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Recent interview with EOAN

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Recently we were interviewed by the Eastern Ontario Agri-Food Network, EOAN, here is the profile that was written about us. 

Circle Path Farm

Circle Path Farm is a recently-established, Ecocert-certified organic vegetable farm and budding retreat centre. It covers two family-owned properties with some 180 acres on County Road 10 and Concession Road 6 in Fournier in the United Counties of Prescott and Russell.

The farm is operated by brother and sister Keith and Karen Pattington and Keith’s partner Gaby Kassas. Each with successful careers off the farm, the trio began Circle Path during the COVID-19 pandemic when, in their eyes, the world seemed to be getting crazier and crazier, and it simply seemed sane to move back to the land.

The farm’s name refers to the fact that Keith and Karen grew up on the farm, which their father Bruce bought in the early 1970s while he was an instrument technician with what was then CP Air.

Circle Path’s motto is “feeding the body, mind and soul” and its stated mission is to grow food that follows the permaculture / organic farming principles of agriculture. They seek to build community through their networks with family, friends, neighbours, volunteers, and mentors that support their principles and pass on the knowledge to successive generations.

In practice, the team cultivates organic crops on some 60 acres of rich, black soil (including a sizable market garden) and also has a budding retreat centre where Karen teaches yoga. The farm currently provides 40 weekly CSA (community-supported agriculture) vegetable boxes to individual customers and families as well as produce to several restaurants in Montreal and Ottawa.

Although the farm is in only its second year of operation, it seems to be going places, thanks to the wide range of talents that its operators bring to the table.

With a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Keith, 54, has extensive work experience in multi-media. Karen, 52, co-owns and operates Alta Vista Flowers, a successful flower store on Bank Street in Ottawa, and also operates Bloulou, a line of natural beauty care products. Gaby, 44, was born in Lebanon and is fluent in four languages (Arabic, Italian, French and English) thanks to growing up in both Lebanon and Italy and living in Montreal since 1996. She operates Café Sfouf, a trendy successful coffee shop in the east end of Montreal.

In their farm description on the WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) website, the Circle Path team further explains the broad dimensions of their enterprise. Animals are a key component to the land fertility plan. They raise 150 meat chickens in a mobile coop to fertilize the fallow portions of the market garden. The team brings strong skill sets in farming practices, culinary arts, business management, floral design, yoga, meditation, language and engineering.

The farm offers a 2,000 square foot residence 1 km away from the farmhouse to accommodate WWOOFers, volunteers, workshops, and short and long-term stays.

In other words, Circle Path farm presents the kind of young agri-food enterprise that has a promising future in our part of the world

How to wash salad greens

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Our First Salad-Spring 2022

Have you ever taken a big bite of salad only to be left with a gritty mouthful of greens? We often get asked what is the best way to wash salad greens, so you don’t end up getting soily salad. Most of our salad greens are grown outside in our garden, the chances of having a bit of dirt in the lettuce is quite possible. In the Spring, we often grow our salads in our greenhouse, which helps eliminate the amount of dirt on the greens. We do rinse our salad greens, but no matter how hard we try there is always seems to be residual dirt on the greens.

Fill a sink or bowl

It is best not to wash salad greens until you are ready to use them. The easiest way to clean your greens is to agitate and soak them in large amounts of water. Fill a large bowl or your kitchen sink with cold water. Separate the greens and add them to the cold water. Vigorously swirl the water and agitate the greens. You want the moving water to loosen the dirt from the nooks and crannies of the leaves. Inspect a few of the leaves, checking for patches of caked-on dirt. If you are washing whole heads of greens, dunk the head and gently open them up, bending the leaves away from the core to allow water to get in between the leaves and remove the dirt stuck down at the core. Also, look for dirt in the hidden “elbow,” area where leaves attach to the stem.

