By Glenda Bartosh
There was a celebration at Helmers’ farm up in Pemberton on Saturday, one beyond the daily celebration of doing what you love. In the case of the Helmers, that means growing fresh produce in a way that’s natural and sustainable — good for the land and everything it supports, good for the chefs and everyday cooks who like to use it, good for the taste buds, and good for the people who eat it.
Saturday was Doug Helmer’s birthday, and after working his fields and doing the interview for this column, he and his family were going to gather round a bonfire for dinner to celebrate his birth in Bralorne 67 years ago.
It’s a rare thing that some of us get the chance in life to act out our dreams. But Doug and his wife, Jeanette, took up the opportunity literally in spades back in the ’90s when they moved to their farm full-time to pursue what they had been enjoying for years part-time — transforming their little piece of land into a piece of organic paradise.
The tale is really one of true love, not exclusively or necessarily romantic, but one that tracks the old theme “do what you love and the money will follow,” or at least you hope it will.
It all starts with Doug and his connection to the valley.
“We met on a ski trip in Rossland,” says Jeanette, who grew up at 29th and Palmerston in a West Vancouver that was very different from the one we see today. At that time, monster houses jostling for space on the slopes weren’t even imagined, never mind built, and the Upper Levels Highway didn’t exist. Their family, like many others in the area, had a garden, and horses and chickens, and Jeanette grew up playing in the woods and riding the trails crisscrossing the mountainside.
“I had never even been to Pemberton and when I first came, it was so hot and buggy. I’d see Doug’s grandpa, who was in his 90s, out working with the mosquitoes swirling around him, and I thought, how can he do that? And I’m here now, and I love it!”
I often think our connection to places is more than just memory, it can be literally in the bones. Doug, with his deep Pemberton roots, is a case in point. His maternal grandpa — Walter C. Green, who passed away in 1985 at the amazing age of 105 — had 80 acres about a mile up the road from where the Helmers now farm. It was where Doug’s mother, Anne, grew up, and where Doug cut his teeth on farming.
Starting in the 1940s, Doug came up with his family to visit the farm. As a little boy, he’d sit on the tractor with his grandpa as he worked the land.
“In the early days — this was 1910 to 1925, or so — they were trying lots of different crops to see what would grow here. They had different types of vegetables and berries, and dairy cows — they would send the cream out on the PGE railroad,” says Doug. “Then one year my grandpa tried growing seed potatoes. He sold his first crop to Will Miller, Bruce Miller’s grandfather, and that started the seed potato business in the valley.”
Doug’s dad, Dr. Cecil Helmer, was a dentist. After working in Bralorne, he served overseas in World War II before returning to Vancouver, where he took up dentistry again. Cecil bought the 76-acre site the Helmers now own (about 30 acres of it is still bush) from an old Dutchman who just ran a horse on it. He kept it tucked away as kind of a get-away, or maybe a possible dream.
“We had to clear it ourselves, and that’s why it was nice in a way, because nobody had ever used it for growing anything,” says Jeanette. Cecil had built a chicken house that was never used for chickens, but it was home for the Helmers, including their daughters Anna, Jennie and Lisa, when they started coming up on weekends in the 1980s.
As all love stories go, they gradually made more and more of a commitment to the place — building a log house, planting more potatoes. And then the sales began. Even when they still just had a kitchen garden, Russ Precious, who started Capers in Dunderave in West Van, was their first customer, buying as many potatoes as they would sell him.
Doug was still working in the commodities futures business at Global Securities in Vancouver at the time, but the day after Lisa graduated, Doug came home and said that’s it, lets go to Pemberton. It was 1995 and the dream was unfolding.
“Each time we left on the weekend, it had been hard to pull ourselves away because we were growing more and more things and we realized how the soil here was just so amazing,” says Jeanette. “We still remember the first time we planted carrots and every single carrot grew, and it grew beautifully — long and perfect and absolutely delicious. We couldn’t believe how good things tasted here. So we were just itching to get more stuff in the ground and to try selling more.”
And so they did. Early on, the Helmers received a lot of encouragement and support from fellow Pemberton farmers, as well as from people like Russ at Capers, and Chef Bernard Casavant, who loved using their produce. Even so, they caught glimpses of the kind of determination and hard work their little dream would take — once they drove their pickup up and down Granville Street in Vancouver, trying to get people to buy their produce.
Today, Helmers’ farm is certified organic and receives support from some of B.C.’s finest restaurants and chefs, including Jack Evrensel’s Araxi and West restaurants, and Rob Feenie, of Feenie’s and Lumière. The farm was even named best supplier/producer of 2006 by the Chefs’ Table Society of British Columbia. Still, it’s a bit of a struggle, despite diversifying into lettuce and other crops, and the girls helping out.
“The thing with farming is it seems that every time you make any money, you need to buy another piece of capital equipment. There is always another building or barn to put up, so everything you make you’re always putting it back into the farm,” says Doug. Especially with organic farming.
But — and this is the hallmark of true love and commitment — he quickly adds, “I wouldn’t farm any other way.”
Lucky for us they’re doing what they love. Now if you want to help
make the money follow, the Helmers will be back selling their fresh organic
produce at Whistler’s Farmer’s Market this summer, as well as at the farmers’
markets on Granville Island and at Trout Lake in Vancouver.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who
says, fresh local organic produce? Bring it on!
