LiveSmart BC Community Hero
LiveSmart BC Community Hero: Harold Steves
You could say the lifelong farmer, decades-long Richmond city councillor, co-pioneer of the Agricultural Land Reserve and champion of sustainable green practices is a modern-day eco superhero.
"It was something our family always did," Harold Steves said of his environmentally friendly practices in his home and on his farm.
Steves grew up during World War II, and he recalls that his mother was really into recycling during the war effort.
Although nobody in the family smoked, they still collected the silver foil wrapping used to keep cigarettes fresh and recycled them, along with tin cans and glass jars. "Nothing got thrown out," Steves said.
And those examples rubbed off.
Today, his wife Kathy does most of the gardening and a lot of the farmwork, and the couple do everything with the environment in mind. They don't use chemicals on their farm, using all natural practices. They've also created a seed bank for a variety of beet called the yellow mangel, a particularly sweet variety that grows well in our climate and can weigh up to 10 pounds.
As far as he knows, they've got the last seed stock of yellow mangel on the planet.
Not only has Steves been an advocate for green practices, he's always eyeing improvement.
They're currently considering the purchase of a windmill, to generate power to heat their almost century-old house, as well as replacing their single-pane windows with the better insulated double-glazed variety as part of a major renovation project.
He wants to show that old homes don't have to be knocked down, but can simply be renovated to meet modern-day standards.
Steves said his five children are even more eco-friendly than he is. His son Rob, an engineer who lives next door, has removed the roof from part of his house and placed a greenhouse in the attic space.
Rob Steves has also done some experimentation on the Steves farm, which has been in the family since 1877, digging a hole and rigging a pump to tap into Richmond's high water table to provide water for their garden beds. That means they don't have to rely on the rain or city water, Harold Steves said.
Steves' son also removed the natural gas furnace from his house, and replaced it with electric space heaters in each room, which wound up providing savings on their heating bill.
"We'd been told for decades that natural gas heating is the cheapest way to go."
