Sunshine Coast farmers without metered water are suffering due to Stage 4 water restrictions. Many fear they could lose their livelihoods if the drought continues much longer.
Food producers who are new to the Coast and are awaiting farm status – and therefore are not exempt from the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s Stage 4 ban on all outdoor watering – are feeling the effects most of all.
Chris Kelly and his partner David Nelson of Pratt Farm began cultivating a farm three years ago on Pratt Road. The farm is still in development, and Kelly said this drought could be the end of it.
“It was going well up until the point where we couldn’t water. Things are not looking as healthy as they should; things are dying now,” Kelly said. “We have a market stand and people have begun to rely on us. It’s becoming more and more limited for what we can sell, so in that way we’re not coping.”
Nelson works in Vancouver and his income goes toward building infrastructure on their farm. They have plans to build a cidery and are currently growing an orchard that is in its early stages.
“The first year of watering is crucial for apple trees. If they can’t be watered the first year, they basically will die off. That’s a huge amount of money and time,” Kelly said.
The Pratt Farm orchard consists of apple and pear trees that don’t naturally grow on the Coast. They need special treatment in order to get them to grow here.
“They’re not doing well – their leaves are starting to turn brown,” Kelly said.
Kelly said they had planned on expanding their orchard, “but we’re wondering if we should even go ahead and plant if this is the situation and we don’t have enough water,” he said.
Kelly and Nelson dug out a pond to catch rainwater in case of a drought like this one, but it’s now nearly empty. They keep bees, but with their flowers drying out and dying, the bees have no pollen to gather.
“It’s crucial that we get water going as soon as possible,” Kelly said. “Everything that we’ve planted we’re in danger of losing. All our fruit trees and our vegetables, and a customer base too.”
Raquel Kolof owns Hough Heritage Animal Farm just down the road from Kelly and Nelson. It’s not against the rules to keep animals watered, but under Stage 4 Kolof isn’t allowed to keep an outdoor pool filled for her ducks and geese.
“The thing with water fowl is they need a lot of clean water,” Kolof said. “Their health is jeopardized if they don’t have clean water to bathe in or drink from. They need it daily.”
Without clean water, disease becomes a serious threat, Kolof explained.
“You need to have clean outdoor ponds, otherwise they’ll get diseases,” Kolof said. “We saw what an impact avian influenza had.”
Kolof moved to the Coast a year ago to start her farm, but didn’t reach the minimum of $2,500 in sales that is needed to achieve farm status before the deadline last October.
“From my impression from the [SCRD] meeting we attended [July 23], there was just a real lack of awareness about what farming is and what role it plays on the Coast.” Kolof said. “The attitude from the Sechelt mayor – in my impression – was that no one really farms: if you want food, you just go to the store.”
Kolof isn’t the only farmer with livestock affected by Stage 4 restrictions. Russell Anderson has almost 100 chickens and relies on the sale of their eggs to keep himself in business.
Normally Anderson feeds his chickens by letting them eat grass, but his lawn died in Stage 3.
“The grass is getting browner and browner, so what I’m doing is going out with my machete and digging up grass and earth and throwing it into the hen pen,” Anderson said. “That’s all the real greens that they’re getting.”
Anderson is also cutting down berry bushes on his property so he can feed the leaves to his chickens.
“There’s only so much of those, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. It’s a really big effect for me and my quality of hens,” Anderson said.
Without his chickens, Anderson said he would be left with nothing.
“I’m finished. Probably you’ll find me in the welfare line because there’s nothing else for me,” Anderson said.
Even business owners with exemptions are feeling the pressure of the dwindling water supply on the Coast. They too are doing what they can to preserve what little is left.
Karen Peterson, a manager at Deluxe Landscaping, said it was a relief to learn that the company was exempted from Stage 4 restrictions.
“They initially said Stage 4 is Stage 4, we can’t water and that’s all there is to it, even though it meant we would lose a lot of inventory,” Peterson said. “We have a compound full of established trees, up to about $100,000 worth of inventory. It was pretty scary for us.”
Despite the exemption, the company is watering its plants with non-potable water provided by the District of Sechelt.
District of Sechelt director of public works John Mercer said that this water is available to everyone.
“The intent was the District of Sechelt people would use it, but it’s not monitored,” Mercer said.
Persephone Brewery in Gibsons is also exempt from the Stage 4 ban.
“We know we consume a lot of water,” CEO and owner Brian Smith said. “And we’re really mindful of that in our production processes.”
Smith said that some breweries use as much as six litres of water for every litre of beer they make.
“We’re down to two to three litres,” Smith said. “We’ve actually added a big tank out there to catch some of our wastewater and reuse it for things like keg cleaning.”
Dawn Myers from Brookbank Farms in Gibsons said she is lucky to be exempted from Stage 4.
“We are affected, for sure,” Myers said. “We’re not just arbitrarily watering everywhere because there is a concern that we’re going to run out of water.”
Even in the middle of one of the worst droughts on the Coast, Kelly and Nelson have found a silver lining.
“Everyone is coming forward and helping in some way,” Kelly said.
“We’ve had the Gibsons Garden Club offer to do a fire brigade, they have 150 members who are willing to – from our pond – carry water bucket to bucket,” Kelly said. “I was so impressed by that, it just touches your heart to know that people are community-oriented like that.”
