Our Story
Homi Garden Farm is owned and operated by Gyungbo Noh and Kendra MacEachern in Antigonish, NS. Gyungbo and Kendra met while living in South Korea. They moved to Antigonish in 2015 to be closer to family. A love of good food and nostalgia for his grandmother’s farm in South Korea got Gyungbo interested in taking up farming in Antigonish. He took part in the Martha’s New Growers Program in 2017 and after a successful year, took part in the program again in 2018. After leaving this program, we went on to join our neighbours in the Lochaber Grower’s Cooperative for 2019 and 2020. After finding our own little corner of Antigonish county build a farm, we went out on our own in 2021. Our vision is to produce diverse and nutritious food using sustainable practicse that will contribute to the health of local populations and ecosystems.
Our mission is to focus on human powered farming to produce nutritious food. We want to decrease our use of fossil fuels and build up the soil to be healthy and alive again. Growing on healthy and vibrant soils will not only increase the quality of our vegetables but also rehabilitate the natural ecosystem of our property. We want to introduce local people to the joy of eating a diverse range of new vegetables and the positive health impacts specific foods can have. Homi Garden grows vegetables naturally without spray. We grow diverse vegetables with many heritage and Asian varieties primarily for market customers. Our goal is to make real, living soil to cultivate vegetables with high nutrient content and no harmful pesticides.
What does ‘Homi’ mean?
Homi Garden is named for the common hand tools used in Korea called Homi. The direct translation of Homi from Korean is “little ground spear”. It has been used in Korea for 5000 years and continues to be used today.
We chose the homi to represent our farm because we are a small scale farm that grows vegetables without large machinery. Many farms in Korea, such as Gyungbo’s grandmother’s farm, are very familiar with the use of hand tools such as the homi. Gyungbo’s grandmother’s farm was the inspiration for this farm so it was fitting to name it after a common tool used there. We brought several homi from Korea and continue to use it daily.