Green Guys on The Drive was started when Dan (one of the co-founders) chose to take a medical leave from work to undergo chemo therapy for pre-existing medical condition. Up until this point Dan had had three hobbies in his life: work, hiking, and traveling.
While attending a course at Inspire Health, a supportive cancer care organization, he was reminded that having a hobby to focus one's energies on would be a helpful distraction to treatment (fortunately Dan's treatment was effective while having mild side effects).
Given that Dan wasn't working, hiking or traveling for the moment he had to find a new hobby. He chose two: Pottery and gardening with a twist.
While attending a course at Inspire Health, a supportive cancer care organization, he was reminded that having a hobby to focus one's energies on would be a helpful distraction to treatment (fortunately Dan's treatment was effective while having mild side effects).
Given that Dan wasn't working, hiking or traveling for the moment he had to find a new hobby. He chose two: Pottery and gardening with a twist.
One day while browsing YouTube Dan came across a design for an outdoor vertical hydroponic vegetable garden. Dan asked Brandon, a good friend of his who he had gone through mechanical engineering school with, if he wanted to build one with him. Sharing a similar interest in system design as well as local, healthy food he said yes.
There were two initial problems though. How to pay for it and where to put it as both of us lived in apartments at the time with no yards. As for the first problem we turned to the business model of community supported agriculture (CSA) where essentially the risk of each season's harvest is split equally between the farmer and the consumer (you can read more about CSAs here). |
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For the first year this meant we relied exclusively on friends and family to help fund the construction and operation by selling 4 shares in the garden's harvest. That first year we fed 10 people salad greens from June to September.
As for where to put it we finally settled on using a small portion of Win's (a friend of Brandon's and future co-founder of Green Guys on The Drive) backyard in East Van quite close to Commercial Drive.
That first year was like drinking from a fire hose as we went through many cycles of design, iterate, fail, learn as we learned what type of nutrients plants need in a hydroponic system, how to support plants immune systems without using fungicides or pesticides, plus other skeletons (learning lessons) that are safely stored in the closet for now :) We will write more about these at a later point.
In addition to an experience of accomplishment from being able to grow greens in method that used very little land both Dan and Brandon appreciated the sense of community that came from volunteering their time to produce food for people within their community.
It wasn't until the start of our second year in operation when Win decided to join us as a co-founder that we chose the name Green Guys on The Drive and to expand from one to three vertical growing units. With more units and plants to feed we were able to supply enough greens for 16 people. We also continued to spend time in the middle of the design, iterate, fail cycle. Given that all the founders value life long learning this wasn't a bad thing even if it wasn't always an enjoyable experience.
As for where to put it we finally settled on using a small portion of Win's (a friend of Brandon's and future co-founder of Green Guys on The Drive) backyard in East Van quite close to Commercial Drive.
That first year was like drinking from a fire hose as we went through many cycles of design, iterate, fail, learn as we learned what type of nutrients plants need in a hydroponic system, how to support plants immune systems without using fungicides or pesticides, plus other skeletons (learning lessons) that are safely stored in the closet for now :) We will write more about these at a later point.
In addition to an experience of accomplishment from being able to grow greens in method that used very little land both Dan and Brandon appreciated the sense of community that came from volunteering their time to produce food for people within their community.
It wasn't until the start of our second year in operation when Win decided to join us as a co-founder that we chose the name Green Guys on The Drive and to expand from one to three vertical growing units. With more units and plants to feed we were able to supply enough greens for 16 people. We also continued to spend time in the middle of the design, iterate, fail cycle. Given that all the founders value life long learning this wasn't a bad thing even if it wasn't always an enjoyable experience.
For our third year we decided to keep the garden the same size and focus on refining our technique in order to boost production and quality. This allowed us to feed 22 people from the start of May to the end of September.
We also participated in MIT's Climate CoLab contest with the help of William (a friend of Win's). The contest's aims were to source solutions to prevent climate change or mitigate its affects. Our proposal looked at the impact of reducing people's food miles by transforming vacant land in cities into urban farms using high density outdoor hydroponics. While we didn't win we did receive special commendation from the judges (essentially third place).
We also participated in MIT's Climate CoLab contest with the help of William (a friend of Win's). The contest's aims were to source solutions to prevent climate change or mitigate its affects. Our proposal looked at the impact of reducing people's food miles by transforming vacant land in cities into urban farms using high density outdoor hydroponics. While we didn't win we did receive special commendation from the judges (essentially third place).
Now as we enter the 2016 growing season Green Guys is heading into its fourth year of operation. With two of the co-founders being trained as mechanical engineers it meant that if the garden wasn't broke it wasn't interesting. So this year's "fixes" include a temperature controlled greenhouse to reduce seedling mortality rates and overall garden productivity as well as including our soil garden in each week's harvest. Stay tuned for updates by following us on our blog, our Facebook page and our Instagram account.