Gravity is your friend. Walk away and let the dirt settle to the bottom of the bowl or sink. Wait about 10 minutes, then lift the greens out of the water. Give the salad greens a gentle shake to get the excess water off. Now it is off to the salad spinner if you have one. The number one rule of salad spinning is not to overload the salad spinner. You will never get the water out if you do. If your greens are too large to fit in the spinner, cut or break them into pieces. Once spun, spread the greens out on a towel or paper towel-lined sheet tray and pat down with additional towels or paper towels. If you are going to keep the lettuce heads intact, say for grilling purposes. Do not try to shove them into a salad spinner. Instead, wrap the head in a dry kitchen towel and shake over the sink or if you’re feeling adventurous, go outside and, with a firm grip on the towel-wrapped greens, swing your arm in a circle and spin the greens. You’re doing it right if your greens sporadically shoot out water like a sprinkler in the yard. Once spun, wrap the greens in a paper towel and place them upside down on a rimmed sheet to allow any trapped water to collect at the bottom of the tray.

Storage

If you are not using your greens immediately, store them in the refrigerator in a large sealed plastic bag with a folded, dry paper towel in the bag. The paper towel will absorb excess moisture and keep the greens from getting waterlogged. That same paper towel will also re-hydrate your greens if you store them for more than one day.

Coming soon : salad dressing recipes 

Siblings circle back to the family farm

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The Circle Path Crew
Siblings Karen Pattington-LeRoy (L), Gaby Kassas (M), Keith Pattington (R)

Siblings circle back to the family farm

Article published in The Review-December 3rd, 2020

The year 2020 has been one of growth and experimentation for siblings Karen Pattington-LeRoy and Keith Pattington, operators of Circle Path Farm in Fournier.

The brother-sister team, along with Keith’s partner Gaby Kassas, had to jump feet first into the family farm this past summer, when their father Bruce found himself stranded at his winter home in Vancouver due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But instead of just maintaining the property – which had not operated as a working farm in more than a decade – the newly-formed team chose to jump straight into reviving it.

“We have this propensity to be either fully on and engaged, or off,” laughs Karen, describing how quickly things snowballed once she, Keith and Gaby started working on the 130-are property, which had been purchased by her parents in 1978.

Keith Pattington, who moved from his apartment in Montreal onto the property full-time with Gaby and her two children last spring, notes the siblings had been discussing taking over the farm with their father for several years. Although it happened quickly, assuming management of the property from the 78-year-old family patriarch did not come as a total surprise.

“COVID jump-started it because my dad was in BC and he couldn’t come back,” says Keith Pattington. “But he’d already been talking about switching the management over to us, so we had some idea of what we would like to do with the property when that happened.”

With Gaby and Keith now living on the property, the first order of the day was to empty out all the outbuildings, which over time had essentially become storage units. The couple – with Karen coming down from her home in Ottawa to assist on weekends – spent weeks just cleaning out the main barn, which had been filled with old furniture.

As spring was turning into summer, Karen – who along with her husband owns Alta Vista Flowers in Ottawa – was swamped with work. The business had been closed temporarily at the start of the pandemic, but once it re-opened the phone started ringing off the hook.

“It just went bonkers – people could not visit families so they started sending flowers and plants,” she recalls.

At the same time, shortages seen in grocery stores had a secondary effect. With 130 acres and numerous outbuildings on a non-operational farm, the trio began to discuss how they could use the land and the skills they had to help both themselves and others.

“We grew up with this. My mother had a very strong conviction to grow her own food, from animals to vegetables – she didn’t know how to do it but she figured it out,” says Karen, whose mother Louise was an active and avid volunteer in the community prior to her passing in 2011. “So when COVID hit we thought ‘we know how to do this – we grew up this way’.”

A new name was chosen – Circle Path Farm, to symbolize how the siblings had come full circle in returning home – and work on the property began in earnest. Beginning by planting a large organic garden and purchasing 50 chickens to raise as meat, the trio used online research and YouTube videos to learn how to farm sustainably.

“We had memories from when we were younger, but it’s not the same thing as actually doing it.” says Keith Pattington with a chuckle. “But it grew once we got the chickens – we learned about pasturing chickens with movable coops and we started thinking about the whole system.”

“We kept saying every day ‘we’re learning’,” adds Gaby. “It’s like puzzle pieces.”

With Keith designing a mobile chicken coop to allow the hens to be moved to different grazing locations each day, the group moved on to their next project. A neighbor advised them that the Canadian Organic Growers association was looking for local producers to be part of the Growing Eastern Ontario Organically program.

