Our Sustainability
At Quantum Leaps Retreat we endeavor to be an example of sustainability and self-sufficiency! We endeavor to live in harmony with Mother Earth and to be worthy caretakers of the Land we live on.
At Quantum Leaps Retreats we have a large organic veggie garden, an orchard, greenhouse, chickens, root cellar, compost piles, and alternative energy generation.
Vegetable Garden
At Quantum Leaps Retreats we endeavor to feed ourselves all year round. In May we plant our large veggie garden (non – gmo and organic seeds) with all varieties of vegetables that produce well in our Mountain climate. And throughout the summer we harvest veggies as they ripen. By October our freezers and root cellar are full. From June to October, guests are welcome to come and pick some veggies by donation. But only what is listed on the white board by the Garden gate! Walk through our gardens and enjoy the abundance of life growing all around you.
Orchard
At Quantum Leaps Retreats our orchards provide us with so much beautiful abundance. We have 7 apple trees of different varieties, two apricot trees, and one sour cherry tree. We also grow blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, grapes, and red currants. If there is an abundance of berries, we invite guests to come and enjoy. Raspberries are the berries that produce incredibly well in our climate! By mid to end of July the raspberries are so very abundant! Yummy! And apples in late August into September; there are so many that we give them away! Yummy!
Green House and Root Cellar
At Quantum Leaps Retreats we have a year round Greenhouse and a Root Cellar that stores our “roots”.
The Greenhouse is designed to capture as much sun as possible even in the Winter months. We heat the Greenhouse in the winter with a wood stove/boiler system. We have back up electric heat and lights (hooked onto our solar system) for those really cold winter days. We grow kale, chard, and lettuces in the winter and in the summer the Greenhouse grows tomatoes and cucumbers! We also have a smaller greenhouse that is dedicated in the summer to the growing of basil! Yummy fresh pesto is then made to last the whole winter.
The Root Cellar is designed to stay above 0 degrees all year round. It is dug into the side of the bank, into the earth. In the fall, we fill up the Root Cellar with cabbages, apples, carrots, parsnips, beets, potatoes, and turnips. Sometimes we are still eating fresh crisp carrots into the following spring!
Chickens, Ducks, and Compost
At Quantum Leaps Retreats we have free range Chickens (during the day they are free to wander)! We tend and nurture a variety of Chicken species. Right now we have 14 “girls” (and 12 more coming this Spring of 2024. They provide us everyday with yummy delicious eggs. In turn we feed them non-GMO, organic feed and fresh compost from our kitchen. All guests are requested to also put all their compost into the bin provided in their Cabin/Cottage and if so desire, to go over to the Chicken Coop and have some fun feeding the girls! We also have 12 Welsh Harlequin Ducks! They have been so fun to have (just 2 years now), are hilarious to watch, make a bit of quacking noise, and give large delicious eggs! They are fantastic foragers and wander the property during the day. In Spring of 2024, Brian has built them a duck house up by the office/upper garden.
The best part of having Chickens is what they produce for our compost pile…chicken poo! Their poo creates a nitrogen rich compost pile. 2-3 x’s per year we shovel out the coop onto the “active” compost pile. The other compost pile sits and “marinates” for almost a year and a half. To the compost we add garden/veggie matter, fruit peels, and leaves. No meat or egg shells are added to the compost. This would attract animals we would rather not have come visit. Every October the “old” pile gets spread over the whole garden area.
Alternative Energy
At Quantum Leaps Retreats we continue to experiment and look at alternative energy generation. Being in the Mountains adds different challenges. So we have so far created and are generating a bit of solar energy. We have 4KW with also the option of BC Hydro to feed the system in the dark winter nights as well as to feed our luxury items; hot tub and sauna. We have 2 diesel generators that run on used veggie oil to help support and feed our system especially when the power goes out.