SHAWVILLE, Que. – Farmer Stuart Collins uses words with the dexterity of an eloquent lawyer arguing a sensational court case.
It is no surprise.
This phenomenally successful Ottawa area farm operator who is a hero in his western Quebec community and an icon to organic- craving, food-savvy consumers in Ottawa was once a crusading Texas lawyer who challenged the practices and integrity of much of the Texas power elite of the 1990s.
“It’s hard to farm and to start a revolution at the same time,” says the 53-year-old with a Texas twang that’s still noticible 14 years after he moved to Canada. “It is exhausting but we’ve got to do this.”
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The farm part of the equation is well established. The revolution part will be explained later.
In less than a decade, Collins and his partner Terry Stewart have created an organic vegetable business that is a sensation in the Ottawa area.
They grow 60 acres of vegetables on the Stewart family farm more than an hour outside Ottawa in western Quebec’s economically depressed Pontiac County.
They use strict organic rules, plant mainly heritage varieties and offer a year-round weekly home delivery of a mixture of a dozen or more vegetables for $45 a week for two people, $60 for four and $85 for a basket to serve six.
Bryson Farms has 400 Ottawa customers a week, a waiting list of 1,200 on its website and new customers joining the queue every day.
Collins and Stewart supplement what grows on Bryson Farms with organic imports from Canada and in some cases, the United States.
“We have to keep the baskets interesting, not just filled with what we can grow that week,” Collins said.
The service is not cheap, despite its market popularity.
“I would say our potatoes would be three times as expensive as supermarket potatoes,” he said.
“And we sell our heritage organic corn at $1 an ear and customers fight over it at the market.”
The secret to Bryson Farms’ phenomenal customer response after its first shaky start in 1999 with one acre of production sold locally is the public demand for real organic products, the convenience of weekly home delivery and the unusual taste and look of heritage varieties.
“Our vegetables taste like vegetables are supposed to taste,” brags the farm website.
Collins searched out organic mulch and now uses a cornstarch-based biodegradable plastic to shield his seedlings from weeds.
This year, they may move into organic beef as well.
The secret of Bryson Farms’ support in the Shawville area is that it is labour intensive and the farm hires just local workers when foreign workers would be less expensive and more reliable.
Bryson Farms employs 25 year round and as many as 50 during busy seasons. It pays wages as high as $15 per hour and has a weekly payroll of $10,000 in an economically depressed area.
And it often hires locals who have troubled job or legal histories, addiction problems or work habit problems. Collins said locally grown marijuana is a mainstay of the local culture and the farm has had to impose a “no tolerance” policy on people doing drugs while working.
“But it is so gratifying to work with these people, see them develop reliability and a work ethic and see them move on to get an education or a job or just to get some stability in their lives,” said Collins. “There are days you want to scream but in the end, that is one of the great parts of this business. We have some failures but many more successes.”
That commitment to the local community is probably why thousands of Pontiac people have signed petitions to support Collins.
And that leads to the revolution part of his comment that “it’s hard to farm and to start a revolution at the same time.” Collins is facing an extradition order back to Texas to face theft charges that he says are concocted and a way for his old enemies to get him back in jail where they could kill him.
“This is no longer about guilt or innocence, and I am innocent, but it is about my life,” he said.
“If I am sent back to jail in Texas, it is a death sentence.”
The Liberal and New Democrat opposition in Parliament has taken up his cause and such Canadian legal
luminaries as Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby have represented him.
But extradition requests from countries seen to operate by the rule of law are routinely granted and Collins has lost at every level.
This year, the Supreme Court of Canada is expected to rule on his case, even as he launches a new challenge with evidence that the alleged theft of $70,000 from a trust fund when he left for Canada was taken by his law partner.
“But I’m not optimistic,” he said.
Collins is convinced the only way to escape being shipped back to Texas is political intervention and in the face of an unsympathetic Conservative government, he has been working his Liberal and NDP connections hard, hoping for a change of government before his legal appeals run out.
Meanwhile, Bryson Farms is thriving and striving for anonymity.
The truck that Collins and Stewart use to deliver weekly vegetable baskets is unmarked to deflect attention. Finding the farm is difficult because there are no signs.
“We don’t need the publicity and if people knew how to find us or to follow us here, we would never get any work done with people wanting to visit.”
Their website connects with customers, gives them hints of what will be in the next basket and offers recipes. Customers respond with stories of their lives.
“Delivering food to people is a very intimate thing,” he said. “You are involved with people in a very private part of their lives. They tell you things.”
Collins said the farm could easily expand but until his legal troubles are resolved, he is reluctant.
“I can’t plan and I don’t want to leave Terry with a bunch of debt.”
