We had the pleasure of sitting down with Candace and Miranda from City Street Farms to delve into the world of urban agriculture. Nestled in the heart of Regina, City Street Farms has been making waves with its fresh approach to sustainable living and community engagement.

How does the farm work?

Candace: We partner with homeowners and we use either their front or back yard to grow vegetables and flowers that we sell in the city. We mainly do weekly subscription boxes, farmers markets, and we sell to local restaurants throughout the season. We do all of the work to build the garden and then do all of the seeding and harvesting. In exchange for use of the space, the homeowner gets veggies and flowers every week throughout the season.

How did City Street Farms come to life?

Miranda: I was really good friends with Candace’s sister. I had met her a few times and she had ended up living with another friend of mine. She contacted me because she knew I had done a Permaculture Design Certificate course and she was looking into doing one as well. As soon as she finished her course she asked that we sit down and have a chat and almost that very instant we decided we would go into business together. We thought the idea of urban farming was a great idea and here we are year 4 and we’re feeling great.

Candace: How we started was wanting to farm in some way and also use lawns in the city that weren’t being used by homeowners. Lots of people have front yards that they don’t really care about, it’s just kind of a burden to take care of. We saw the opportunity to put the resources that are being used to take care of lawns and put that into growing food and now also flowers and make the spaces a little more beautiful and put them to something productive.

What has the support been like from the community?

Candace: In our first year when we were looking for yards to use, we thought it would be more difficult to find the spaces. But we were pleasantly surprised with the people that reached out to us just from word of mouth. By the second year we had tons of interest from people so we actually had lots of choices. We’re not accepting any new yards now but we are still adding to our waitlist. We’ve been really surprised by how many people want someone to use their space to garden so that they either don’t have to do yard work or they just want to be a part of something like this.

Same goes for our subscriptions. Last year was the first year we did a bouquet subscription and it went over really well. People love having flowers delivered to their door. This year we expanded our vegetable subscription box and that also has gone over really well.

Miranda: We definitely appreciate how positive the community has been around the whole idea. From day one we were doing callouts on social media like, “who has a hose?” to try and start this whole thing with nothing. We wanted a very small financial investment and really called out to the community for that and they answered. We got lots of pots, hoses rakes, shovels, all that kind of stuff.

Candace: We both have good connections to the restaurant industry and from that aspect as well we’ve been really grateful for having different restaurants as customers. We’ve forged some really great relationships with Homestead, The Cure, Saltine Bakery, and many others.

What has the learning experience been like over the last four years?

Candace: It’s really become a way for us to learn about farming on a small scale and about running a business.

Miranda: We call it Free Farm School!

Candace: Now that we’re in year four we've found a way to have the farm and run it a little smoother each year and also have our lives outside of the farm as well which is novel. Not a lot of farmers could say they’re able to do a lot of other stuff, but because we live in the city and have a really small farm we are able to feed the different parts of our lives at the same time.

Miranda: This year we started selling our saved seed and that’s been a really cool avenue because it’s something we are super passionate about. We really think it’s an important thing for people to know how to save seed but also to have seed that is ecologically grown in their zone.

How has the digital space grown your business?

Miranda: We definitely had Instagram right away and that was all of our business because it was just an idea and we were trying to sell something that we had no example of. It was just a lot of faith building. So we used social media a lot for this. In the off season we do a lot of webinars. We also love to listen to podcasts while we garden.

Candace: We built our website too, that’s our online store. We use Internet for a lot of different things, having reliable internet from SaskTel while we’re using Square at a Farmer’s Market, to build our website, to keep in touch with people over email and it’s good to know we have a reliable service to back us up.

How can people find you?

Miranda: You can find us at the Regina Famer’s Market later in the season and our bouquets at different businesses in the Cathedral neighbourhood. You can also follow us on social media—Instagram and Facebook.