Mobile Chicken Coop

“We’re now part of this program that helps us with soil maintenance and business advice and marketing – which is amazing,” says Karen, who credits the COG with providing inspiration for future growth. “We have all these things that have allowed us to go forward and expand.”

With the 2020 growing season now over, the owners of Circle Path Farm are now looking towards further expansion in 2021. They recently purchased a nearby 50-acre property, complete with a large open-concept home, which they hope to use down the road as a base for agri-tourism visits. They also obtained two large greenhouses, which will allow a quicker start to the growing season next spring.

And the ideas just keep coming.

“The snowball effect has now happened – we can do chickens well, we can grow things well,” says Karen. “Then we started seeing this vision unfold – we can grow more food to sell or to feed people, we can grow flowers for the flower shop.”

“We can see distribution points in Ottawa and Montreal,” adds brother Keith, noting the farm’s central proximity to the two major markets.

A huge key to future success, both siblings believe is to maintain the organic nature of the property. After their father stopped actively operating the farm, the fields were rented out to Phil Arber, who practiced organic farming on the land. As such, the soil is rich from having been maintained naturally for more than two decades.

Circle Path Farm will become a full commercial organic operation in 2021 and will hire several employees. Karen, Keith and Gaby will also be offering some of their products at farmer’s markets throughout the region. They have been particularly inspired by other area producers who have gone organic and returned to old fashioned methods of farming.

“It’s a lifestyle that goes beyond just growing stuff. It’s growing your community, your spirituality – it’s growing your life,” Karen emphasizes. “That’s what we really want to be able to do – not just grow stuff to sell, but provide opportunities for ourselves and the community.”

Anyone wishing to learn more or purchase any of their products can visit the Circle Path Farm webpage or Facebook page.

The Pattingtons
Bruce Pattington (middle), had a chance this summer to drive back from BC to see the transformation of the Farm this fall with his girlfriend Jill (not shown in the picture).

Written by: Reid Masson

We found a name for the Farm!

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Circle Path Farm

Our farm has often been referred to as just “the Farm”, a simple, and right to the point kind of name. We’ve mulled over a few names over the years, but as a hobby farm, the farm didn’t seem to require the need for a name, it was just what it was. A beautiful 130-acre property that is nestled just below a hill, the farmhouse is guarded by an enormous pine tree on one side and the whole property is shielded by pine and oak trees. Our parents made a difficult decision over 45 years ago to leave the city for the country, there were so many reasons to leave life in Vancouver. For many of the same reasons that people are leaving city life now, to live a simple good life, grow their own food, and have space to raise a family. Hi, we’re Keith and Karen, a brother and sister team, that have returned back to the farm from our respective world travels, operated successful businesses, and are parents ourselves. We’ve always had this idea that somehow we would return back to the farm, we just didn’t know how or when. Nothing like a world pandemic to change paths, eh?

Our farm life started back in the mid-’70s, our parents had an urge to leave the west coast to live a different life. Spurred on by an energy crisis, forecasted changes in the economy, they packed up all our worldly possessions into a converted cattle truck and drove 3,000 miles to a farm purchased site unseen. Our new life started, then on 127 acre abandoned farm in 1978. Early times on the farm were a challenge, but with grit and determination, our parents, reclaimed the land and barn from overgrowth and rot, recycled timbers to renovate our farmhouse and with energy conservation in mind built a passive solar heated home that for the most part is warmed by the sun.

Today, our farm stands as a living testament to what hard work, vision, and creativity can accomplish. Now, my brother and I stand in the very spot almost 40 years later, our father and girlfriend unable to return back to summers on the farm from their winter travels. Faced with a wonderful opportunity to finally launch our lives on the farm, we stepped into co-running the farm with Keith’s partner Gaby and are now planning what the farm will become.

When whisperings of what Covid-19 reality would represent to our lives in the city. Keith, Gaby and I quickly flew into planning mode, and shortly thereafter a batch of meat chickens was ordered, a chicken coop renovated, and there launched our early start to life on the farm. Now with a plan and a name for the farm four short months later, our path back to the farm has come full circle and that is how the name evolved Circle Path Farm felt like the right name for the path to coming home.