A gardener at the FDFN Market Garden. (Submitted/Jason Cardinal)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Market gardens

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Mar 20, 2025 | 11:38 AM

As the snow begins to recede, and the sun gets stronger, gardeners around Flying Dust First Nation and Meadow Lake are preparing for another season of toiling in the soil.

“There’s so much more to being a community garden right, we’re trying to grow a healthier lifestyle with the organic fresh fruit,” said Pat Morley, coordinator of the Willow Creek Community Garden.

“It’s about getting fresh air, it’s about participation, it’s about getting out and building community relations and helping people feel welcome in a safe place and being supportive and respectful.”

She explained that at the moment, they are getting ready for their April registration and offer a variety of plots ranging in sizes, high boxes, high-raised beds and all the amenities needed for a successful growing year.

Flowers of the garden. (Willow Creek Community Garden Inc./Facebook)

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At the Flying Dust Market Garden, Manager Jason Cardinal said they have a number of projects on the go.

“We’ve been working on value added food products from the market garden produce,” he said.

“We’ve been working on two different flavours of bison jerky – so we’re doing a teriyaki and an original.”

Cardinal said the this is expected to be the first product to be finished shortly, and consumers will be able to find it in stores and gas stations around Saskatchewan in due course.

The team is also developing pickled vegetable products, zucchini salsa and carbonated honey drinks and all of the food product development is done with the Food Centre in Saskatoon.

The market garden has also been partnering up with Kopahawakenum Community School and working with students to start seedlings at the greenhouse, which is located nearby.

“It’s kind of like an in-kind partnership where we can kind of help maintain the plants in the greenhouse, while also utilizing the facility for the market garden so it’s been a nice little partnership with some of the educational opportunities there too,” he said.

A couple of the classes even hatched chickens.

“They donated those to the market garden so, they really helped us reintroduce chickens back to the market garden,” he added, noting they had 150 chickens last year, 100 of which were butchered and distributed throughout the community.

This year, he’s hoping for a peck more.

(A box of produce. (Submitted/Jason Cardinal)

“I want to be a little ambitious and I want to shoot for maybe 3,000 so, we’ll see, maybe that might be too much.”

Morley explained that they also have educational opportunities at Willow Creek location and work to mentor new gardeners who join the space.

“It’s more than just a community garden to grow fresh vegetables, it’s a community garden that’s going to build community,” she said.

The season’s the limit as to what may be grown – that is, whatever the green thumbs wish to grow in northern climate, they can grow.

“We’ve got gardeners that are coming in from different climates, you know, they don’t have a clue what to garden,” she said, referring to the focus on short-maturity-day veggies.

“We have gardeners that have gardened here for years and we try to support them and try to give them mentorship as far as what will grow, how to grow it.”

Carrots, beans, peas, greens, potatoes, beets are the staples, and they aim to have the garden prepped by May-long weekend so people can begin.

Morley said they’re hoping not to have a repeat of last year’s cold and wet start to the spring.

“Last year we had to basically restart, we had a lot of plots that just succumb to the extra rain we had,” she said.

On FDFN, the market garden team will also be working to expand their hive count to over 300 colonies.

“It would be nice to add another bee yard.”

In addition, they also bought a brand-new seeder and harvester for potatoes, which he says will help them mechanize their work force and hopefully produce more potatoes.

“On average, we plant roughly forty acres and that’s on average what we need to sustain our community for the year,” he said.

“We’re really hoping that this new equipment purchase that we can expand our production and hopefully maybe reach other markets other than just our community.”

Cardinal, who has worked at the garden for a couple of years, said he was idealistic when he first began.

Another box of produce (Willow Creek Community Garden Inc./Facebook)

“Some people may think gardening may be a little easy, maybe it’s certainly how I felt at the start…I guess really gung-ho about it, you know ‘I’m gonna change the world’ thing of thing,” he said.

“Now that I’m in it and really getting a grasp at what it really is, it’s a really interesting, complex thing. There’s lots of moving parts.”

Meanwhile, the Willow Creek gardener said they also work to promote community support and for a couple of years, Kids First had a space to grow and work with families as an educational opportunity.

“If we have any extra space or there’s some extra produce, we donate to the (Meadow Lake Food Bank), the Door of Hope, (Waskoosis Safe Shelter),” she said.

“Anything that we have extra, and we can’t use between our gardeners or whatever…we make a point of donating it to places that can make use of it and give back to the community that way.”

Anyone looking to work at the FDFN Market Garden can send a resume and resume to human.resources@flyingdust.net.

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett.bsky.social