Four Season Greens

Since 2010, Four Season Greens has been producing microgreens and lettuces in Muskoka all year round. We supply our fresh produce to most local fine dining restaurants, plus specialty food retailers, resorts and caterers. Individuals can buy fresh throughout the year through our CSA program, where we deliver weekly orders to depots throughout Muskoka. For those who want to grow their own, we also supply sprouting kits and seeds through our website.

We are passionate about:

Fresh, local food: making it available and accessible year-round, for everyone.

Healthy eating: raising the bar on good-for-you food choices among all generations, to improve quality and quantity of life.

Local food security: improving food security in Muskoka by producing food year-round.

Four Season Greens owners/operators Steve and Sharon Bacon live in Muskoka, Ontario, where the leaves are off the trees for 7 months of the year, winter is severe, and many year-round residents are seasonally under-employed. Even at the 45th parallel, year-round options for buying quality local produce are limited. Diet-related diseases are prolific in our community, as well as in the rest of North America; diseases not of poverty but of affluence. With increasingly stressful lives, where quality family time is difficult to find and processed food is more affordable than fresh, it is tempting to opt for quick and easy meals devoid of the nutrition our bodies need. Or perhaps that is all we've ever known.

Ignorance may be bliss, but when it comes to food, it is killing us.

There is Good News, however: Good-for-You Real Food can be grown in a northern climate, year round, by anyone, anywhere.

Enter the world of sprouts and microgreens. These baby greens are superfoods, as their nutrition is maximized within just a few days of germinating the seed. Because they are highly nutritious, they are effective in addressing all sorts of health issues, from cancer and digestive problems to obesity and high blood pressure. However, they aren't just good for you. They taste delicious, look beautiful and can be incorporated into all sorts of delicious meals.

Consider this: If you owned a $5 Million race horse, would you feed it junk food? It goes without saying that our children, and even ourselves, are worth so much more. We are all, in fact, priceless.

Four Season Greens maintains several food safety protocols, including the following:

• Staff working in our packaging areas wear hairnets and gloves.
• Our main seed supplier is Mumm's Sprouting Seeds (Saskatchewan), whose seeds are certified organic and guaranteed pathogen-free.
• Our lettuces are produced both aquaponically and hydroponically, without the use of pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides, in a winterized greenhouse. This enables us to grow all year round in a simulated outdoor growing environment, and virtually eliminates the possibility of contamination from pathogens in the environment.
• Cut produce is kept cool, from our walk-in cooler to our customers’ fridges.
  
• Greenhouse growers are faced with multiple challenges, and insect pests are the most problematic. While there is a trend in Canada towards minimizing the use of toxic controls, growers are still permitted to resort to their use. At Four Season Greens, we do not use chemicals. Instead, we give our lettuce a wash if needed, and use beneficial insects such as ladybugs in our greenhouse. If you happen to find one in your package of lettuce, treat it kindly and give it a good home in your garden, where it can continue its good work.