Kate’s Rest proposes housing and farming initiative, manufacturing facilities

By Sharon Harrison
An ambitious plan to create housing and farming communities in Prince Edward County is being proposed by the Kate’s Rest Foundation, a registered charity located on Big Island, in what they describe as a home and farm initiative.

Additionally, they are proposing an organics processing site with the development of a facility equipped to sustainably process the County’s organic household waste to create organic liquid fertilizer.

As well, a modular house manufacturing facility is proposed, and also a facility that will assemble hydroponic farm systems. All of this is being proposed at the site of the municipal transfer station in Demorestville, located at 35 County Road 14 in Sophiasburgh ward.

In his deputation to council at last week’s committee of the whole meeting, Brian Hart with Kate’s Rest, said they were looking to establish a public-private-civil society partnership with the County. His request was for council to direct staff to work with the Kate’s Rest team to explore the partnership proposal and to provide recommendations and next steps.

Hart is looking for a report from council that will include questions of zoning, water use, assignment of land, project timeline, roles and responsibilities within the partnership, and community consultations, all by March 2026, at the latest.

No decision by council was made at this time, where they simply received the deputation for information.

Kate’s Rest has been providing permanent supportive housing for men, women and children, primarily those coming from the streets, or referred to Kate’s Rest through different agencies, since 2006.

“Our focus is not just on housing as we have come to understand that housing alone is not the solution to homelessness, but community, and not just any kind of community, but community, what we call companionships of empowerment,” explained Hart. “We think that’s a vital aspect of how we solve the problem or contribute to the solutions of homelessness.”

He said, the organics processing facility, the modular house manufacturing facility, and the hydroponic farm systems assembly facility would be the economic engines behind the home and farm initiative, and the essential components to what they are trying to create.

Council had a number of questions about water use and the zoning change, to what will happen to the gases emitted, to questions about the fertilizer being concentrated and its analysis content. Also, how much material would be needed to make the fertilizer plant effective.

Councillor David Harrison asked what a hydroponic farm house is, where Hart explained that it is a home on a farm, and the farming will be hydroponics.

“Basically, we would have small farms and each resident would have that operation which would be sufficient, in terms of its outputs, to support them in that home, and they wouldn’t be needing social assistance then,” Hart explained.

Harrison also asked about the fertilizer being concentrated, so that whoever purchases the concentrate would be adding water to it, but it was the fertilizer analysis (nitrogen, potash, phosphorous content) of the finished product that he wanted to know more about.

“That’s the critical part of this; as a farmer, if you are going to use this product, you need to know what you are getting and that’s what makes it either viable or not, when you are purchasing,” he said.

Since those figures were not available, Harrison said he couldn’t support it until he can see some number for potential volume produced, price and analysis. “There is quite a bit missing here for a good solid decision from an agricultural point of view.”

Joining Hart at the podium was Daniel Livvarçin who is with Ottawa-based Bio Sustainer Inc., specialists in organic liquid fertilizer and hydroponic assembly and are working with Kate’s Rest to provide solutions to organic waste management.

Councillor John Hirsch enquired about how much material is need to make the plant effective.

Livvarçin explained that initially they would be limiting themselves to approximately 20 tonnes of organic waste processing, with approximately 180 tonnes of organically good fertilizer per day if the company operates at full capacity. He said the operation can be scaled up or scaled down, as the whole system is scalable.

HOME AND FARM INITIATIVE
Hart explained that the home and farm initiative is a social enterprise that would include people at Kate’s Rest in a four-year program that they will be invited to participate in to develop social and business skills for economic community integration.

“They become certified at the end of that four years as owners and operators of a hydroponic farm business within a supportive farming community, and as a result of that activity, they should have sufficient income to own their own modular home within a thriving farm community, that’s the goal.”

Hart said the housing would be state-of-the-art modular housing, to include assistive devices for people with disabilities of different forms, either mobility restrictions, but also mental health challenges.

The thinking behind the farming part of the proposed initiative comes as a result of the large number of farmers expected to be retiring in the next number of years, he said.

“Many of the farms that are going to be sold, and a lot of them are going to be used for housing development, so a lot of them are going to be used to create large agricultural corporations,” Hart predicted. “What we want to do is maintain and preserve the small family farm unit, but targeting vulnerable people, people who need to be included in our economy.”

“We are looking to promote farming through our home and farm initiative.”

ORGANICS WASTE PROCESSING FACILTY
The idea is that the proposed organics waste processing facility would receive all of the County’s household waste, and farm organic waste. They will use only organic waste from the County and do not propose to bring in organic waste from other areas as Hart said what is produced here is enough.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars can be saved by the County in this arrangement, and organic liquid fertilizer would be donated for application to all municipally-owned land, and also available to County farmer owners at cost of production.”

He outlined that the bio fertilizer is created through a closed-loop transformative processing of organic household waste.

“It operates with a zero-waste and emissions cycle with gases filtered or combusted for combined heat and cooling, and all water is recycled in the process, so there is nothing going out of the process into the environment.”

Water input will be manageable according to the available data, Hart said, and they will be using a concentrated fertilizer output to minimize water usage.

It is anticipated that approximately a maximum of 12 trucks daily will access the facility for waste inputs and liquid fertilizer outputs.

“The facility is designed for the smallest environmental footprint and will be using renewable energy technology for our processes.”

Along with Bio Sustainer, the development team includes VoltServer Inc. who specialize in digital electricity for house and hydroponic farms (they are currently active in installing the same digital electricity in the Kate’s Rest cottages), and ModuLogic Inc., a modular house manufacturer headed up by County resident Anthony Francis.

“His goal is to create modular houses manufactured using robotic technology to maximize output and minimize waste, and replacing all of Kate’s Rest current housing stock with proposed hydroponic farm houses in the future at a new location which will include new smart housing that he is working on,” Hart shared.

Loyalist College would also be helping with the certification of the hydroponic farm owners and operators.

“We have a lot of significant companies that want to come forward to put an investment in this process,” he revealed. “We have a company from Turkey that will donate to the process $6 million in equipment… companies in South Korea that want to be involved in terms of agricultural technologies as well as hydroponics. Pretty much everyone that I speak to wants to be involved.”

While councillor Chris Braney didn’t have a problem with the general concept, and even liked the idea, he did take issue with staff having to be involved to provide a report and devote time to the task.

“The thing that I am stuck with in my head is, why don’t you just do it?” asked Braney.

“I am concerned about just the staff time with these expressions that just seem to keep coming and coming and coming… It’s a process thing that is going on in here, sometimes it needs to find an end day. My fear is, once we do something like this, then you almost have to entertain everyone else that has a concept or idea.”

Livvarçin said the County has a problem that needs to be solved.

“You have organic waste and this has to be processed, so you need to find the best solution that works for you financially and environmentally; we have proof and have done the study,” Livvarçin said, where he also spoke to helping vulnerable communities.

“If we don’t support it, I would imagine you are still going to go ahead with it anyways,” suggested Braney, to which Livvarçin answered “Yes”.

County to seek expressions of interest for organic waste processing