since we have 2 other farm sites and veggies go to the CSA first. Our microgreens were also not in harms way so not affected.

What was affected:

It’s more long term lost income from farmers market sales that will be affect us the most. Plus the cost of soil testing and if it tests positive, removing and replacing any affected soil and plants. (And they killed all the bees when they destroyed our mason bee house 😔)

The site that was affected is where we grow most of our long term crops like tomatoes, melons, squash, pole beans, etc. because that’s where our trellising is set up. Also a lot of perennial herbs and fruit trees.

I do at least have some dwarf tomato varieties this year I’ll be able to grow on another site since they don’t require trellising at least.

Overall we will have less veggie this year and/or delayed start on that site until soil testing is done. So the volume we have for sale to non-CSA customers will be reduced

Side note: I was running behind getting plants into the ground at the affected Canada Way site- now I’m glad I was! That means a lot less plants I’ll potentially have to trash. Main struggle now will be finding a place to put them all!

As always, your safety and health is our top priority. We eat this food ourselves and will only have the best quality and safe food available for our customers. We appreciate your support during this challenging time ❤️

10/05/2024

Buckle up, farm family, you’re in for a ride.

TLDR local construction company destroyed our mason bee house (and dozens of bees inside it) and dusted our Canada Way farm site with construction debris that may contain heavy metals or other harmful materials, wrecking our currently growing crops and possibly permanently contaminating our soil

ALL of which could have been avoided with a quick heads up to neighbours and a short conversation before demolition began

******
The house that we share a property line and a fence with was slated for demolition. Problem is the construction company didn’t give any of the neighbours a heads up demolition was starting. They also DID NOT EVEN NOTIFY THE PROPERTY OWNER.

They did not put up temporary construction fencing before they started, or before quitting time yesterday when they started demolition. They have now put up flimsy orange mesh between our properties (its a start) but the front is wide upon to 13th Ave where kids can access
🔨a stunning 8-10ft deep pit 🙃

🔨broken glass, jagged metal, other dangerous debris

Basically unsafe contruction practices, not a good look

How they damaged our farm is what’s got me really upset

The common fenced area between the two properties includes our cattle panel farm fence (1/3) and the wall of their garage (2/3).

Our mason bee house was on the wall of the garage. We had no idea they were demolishing the garage today and before we could remove it, the garage was demolished and all mason bee cocoons along with the mason bee house are now lost and buried under tons of rubble. Dozens of bees, dead.

The second and more disastrous way they damaged our farm was by taking zero methods to stop dust and flying small debris. There was no construction fence with fabric to stop any dust from entering our yard.

They did not start hosing down the area to minimize dust until we complained. They then started using a small garden hose with simple spray attachment to hose down debris, which helped a bit, but did not stop large amounts of dust from entering our organic-grown farm beds.

At one point the dust cloud was a house width and two stories high. It absolutely blanketed our yard. It got on the soil, it got on the crops, it got on our fruit trees.

We talked to the foreman on site who was argumentative at best. They didn’t listen to our concerns or take them seriously. They interrupted and talked over me constantly. They refused to stop work. They refused to put up fabric fencing (or any other fencing). They refused to use a more powerful water spray to hose down the debris and dust adequately.

Their opinion seemed to be “we’ve got a permit, we can do whatever we want, we’re not going to stop causing damage and there’s nothing you can do about it”

What has been damaged:
🍅 Our Miner’s leaf lettuce crop will have to be harvested and destroyed
🍅 Our entire 25’ row of chives will have to ve harvested and destroyed
🍅 Our mason bee house along with dozens of bees are dead/destroyed
🍅 We will have to pay for a $300+ soil test at a lab to check for soil contamination
🍅 If the soil is contaminated we will have to do costly remediation methods or worst case remove, dispose of, and replace the top 12” of soil; countless perennial edible plants may have to be destroyed as well
🍅 150 tomato hand grown, heirloom, rare tomato plants may now need to be destroyed

I called City of Burnaby - and talked to their climate action plan team, who said they will follow up with me.

I talked to Burnaby business permit department, and they confirmed they do have a permit for that address. They took my complaint about the lack of construction fence. They didn’t really have advice on what to do about the dust and property damage and environmental hazard.

I talked to a lawyer and will be following up with them tomorrow.

The lawyer advised me to call the police, so now I’ve got a case file with them. At that point I was desperate for someone to stop more damage from occurring.

I’ve called WorkSafeBC to report the open construction site, and will be callling them again tomorrow during business hours to see what we can do about the dust that damaged our farm to prevent them from releasing more dust and causing further damage.

I’m kind of in shock right now. This is our life’s work. This is the only livelihood for the entire household. We are now short ten 25’ rows for planting, during our busy season. Our squash and melon plants are supposed to get planted this week. 100 more tomato plants were set to be planted this week

Now I have no idea if the entire farm site is even usable this season. I’m at a loss, friends.

The last time I got this upset was when our apple tree was stolen, and the huge emotions caused a week long crash because of my chronic fatigue syndrome, and I was couch bound the entire week. Fingers crossed I don’t have a similar crash this time

Being a disabled farmer is difficult during the best of times… really didn’t need this on my plate too.

24/04/2024

Our pollinator garden at just bust out in blooms overnight! Was stressed out today but these blooms 🌸 really helped my brain 🧠

04/04/2024

Are you a fearless farmer? A hasty horticulturalist? A gambling gardener? Remember - April weather can be unpredictable and still snow sometimes!

Go ahead and plant those tomatoes, but remember to check the forecast everyday or you might be a sad sower 😔 We plant early, but make plastic low-tunnels to protect our beauties until danger of frost is gone ❄️

30/03/2024

Fruit tree pruning & working with weeds workshop!

🥬 When: Sunday, April 7, 12pm-4pm
🥬 Where: 4052 Price St, Burnaby
🥬 Bring: Closed-toed shoes, sun hat, water bottle, snacks, nursery pots you no longer need to donate, your garden questions!
🥬 Cost: free!

Learn about healthy pruning for fruit trees, see the results of grafting in action, learn to identify common weeds, how to improve soil health, and how to tame weeds naturally!

We’ll be overhauling a graden space that hasn’t been used in 4 years, and turning it back into a productive space

22/03/2024

The plants are watching
And waiting
And plotting 🌱

19/03/2024

Mulch warriors, activate!

Adding more arbourist wood chips to our pathways, gradually getting the yard more level - all in a days work! 🪵 🪱 🌱

18/03/2024

Gearing up for another amazing year - looking forward to seeing y’all at the and 🍅

We’ll have more herbs and flowers and veggie starts to choose from, have our own seeds to sell and lots of new veggies to munch on!

16/03/2024

Be like our garlic - reach for the sky, focus on your roots, and remember that growth takes time - it’s ok to grow slow and take lots of rest along the way ❤️

Looking forward to gorgeous weather this week and spending time with farm friends and critters 🌷