Tristan Banwell has been involved with LAFS from the start. As President of the society and full-time rancher, he is a strong advocate for local and sustainable agriculture.
In this short interview, Banwell tells us about his family, his farm and his vision.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your family?
My wife Aubyn and I moved to Lillooet in early 2014 to manage Spray Creek Ranch. Aubyn majored in Studio Art at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA and I studied Natural Resources Conservation at UBC before we married — but we met in band class in high school in Northern California. I worked and studied around the world and Aubyn and I homesteaded for five years on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State before moving to Lillooet.
It was while we were homesteading off-grid on the Olympic Peninsula, that we started trying to become more self-sufficient and grow some food. When you do something you love you are bound to produce a surplus. We saw that raising our own livestock for meat, milk and eggs was beneficial for our health and the health of the land, and soon we had chickens, ducks, goats and pigs rotating around the farmstead. Before long, we were producing a wide range of vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, meats and eggs for on-farm sales to our small community and we knew this was what we wanted to do for a living.
Q: When did you get involved with LAFS and why?
A: When I moved to Lillooet, I saw so much potential and had plenty of ideas. When I discovered the Ag Plan, I realized a diverse group of people had already spent a lot of time thinking about how to build a sustainable food system in our area. I decided to start working on some of the tasks identified in the Ag Plan, one of which was starting a “farmers’ institute”, which became LAFS.
Q: Can you tell us about your farming practices?
A: Spray Creek Ranch is a certified organic and diversified regenerative farm using ecological principles to produce wholesome, delicious pastured meats. We raise certified organic beef cattle, pigs, meat chickens, turkeys and laying hens on pasture as part of an integrated and regenerative agroecological system. We also operate a growing on-farm abattoir and meat shop, and are moving toward slaughtering all our livestock on the farm and providing slaughter and cut & wrap services to other farms in our region.
Q: Where are your products sold?
A: Customers can find us selling our beef, pork, chicken, turkey and eggs at the Lillooet, Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish Farmers’ Markets. We are also open by appointment for tours and on-farm sales, and you can taste our products at our favourite local eateries: Abundance Artisan Bakery and The Kitchen at Fort Berens Estate Winery.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We are growing our business each year as we develop our systems, connect with more customers and find out what works. In 2018 we will be producing a lot more beef, increasing the size of our laying flock and building on the capacity of our on-farm meat shop.
Photo Credit: Spray Creek Ranch
Q: When and why did you move your farm to Lillooet?
A: We bought our farm way back in the summer of 2016. Lots has happened since then… I can’t believe it has only been a year. We had been looking for the perfect plot of land for many years… a place that would fill our need for natural surroundings, coupled with the resources to grow beautiful food. After a few decades of leasing or caretaking various properties, we had a pretty long list of criteria to fulfill our idea of “perfect”. With Lillooet always on the radar, our search took us all over the province. We looked at many beautiful farms but none were quite “perfect” for one reason or other. No water, no sun, no road… When we finally found this place, we knew it was the “one”. It was a blank canvas on which to paint our beautiful, bountiful future.
We knew that Lillooet was a naturally beautiful place, but the community is exceeding any expectations we may have had. We feel pretty lucky to have landed in such a land of supportive neighbours and organic farmers. I would have had a tough time making it through the year without their help.
Q: Can you tell us about your farming practices?
A: I farm vegetables and will be adding fruit trees and perennials over the next few years. I like to farm in balance with nature. It is against my beliefs to use synthetic chemicals to grow things. Compost, cover crops, and mulching are more my style.
I use a small tractor, a walk-behind tractor, and an assortment of hand tools. Love is my biggest input.
Q: What do you grow and how can people buy your produce?
A: I try to grow pretty much anything our climate will allow. I’m so excited to be able to grow the heat-loving crops that Lillooet is becoming famous for. I have been supplying two weekly farmers markets in Vancouver since June with a wide assortment of vegetables. So many kinds of peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, greens, peas beans, etc, etc… At the moment, I have many varieties of squash, shallots and storage onions.
My Farmers markets are on Thursdays at Queen Elizabeth Theatre downtown Vancouver 11am-3pm and Saturdays at Riley Park Vancouver from 10am-2pm. I’ve been selling to a few Lillooet residents, as well as to the Kitchen at Fort Berens and Abundance Bakery.
