Our goal at Crooked Farmz is to be at the forefront of a new low-carbon economy in the East York area—and we understand this guiding principle is a significant consideration for our customers as well. Not only is this to recognize the wave of the future, but also to acknowledge the importance of history and honour our obligations to care for the land and water on which we live, work, and grow.

Some of the ways we’re attempting to reduce our carbon footprint every day include:

Sourcing and Distribution: 95% of the materials used to make our compost and compost tea are sourced from the immediate neighbourhood, while 95% of our finished compost tea products and amendments are distributed to our ‘very local’ CSA subscribers and farmers’ markets. This allows us to dramatically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for the logistics of the business.

Packaging: The compost tea brewed for our CSA subscription program and for sale at farmer’s markets is bottled in 1-litre glass mason jars. We retrieve and reuse all of the bottles from our subscribers and accept all used mason jars for return at our farmer’s market stall, reducing our reliance on disposable plastic packaging. The bulk quantities sold as part of our Pro Desk program to professional horticulturalists, landscapers, and backyard farmers are packaged in 5-gallon CFIA-certified food-grade HDPE plastic buckets. We also accept these for return or encourage consumers to donate them to neighbourhood container gardening projects.

Solar Power: As we expand our operations in 2022-23, we are attempting to the best degree possible to use solar power for our operations: the water we use for cleaning mason jars and brewery equipment is heated with solar energy, and as we continue to add capacity we plan for all of our brewery pumps to likewise be powered by zero-emission solar.

The Product: Research is increasingly demonstrating that compost tea itself has the potential to sequester atmospheric carbon and store it in the soil. As we increase the number of homeowners and backyard farmers who are using compost and compost tea on their vegetable gardens, ornamentals, perennial shrubs, lawns, etc., we can begin to imagine a patchwork acreage taking shape across East York capturing carbon in its soil ecology.