Our story
Three generations of the Wilting family, farming Prince Edward Island's south shore.
From Holland to the south shore
Linden Lee Farm Enterprises was started by Aike Wilting, who came to Canada from the Netherlands in the 1950s. He began the way a lot of Island farms did back then, with pigs and a few cereal crops.
Potatoes came later. Aike and his son Hans started growing them, and they have been the farm's main crop ever since. Hans has worked the south shore around Canoe Cove and Meadowbank for more than twenty-five years, and today his own son, Aike, carries on the family legacy in potatoes.
The same ground, season after season
Farming here is a long game. What we do this year, the land remembers next year.
Farming for the long haul
Good years and bad, the ground has to last. That means rotation, so potatoes are not run on the same field year after year. Soybeans, peas, and small grains go in between potato crops to rebuild the soil.
It also means listening to what the land tells us. After wireworm wiped out a full potato crop here in 2005, the farm became a place where better ways of managing the pest get studied and tried. Mustard, planted as a rotation crop, turned out to be one of the answers, and it has caught on across the countryside since.
Watch Aike on the news
Aike speaks about the difficulties of the 2025 drought.
In the news
Where the Wiltings and the farm have turned up in Island coverage.