Now that I’ve had a year of growing on this land, and have established a reliable market, I can focus next year on providing a reliable flow of vegetables to the members of my community. I’m not sure if this will be through the Lillooet Farmers Market or through pre-orders. It would be great to have some input from the those interested in receiving my produce.
At the moment, I’d love to make available my onions, shallots and squash. I’m taking orders now.
Chris can be reached at 
The series started in the spring with a two day workshop on growing organic food, hosted by T’ít’q’et First Nation and offered by Thompson Rivers University.
In the summer, it was Sekw’el’was’ turn to host and this time the workshop was on water preservation, efficient irrigation and xeriscaping. 25 participants attended. Jim Dobrovolny from Delta Irrigation provided a very engaging talk about water wise irrigation – he answered questions about practical aspects of providing the best irrigation with the least water and had examples from farms in the area to demonstrate his teaching points. We had a phone conference with Jaime Garbutt, Outreach Coordinator for the Kamloops Sustainability Program, and learned about that city’s methods for conserving water. Splitrock Environmental then hosted a tour of their facilities and talked about xeriscaping and using indigenous plants.
Our latest workshop, which was hosted by Xwísten this fall, was attended by 20 participants. Greg Smith presented on pruning fruit trees and the participants asked many questions and shared their own experiences.
Greg drew on his years of experience farming in the area and shared humorous stories about some of his less successful enterprises and the learnings attached. The talk was engaging and informative. In the afternoon Kim North and Candice Jack did a presentation about bringing indigenous plants into the garden and we took a walk to the community garden. We looked at some native plants and talked about laying out a landscape for a garden. Participants received complimentary copies of Naturescape booklets provided by 
We then had a look at an overgrown fruit tree where Greg demonstrated how pruning would be approached for the best fruit production. During the day, Candice Jack, Xwísten community member, shared her expertise about St’at’imc traditional use of plants. A big thank you to
Fountainview participants who brought along fruit for the workshop which we enjoyed and shared with the community.
Our next workshop will take place this winter and will likely touch on seed-saving and keeping chickens in one’s backyard. Stay tuned for more details!
Serving local food has been a dream of Foss’ for over 10 years and is the culmination of many years of work and apprenticeship. The vision began when Foss worked under Robert Clark—co-founder of Ocean Wise and a strong advocate for sustainability—and it became a priority when he tasted the difference between low and high-quality products.
Foss says the menu changes with the season. “You’ll notice early in the season that the menu is full of root vegetables, dried legumes and braised meats. As spring turns into summer, you’ll see collard greens, kale and baby greens, as well as the first radishes of the season. Then you’ll see cherries showing up in some of the desserts and, as summer progresses, you’ll see tomatoes and melons. The glut of those hot weather vegetables is what is so special to me about Lillooet at this time of the year.”
The Kitchen currently sources its produce and meats from 6 local farms: One Love Farm, Spray Creek Ranch, Rainshadow Growers Collective, Amlec Organic, 3 Ravens Farm and Armitspring Orchard. And if the food on your plate wasn’t picked by a local farmer, it’s likely Foss picked it himself!
Again, this year, Foss and his team have been gleaning fruit from the many fruit trees around town and have put up ads to let people know that they are eager to buy fruit. “I love walking down the street and being able to smell the apricots,” says Foss. “It’s so satisfying to find the trees that have the best apricots and to approach the owners of those trees about maintaining them so that we can come back next year and pick them for the restaurant. They become more flavorful year after year.”
Foss has nothing but praise for the people who provide him with the food he serves. “I’ve come to a place where the locals care about the soil, land and air as much as I do. It’s been like coming home, to connect with a community who cares.” He also talks about the importance of the land stewardship provided by the St’at’imc Nation and adds, “it’s important to me to include foods to my menu that have been sustainably harvested from the land”.
When asked what was next for the restaurant, Foss responded that he hoped to attend and organize more events so as to promote local and sustainable agriculture in Lillooet and draw in outside guests. “That way, when our product goes out to Vancouver, Kamloops, or even Prince George, people are already connected with what’s growing here. They’ve connected with the wine, they’ve come to the restaurant and they’ve connected with the high-quality produce that we serve.”
The Kitchen at Fort Berens showcases the bounty Lillooet has to offer and is a great reminder that, with hard work and dedication, a more sustainable approach to food is possible. 
The Reynolds family have a lot to be proud of. In only a year, Jar Enterprises, the newest business run by the family, has flourished from what was a simple love of gardening into a multi-faceted and ambitious business.
