Article content

While other farmers harvest the last of their salad greens, Swiss chard and kale, Leela Ramachandran and Brad Wright at Bluegrass Farm are just getting theirs going.

Did they hopelessly miss the boat on the growing season? Not at all. In fact their year-old operation is so clever and unusual, it’s attracted wide-spread attention and awards from provincial and federal funding programs aimed at encouraging innovation.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Turning winter green at Bluegrass Farm Back to video

Wright, 35, first started farming in the Wakefield area in 2012.

“I was working 14-hour days, but when I’d go to chefs with my tomatoes, they’d say, ‘I’ve got six other growers bringing me tomatoes.’ I wanted to do something different.”

Now, along with his partner Ramachandran and their three-year-old son, Wright gets to relax a bit in summer, but grows more than 40 crops in winter, in greenhouses heated by tubes of hot water running under the soil.

Photo by Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen

A wood-fired boiler heats the water, with Wright pushing in firewood several times daily.