I’ve made a couple of delicious visits to Riley Park Winter Market and here are some of the sights I’ve seen…..
My first foray was in early March, when Vancouver had received an unwelcome dump of snow. Which didn’t deter shoppers or stallholders!
Victoria’s long-awaited public market at the Hudson’s grand opening sprawls over this entire weekend.
Want to get out of the drizzle on Sunday? Come and say hello in the nice dry market space where from 11am till 5pm, I’ll be perched at a table for Digging the City. with books and a bit of community information about the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers. At 11:15 I’ll be stepping into the community kitchen to read from my book, and talk about the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers community seed bank initiative.
There will also be
local food, fun, entertainment, featuring local food centered non-profits, who will have day tables to highlight their good work and will provide programing for the Community Kitchen (cooking demonstrations. Kids entertainment will include free face-painting (11-2pm) and balloon twisting (12-2pm), and food and garden focused activities by Lifecycles and Compost Ed Centre.
Saturday morning we repaired (by schoolbus) to the beautiful spaces at Okanagan College, where the luckiest presenters spoke in the curvy pod at the top of the stairs, but really everything was lovely there, including a fine breakfast of fresh muffins (featuring Okanagan apricots) and lots of fruit.
The best overall session of the conference for me was one called Looking Away, Looking In, Looking Under: Perspectives on the Okanagan on Saturday morning, which featured a lively talk by Kelowna’s own George Grinnell on Patrick Lane’s novel Red Dog, Red Dog which is set in the Okanagan; followed by an entertaining if depressing look at development by another local speaker, Daniel Keyes (White + Green Space Invader: The Rhetoric of Development in the Okanagan) – check out the toe-curling promotional video. Poet, blogger and essayist Harold Rhenisch finished things off with Caraway & Pippins, a luscious essay that circled around the Newtown Apple (each “a tiny earth, a green planet”) as an emblem of the cultural and agrarian changes wrought by commerce and industrialization on the Okanagan.
The Saturday junket to the farmers market was a brilliant idea, but much too short a visit. No sooner had I downed my black bean-chickpea quesadilla than I was sprinting up and down the aisles, power-shopping for produce – a giant fennel bulb, a jar of local salsa, a box of sweet yellow cherry tomatoes – the latter from Curtis Stone, who had mentored another SPIN farmer at the market, Janice Elliott – and trying to find an organic peach grower.
I had come to the Okanagan with a mission: organic peaches were on my mind. As you may know, dear reader, peaches are right near the top of the Dirty Dozen, a couple of fruits below apples, and so one of the best places to put your money when buying organic produce. I’d been warned that I might have to make a side trip to Cawston or Keremeos to find organic growers, as most of the Okanagan fruit in the Kelowna area is chemically produced. At the 11th hour (12:58 in fact, since the stallholders start packing up at 1pm) I was pointed to the Fruit Guy, Michael Welsh, who grows without pesticides and sold me a 20lb case of beauties (he also writes very fine poetry, according to Nancy Holmes, but I didn’t know that at the time.) The catch was I had to drag it back on the bus and get it back to our residence so I could pack it into the car for the morrow’s trip back to Victoria.
Mission accomplished, fruit in hand, grateful to be back in the cool of the building, I settled into an easy chair in the pod for the last Saturday session, Unmemoried Heights? Thinking In/With the Rockies, starring Gyorgyi Voros who took us on an excellent adventure: Wallace Stevens‘ hunting trip to BC; Tempest Emery who talked about landscape and memory in Sid Marty‘s work; and Benedict Fullalove who invoked a host of odd characters, from Rupert Brooke to Viscount Milton & WB Cheadle and Howard O’Hagan before the clock ran out on his Unmemoried Heights: Historicizing the Rockies.
Sunday morning began with probably the best yoga session I’ve ever attended, at 7am on a sunny, dewy lawn overlooking the valley. After that, temperatures already starting to climb, came a blur of packing and vacating and hanging about waiting for the most welcome coffee, fruit and pastries which arrived mid-session: our saintly panel chair released us to seek refreshment mid-panel, while being entertained on the subject of Generation A by Richard Pickard, Cate Sandilands and Jenny Kerber.
I had to depart after that session in order to get to the ferry with reasonable confidence of getting home before midnight; the traffic was horrendous, stop and go for an hour or two on the baking highway beyon
d Hope, until I got nearer Tsawwassen and those welcome sea breezes. Ironically, given the last session of the conference, the saddest news awaiting me when I returned to my garden later that night was the death of my bumblebee colony. My local entomologist can’t be sure what the cause was, just disease of some kind he thinks.
I spent a very pleasant long weekend in Calgary, visiting old friends and having occasional excursions to sprawly bits of the city on shopping missions or the green and pleasant farmers markets in Calgary and Millarville.
I’d been to the Calgary Farmers Market a couple of years ago, but this was my chance to have a gander in summertime. We paused for a Ukranian lunch of cabbage rolls and sauerkraut to fortify ourselves before our own lamb burger supper.
