Farm To Table Experience

In the world we live in today, there’s something special about eating food that is grown naturally and locally. Organic farming brings together the best practices of tradition, community, and sustainability in an often overwhelming world. The increasingly more popular practice of farm to table dining brings the heart into growing food and plants, and allows for a deeper connection with the earth itself. 

What Does Farm To Table Mean?

Farm to table is a phrase that is used to describe the journey of farm fresh food from the place where it was grown or raised to your plates. When you eat farm-to-table, you are getting the freshest possible ingredients right from the source.

At Lightwater Farm we employ sustainable organic farming practices in the ways that we grow not only our produce, but our decorative and ornamental plants as well to preserve our land and pay homage to its rich history. We do create the farm to table dining experience in the ways that our produce is grown locally and organically. 

Benefits of Eating Food That’s Farm To Table

Farm to table is a meal designed for each guest to recognize the ingredients of their food and enjoy meals made from fresh, local ingredients. A farm-to-table experience is one that preserves the integrity of the food and its preparation.

• Farm to table dining reduces needless food waste and packaging.

When you’re enjoying a farm to table dining experience, you’re helping to reduce food packaging that your meal’s ingredients would otherwise be shipped in.

• By choosing farm to table dining, you’re reducing the environmental impact of food transport for your meals.

Additionally, the costs of shipping food and produce can be not only astronomical, but the transportation process can be detrimental to the environment. By choosing foods that are farm to table, this shipping phase is cast aside.

• Farm to to table means utilizing seasonal ingredients. When you pair this practice with sustainable organic farming, you’re helping local communities and ecosystems thrive.

Enjoying meals made from food that is in season can have surprising benefits – organic farming practices help the local environment, communities, and ecosystems.

• You’re typically eating only natural or organic ingredients and produce.

Smaller farms are on the rise for growing natural and organic produce – which has its own health benefits.

• There are great benefits to local economies – especially in smaller communities like Salt Spring Island.

Supporting local is imperative and has a ripple effect on the world around us. Especially in smaller communities like Salt Spring Island where we can help our local community thrive by choosing local foods, local restaurants, and local ingredients – we help Salt Spring thrive.

• The health benefits to eating farm to table are great, there are less preservatives in the food being enjoyed. 

Preservatives can be damaging to our bodies, and when you enjoy farm to table food, there are no preservatives needed – the food doesn’t need to be preserved for a long travel! It comes on your plate fresh and from the farm.

Developing Meaningful Relationships With Local Farmers

Not all ingredients, produce, or meats can be grown or raised on one farm alone. The efforts would be endless.

In this way, the farm to table experience in a community like Salt Spring ensures that all of our local farmers, chefs, restauranteurs, and artisans, all develop and maintain an interdependent relationship with one another – creating a natural community of its own. Each year the apple trees on Lightwater Farm produce over 5,000 lbs of apples – far too many for us. We work with other local farmers to supply our oversupply of apples to, and source local ingredients for our meals from other local farms on the island.

By building interdependent relationships with one another, we’re growing our community.

Farm to table efforts also help to build a stronger relationship between farmers and restaurant owners – when bringing in food, the farmers get to speak with the staff and share the story of how the food was grown, produced, and processed, and diners get to know exactly how the food came to be on their plates.

There are endless benefits to the growing popularity of farm to table restaurants.

Why Is The Farm To Table Dining Experience Important? 

Typically smaller farms employ more sustainable organic farming practices. By choosing farm to table dining, shopping locally and choosing local produce, you’re helping to create a ripple effect beyond the community – as all of these continue to support and repair the environment and earth. Organic farms help to keep the soil healthy by promoting biodiversity and continuing to add nutrients back into the ground. 

Farm to table systems ensure quality food products are being served, and encourages the growth of small farms – giving incentives to utilize the earth around us, and to take care of our planet.

Visit Our Organic Lightwater Farm 

A farm is only as good as the soil it grows from – and Lightwater Farm’s organic farming traditions are firmly rooted in some of the best earth British Columbia has to offer, going back decades and centuries to when some of the first settlers were growing organically on our verdant property, a history we enrich with the soil. We use best organic farming practices, including making use of collected rain water to store and use rainwater for our entire property. 

We collect and source our produce and ingredients for your breakfasts in the morning during your stay at Lightwater Cove, including ingredients sourced from other local farms on Salt Spring Island.

During your stay at Lightwater Cove, be sure to tour our farm, and see how we’ve been able to use all of these techniques to grow delicious food, provide beautiful spaces to work and play, and help our local Salt Spring community bloom.