Hannah Brook Farms, Purple Rubber Boots and Gumption

It’s 8 a.m. and I’m crouching in a field of watercress on an organic farm in Southeast Vancouver. I’m wearing purple rubber boots and sitting on my haunches to snip the green, rounded leaves. Sally is in front me, also picking the curly-stemmed plant.

I’m going to marry her son, we’ve decided. Well, I’ve decided. Sally’s not convinced. He’s taken for the time being—her son—and I’m definitely not Chinese enough.

Besides, I pick too slowly. Not good marriage material. Sally fills two grey, plastic containers in the time it takes me to almost fill one. She probably had her choice of suitors.

But I think Sally likes my attitude. I did show up, after all, hopping on a bus with my fingers crossed at 7 a.m. after a loose invitation from a farmer. That would be Sally’s boss, Paul Healey of Hannah Brook Farms. We met the day before at the Trout Lake Farmers Market in Vancouver. When I drooled over his anise hyssop at the market and bought a bag of pea tendrils, he invited me to come pick what I wanted in his fields so overrun with cucumbers, giant zucchini, squash, kale and beets that he couldn’t pick and sell them fast enough.

That’s almost true. He actually invited the two other customers in the stall, not me. “I’ve got more than I can pick, so bring a box and come take what you want,” he said to them. But my ears perked up. “Can I come?” I asked. Yes, he said hesitantly, checking to see if I was serious.

I don’t think he actually expected me to show up at the family-size farm on Willard Street in Burnaby. The other two customers didn’t. They probably had work or sleep to attend to, while all I had was a couple days of vacation. And gumption.

I like Sally’s gumption, too. Until recently, she owned the farm where we’re squatting with the watercress. But she sold the farm and rid herself of the stresses of running a business and now she works as a picker a couple days a week. Her son comes when she makes him, but Sally says he never wanted to be a farmer.

Sally is from Sichuan Province in China. She doesn’t think her English is very good, but it is. Here on the farm, she used to plant rows and rows of bok choy and gai lan. Now she picks lacinato kale, mustard greens, purslane and mizuna greens—“everything you can put in a salad that isn’t lettuce,” says Healey.

I ate them all in the Hannah Brook Farms salad at Chambar Restaurant the night before. The salad came in a sweet, vinegar dressing that was more vinegar than oil. Chambar is only one of the city’s top fine-dining restaurants that uses Healey’s produce. Healey’s background is in biodynamic farming and while the farm isn’t certified biodynamic, he doesn’t used pesticides or chemical-laced fertilizers.

But the real reason restaurants are sourcing produce from Hannah Brook Farms is the unusual flavours and colours Healey offers: lemony sorrel, bitter cresses, gelatinous purslane, and heart-shaped dark green leaves with purple centres that are bitter on their own but soften under stronger flavours. I’ve only seen something like them in Thailand to wrap a mix of grated coconut and stir-fried pork, chicken or jackfruit and dip in soy sauce and in Vietnam as wraps for mouthfuls of turmeric-tinged banh xeo rice-flour pancakes.

Sally used to pick the sweet anise hyssop leaves that tastes like licorice, but last week a bee stung her. Now she’s off hyssop duty. The hyssop patch is still swimming with bees—they love the fern’s purple flowers.

One third of the farm is devoted to gnarled branches as thick as my forearm that twist along the ground in the pumpkin patch, hiding 5-lb crookneck squash and zucchini bigger than my rubber boot.  I jump over a green and orange-lined oblong squash on my way to the purple beets, grabbing some greens on the way. I thought they were curly kale. They weren’t.

“Try a big bite,” Healey says. I take a nibble. “No, take a bigger bite.”

I don’t, thankfully. The green tastes like wasabi.

“They’re mustard greens,” Healey says. “Wasabi takes 20 years to get established.”

Healey’s invitation to take what I want stands, and I load up my backpack with as much as I can carry and fill a box with beets, greens and cucumbers. I also pick three crates of cucumbers that are nearing the size of my thigh. The cucumbers will go to Vancouver restaurants like Chambar and Forage.

Cameron, who also works at the farm, is organizing the day’s orders while Sally and two other women are off picking more kale. Healey also sells a ridiculous amount of it to raw food restaurant, Gorilla Food, which juices it along with heaps of other fruits and vegetables. Sally’s lower back seems to be doing just fine, while mine is mutinying from all the squatting. I’m probably not good enough for her son after all.

Christian is loading up his truck with boxes of greens to take back home. He’s the only one here who doesn’t work for the farm. He’s from just north of the city. His business brings biodynamic peaches and nectarines to Healey, which Healey sells at the Saturday morning Trout Lake Market for about $2.50 a piece. They’re completely worth it—the perfect balance of sweet, sour and juicy. He’s also trying to organize a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) vegetable box with Healey’s excess produce. At least that way it won’t go to waste.

The morning’s almost over, so Christian gives me a ride to the Skytrain along with my box of beets, greens and cucumber. For the rest of the day I’ll be a city girl. It’s only 40 minutes from the farm to my sushi lunch in downtown Vancouver.  At organic, brown rice-wielding restaurant, Shizen Ya, on West Broadway, I stick my box at my feet. The woman to my left sees the greens sticking out of the top of the box, smiles and laughs. At least she didn’t see me in my purple boots.

If you go to Chambar this week and eat watercress, think of my borrowed rubber boots, Sally, and a bright morning in a damp field that maybe put those curly greens on your plate.