Evermeadow Farm was founded in 2020 by Joshua Noiseux and Janita Wiersma.  

Joshua Noiseux is a philosopher ecologist with "boots on the ground".  After years in academia, studying the philosophy and political theory of ecology and agency, Josh put his PhD thesis on on hold to start Evermeadow Farm in 2020. He holds an MA in political and cultural theory and has worked in diverse trades, including gold exploration and arboriculture.  Now a respected voice in the regenerative agriculture space, Josh has guest lectured at Ivey Business School, Trent and Queen's Universities, and presented at numerous conferences and panels, including with the Ecologicial Farmer's of Ontario (EFAO) and the National Farmers Union (NFU).  Entering his 5th year at the helm of Evermeadow, Josh is looking forward to further actualizing his vision of landscape scale ecological restoration, and deepening community resilience through the marriage of environmental conservation and agricultural production.

Janita Wiersma was raised on the much beloved land that hosted Evermeadow's first pastures, Fifth Wind.  She believes that being in communion with land can be a powerful antidote to the myriad anxieties and traumas generated by our colonial, consumerist economic system. Janita's formal education in printmaking and Fine Arts led to her working as an assistant printmaker and studio manager for the Canadian artist David Blackwood.  Her days are split between her studio management, and the crucial work of homemaking, taking care of family (kids Ursula and Ida) and the broader community.
  

Janine Lameiras is Evermeadow's top gun when it comes to field operations, fulfillment, and in-person marketing.  After completing her degree in international development, Janine came across a job opening at Evermeadow and decided to take the plunge into sustainable agriculture.  After two full seasons, Janine has become a core team member, working at the centre of Evermeadow's operations. She has become increasingly excited about focusing her efforts on building resilience through local community engagement and restorative agriculture. When not farming or doing community work, Janine is an avid crafter.

Our Story

We founded Evermeadow Farm in the spring of 2020 just as COVID-19 began to alter our way of life. During those extremely stressful and uncertain early days of the pandemic, we realized that the world was changing, and that we had better act fast if were going to pursue our long-held dream of ecologically restorative agriculture.  

After developing the Queen’s University course “From Cultural Ecology to Ecological Culture”, Josh realized that in our context of overlapping environmental crises , meaningful ecological philosophy has to have “boots on the ground”.   Problems like climate change often feel too big to address on and individual or even community level.  But the land is literally right under our feet.  Land and regional ecosystem degradation is something we as individuals can actually do something about.  Knowing that we needed to have access to land to pursue our restoration work, and that livestock, managed intelligently, can drive numerous positive ecosystem processes - we landed on the idea of starting a commercial scale farm. 

Thankfully, we lived right beside Janita's family's land, 15 acres of which was available for rent.  We signed an agricultural land lease with Janita's parents for an old depleted hay field, and Evermeadow was launched in earnest.

Josh put his doctoral studies at Queen’s University on hold in order to start our (very humble) first farm operations. We were joined by Brooke Dewhurst our wonderful first employee, who helped build infrastructure and get our initial enterprises rolling.  In the 2020 season we raised a few hundred chickens, a dozen sheep, and 3 heritage breed pigs, in addition to our vegetable plots. This was a seed-year for the coming expansions.

After acquiring financing (not easy!), building some more appropriate infrastructure, Evermeadow grew dramatically between 2021 and 2023.  We began attending Toronto farmer's markets, built our local client base, and picked up some awesome restaurant and wholesale accounts.  The land under our care grew from 15 acres of old hay field in 2020, to 70 acres of hay field, pasture, abandoned cropland, and marginal forest lands in 2023.   We raised hundreds of hogs, sheep, and hens, and thousands of pasture raised broiler chickens, all while managing their impact to benefit the land and ecosystem around us.  We also started Evermeadow's programming arm - with our first offerings of kids camps, workshops, and guided ecological farm tours. 

Still, there were many things we wanted to do on the land (trees, ponds, fences, cabins!) and with our infrastructure (proper buildings, waterlines, accommodations!) that were starting to feel constrained on our leased land.  Then, in 2023, our world got turned upside down by a totally unforeseen development - we bought a farm!

The Future of Evermeadow

Land prices in Ontario, like much of Canada, have risen dramatically over the past decade, as speculators, foreign buyers, farmers, and rural landowners all competed for access.  While we were not in a position to purchase land at the time (Spring '23), we knew that if it was ever going to happen it would have to be relatively soon - with land prices only rising further every year.  We were aiming to be able to purchase land sometime in the next decade, but we certainly weren't thinking about it in the immediate term.  

All that changed when a farm just 1km south of our leased pastures came up for sale in May.  With a mix of beautiful rolling pastures, hardwood forest, wooded stream valley, and old but serviceable infrastructure (real barns! real workshop! piped water!) the property truly called to us.  This new farm could be our base, while continuing to lease the original pastures, and provide us with an opportunity to actualize our bigger plans for landscape scale ecological restoration through regenerative agriculture.  But how to actually buy it?

Knowing that this was not a time to hold back, we decided to approach Janita's employer, who we thought might be able to help.  After a few heartful conversations, a visit to the property, and a proposed joint ownership structure, we reached an agreement and  - oh oh - there was another offer on the property!  We had only seen the listing on Sunday, now it was Wednesday and we had to act FAST.  With the fire of another offer under us, and our extremely forward thinking and generous patron backing us - we went for it it and made our offer.  After some horrible hours of nail-biting and pacing, we got the text.  The farm was ours!  

Fast forward 8 absolutely crazy months of finding further financing, trying to sell our house in a real estate downturn, and finally moving, all while running a livestock farm, and we finally settled in at the new farm.  2023 was by far the most stressful, but also the most exciting, year of our lives.  We had to reduce production, postpone our planned eco-education programming, and our business development was basically put on pause while we poured all our energy and attention into the move.

Now that we're here, we're ready to start implementing our plans for programming (workshops for kids and adults, guided tours, picnics, vents, on-farm accommodations etc. etc.) and expanding our regenerative livestock production and ecological land management to the now 170 acres under our care.   

This part of the Northumberland hills is, to us, one of the most beautiful places in the world.  We can't ever hope appreciate it as much as it deserves by ourselves.  So, we invite you to join us!