Saturday we leapt out into the day good and early to get to Millarville for the farmers market there, which was booming. It’s a good mixture of food and other things – everything from ostrich eggs to mead to fresh fruit and veg. The rodeo was about to commence so there was a bit of calf roping going on in the background, and a buckin’ bronc that was attracting a youthful ridership. We repaired to the countryside for a stroll and a cup of tea with some locals before heading back to town.
I spent the evening in Spruceville with the lovely and talented Susan Bruce, dining on some excellent Nepalese takeaway from The Himalayan, and chewing the fat, and later putting the icing on the cake with a big fat gelato from Amato.
Calgary still has a few good independent bookstores, hanging on in a world of big box, car-friendly shopping. Owl’s Nest Books is one of them, and I dropped in here to pick up a copy of dee Hobsbawn-Smith‘s delightful new work, Foodshed.
We supped one night at Le Villa, where the (Alberta) lamb chops (why oh why do they insist on raising our hopes and calling them a rack??) were exquisite in every way. I had ordered the tasting menu, so prefaced them with a pair of oysters Rockefeller (they were ok: I like Ferris’ even better, though it’s unfair to compare a prairie restaurant with a West Coast one) and concluded with a strawberry Grand Marnier crepe which was unremarkable, and perhaps even an intrusion after the lamb. But such is the fate of the taster, and I do make my sacrifices carefully.
And then, after a spell more moseying and visiting, it was time to high tail it to Kelowna, where I we are perching at the tail end of the ALECC conference, which concludes tomorrow.
Last weekend’s Vancouver Island Music Fest was blessed with warm weather, peaceful crowds, some good food and great music.
It kicked off this year with Alison Krauss & Union Station playing a separate Thursday night concert. I’ve seen her a couple of times, so although I consider her to be both the bee’s knees and the cat’s meow, I took the more affordable option of skipping that, and waiting until the festival weekend pass kicked in on Friday.
Which gave us a chance to enjoy a leisurely Thursday night dinner of pasta dressed in garlic scape pesto, that was kindly included – courtesy of Farmer Derek – in the first Haliburton food basket. Which also included organic greens for the salad.
Friday night highlights were Red Horse (Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka and my longtime favourite Lucy Kaplansky) followed by real Vegas magician Jeff McBride who provided some harmless fun. We left the next generation to enjoy Arrested Development so as to be fresh for the Saturday morning visit to the Comox Valley Farmers Market, which happily for us takes place right next door to the festival site.
Though the snackable carrots were long gone by the time we rolled up, the Willowvic Farm cinnamon buns were not, and nor were some particularly delectable spinach & feta croissants from Alderlane Farmhouse Bakery. And there was the watermelon radish which Big Buzz AcresFarm from Campbell River was selling to my great delight because I’ve just planted some myself.
There were a lot of stands with some good looking foods and regular customers who bring their own shopping barrows, apparently. One 
surprise was to arrive and hear what sounded like a Stan Rogers cd playing, only to discover that it was in fact his son Nathan singing live, whose cross to bear is a voice very much like his dad’s, and perfectly suited to singing his father’s repertoire.
On with the day. As usual, far too much to choose from, but I lucked into a workshop called The Magic of Music which introduced me to the wonderful Celso Machado, whose percussion antics so entranced his fellow performers they started filming him.
The Broken Hearted Song Circle followed, with a stellar lineup (Jon Anderson, Rodney Crowell, BettySoo, Leela Gilday and Gurf Morlix) and then it was on into the barn and Songs for Reason to discover some good ol’ boys – Atomic Duo – from Austin: highly entertaining all round.
A Melancholic Frolic followed, featuring Lucy Kaplansky, JD Edwards, Eugene Smith, Morlove, Devon Sproule — and a rare treat for me to see Daniel Lapp again; I’d only seen him once and he was incredible, but at subsequent appearances I’ve caught, he’s given the stage over to his students – he’s a
much-admired teacher and mentor to young musicians.
“Don’t worry,” he told us, “it’s not broken” – as he detached and then slung the strings of his bow over the fiddle and proceeded to make some great sounds that left the others on stage gaping in delight. Edwards was good, if having a bit of trouble with his coiffure at times; always a pleasure to see Smith; but I was mostly there to see
Kaplansky who jammed with the others just like she oughta.I stayed for a few numbers by Steve 
Riley and the MamouPlayboys but the beer tent beckoned, and I also caught the unmistakeable sound of an oyster burger murmuring my name from Bob’s Burgers.
So then it was Saturday evening mainstage performances, starting with Jon Anderson, followed by John Jorgenson & Albert Lee – surely the stars of the evening. After which Randy Newman, more entertaining than I’d expected. We left before the Travellin’ McCourys & The Lee Boys mixed it up in ways that just sounded like more than I could handle before bedtime.
Sunday had a slowish start for me but quickly peaked at a workshop called Guitars! where Albert Lee and John Jorgenson, with Celso Machado, quickly stole the show, although Bill Coon and Darren Radtke rose to the occasion as best they could, particularly with the closing number (Crossroads). But the standing ovation encore rendition of Orange Blossom Special was quite a moment. And not a fiddle to be seen..
A sense of anticlimax prevailed during the final workshop (Hope ya Like Jammin’) what with abysmal failure of sound systems to cope with some 13 musicians (Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys, The Travelin’ McCourys and The Breakmen) not all of whom, ahem, played nicely with the others.
