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Salads from Selwood Greens

This surprisingly cool yet sunny spring day, photographer Shannon Hennigar and I meet in Windsor and head east along windy roads and run-down Nova Scotia Highway 215 from Brooklyn toward the Noel Shore. As if nervous of my approach, a slow-moving pheasant beats out of the brush mere inches from my fast moving car, and narrowly escapes becoming a chapter in my potential road kill cookbook (just kidding!). We pass through quaint Cheverie, ancestral home of MP Scott Brison and wonder which house is his family’s. Just as we enter Bramber and near the indicated turnoff on Lantz Road, we spy a dramatic vista across a marshy area—a quaint and small older graveyard splaying itself across a small knoll is ablaze with vibrantly purple heather.

We find our way following directions given over the phone only an hour earlier. A wrong turn leads to cottages on a dead-end road at ocean’s edge so we backtrack and take the correct one down a rather mundane looking laneway. After a brief, bumpy ride through a small wooded area, we burst onto fields of tilled land, in the infancy of this year’s plantings, rolling off to ocean’s edge and a spectacular view of Cape Blomidon and the Bay of Fundy from a perspective I have never viewed it from before.

Tall and serenely mannered Norbert Kungl has been farming this land for 20 years—his home plot of 60 acres and another nearby farm he purchased that includes another 60-plus acres. As we dodge rain squalls interspersed with brilliant hits of sunshine between each gray cloud, Norbert invites us for a cup of Joe and a talk in the comfort of the farm’s kitchen. It is alive with life as we meet life partner Minga and young daughters Lily (six) and Skyra (three).

We learn that growing up in Queckborn, Germany, perhaps foretold of a future direction for young Norbert; hog farming was the family business and an uncle was the town butcher. In the 1980s money was ripe for the earning in Germany but many people felt a desire to escape those social trappings. Eventually a yearning to come to Canada and explore the possibilities proved unable to resist and Norbert explored Canada and, eventually, he felt Nova Scotia was where he was destined to till the ground. After starting in Canning, he set up the present business in Bramber and it thrives to this day. Minga moved here seven years ago after a passionate romance fueled by ‘jet fuel’ at cafés in Halifax (the catalyst location was revealed to be Steverinos) and after a time of them both commuting between Halifax and Bramber, she made the choice and became part of life here.

Norbert and Minga, with
daughters Lily and Skyra, are
not your typical farmers

We chat about a recent empowering trip to Cuba where Minga and Norbert experienced firsthand exposure to both massive communiststyle agricultural collectives and at the same time a flowering free market with excesses from an oversupply and a relatively relaxed quota system. With most basic necessities expensive beyond belief for the average and even middle-class Cuban, Norbert and Minga learned again how lucky we are to live in Canada, where so much is available to us and we have the power of choice. They hope to explore organic and agricultural links to Cuba, and perhaps help elevate standards in Cuba through education and participation.

Both exude an easy and relaxed atmosphere of intelligence—these are NOT your typical farmers. Born of a desire (common yes) to get back to the land after lives lived in the urban and sophisticated centres of the world, but also with an eye and ear to social responsibility, they are quintessential examples of progressive citizens with a healthy dose of humility thrown in.

And that is how Norbert and I got to know each other in the first place. A recommendation from some Halifax chefs as him being a person I should know was made when I first moved back to Nova Scotia. Norbert was hallowed as the sort of “go-to” man for organic farming in Nova Scotia. Selwood Greens Organic Farm has proven itself able and organized enough to be able to supply restaurants around Nova Scotia, with established order systems, delivery routes and trucks organized through Sea Spray, a collective that Norbert helped create for distribution. Two years ago we went through a seed catalogue (over coffee at Tempest!) and I picked a number of exotic vegetables and herbs that Norbert then planted for me and sold me later. Presently, they number over 100 varieties of plantings at their farm. These astounding choices are available weekly in three locations: The Halifax Farmers Market, The Wolfville Farmers Market and The Hubbards Market too.


Of course, seasonality and climate have a lot to do with what is available on the farm at any give time. The family had been dealing with some colder weather when I visited, and a potential frost. They had not planted too much too early. Norbert knows his micro-climate well and can virtually smell the weather. He doesn’t need a Farmer’s Almanac for any predictions.

After touring the transplant and production greenhouses (the lifeblood of any Maritime farmer), we walk over the fields in the direction of the water and cliffs and investigate the very young crops toughing it out with a brisk Nor’easter wind blowing in off the Bay of Fundy. Lily and Skyra point out a rare plover nest in the middle of the fields that the entire operation studiously avoids in order to respect the nesting habits of the bird. The vibrantly coloured mother puts on a zealous display of sham injury in order to attract predators away from the eggs, which lay open to the sky in the middle of a shallow dirt and twig nest in the heart of the zucchini patch! The Kungls have placed unmistakable orange flags on either side of the nest so everyone working on the farm knows where it is and will avoid it.

As we walk along the perimeter of the property at ocean’s edge, the bay, now at low tide and kilometers away across mud flats, lies dramatically exposed as we view it from atop 25-foot cliffs. Norbert stops us along a small road, pulls at a, apparently to me, dead stick and proudly unearths a nobbly Jerusalem artichoke at its base, which I secret away to cook with later. Around another bend and we peep under protective fabric covering acres of property (at astronomical cost we learn)—fledgling chard, potato and lettuce plants not quite ready for full exposure to the elements. Then we cross a large five-acre field, treading warily between delicate shoots of just-ready asparagus. In the space of five minutes or so we hand harvest several pounds of the ripe green gem. We feel a slightly guilty pleasure as we pick—sort of like how Peter Rabbit might feel with free rein at the lettuce patch.

After a washing up of the vegetable for transport back to Tempest to be thus transported again into beautiful food, we bade our goodbyes and made fast promises to help each other whenever possible.

Norbert and Minga are proactive rather than reactive; their knowledge and appreciation for the soil that they have that nurtures life is immense and heartfelt. It is clear that they want to make a difference, but also, realistically, to make a decent living as well, as we all deserve in this land we call Canada. We admire their commitment to trying to make a difference despite the vicissitudes of organic farming in Nova Scotia. We like to think of them as guardians of mother earth whose footprint is both light and sure.

Click for the dish and recipe that Chef Michael Howell created from produce from Selwood Greens Organic Farm: here for Miso-crusted Halibut or here for Salad with Blue Cheese and Lobster