Charles Doering was the quintessential gentleman farmer who kept a good stable of fine horses at the ready to go on a hunt for the pheasants he raised himself.
This historic Cowichan Station farm on Jackson Road made international headlines in recent years when the federal government ordered that its specially-imported herd of water buffalo be destroyed for fears they were carriers of the dreaded mad cow disease. The long-running tragedy was compounded when none of the slaughtered animals proved to be infected.
The Victorian farmhouse has been described as “a real gem”. Unfortunately, little is known about Phillip Carvell and John Marriner, the first owners. In the mid-1880s, or perhaps 1890, John and Mary Jackson bought Carvell’s half of the 80-hectare property beside Kelvin Creek, a tributary of the Koksilah River, renamed it Fairburn (Scots Gaelic for “beautiful small stream”), and began farming. Mary, the mother of two sons who hailed from Scotland, became well known as a breeder of Jersey cows; after John’s premature death at the age of 35, she shipped her milk to Victoria with the help of a farm manager and later became involved in the importation of thoroughbred horses.
She remarried, in 1911, to Charles Doering, a millionaire German immigrant who owned breweries in Victoria and Vancouver, and who also had investments in farming, ranching, mining and hotels throughout the province. Doering is remembered for his being chauffeured about the Cowichan Valley in a 1912 Daimler before he moved up to a Cadillac. He ran Fairburn as a dairy farm and raised Percheron draft horses and race horses. He was the quintessential gentleman farmer, one who likely never dirtied his hands but who kept a good stable of fine horses at the ready to go on a hunt for the pheasants he raised himself. Mary, it’s said, was more salt-of-the-earth, as capable of entertaining company as she was of delivering a calf.
Mary (Jackson) Doering, according to the late Valley historian, Jack Fleetwood, arrived on Vancouver Island with her father, John Reid, in the 1880s after having spent much of her early life in England, India and Oregon. Predeceased by her second husband in 1927, she passed away in 1949, aged 88, and all but 130 of the farm’s 1,200 acres were sold to MacMillan Bloedel. Leased for several years, the farm was allowed to run down until Darrel Archer’s parents, Jack (an electrician at the Crofton Pulp Mill) and Mollie (a teacher at Fairbridge, Koksilah and Alexander schools), acquired title in 1954. According to daughter-in-law Anthea, they poured “all their finances…into saving the house and many farm buildings for their historical value”. After attempts to operate the farm as a co-operative failed, they became early proponents of organic farming in the Cowichan Valley and operated a riding stable and summer camp.
That at least a portion of the house was built in the 1880s appears to be established by the fact that newspapers of that period were discovered under the floorboards. In 1913, just prior to Doering’s departure for England, the Cowichan Leader noted the building of a new porch and some interior decorating. In 1987, Daryl Drew described the house for readers of the Colonist as being “typically Victorian with high-ceiling rooms, tall bay windows and tile-face fireplaces in many of the rooms. Two mounted elk heads sit above the dark, oiled-wood trim and antique papered walls. Arranged among the soft-arm parlour chairs are shelves with books of every sort and fronting the house is a grand sweeping porch, with a view of Koksilah Ridge.”
The 12-stall stable — with hand-forged iron grillwork topping the stalls, no less — had been built the year before and a root house had a record of the 1917 potato crop tacked to a wall. A concrete sheep dip bears the year, 1928. Over half a century, three generations of Archers have enlarged the kitchen, added another dining room and installed electricity. They also found it necessary to upgrade most of the outbuildings.
For years Darrel and Anthea operated a sheep farm and a horse rental business combined with a summer camp with more gracious accommodation for as many as 20 guests. Theirs was the first water buffalo dairy in Canada. In 2004 it was reported that the farm was being considered as a site for a drug and alcohol treatment program. Today’s Fairburn Farm serves as a bed and breakfast and water buffalo dairy farm.
The 127-acre property, recently put up for sale, is surrounded by planted forest land with Kelvin Creek flowing through the property for a mile. The ca 1896 farmhouse (as stated in a real estate ad) is all of 6,102 sq. ft. with six guest rooms on the upper floor and a whole lot more besides two other homes and a cottage.
Brian Danyliw of Engel & Volkers Vancouver Island, isn’t whistling when he describes Fairburn Farm as “a rare offering!”
It can be yours for just $2.95 million.