Check out this far north farm is helping to tackle food sovereignty

I'm at the Tŝidnak'eyh farm. I'm here with Derek Hastings, and he's going to tell us what goes on here and show us a little bit around. You can hear behind me already. There's a number of birds. Derek, can you just talk me through what's going on behind us? What kind of poultry I guess you have? Hi. Yeah, we operate an egg grading station here, so we mostly have chickens behind us. We have about 250 right now, and we try to have between 250, 350 all winter and we have a few geese and ducks the ducks we raise for eggs and the geese are just pets mostly we also have some quail and we do turkey seasonally and where where do all of the the eggs and the birds when they are prepared for for eating i guess where do they go so the eggs go to the stores locally they also go to restaurants Bonton buys our eggs for their uh breakfasts lunch menu and we also distribute them to transit kitchen programming which is the men's shelter we also do it through the nutrition program sometimes we'll send eggs to the the school lunch program periodically and then citizens you know whomever shows up we got mines a mine across the road that just came and bought 14 dozen today and yeah whoever shows up basically can buy them. It sounds like it's a really I mean and there's so much going on here but it sounds like the eggs are a really good kind of pillar and a good demonstration maybe of of what the farm can do for the community. Yeah the eggs are probably the most viable business on the farm because it's a it's a social program uh associated with the Tŝidnak'eyh government and it breaks even every year and makes a little bit of money the eggs so yeah and it's a it's a good source of protein healthy source of protein we got initial funding through a climate change adaptation fund because of the lack of salmon to sort of have the availability of good protein for First Nation citizens but also for the broader community and that helped us build our egg grading kitchen which has operated for six years are you able to talk a little bit about how the farm began and has evolved into what it is today? So it began with an elders committee and a citizens committee who wanted to bring about food security initiatives on the Tr'ondëk, which in traditional territory, this was a land claim, like a plot of land that they had acquired through their land claims agreement with the federal government. In 2012, 2013, there was the initial committee formed and they decided upon this site and they decided what they wanted to do with the site is engage in this farm school here and so the farm school got acquired some funding to have a pilot project here for two years and we operated a farm school and we were affiliated at that time with Yukon college and it operated and it was successful but it the costs were fairly high so Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in decided let's try to operate the farm more as a practical environment now it's it's a a hybrid of like a social development program where we offer youth opportunities and employment opportunities skills and skills and training and then also we have a bunch of products for sale but we also give away a substantial amount of food every year too for whomever needs it and we try to we're trying to work with other with food banks and with uh try to get the food down to Tr'ondëk citizens down in um in Whitehorse so like get some food to citizens that don't have access to the farm it has a lot of a lot of benefit outside of just the food sovereignty food security ideal which was the initial you know motivation now it's sort of a space for people to come and engage on the land but also to understand where food is how it's grown and and access good quality organically grown food and we also work with other farmers in Yukon to buy our feed so it's we're part of the broader agricultural community now we're supporting other farmers farmers support us and it yeah it's become an integral part of uh certainly the indigenous agricultural movement in the Yukon but the broader movement you know we we want to be we want to be part of the larger agricultural uh movement it must be really satisfying to think hey we've built a sustainable thing here for people to get food i mean that's not an easy thing to do no it's not easy and it has had a lot of challenges like i mentioned earlier i feel strongly that this that this type of idea could and should be implemented throughout the north and certainly in remote communities more often just as a way to engage with uh you know neurodiverse individuals it's a it's a good space for like a like a large spectrum of people like in people that are highly functional and people that are just you know that need an opportunity that don't fit into other elements of society because it with with a larger group taking on a project like this we do have the ability to not be as like demanding on individuals to like produce a huge amount we can spread the workload out and even though i like the leadership and some of the some of the older guys or the more skilled people take on more yes certainly but uh it's good camaraderie it's healthy uh and i think most of the staff here take pride in like providing for their family members and for themselves and for their community so i think that uh yeah really benefits people's well-being yeah derek thank you so much for this this chat it's been really fascinating to learn more about the work the farm farm has done the evolution but also just to hear you talk about the impact on the community i really appreciate it oh you're welcome my pleasure