Alex Reynolds and JAR’s 3 employees—two of which work full-time—split their time between JAR’s many projects: the aquaponics, the farm and the nursery. Soon they will also be processing much of the fruits and vegetables they are growing to sell at the Lillooet Farmers Market.
The Reynolds were not planning on starting a produce production company. Alex loved gardening and started looking for one personal greenhouse but instead she found three 20′ x 100′ greenhouses. Her parents went along with it and off they went to rip them down and bring them home. That is how the nursery was born.
Later, the Reynolds purchased an aquaponics system and installed it into a building which they built in June 2016 to rent to HOOH for hop processing and to Fort Berens for wine storage. The aquaponics system currently grows a variety of herbs and salad greens. They will eventually introduce tilapia and rainbow trout into the system. The concept behind growing aquaponically is that by circulating water through the fish tanks, where it becomes saturated with fish waste, and then through the plants, where it is cleaned and made ready to go back to the fish tanks, one can create a closed, self-sustaining cycle which mimics nature. No chemicals are needed and the result is healthy, vibrant food with great flavor!
The Reynolds have big plans for JAR. They envision a thriving local food hub catering to the Lillooet community and a tourist destination focused on education around food and health. They also plan to build a commercial kitchen to make value-added products.
Though they have had their challenges (this spring they lost half the plants in the aquaponics to thrips), things are progressing remarkably quickly. This spring, they sold their bedding plants at Timber Mart and Buy-Low in Lillooet. They attended their first Farmers Market last week, where they sold their very own raisins along with greens and herbs. They have also been selling herbs to the Fort Berens Kitchen and spinach and salad mixes to the Cookhouse Restaurant. Alex Reynolds said they want to make sure they can serve the local market before they expand their horizons to the Sea to Sky Corridor and to the Lower Mainland.
What else does JAR Enterprises have on the go? They currently grow 15 different types of herbs, they have blueberry, raspberry and strawberry patches (which they expanded this spring), they grow a large garden, they have been processing the fruits coming out of their orchard and they now also sell compost and mulches.
Everyone is welcome to go tour the property. JAR is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. If the employees aren’t down at the building, situated at 313 E. Lillooet Rd, you can drive up to the greenhouses. A pressure activated buzzer will let them know that someone is there. Contact information to reach them can be found on their Facebook page: 
It all started with garlic. When they saw how well it sold, they expanded to other vegetables. The food is grown in their backyard on the Hop Farm. This year, they took down an old shed so that they could expand the garden.
Those of you who haven’t yet tried B&B’s produce will want to mark their calendars for the next available Friday–preferably before 10am–and prepare yourself for a treat! 
Matthew Davidson was born and raised in Lillooet. Growing up, his parents always grew a garden and processed much of the food they grew. They also gave food–like veggies, milk and eggs–to low-income families when they could.
This was the foundation that gave Matthew an appreciation for plants and taught him the importance of food security from a young age. At 23, he bought a piece of property and started a garden of his own. However, health problems kept him from working for many years and his moral was low.
One day, it dawned on him that he needed to preserve food and work towards food sustainability. He went to the Old Airport Gardens and bought cucumbers–it’s what they had that day–to make some pickles. The next year he planted potatoes. And so he started on the path that took him, in 2013, to take a 10 month Horticulture Program offered by the Ucwalmicw Centre Society and Thompson Rivers University.
Not long after, Matthew founded the T’it’q’et’s Food Sovereignty Project and Amlec Organic. He believes that growing nutritious food is the best kind of insurance and is working hard to make sure that the T’it’q’et community is well taken care of.
Ravenwood Wildcraft & Healing arts is a business based in the Bridge River Valley that creates local, wildcrafted soaps, body butters, bath salts, massage candles & much more using sustainable, seasonal harvested plants.
Recently, Jennifer, who runs the business, created lavender oil rollers using lavender that was grown at the Old Airport Gardens. According to Jennifer, lavender is known for helping to calm, relax and balance emotions, as well as for its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. The oil can be rolled on temples, pulse points, sore muscles, wounds, sunburns or just for Lavender Love.
Old Airport Gardens is also planning on producing lavender essential oils with all the lavender they’ve been growing. They hope to put Lillooet on the map as a lavender destination. They currently have bundles available for sale. Stop by and get yours!
