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

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

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See the update info and photos below.

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 McMillan
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
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 27th, 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 900 cloves, 188 of our own home grown (really nice big bulbs) and 712 of purchased cloves, all of which were Red Russian. At this point we still had tons of room left so decided to purchase another 50 pounds, which we hoped to be about 1500 more cloves. These were Yugoslavian Garlic that came from Rocky Ridge Farm in Mara, BC and are super nice looking seed quality cloves! We hope to get them all planted this weekend.

October 29th
We planted the last of the garlic for this year, another 1600 cloves, for a total of 2600.

A huge thanks to Anne and Ian Richardson of Rocky Ridge Farm for suppling us with the awesome looking Yugoslavian bulbs that we'll use for seed. Check the clove size against the loonies in the 2nd row end photo - they look great. They supplied us with amzing garlic bulbs for years now. Also thanks for all the mentoring and answering our endless questions ... as they slow down to try and enjoy retirement, we hope we can produce as good a quality garlic as they have over the years!     Thank you Ian and Anne! Rocky Ridge Farm: 250-838-2221 or see then on FaceBook

Some of the preparation work and planting in 2022. The following photos will enlarge if you click on them.


garlic on the right and Fall Rye on the left


garlic beds ready to plant


spreading compost over the beds


hand planting to ensure upright cloves


900 planted and 1700 to go


harrowing in the fall cover crop for rotation


2 of 4 bags of Yugoslavian garlic bulbs


note the clove size by the toonies in the box


chopping leaves and branches for mulch


covering the garlic with the mulch


frost protection as well as weed control


perfect timing and we finished in time!


a comparison of good seed to small seed


good garlic scapes could mean good garlic


our scapes all sold very well


lots of garlic scapes!!


we hand dug all of our garlic


and laid them out to sun dry for a day


lots of garlic heading for the hanging shed


sorted by type and hung in bunches of 10


after drying every bulb is sized


some of the Yugoslavian garlic after sorting


anything with a blemish is kept seperate


some of the Yugoslavian ready to ship

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