J. & C. Nyman Farms

John and Colleen Nyman farm and raise a family just outside of Picton, Ontario. Picton is located in the County of Prince Edward, one of the most beautiful areas in the province.

John and Colleen both have a farming background. John having been closely involved in the running of his family’s dairy farm and Colleen’s family having run a sheep farm for many of her growing up years.

Their own foray into farming started in 2000 when they both worked full-time off farm jobs and renovated a house to sell while farming 100 acres of rented land in their ‘free time’. At that time, the farm was producing roasting chickens, farm fresh eggs, cash crops including corn, soybeans, wheat and continuing John’s longtime maple syrup business from the maple bush on his parent’s property.

Having gone through a series of transformations, J. & C. Nyman Farms now has a home on 78 picturesque acres that are a mix of productive farmland, pastureland and maple bush. With the move to this new farm in November 2006, John and Colleen have created the first Meat C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture) program in the region.  Through this program, they deliver beef, pork, chicken and lamb to families from Kingston to Toronto.

Though the workload to provide the service is great, so are the rewards.  If nothing else, dinner is going to be fabulous!

Our Philosophy

Anything we do on the farm must:

• Sustain the health and welfare of the animals and plants;
• Sustain the living organisms in the soil and the environment in general;
• Sustain us, the family running the business both by providing the satisfaction of doing something we enjoy and by supplying the income we require to live.
• Meet a high ethical standard (otherwise there wouldn’t be much satisfaction in it, would there?) This is something that we are constantly thinking about and factoring into our decision making.

This means that we endeavor to farm without pesticides, herbicides or other substances that are harmful to the environment, plants and animals (this includes the farmers!).  While we’re not extremist, we’re into transparency.    Our customers know exactly what we’re doing to provide them with their meat.  We answer questions put to us and are happy to discuss how we make our farming decisions.

On the occasions when we’re faced with a choice between applying the conventional farming knowledge that we have to save an animal or crop or taking the time to figure out how to fix a new problem organically thereby letting the animal/crop suffer, we choose the conventional method.  We get the imminent problem solved, then we move that problem to the Urgent List of Things to Learn.

Every time we hit a road block, it pushes us to increase our knowledge about alternative ways to make our farm run.  Happily, the roadblocks are few and we’re satisfied that we’re contributing to our environment, not taking from it.