Sunrise Gardens is a Certified Organic microgreen and vegetable farm located a few minutes west of Onoway, Alberta. Our focus is on microgreens (and shoots) as well as specialty greens, vegetables, edible flowers and wheatgrass. We are at the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 8am-3pm.
Our Mission Statement
Our goal as responsible stewards of the land is to use organic and ecologically sound farming practices to bring unique produce of the highest quality to you, our conscious and engaged customers. We strive to act in an authentic and compassionate manner in all of our endeavours and to create genuine and mutually beneficial relationships with our customers, our employees, and our families.
Our Team
It takes a whole team of people to get the food we sell from our shop, our cold frame and our gardens to our customers. We have four people on staff full-time, all year, and at busy times of year, the helping hands easily double in number. We’ll introduce you to our team a little later, but for now we’ll give you a quick rundown of how Sunrise Gardens as it currently exists came to be.
Dawn – Before Sunrise Gardens
I spent most of my early years living in and around Spruce Grove and Stony Plain but also lived in Ontario and B.C. before moving into my first home in Edmonton. I have a lifelong interest in Energy Work, medicinal and nutritional herbs and plants, and wild edibles. I completed a Wholistic Practitioner Program in 1999 and worked at a health food store during that time.
My interest in working outdoors and paying the bills had me working in construction and tieing reinforcing steel for the next 10 years. Tough job, I thought – until I started farming. My experience working rebar was great training for the heavy lifting and bending needed in the gardens, though now a days I’m always looking for ways to work smarter, not harder.
In 2002, I became a mother to our son Ceinan (kay-nan), and learned pretty quickly that no amount of hard work could have prepared me for parenting. Challenging and wonder filled would be the best way to describe the relationship, I think. By 2004 we had decided that we would head west again and settled into a cozy cottage off the banks of Lac. St. Anne. Our next move was to Sunrise Gardens.
Farm Roots
The first market season begain in the fall of 2003 and was the result of an excessively large family garden at my dad’s place a few kilometers West of Onoway, Alberta. At the encouragement of friends, I headed out to the farmers’ market in Darwell with around 50 pounds of potatoes, 10 pounds of cucumbers and a couple dozen onions. At that point, there were only three markets left to attend before they closed for the season, but I was seriously hooked on the idea that I could possibly make a living through my love of gardening.
I applied to be a vendor at the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market and was very lucky to be accepted in March 2005. A few months later, in May of 2005, a relatively small load of beets, lettuce, green onions and radish was brought in to Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market. We have now been at Old Strathcona for 17 years.
There have been many difficult and exceptional growing seasons over the years, as well as an unbelievable amount of personal and professional growth. Although the methods used at Sunrise Gardens have always been organic, we first became Certified Organic producers through OCIA in 2007.
In 2008, I began growing microgreens indoors. I found myself on yet another steep learning curve, and with much trial and error, the microgreens and wheatgrass found their way to our market table. For 4 years, we grew out of a 900 sq foot shop. Business outgrew the limited space there, so in January 2013 we moved the microgreen operation into a 2500 square foot shop closer to our home and to the gardens. In 2011 we put up the first cold frame, which is now heated with a wood-fired furnace. It allows us to extend our growing season, and offer things like mixed greens and carrots much earlier than this climate would normally permit. We have since added 2 more cold frames to grow as much as we can in the early spring when everyone is hungry for greens and vegetables.
We’ve tried many new crops over the years, and have many plans and hopes for the future. We are ever grateful for the opportunity to grow, all ways.
~ Dawn