It’s easily said from my side of the stage that the best workshops are the ones where everyone jams – such rare opportunities and odd combinations – and yet other sessions end up as fairly pointless one-after-anothers.
So in that sense Rodney Crowell’s workshop appearances were disappointing – no jamming on his stages – and he sang songs (and not always his best numbers, imho) that he then repeated in his mainstage performance Sunday night. I’m a longtime fan of his so can’t believe he wouldn’t want to make more of his considerable repertoire. I guess one gets tired of one’s own words after a while. Anyway, I like most of Sex & Gasoline which was one of the few cds I bought this year (economy, economy) despite the fact I didn’t like most of the songs from it that he sang in workshops. Go figure.
The other Sunday nighters – Holly Cole, Night Train Music Club and David Crosby – were, shall we say, just not what I was looking for. And so it ended for another year. Kind of expensive, food-wise: most plates were $10-12, and there really wasn’t much of interest in the vegetarian offerings. And the vegetarian meals were pretty much always the same price as the meat ones, which means the veggies were subsidizing the carnivores: a wrongness if ever there were.
Sadly, very sadly, I had to leave all these fellers on the beach too, 
as it’s red tide. Odd to see the coolers standing empty at the Fanny Bay Oysters Seafood Shop.
If you consulted the BC Association of Farmers Markets Marketfinder, you might be forgiven for thinking there are only two farmers markets in Victoria. We visited a couple of off-the-list markets last Saturday, and there are many more besides.
It’s another one of those situations of fragmentation I guess; we are over-supplied with information and have no way to concentrate people’s attention on one source. What is the authoritative source of current information about farmers markets? We just don’t have one place to look anymore. In little old Victoria we have two print phone books now, as well as multiple online directories, and where directories are concerned, authority seems to change as swiftly as technology itself . Choosing a directory so people can find your business is a nightmare. Farmers market administrators would have to work out which information sources to subscribe to and then 
keep updated; prospective customers come from all kinds of backgrounds and are seeking the markets for all kinds of reasons, so will be looking in all different directions. Phew. Information overload already. Little wonder many simply rely on their own websites. No: make that blogs… No: Facebook… No: Twitter… No: iPad apps… No: Groupon. No: ..?!
Anyway. The listings include Moss Street, of course, and Oaklands – which I’ve never heard of but seems to be a Thursday community market. But there are in fact a number of others absent from its listings, who presumably simply don’t belong to the organization. The Victoria Downtown Public Market struggled on through the winter – its meat (Terra Nossa) and produce stands were always thronged but attendance looked poor to me in the cold months; I haven’t been downtown much so haven’t seen how it is this summer, or whether the Island Chefs Collaborative market is running competition for it in Bastion Square.
The James Bay Farmers Market is a small neighbourhood market, nestled behind the 
legislature building and the Tally-Ho stop, so perfectly positioned for tourist as well as neighbourhood trade.
It’s time for fresh produce at last at last. And the
re are lots of tomatoes to be had, despite the cool start to the summer. Those with greenhouse space 
are a month or two ahead of me. Sun Trio Farm had a good variety of plum sized tomatoes of many colours.
Given this long cool year we’ve had, it’s early for it, though even so, later in the day I encountered at least one farmer who was selling fresh garlic, but Golden Maples Fa
rm had a great selection from last year. And nicely 
displayed too. They were labelled Purple Stripe and Metechi, but from what I read, Metechi is a kind of Purple Stripe; there are hundreds of varieties of garlic and all I can safely say about what’s in my garden is that I’m growing both hard and soft neck varieties and they haven’t died yet, so I’m hopeful that a harvest is still in my future. Anyway… these ones looked good.
The bread selle
r at James Bay has beautiful looking loaves. Not cheap – many clocking in around $8 or $10 a loaf, but brisk sellers: he was down to a couple of loaves when we passed by later that day.
Another Saturday market not on the BCAFM list was the North Saanich Farmers Market, run by the North Saanich Food for the Future Society (“dedicated to supporting farms and farmers, and further developing the agricultural capacity of the district.”). It’s another small neighbourly market with a regular clientele and – like James Bay – musical accompaniment. It seems to be well appreciated by the marketgoers too: things really do run out near the end of its three hour day.
There are more missing from the listings. From a food-shopper’s point of view, the risk that farmers markets run as they mature is in evolving into crafts markets, but that seems to happen to many of them. The farmers have to weigh time away from the fields against sales, and a great many of them (thanks in large part to the long-running Island Farm Fresh directory) have farmgate or direct sales as well as connections to retailers and restaurants. Moss Street has avoided this by keeping the crafts and food vendors physically separate, and the vendors are attuned to consumer trends: organic and gluten-free foods are the mainstay. It’s been a while since I went to the Saanich Fairgrounds, to the market that for a while seemed to be the only show in town (now known as the Peninsula Country Market), but it looks from the vendor list to have lagged a bit on farmer presence; and the last time I was at the Thursday evening Sidney Summer Market it was thoroughly mobbed, but had almost no produce stands.