Portrait of a farmer | Carrots take root

While we value local purchases and farm-to-table consumption more than ever, The Press hits the road again this summer to meet craftsmen and agricultural workers. Fifth portrait of a series of six with Les carottés, three friends who spin (finally) perfect happiness in Brigham, in the Eastern Townships.

Simon Chabot
The Press

Cores are making their seventh season this summer. And for the first time, Eloïse Racine, Francis Côté-Fortin and Laurence Harnois, all three young thirty-somethings, have the impression of having reached their cruising speed. “We have come to enjoy our spot! “Launches Laurence, seated with her two partners, who have been a couple since the first hour, on the edge of overflowing plots of onions, carrots, squash, dill and other delicacies.

The “spot” in question is a narrow land of 4 hectares, a quarter of which is wooded, where the trio grows with the help of 4 employees about fifty different organic vegetables for its 270 subscribers (including a good part in Montreal). , the farm market on Thursdays as well as the one in Frelighsburg on Saturdays, and a few restaurants, especially local ones. There is also a hemlock farm building, an irrigation pond and four greenhouses filled with giant plants of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and peppers, among others. An abundance that makes your mouth water.

The complicity between the three friends, who all went through the organic vegetable production program at Cégep de Victoriaville, is obvious when they tell their story. They go back to each other, complete each other’s answers. And often laugh. The path that led them to this manifest happiness, and good salaries for everyone, was however long. And strewn with pitfalls.

find a land

Becoming the owner of their land is one of the biggest challenges faced by Les corottés. Tenants at an apple grower in Dunham for three seasons, they even stopped believing in it for a while.

“Farms like ours are exposed to rural gentrification,” says Eloïse. City dwellers who buy a country house to rent out their fields drive up prices and deprive farmers of both land to farm and housing, she says. “On the row here, there are eight secondary houses almost always empty, and our employees are struggling to find accommodation. »

Luckily, Eloise’s family, who have operated a dairy farm for six generations in Brigham, agreed to sell a piece of land to Les Carottés. But still it was necessary to convince the Commission of protection of the agricultural territory to accept the division of the ground. Francis took charge of the file. With brio. “Insurance, building permits, financing: when we became owners, all the barriers to the development of the company were lifted,” he specifies.

The carrots still do not owe their success to the simple fact of having taken root in their own land. Their relentlessness also has a lot to do with it, from the college education that touches on culture as well as management, through the internships and the years on rented land that allowed them to take tests and improve, suddenly. hours never counted for planting, weeding, harvesting, selling, etc. “Working with nature can’t be learned quickly, it’s the work of a lifetime”, says Eloïse, who remembers having been in the field even when she was fully pregnant. Little Annette is now 3 and a half years old.

Ideas to spare

“We were also lucky to have complementary skills that allowed us to progress,” adds Laurence, who is responsible in particular for marketing and social networks. Francis is the master of infrastructure. And Eloise reigns over the nursery and the fields. “And since there are three of us, explains Laurence, when someone has a less good idea… there are two of us to bring him to order! »

Ideas, Les carottés have never lacked to grow their business.

The baskets arouse less enthusiasm? “We offered prepaid cards that work like a Canadian Tire gift card, to let subscribers choose their vegetables as they wish,” recalls Eloïse.

Customers want more tomatoes, peppers and aubergines? “We put money into the greenhouses to have more heat-sensitive vegetables early in the season and create satisfaction,” recalls Francis.

Are new vegetables becoming popular? “We surprise customers with new products and novelties such as ginger or shiitake mushrooms that are coming,” observes Laurence.

At the market as at the church

Over the years, relationships have been forged with customers. “People welcome us into their lives,” rejoices Eloïse, for whom the market days at the farm remind us of the meetings in the churchyard on Sundays in the past. A game module also delights families who go shopping with their children. This summer, the daughter of subscribers from the start, who was around twelve years old when Les Carottes started, is even working on the land.

For the future, the trio also hopes to multiply the opportunities for meetings with vegetable lovers through events on the farm. But for the moment, the carrots take the time to breathe a little. And to contemplate, too, their success, in which they have invested so much. “If I was told that I had to start all over again now, concludes Eloïse, I would not do it. It takes a lot of willpower and crazy energy to build a farm. I’m not 20 anymore! »