“I hope more people see this and get inspired to grow their own food locally,” says Amy Maund. “We need more of it in the North. You can make your own soil.”
Laughing Lichen began as an exercise in foraging around Yellowknife. Now, it’s an agricultural complex and educational centre on the Ingraham Trail northeast of the city that hopes to act as a beacon for others.
Farming and Yellowknife don’t often go hand in hand at scale. One of the reasons for that is the general absence of the soil needed to grow high-quality produce (not to mention, in the city’s immediate surrounds, some contamination concerns from former mines).
Amy Maund holds a box of a dozen quail eggs. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
Laughing Lichen founder Maund says her business has solved that problem and can now act as a centre for other prospective growers to learn the same lessons.
Maund and builder Ian Proctor have created terraced gardens on the Ingraham Trail bedrock alongside market gardens in slightly boggier, lower land. They also have a chicken coop, a greenhouse and a barn for shade-drying produce.
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How did they get the soil to fill those terraced gardens and transform the lot? Maund says dozens of truckloads came from the former North Country Stables, owned by the late Yellowknife veterinarian Dr Tom Pisz.
“I was very close with Dr Pisz and we acquired horse manure from the stables, tested it to make sure it was safe to use for growing food, and brought it all out here a year and a half ago,” she said.
“We got funding from ITI to purchase the soil and it’s slowly becoming beautiful soil. Over the next couple of years, it’s going to become healthier and be colonized with more microbes and bacteria that are going to make the veggies really happy.
“We also have manure from the chickens, which is very important, and we compost here. We are trying to compost everything from the site to go back into the gardens.”
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The result is that last Saturday, Laughing Lichen’s weekly farm stand was a hub of activity.
While summer volunteers stripped the market gardens of healthy-looking carrots, Yellowknife residents swamped the makeshift parking lot and lined up for the latest local goods. (Tip: turn up early for eggs.)
For reasons that were not immediately clear, a cardboard cutout of actor Idris Elba guards the market gardens at Laughing Lichen. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
Squashes in the drying barn. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
The farm stand runs from 10am till 12:30pm. Laughing Lichen expects to run them each Saturday in 2025 until at least October 4, after which they might move indoors and focus on root vegetables and preserves. Goods from local artisans are also on offer.
Each farm stand doubles as a form of open house. You can find Maund and Proctor showing off the chickens, washing carrots, explaining how the site uses a nearby lake and solar panels to stay off-grid, or walking people through the medicinal plants they harvest.
Whether or not they buy anything, Maund wants people to take from Laughing Lichen the sense that agriculture on this level is “very possible” around Yellowknife.
At the farm stand. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
“I’m really excited about it. These garden beds are grown on rock. We have filled crevices with soil, plant matter, wood chips and everything we could find to make these garden beds, and they’re doing wonderfully,” she said.
“That’s why we do the markets on Saturdays, because we want people to come out. Even if you don’t want to buy produce, you can ask questions, you can walk around and see what we’re doing and learn from it.
“We’re here to share knowledge and support people that want to grow their own food. That’s a big, big part of this. We need more agriculture in the North.”
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