Grouse House Farm is a small, home-based diversified vegetable farm located in the territories of Cas Yikh of the Gidimt’en Clan, home of the Witsuwit’en Nation, in Smithers, British Columbia.
For the 2026 season, Grouse House Farm will be selling primarily at the Bulkley Valley Farmer's Market on Saturdays. For bulk order inquiries, get in touch at gavin@grousehousefarm.com.
About
About the growers
Gavin and Jenna have grown food in every place they've lived since 2012. In earlier times, both volunteered as WWOOFers (Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms) and Gavin spent a season apprenticing at a small farm on Vancouver Island. They ended up taking other career paths, but never stopped coming back to that feeling of working in the soil and (sometimes) the sunshine.
That’s how Grouse House Farm was born.
About the farm
When the two moved into a small cabin on the edge of Smithers, Gavin transformed the yard into a garden that supplied much of their household produce. Grouse House Farm is an expansion of that space into a home-based market garden serving the Smithers community.
The farm is intentionally small-scale and low-tech, aimed at keeping things simple to grow as much high-quality food as possible on a small footprint, while prioritizing the well-being of the soil and surrounding ecosystem.
From yard, to home garden, in transition to market garden.
How we grow
Grouse House Farm currently operates on one-eighth of an acre of permanent raised beds, which are not tilled after the initial ground-breaking. The beds are regularly mulched with compost and other organic materials to support active soil life. We generate as much fertility as we can on the property or locally, which includes composting a lot of leaves and wood chips from our surrounding four acres of forest, as well as compost pickup from a commercial kitchen in Smithers.
We mostly use hand tools and we never use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. After all, it’s our backyard. Literally.
About the grouse
We began calling our home grouse house because hardly a week goes by that a ruffed grouse isn’t bursting out of a bush, wandering across a footpath or hanging precariously from one of the aspens.
Aldo Leopold wrote that the grouse is “the numenon of the north woods”, a symbol of the “imponderable essence” of northern forests. The grouse offer us regular reminders of the abundance of the land we’re fortunate to share with them, and the connection between forest, field, and everything in between.
Thanks to Facundo Gastiazoro for the logo design.
