RICHMOND, B.C. – The Steves farm is squeezed in beside townhouses and suburban homes and cut in half by a walking trail atop a dike.
The rich delta soil provided an ideal location for farming until Vancouver stretched out in the 1960s and rezoned 10,000 acres of productive farmland as residential.
Lulu Island and Sea Island split the Fraser River at its mouth where it empties into Georgia Strait. At the southwestern corner of Lulu Island is Steveston village.
It was named for Manoah and Martha Steves, founders of the small farm sitting at the end of Steveston Highway near a shipping corridor.
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Today that farm is operated by their great-grandson Harold and his wife Kathy Steves.
Their son Jerry operates a second cattle ranch at Cache Creek in British Columbia’s interior.
The Steves were the first family to settle permanently on the southwestern corner of Lulu Island. With their six children, Josephine, William, Mary, Joseph, Ida and Walter, the Steves left Coverdale, N.B., in 1868 to farm for a few years in Chatham, Ont. They moved to Cambridge, Maryland in 1875 where most of the family got malaria.
Manoah, seeking a warmer farm on tidal flats, bought 400 acres of land a kilometre north of Garry Point, B.C., for 75 cents an acre
in 1877.
The family reached the land by train across to California, by ship to Victoria, and by rowboat to Garry Point from the steamship Enterprise en route to New Westminster, B.C.
They lived in a cabin until their first house was ready. It was built on stilts because high tides flooded the area until an earthen wall
was built around the yard.
Manoah began farming in the area in 1886, importing three Dutch Holstein-Friesian cattle from Oregon. Their calves, Lulu King and Lulu Queen, were the first purebred Holstein calves registered in B.C.
The family also started a dairy and delivered to Vancouver area customers by horse and wagon. Much of the Steves’ milk was dumped during the hard times of an economic depression when the family lost some of its farm. The depression forced cattle prices down drastically and by 1892, almost all the registered cattle had been sold to prevent foreclosure of the mortgages on Steves’ land.
Manoah’s sons, William and Joseph, became the first mail-order seed sellers in Western Canada. Long Red Mammoth mangels were among their more unusual crops. These beet-like root crops, which continue to be preserved by Harold today, could produce about 130,000 pounds per acre, with each mangel weighing about 10 lb. Both the roots and the tops of the plants were chopped and fed to cattle.
The Steves usually grew about two acres of mangel seed, which they sold for 75 cents a lb. in 1900.
Manoah and 24 other settlers submitted a petition to incorporate Sea and Lulu islands under the name Richmond in 1879.
It was incorporated and Manoah became a councillor. Before a town hall was built, the councillors rowed their boats on moonlit nights to meet at the reeve’s home.
The construction of roads, ditches, dikes and bridges was among their top priorities. Roads were made of thick cedar planks over a sand base but were still muddy and soft after heavy rain.
In 1880, Manoah’s son, William, bought 160 acres between Steveston Highway and Chatham Street and began to develop the townsite first known as Steves and later Steveston. A wharf was soon built called Steves’ Landing.
In 1917, the Steves family built the four-bedroom house where Harold and Kathy live today. The house was one of the first to have central heating with a wood and coal furnace and hot water radiators.
After 1945, the basement rooms held egg incubators and chick brooders for a large poultry operation.
Agriculture thrived in Steveston as did commercial fishing. With 15 canneries along three km of shoreline, Steveston grew to be the largest commercial fishing harbour in Canada and employed many First Nations and immigrant workers.
Today, Richmond remains a thriving multicultural residential community, while the Steves farm has switched from dairy to beef cattle.
Harold, Kathy and Jerry raise and direct market Belted Galloways and Hereford-Galloway steers, but also preserve seeds for the Heritage Seed Program.
The farm is home to an assortment of artifacts collected from the original townsite and area that could one day become a museum to showcase the area’s history.
The Richmond farm is protected by B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve, which Harold, a longtime Vancouver city councillor, hopes can keep the condominiums at bay at least during his lifetime.
“We will not give up the farm,” said Harold.
