We are Academy Farms: the 108-acre water buffalo and bison farm and social enterprise of the John Volken Academy, located on south Langley’s Agricultural Land Reserve. Our farm is home to 350+ water buffalo and 100+ bison, and everything we raise here feeds directly into our onsite Farm Market, where we sell buffalo meat, bison meat, buffalo milk and cheese, heritage pork, and specialty local products. Every dollar our farm and market bring in goes back to the John Volken Academy.
Land development at Academy Farms began in 2019, and we have been growing ever since, adding animals, adding infrastructure, and adding the people who make the whole operation run.
We exist because of the John Volken Academy, a holistic, long-term residential treatment community that helps people rewrite their personal story after addiction, homelessness, or involvement with the justice system. Our farm is one of the ways the Academy delivers on that mission: it gives students a real workplace, not a classroom exercise.
Day to day, our herd and our market are cared for by John Volken Academy students working alongside our farm team. Students rotate through animal care, herd management, and retail roles in the Farm Market, building the kind of practical, transferable skills, showing up on time, following through on a task, working as part of a team, that make a real difference once they graduate. We back that hands-on training with the knowledge of buffalo and bison subject-matter experts, nutritionists, and equipment specialists, so our students are learning current, correct practices rather than picking things up by trial and error.
That structure is also why we lean on our mission so often when we talk about our products. When you shop with us or book a tour, you are supporting a training program, not just a farm.
We raise our water buffalo and bison humanely and ethically, and we manage our pastures the way herd animals are meant to be managed: by moving them. Rotating our buffalo and bison between paddocks gives grazed pasture time to recover, keeps our herd from wearing down any single section of the Agricultural Land Reserve, and lets their natural grazing and movement do some of the soil work for us. Bison and water buffalo are efficient converters of forage, so this kind of rotational system tends to ask less of the land than more input-heavy forms of livestock farming, while still producing the meat, milk, and cheese our Farm Market is known for.
We treat this as an ongoing responsibility rather than a finished project. As our herd grows, our grazing plan grows with it.
We are continuously growing our herd of water buffalo and bison with a focus on sustainable, responsible farming, so we can keep offering our guests a wide range of healthy, hearty products from the Farm Market.
We stay on top of the equipment, animal husbandry practices, and nutritional science our herd needs by working with buffalo and bison subject-matter experts, nutritionists, equipment specialists, and other authorities in the field. That is how we keep our farm efficient and sustainable as it gets bigger.
Our Farm Market is open 10am to 6pm, Monday through Saturday, at 23480 40 Ave, Langley Twp, BC V2Z 2K1. Stop in for buffalo meat, bison meat, buffalo milk and cheese, heritage pork, and the seasonal specialty items we bring in from local vendors.
Want to see the herd up close? Our farm tours take you through the property by wagon, with time in Calf Alley to meet our buffalo calves and a stop in the Farm Market afterward. If you are stocking up for animals of your own, check out our hay sales for Orchard, Timothy, Washington, and Alfalfa hay, with delivery available.
