Hazelwood Gardens is a family-owned and operated farm that is dedicated to growing organic, regenerative, and sustainable produce. We use permaculture practices to grow garlic, hazel nuts, maple syrup, plants, herbs, nursery plants, fruit trees, berries, foraged goodies, farm animals, eggs and produce and create salts, soaps and ferments with these. At Hazelwood Gardens, we strive to provide the freshest and healthiest produce possible while promoting sustainable farming practices. We are committed to providing our community with healthy, wholesome, and great-tasting food. Try some of our produce today and experience the taste of North Glengarry finest.

 

My name is Brigitte.

I run Hazelwood Gardens along with my husband and children (sometimes just the 2 remaining, sometimes 2 older kids that come back home on weekends ).

Hazelwood Gardens is a beautiful farm that we purchased in 2007.

100 acres are paddocks, fields, orchards and 100 acres are woodland.

I recently had someone post a really, really sweet and much appreciated comment on one of my posts. This prompted a lot of thinking.

A lot of you know me, but some of you don't.

Hence, I figured that I would take a moment on this rainy day to introduce myself to those of you that don't know me.

I was raised in the suburbs. No farming in my family. I have been with my high school sweetheart since early 1990. We have 6 children, most of whom are grown up and either live away 100% or part time-haha.

I am a teacher by trade. Have done many things along the way including owning and running a café/bakery, The Pantry, in Vankleek Hill, for a few years. My husband works outside the farm full time ( and then some) and since closing my bakery during Covid era, I mind the farm.

The internet, libraries, local classes...You tube, Facebook Groups... are where I learned most of what I do daily now, be it farming, baking, fermenting... I enjoy sharing my learning adventures with my friends and folks that support the farm and hope that some of you join me in the adventures of learning these crazy new skills!

I am blessed to share my world with a lot of furry and feathered friends. They bring us all great joy and I enjoy sharing their antics with everyone.

My MIL was kind enough to let me start my own garden in her yard when I was 15, that’s where that passion began. Then student poverty prompted the necessity to learn how to make food from scratch (base ingredients being a lot less expensive) as well as sprouting to have greens and fresh goodness available to us at a minimal cost.

This farm adventure started 2 decades ago when we briefly lived in New Brunswick. We had become avid gardeners and proficient in the kitchen, the natural progression for the animal-lovers that we are was to get chickens for eggs and ethically raise our own meat. Essentially, we became homesteaders.

In the beginning, we decided to open our farm to unwanted or special needs livestock and pets. We acquired many skills in doing so and this taught our children empathy and compassion for all creatures great and small. They learned where their food came from and we all learned to be thankful for the gift of the livestock's sustenance to feed and nourish us.

When we moved to North Glengarry, we moved ALL of our critters with us. Slowly things became what the farm is now as we added sheep and cattle to our existing menagerie.

Over the years we have had pretty much every type of animal possible: sheep, horses, donkeys, cattle, pigs, birds of all kinds, llamas, alpacas and even deer!

Being an avid gardener and loving to try and eat all kinds of foods brought me to foraging. I love all things botanical, did many classes in natural plant based medicines and have found a balance in traditional medicine and modern medicine.  I am all about balance. As the children aged, they too learned about plant medicine, wild edibles, foraging and the likes. We learned fibre skills and survival skills, old time knowledge for example how to make soap or how to tan a hide, etc. Each of the children had their different range of interests so we learned about a lot of different things!

Currently, since I am mostly on my own to run the farm during the better part of the week, we produce what we can, by that I mean that we don't always produce on a large enough scale to sell. 

However there are a few things that we usually have an abundance of.  

Late Winter and early Spring belong to Maple Syrup Season. That's my hubby's passion.

I work the greenhouse in Season and the baking, ferments, sprouts, indoor farming in the off-Season.

Our main crop is garlic for the moment - of which we are growing 81 varieties- as we wait on the hazel nut trees to grow, mature and produce. We usually have an abundance of potatoes, eggs and perennial vegetables such as rhubarb and lovage.

We have every kind of fruit and nut tree that we can hope to grow here and plant more every year. Pawpaws, persimmons, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, blueberries, chums, plums, plumcots, goji, peaches, apricots, nectarines, sea buckthorn, quince. blackberries, apples, pears, sweet and sour cherries, heartnuts, pecans, almonds, English walnuts,  blackwalnut, chestnuts...

I also grow quite a collection of figues, bananas, citrus, tropical edible fruit inside our home. 

So there you are that's us in a nutshell-pun intended!

We love our lives and feel very blessed to have all that we do including many dear friends that lend a helpful hand whenever needed.

It sounds all beautiful and romantic, but it IS most definitely a LOT of work:

14-16+ hour days are usual days.

The thing is though, that we LOVE every bit of it and wouldn't have it any other way.