Our Story
We’re just a few friends who want to feed you!
Besties Cooperative Farm is owned and operated by Curtis Reynolds, Michael Gavin, and Nicole Boere. In 2022, an organization called Young Agrarians tied us together for a summer of farming, food, and days in the dirt. A shared love of feeding friends and community has kept us together ever since!
Now, we’re starting a new project together: a farm cooperative! We’re growing food just for you on 3 acres of Treaty 7 land in De Winton, Alberta - a stone's throw south of Calgary. We believe that good food comes from healthy soil and is handled with care from seed to table. We maintain that food should respect the land, people, and mouths it meets, all while nourishing your body and soul. We grow prairie hardy produce using ecologically informed practices to feed our Calgary community using a working cooperative model!
We love this place: the critters, the crawlies, the land, and we love what we do. Our dream is to participate in a robustly diverse, equitable, and resilient, localized food system. One that is composed of small, community-integrated farms that work in reciprocity with land and community. We aim to highlight the bounty of the prairies and honour the labour of farm workers; to link communities of food growing, food eating, and food sharing besties.
If you’re into this too, sign up for a CSA produce box or catch us at a market near you!
Let us feed you <3
We acknowledge that we each live, work, and connect deeply on Treaty 7 land, traditional territory of the peoples of Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, Stoney Nakoda Nations: Chiniki, Bearspaw, Goodstoney and Tsuut-ina Nation as well as Metis Nations of Alberta (Districts 5 and 6), people who have lived on, celebrated, and tended to this land for generations. We believe in our responsibility to care for and connect with the land and people who call this place home and to live in reciprocity with the future in mind.
Meet the Besties
Why a Cooperative?
We’re a worker cooperative!
At Besties Cooperative Farm, the Besties are the people who grow your food and are the same people who own and operate the farm. Unlike a typical business, we operate using a non-hierarchical framework to democratically make decisions that decide the direction and operations of the farm.
You know how they say, “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together?”. For us, the cooperative model is fair and responsive to the needs of the owners/employees (us), the land, and the community we serve. It balances the social, economic, and environmental needs of our networks, recognizing that our diverse knowledge, skills, and decision-making power are better…together! As a cooperative, we contribute to the development of a robust, diverse, and resilient localized food system. One where we advocate for meaningful work in agriculture and actively create more space for young and new farmers in Canada. We do this by modeling alternative work structures and ecologically informed growing practices on the prairie landscape.
We’re inspired by other worker cooperative farms like Agricola Cooperative Farm, Beetbox Farm, Tourne Sol, Krautgaart, as well as other communities and people seeking fair and just economic models.