08/29/2026
Like many farms on the Saanich Peninsula, this property had lost its topsoil to Butchart Gardens decades earlier. What remained was 11.5 acres of blackberries, broom, and stubborn clay—hardly what anyone would have called a farm.
Alex Mihailovic and Simon Lamond (uprooted_farmy) bought it anyway. She’s a trauma surgeon from Northern Ontario; he’s from Cape Town. Neither of them had been looking for a farm.
So they called Edible Landscapes Design. Together, they transformed the south-facing slope into a food forest: stone walls, berms, fruit and nut trees, and a living fungal network beneath it all.
There are roughly 30 chickens, eight pigs, two goats, five sheep, six lambs, three turkeys, and 15 ducks on the property. This spring, a cougar made a few visits of its own—a reminder, as Alex puts it, that nature is in charge now.
Today, the almonds won’t stop producing. Morels rise unplanted through the pathways, and alpine strawberries cover the ground. As Alex showed me around, nearly every corner of the food forest offered something new to touch, smell, or taste
Tom Kral - Nature's Chef cooks long-table dinners almost entirely from the property—using ingredients harvested, fermented, dried, and preserved over the course of a full year before they ever reach the plate.
From blackberries and clay to a flourishing food forest—and long-table dinners shaped by a full year of harvesting and preserving.
Read the full story in our new September/October issue, arriving across Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands this weekend.
Story and photography by Elizabeth Nyland (Elizabeth Nyland | Food & Photography)
