A new cold storage facility in the Big Eddy is giving Revelstoke a bit more food security and building on a unique business opportunity for First Light Farm.
Affectionately called The Vegetable Bunker by staff, the roughly 230 square metre building houses four walk-in fridges, processing resources and new staff facilities for the team. With a capacity for roughly 60,000 pounds of food, the fridges allow Chris Rubens and Jesse Johnston-Hill’s team to store hardy crops such as carrots and radishes for longer periods of time.
“We’re not going to fill it with 60,000 pounds we’ve grown right now. That’s hopefully years down the road, but we have space for us to grow into,” Johnston-Hill said.
First Light Farm is now able to increase bulk purchases from other farmers in the region, securing a wider range of produce for Revelstoke and creating connections throughout the local farming community. This capacity boost expands First Light’s ability to act as a distribution centre in town and provide produce for sale at Mountain Goodness Natural Foods, Southside Market and Le Marche Gourmet, alongside the weekly Local Food Initiative markets. Roughly a dozen restaurants in town partner with First Light Farm for ingredient needs and some regional heliskiing operations are joining in on the bounty.
“We’re a town with passes on either side of us. When that highway closes, and if those trucks for the grocery stores can’t get through, you really start to see that impact quick,” Johnston-Hill said.
The idea shifted from an auxiliary building with fridge capabilities to the concrete walled building designed to retain as much temperature and moisture within the facility as possible, creating stable storage with less energy wasted.
“It’s also going to be a game changer in the summer,” Johnston-Hill noted, explaining that extreme heat events and heavy wildfire smoke throughout the summer won’t hinder farmwork as much as in the past, with production now able to retreat within the Vegetable Bunker.
One of the first opportunities to bring produce in at wholesale was First Light Farm purchasing 3,200 pounds of apples from Rupee’s Organic Orchard out of Cawston, storing the crates of Cripps Pink and other variants.
“There’s farms from all over the region who want to come to our market, but maybe the logistics don’t line up all the time. We can now purchase directly from them and bring that to Revelstoke,” Rubens said.
A community barn raising
A building of this magnitude doesn’t just grow out of the ground, and both Johnston-Hill and Rubens are quick to point out the local contracting work and general community support that’s seen the cold storage facility from planning stage to power on.
The project was sparked in late 2023 when Isabel Kessi, Revelstoke LFI market manager approached Johnston-Hill and Rubens about a food storage, distribution and retail program from the Investment Agriculture Foundation of B.C.
“We’re really bad at saying no,” Rubens said, explaining LFI met with First Light Farm and other local farmers to discuss future food security in Revelstoke. While Johnston-Hill and Rubens weren’t immediately convinced their team had the capacity for a larger project, the idea wouldn’t die.
“So, we dove into what we could imagine for food storage and distribution in Revelstoke, and kind of came up with this idea,” Rubens said.
Once the idea started to take shape, First Light Farm reached out to Jordan Cropper, Raven Contracting owner and operator to see if he would jump on as general contractor.
“It was always pretty obvious to me that we needed these guys’ expertise,” Rubens said, explaining Cropper’s knowledge on various building codes and regulations was key in keeping the project going as the storage shifted more into an industrial building classification.
Scratching out a rough estimate and budget of $600,000, the team applied for the grant that covers 75 per cent of the proposed budget. By the end of March 2024 they got the approval with conditions that building permits would be sorted by September.
“We had to design it, engineer it, get septic mapped, surveys, everything ready to go in three months, which is a new record for us,” Cropper said. With a bit of finessing right until the bitter end, contractors were able to break ground in June 2025. Gambling that the cold storage would be operational in time, First Light Farm planted an additional 9,000 pounds of carrots to trial run farming capacity and the new storage capacity.
In the final days of the season, First Light reached out to the local community to see who could help harvest the abundance of carrots. Ten additional labourers joined in to get the carrots picked, washed, prepared and stored in the newly operational coolers.
“The coolers were basically being turned on while they were picking them,” Cropper said.
That push from contractors, staff and local help to get the Vegetable Bunker running and stocked showcases the deep community support First Light Farm has always known, Johnston-Hill said. While selling the products of a farm might be the hardest part, Revelstoke makes it an easier goal than most other cities.
“We have a really strong local food culture here. I want to pay homage to the Local Food Initiative for fostering that,” she said.
First Light Farms wishes to thank Raven Contracting, Martin Hamel at Revelstoke Drafting, Robyn Thomas at WSA Engineering, Tracey Peet at Elite, Advantage Excavation, Last Spike Construction, TJ’s Roofing, Revelstoke Electric, Axiom Mechanical, Ullr Mechanical, Home Comfort, AnCrete, Salmon Arm Window and Door, Element Gutters, Elite Septic, Revive Renovation and the financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food for supporting the building of the cold storage facility.
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