Welcome to Nightingale Farms

Nightingale Farms has operated in the agriculture produce business for over 55 years. Originating from a small family farm, the operation has expanded over three generations and now grows, packs, and ships over three million pounds of fresh produce annually. The company is one of Canada’s largest local suppliers to Ontario food chain retailers, independents, Ontario Food Terminal brokers, and numerous retailers in the United States. It operates from its central, ultra-modern grading, packing, and cooling facility in LaSalette, in southwestern Ontario. Over 1,000 acres of vegetables are planted and harvested each year.

Nightingale Farms has led the Ontario’s vegetable farming industry in crop research; developing high technology methods of farming to improve product quality and to extend the local growing season. They have pioneered the use of plasti-culture technologies including plastic mulches, drip irrigation, low tunnels, crop covers, crop monitoring systems, and most recently the use of high tunnel structures; all of which has provided a competitive advantage in its markets.

The Nightingale farms organization employs over 200 seasonal workers, of which 150 are Jamaican migrant farm workers, for the past 25 years. They encompass excellent working relationships with the Jamaican Liaison located in Toronto, as well as with government officials and private sector contacts in Jamaica. They have also previously grown produce in Jamaica on a research project basis.

Ownership of the business has passed through multiple generations. The creation of the company name is indebted to Frank J. Nightingale; operating the business from 1950 to 1980. The family business was then passed to his youngest son, Bill Nightingale Sr. and his wife Caroline, who, through numerous research projects and a lot of hard work, put the quality aspect behind the Nightingale name. 2003 was a year of change, a year when Bill’s only son, Bill Nightingale Jr., would take the full ropes of the company. And now, since 2007, he has joined with his sister, Carmina Halstead, to drive this company to a new level.