Sask. farmer growing tropical foods in his passive solar greenhouse

Saskatoon-area farmer Dean Sopher has always looked for ways to be self-reliant.

So when food prices started to soar, he took on the challenge of building a passive solar greenhouse so he could grow food year-round.

“I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to passive solar technology,” said Sopher. “So my house is near net-zero, I’ve got a little chicken coop that’s passive solar, and I knew this concept would work, but I had to prove it. So I decided to build it myself, it’s been two and a half years since I started.”

Now he’s brought part of the supermarket to his backyard.

“All this stuff, we cannot grow it outside, even in the summertime,” Sopher told CTV News. “We grow passionfruit, lemons, limes, eucalyptus, tropical medicinal herbs for medicines, spices and things, it’s amazing to be able to do out here.”

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The difference between passive solar and photovoltaic solar is in the design. It’s about architecture, rather than solar panels.

“Passive simply means there’s no moving parts,” he said. “It’s all essentially in the building science and the design when situated to the sun. So at our location on the planet, this building is specifically designed for our location. In Saskatchewan, we’re very sunny. We have something like 313 sunny days every year, and we can only grow food outside for like, four months.”

Sopher has been documenting his journey on his YouTube channel where he’s got more than 36,000 subscribers and over 1 million video views. His main suggestion: doing things yourself.

“On my YouTube I talk about a bunch of ways you can save money,” he said. “Number one is doing things yourself. I’m an advocate for learning skills on how to build out and grow your own food.”

And while he says it’s a lot of work, it’s worth it.

“Oh, it’s hard growing food indoors,” he said.

“Storing the excess heat from the day for at night, high humidity and even carbon dioxide deficiency because the plants keep making oxygen. But when you get your hands on and do those types of things, you find out all these systems really work together. So the chickens make us manure, the manure makes compost, the compost goes to the gardens and the gardens feed the chickens again. It’s beautiful.”

Now that he’s proved the concept, he’s got viewers from around the country building their own passive solar greenhouses based on Sopher’s design.

Another benefit of the greenhouse is in a new addition, a hot tub. Sopher says it’s actually a practical part of the system.

“It’s not all about production, we wanted to enjoy it a little bit too,” he said. “Instead of out in the elements where it would cost a huge amount of electricity to heat, in the greenhouse any heat loss adds to the humidity and heat, so it works together.”

Sopher says he’ll continue making videos about the inner workings of a passive solar greenhouse sitting at 35 C in the middle of winter, and continue producing fresh raw food for a small group of customers.