DURING the nights she spent fretting about the future of the earthmoving business she runs with her partner, Nicole Huska conceived a plan for a farming model that aims for change literally one acre at a time.
The 29-year-old Canadian mother of three has an ambition to build a network of micro-farms that make productive the thousands of small plots of fertile land currently unused on large housing blocks and hobby farms - in fact any unused land.
The farmers, in Ms Huska's plan, will be the young or currently unemployed with a desire to farm but without the means to buy into a conventional farming operation.
The farms Ms Huska aspires to are tiny and run on organic principles, but will be managed along tight business lines that emphasise efficiency and productivity.
The poster farmer for the project is Eliot Coleman, an organic market gardener from Maine, USA, and author of several books about producing vegetables year-round in a cold climate.
The farms' intended output will be a supply of fresh, chemical-free vegetables and fruit sold as close to each micro-farm as possible. Ideally, Ms Huska hopes, a group of micro-farms will form "food hubs" to ensure a constant supply of produce into their local communities.
The landowner gets a rental income from previously unused land (and presumably some fresh veg on the side).
Aspiring farmers get a chance to farm, an opportunity currently out of reach of almost anyone without existing farm equity.
Communities get a new source of quality fresh food, grown with lighter demands on shrinking resources.
And Ms Huska gets to run Nicole's Farm, the management company she has set up to bring her vision to fruition. She plans to scout for land, find new farmers, and hone and transplant the principles of successful micro-farming.
Nicole's Farm is still in the germination stage, but as winter retreats from western Canada, Ms Huska and partner Adam Hammond are clearing two acres north of Vancouver that will serve as their "proof of concept" farm.
The first produce from the farm is scheduled to be in local grocery stores by June 1 this year.
When they have this micro-farm operational, Ms Huska aims to transplant the successful principles to another of the 10 acres that have already been offered to her. And then, she hopes, another acre, and another. She would like to have 10 working acres operational in 2012, and then add up to 50 acres a year.
"It's about re-purposing land in ways that return value to the landowners and the community, and creating jobs that deliver a living wage to people who really want work," she said.
After the 2008 financial crash, North America is full of people looking for work and a new sense of purpose, including young people disillusioned with their university degrees.
Or as Ms Huska, who completed a degree in political science, said "we're a bunch of lost souls looking for purpose and community".
The project was born of a number of frustrations.
The earthmoving business she and Mr Hammond jointly manage has difficulty competing with larger interests, Ms Huska said, and they want to put their expertise in this area to a different use.
They see a role for their existing business in building farm infrastructure on the Nicole's Farm blocks.
At the same time, Ms Huska sees some deep flaws running through the Canadian food system.
In British Columbia, prime apple growing country, stores are selling Australian apples. "Why, when we can grow great apples here?" Similarly, cabbage comes from California.
With three daughters under five, Ms Huska has joined the growing ranks of young mothers concerned about chemical residues in food. She peels certain store-bought produce, and questions why such precautions should be necessary.
The final straw: "The food we get at the grocery store is junk. Carrots don't taste right, cucumbers are disgusting".
The path hasn't been smooth. A fundraising program to get money together to develop the first farm has only raised a fraction of its stated objective.
But Ms Huska is undaunted. "I've got plans B, C and D," she said.
And if the funds haven't yet rolled in, the support has - from people offering land, small grocery stores interested in the produce, and those interested in furthering the concept to revitalise flagging regional economies.
"Our primary resource base in areas like fishing and logging is losing viability. This is another way of generating some locally-based economic stimulation."
www.nicolesfarm.com
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