About Sitka Farm and it's owners, Oliver, BC, Canada
Garlic Seed & Table Garlic

Kathy and Mark McMillan, 265 Sitka Road, Oliver, BC, Canada

Email: Sitka Farm Garlic or Phone: 250-395-0960

Also the home of: BCTractorParts.com

Some of the preparation work, planting, and harvesting. The following photos will enlarge if you click on them.

field preperation for garlic beds

our new disc bedder making raised beds

beds looking good & ready for planting

Phil's new dibbler punching holes for seed

every 6"s a row of 4 that are 12" apart

cloves dropped in the holes by hand

cloves turned upright for perfect results

last year's beds seeded to fall rye

Some of the harvest in 2024. We're very happy with this year's crop! The following photos will enlarge if you click on them.

a good looking crop for 2024

some really nice garlic scapes

MOVIE: a first time with this garlic digger

MOVIE: so easy to pull the plants!!

MOVIE: a super machine ... Thanks Phil !!!

a short time in the sun between loads

Kathy hauling in one load of Yugo

the Yugoslavian was ready first

and they look super good

hanging to cure ready to store

really nice Red Russian bulbs for seed

really nice Yugoslavian bulbs for seed

Some History

Kathy and Mark have always loved the farm / ranch life! They were married in 1988 and owned Hidden Acres Farm on the Saanich Peninsula, Vancouver Island. It was Mark's grandparents berry farm for years prior to that, but they converted it to a horse farm where they kept draft horses for a number of years. They also had large gardens on the property.

Around 1992, although they'd miss the gentle giants, they switched to saddle horses ... they were far cheaper to keep! They raised butcher pigs, chickens, and a few head of cattle. Somewhere around the mid 1990s they started looking for property on the mainland. They wanted more grass, more room, less rain, and less BC Ferries!

In 1997 they moved to a quarter section (160 acres) of land just north of 70 Mile House. They built, or rebuilt, four guest cabins, and bought a small bunch of horses (24 including their own). Here they ran a successful guest ranch business, renting cabins and doing trail rides. They also ran a small cow calf operation and sold the calves each fall. They retired from the dude ranch stuff in about 2016, mainly because Kathy had acheived her CPA and then bought in as a partner in an accounting firm in 100 Mile House ... now far too busy to clean cabins and make beds ... and Mark, apparently, wasn't into making beds, etc.

Kathy and Mark

They completely renovated their house from 2017 to 2021. Each year during this period saw them taking a fall vacation to the Okanagan where they enjoyed the wine tasting and the area itself ... the thought was that south Okanagan might make a great place to retire. At that point in time they were thinking maybe in 5 to 10 years ... ?

Well, in October of 2021, while checking out the Oliver area, and looking at a dozen or so properties, they fell in love with a little 3 acre property on Sitka Road just north of Oliver, BC. "We say little because we moved from 160 acres to 3 acres!" It was not farmed when they purchased it, but it did have large gardens, a small greenhouse, and some berries and grapes. After a lot of thought, trying to decide if they should get their farm status or not, they made up their minds to call retirement, semi retirement instead.

Sitka Garlic Farm

At the time of putting this web site together, February 2022, there was still snow sitting on top of very frozen ground so farming was just a plan. The plan was to grow garlic for commercial sales, both table garlic and seed garlic if the crops produce a good enough quality bulb. We grew a lot of garlic at the ranch and it was always a great crop! We also grew a lot of tomatoes and peppers which we may continue to grow, hopefully with enough to sell along side the garlic.

So over the next couple of months we were busy! We did house renovations until the weather allowed farming to start. At that point in time we got the garlic and garden plots ready, then started planting. Keep your eyes open right here for future updates. We'll keep you posted as to where and when you can buy garlic and/or produce at Sitka Farm!

The Start of Sitka Farm

October 2022
We broke ground in an area that had not been farmed before and we also tilled up the old gardens. The new ground got loads of organic compost spread over the garlic beds and was tilled in. We then planted a total of 2600 cloves.

Summer 2022
We dug the garlic and hung it on our new drying racks in our new tractor shed. Both worked out super. We lost some because of the extreme heat and some didn't do as well as we had hoped because we lost a brand new irrigation pump at the start of growing season. What did do well sold very quickly!

October 2023
Planting was different this year - way easier as a good friend built us a dibler :-). (photo above) We also built a disc bedder for raised beds. (photo above) Both work awesome and we planted 3000 cloves (half Red Russian and half Yugoslavian) in two part days. (photos above)

2024
Harvesting in July was super easy this year as the same good friend built us a digger :-). (movie above) The garlic was super nice and we're really happy with the results! In October we planted 4400 cloves (aproximately 1700 Red Russian and 2700 Yugoslavian).

2025
Harvesting a week earlier this year went well. Once again the garlic was super nice with more extra large than any other size! We're again really happy with the results! The plan is to plant about 4000 cloves (half Red Russian and half Yugoslavian) in October.

Sitka Farm, Kathy & Mark McMillan, 265 Sitka Road, Oliver, BC, Canada, V0H 1T7

Email: Sitka Farm Garlic or Phone: 250-395-0960

See our other business website: BCTractorParts.com