I'll start off by giving credit where credit is due. Even though I grew up on a farm, I hadn't really given much critical thought to food chain issues until I started reading OC's Vegetables of Mass Destruction diary series. And let's face it, a couple of years ago even the most obtuse of us knew that global warming was a crisis, but I never really considered going beyond recycling until I read about Energize America and ASiegel's Energy Cool series that delves into fascinating and innovative options for bringing sustainable energy into our daily lives.
It was the revoltingly accurate descriptions of CAFOs, I think, that finally got me off my butt (figuratively, I’ll be honest) and prompted me to search online for farmers markets in my area, with an emphasis on organics. I found a veritable goldmine of information about organic growing up here in Canada, and specifically found out about an organic-only farmer’s market that’s only a five to ten minute drive from my apartment (yay!). I had such high hopes, since only a few months ago at the time, on a trip to St. John’s, Newfoundland, I had been reminded of how vegetables are supposed to taste when I ate carrots purchased at a roadside stand. Oh, the memories of my grandmother’s garden! The taste! Wow. If you’re still eating those cardboard-like bagged baby carrots, you’ll unfortunately have no idea what I’m drooling about. So off I went one Saturday morning, to tentatively explore.
All of my great expectations were fulfilled, to my delight. I mean, it was December in Ottawa, for goodness’ sake! I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, but it probably wasn’t much. Yet, the onions and garlic and potatoes and carrots, the greenhouse-grown greens and the bread, and the fantastically various cuts of beef and pork and lamb (I’m sure I’m missing lots here, sorry!), just amazed me. I think I went straight home and made a salad, and I have very fond memories of the pork chops I made with rice and a cream of mushroom sauce. The lamb chops I had later that week were incredible, too. The flavours just exploded in my mouth, and there was no turning back for me. That’s not even taking into account how good it made me feel to directly contribute to the livelihood of farmers, as a woman who came from a farming family.
A few months later, I read an Energy Cool diary about urban cycling that happened to be posted during a period of really nice weather, which prompted me to start thinking about literally getting off my butt this time. I decided to start commuting to work by bike, to reduce the amount of driving I was doing. I went to about seven or eight bicycle shops - new and used - in the space of one weekend... and I came up with this:
Isn’t it shiny?
The very day that I picked up the bike, I took a test ride to work to figure out how long it would take me. Lucky me, it only added ten minutes to what was normally a twenty minute commute. On the way there, that is - the two hills that add downhill speed on the way there are steep enough that I still have to walk up them on the way home until I get my stamina up - the return trip takes about forty minutes.
Unfortunately, we got a bit of a bad spell in the weather after that, so I didn’t get the bike out for a few more weeks, but the first sunny Saturday, I took my bike to the organic market, and I brought along the digital camera I had borrowed from my parents:
The lady running the booth for this organic farm took a good bit of her time to talk to me about the CSA she offers, and even though I said I don’t eat enough in one week to justify a CSA share (I hate to waste good food), she said that she’d be happy to keep in touch with me to let me know what the farm’s offering each week and I could individualize an order to be picked up each Wednesday evening at the market’s location. Talk about service with a smile!
As you might be able to tell from the French signs, this gentleman farms just over the provincial border in Quebec. His farm is still only about an hour and a half drive from the market. He sells his produce at the organic market I’ve visited as well as one or two that are closer to home for him. He does import some vegetables out of season, but everything is certified organic and he’s very upfront about telling customers which products are grown where.
This shot shows his huge supply of carrots (see all the bags in the background?) as well as his bags of greens off to the left. I can’t say enough about the spinach and salad greens he sells. Yummmm.
This gentleman was co-ordinating the market that Saturday. He was happy to answer my many questions.
Even though he brings in stuff from outside the area, it is all certified organic, from pasta to soap and cleaning supplies:
There are probably about fifteen booths at the market every Saturday, but for the sake of space I’ve only posted pictures from the farms I purchased food from that day. There’s one lady who sells the most to-die-for organic whole-wheat French baguettes, though, let me tell you. [Note: I do have contact information for all of the above listed farms, if anyone should be interested. Either let me know in the comments or contact me by the email in my profile.]
I stuffed all the veggies I bought that day into my backpack and pedalled over to a friend’s place so she could take some pictures of me on my first big sustainable trip:
See that backpack on the path in the background? Stuffed full of veggies to be mainly used for a salad at a friend’s barbeque later that night. If I hadn’t been running late that evening, I would’ve had a beautiful salad picture for you guys to see the finished product...
As it is, count yourselves lucky to see the ingredients, since the salad only lasted about 2 minutes once I put it on the picnic table.
So not only is the food incredibly tasty (and I’ve juuuust about convinced one of my aunts to buy into a CSA share with me!), but I’ve been enjoying my bike commute to and from work.
I’d like to leave you with a few pictures that might explain why I feel so strongly about being able to directly support the farmers who feed us. A few weeks ago I asked my parents to search for some pictures to scan that showed how our family farm used to look going back the last couple of decades. My father with the dry sense of humour emailed me these two pics initially:
See the resemblance? No? Me either... maybe these will give you a more complete picture of my surroundings growing up on a working beef farm:
A good number of my grandparent’s children stayed close to home after they married. They raised families, worked at outside jobs, and yet all of them and the men and women they married helped out on the farm in many ways big and small, even though it was two of my uncles who mainly took over the farming. My cousins and I helped out where required whether it was helping Grandma pick produce from her garden or bottle-feeding orphaned calves (there’s a picture somewhere, I swear! We named him Junior... how original), but we mainly took off at sunrise to play in the great outdoors and only came home when we were hungry or the sun went down, whichever came first.
About ten or fifteen years ago, my grandparents sold most of the land to developers. They had their reasons, and it didn’t really impact me, because the family still had use of the land for grazing cattle, growing grass for hay, or just using the property as space to sell firewood. In the last two years, though, most of the zoning has finally gone through. The cattle have all been sold. The subdivision has finally started. Here’s the view from my parents’ backyard now, from left to right:
In the next two years, there will be somewhere between 750 and 800 houses back there. The barn on the hill is gone. Hell, even the hill is gone - blasted away last summer. I don’t like to look out my parent’s back windows anymore. They will be moving before the end of this summer.
One week ago, my parents hosted a family lunch, and my dad and I took my sister-in-law and her nieces and nephews back to see the creek that runs through the property. It was great to see a group of kids walking through the field again, and poking some sticks into the creek to see if they could tease out any frogs. But I took a little detour, and discovered that the last of the tree forts that my cousins and I built has been torn down.
So yeah, that’s really depressing for me. Now I do my part in the small ways that I can, by supporting farmers who are working their land as responsibly and sustainably as they know how, and by taking my bike to work and to the market and the bank, in an attempt to reduce my carbon footprint.
As A Siegel likes to say in both the Energize America and Energy Cool series’, there may not be one silver bullet, but there can be lots of silver B.B.s...