Those who want to know where their food comes from and home gardeners looking for help now have a new local option.

Good Food Garden, located on Pleasant Corner Road north of Vankleek Hill, debuted its new website this month, offering Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes for home delivery and all types of products for home gardeners. Peggy McDonald, who purchased the 25-acre property just over a decade ago, decided 2021 was the year to expand the agricultural experience gained from her personal gardens.

“I’ve always had a huge garden here and delivered all kinds of vegetables to family and friends, but never actually sold produce before – I’ve been doing it thus far just to share it,” says McDonald. “I really decided to grow food for the community. That was the big deal – being able to have local people know where their food comes from.”

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a number of food shortages in its early days and also made Canadians question where the produce on their tables originated, would it be available in times of crisis, and was it safe? Those questions have inspired growers across the country to invest in making local produce available to consumers.

For 2021, Good Food Garden plans to offer a limited number of customers CSA boxes for a 10-week period over the summer. Plans are to expand the service to provide a greater number of customers with weekly CSA boxes throughout the year. The boxes are almost all sold out for 2021, and those who choose to get one this year will get in on the ground floor of experimenting with different types of produce.

“What I’m doing right now is testing a lot of different varieties and germination rate of seeds,” explains McDonald, who has created a small indoor grow space to start her seedlings and plans to offer a wide variety in Good Food Garden CSA boxes. “I’m going to be introducing my CSA customers to a really wide range of ‘heirloom’ vegetables.”

For the home gardener, Good Food Garden offers seedlings and certified organic seeds, as well as products such as CowPots and Root Pouch fabric planting containers, made out of recycled water bottles.

“CowPots are compressed cow manure and when they are planted, they decompose and give a boost of nitrogen to your plants, so you are actually fertilizing your plants at the same time, just by popping this in the ground,” enthuses McDonald, who plans to introduce area gardeners to smaller environmentally-friendly companies. “I’m trying to find ways to help the home gardener, because not everyone has the space, but a lot of people would like to have their own fresh fruits and vegetables – whether they want to have a little tomato plant, or they want to have a few plants.”

McDonald aims to be 100-per-cent natural in both her own growing, and in the products the Good Food Garden offers to home gardeners.

“We are not yet certified organic, but I use organic compost and seeds, with no pesticides – everything I do is done 100-per-cent naturally,” McDonald says. “We have chickens on the farm for that purpose – so that we can age the manure and use it on the gardens.”

To that end the Pleasant Corner Road property is also set up to attract pollinators, with all kinds of flowers complementing the produce. Each little attention to detail benefits everything that grows on the property. McDonald explains.

“When I say 100 per cent natural, that’s a big part of it – to try to work with nature, not against it.”

Anyone who would like more information on Good Food Garden’s CSA boxes or for advice and products for their home garden can contact Peggy McDonald through the company’s website , or Facebook page.