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seed saving

Seedy, raw community

Maple Bay Witch Hazel

It was an intense ag-food weekend starting with Seedy Saturday at the Victoria Conference Centre. Many were the crowds, nigh on as numerous as the seeds on sale, and much was the diversity on offer. I was helping out at the CRFAIR stand, conveniently situated next to Jacob of Salt Spring Sprouts & Organic Mushrooms, who is always generous with his samples. I also sampled some excellent banana pancakes made by chef Joseph from his bean flour pancake mix. Managed to escape with only one package of seeds, this one from GTUFer Kendell Nielsen, PAg, who had dropped off some mini-spaghetti squash seeds that caught my eye. I did not need her giant Jerusalem artichokes though they were beautiful. There was a very busy table of volunteers repackaging the donated seeds, and a large variety on offer (free for trade or $1 a package).

 

 

 

 

 

 

My book was on sale at the CRFAIR table (near the giant rutabaga); Verna & Bob Duncan talked fruit and fruit trees at their very popular stand, and it was spring all over the place with tender snowdrops and other spring shoots waiting to be taken home. There were many workshops as well, including a preview of the Changing the Way We Eat food talks which are upcoming at the Belfry Theatre in late April. Watch this space for news..

 

 

 

Sunday was a double whammy. First, the GTUF meeting, in which Gabe Epstein and Belle Leon shared some photos of community gardens in Victoria, Seattle and South Africa, and invited discussion about the nature and purpose of community gardens in our area. Then we broke for snacks – including two glorious pizzas hand-crafted by local caterer Eugene Monast who has often blessed us with food at our meetings. GTUFer Robert Baker had brought a basket along to show what he’d harvested from his garden that morning, encouraging us to make the most of winter growing.

 

 

 

 

And finally it was on to the VIVA-RAW monthly potluck, to see what delectables were on the table and to hear Aika Tuomi talk about mushrooms. He focused on shiitake, reishi and chaga mushrooms and did a good plug for mushroom powders and extracts on sale where he works, Ingredients Health Foods.

And the raw food we ate: below, a delicious and beautiful salad featuring pomegranate, kiwi and avocado; seedy flax crackers; mock salmon (walnut) pate (my contribution); zucchini noodles; ingredients list from some cocoa-date cookies; and finally the groaning plate which features everything but the late-breaking and improbable-sounding but gorgeous salad of mango, citrus and sauerkraut.

More seeds

GTUF 2013 seed swap

Lost a bit of time to computer troubles, but we seem to be back on our virtual feet again.

This abnormally warm West Coast winter is blending seamlessly into spring with an alarming showing of buds on bushes even as the snowdrops do their seasonal duty. We’re all thinking about seeds just now. The weekend before last the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers seed swap attracted around 50 GTUFers and other interested parties. It was a friendly and interesting time, comparing notes on what had grown well in our neighbourhood, and enlivened by the arrival of several cases of last year’s seed stock donated by a good neighbourly commercial seller.

Among my trophies, I collected seeds for:

  • cucumbers (field and pickling)
  • kohlrabi (one can never have too much)
  • scarlet runner beans (some unusual & beautiful brown and cream coloured seeds)
  • mammoth pot leeks (I have regretfully given up on onions – just don’t have enough sun in my garden)
  • a Kashmiri brassica called Haak
  • spinach

And I left small quantities of a large number of different plants including broccoli, celery, amaranth, calendula, oca, bulb fennel, black radish and eight different kinds of tomatoes, sugar snap peas and the remains of some unneeded seed packs, like onion (my plant list is here)

On Monday I was invited to speak to the fruit & veg group of the Victoria Horticultural Society. Rather than try to cross secateurs with more seasoned gardeners I chose community seed banks as my topic, and a lively discussion (several in fact) ensued. The GTUF seed bank, like many in these parts, was started after Dan Jason’s inspirational article on the topic. A good way to build goodwill, seed stocks and, ultimately, food security in your neighbourhood!

First seeds

Even here in Lotusland we were reminded it’s still winter with a run of frosty nights, but the chill gave way to a clear sunny day last Saturday in which Haliburton Farm’s friends and neighbours gathered at the farmhouse to buy seeds, plant starts and organic produce and talk about the gardens to come. It was the first Seedy Saturday on Vancouver Island and the beginning of a long season for the seed-sellers who attended: Salt Spring Seeds, Seeds of Victoria and some of the farmers of Haliburton Farm: New Mountain Farm, H&R Veggies and Sunbird Farm II.

Below, Dan Jason – representing Salt Spring Seeds – and farmer Heather – with a tasty selection of  organic produce from H&R Veggies – await customers as the day begins. Visitors, board members and farmers alike listen to Dan Jason’s noontime talk about the importance of seed saving and the value to food and community of knowing where your seeds come from. New Mountain farmers Nate and Mike offered seeds and produce.

Seediness & worminess

Artichoke with TreefrogA group of Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers visited the Garden Path last week, to have a look around at a garden going (deliberately) to seed.

Carolyn Herriot walked us round the garden she carved out of broom and bracken about 12 years ago, and which over the years has been an organic plant nursery, a source of local organic seed, and now a fruitful training centre for interns. Carolyn has increasingly turned her hand to writing and is awaiting release of her new cookbook, The Zero-Mile Diet Cookbook, which follows her last book, The Zero Mile Diet: A Year Round Guide to Growing Organic Food.

Here she checks artichokes, which are ready for seed collection when the flower turns to fluff. Her leeks are in bloom, to the delight of the many bees who visit the garden. And she showed us a box of peas that had been collected and put into a container for freezing. Although they’d been carefully checked for pea weevil, freezing the peas for several days would make sure that anything missed would not hatch.

 

 

 

 

 

Pea weevil is a problem in summer peas; any planted after June should be resistant varieties, as the weevils bore through the pods and into the peas to lay eggs, which hatch out and can stunt or destroy seedlings as well as ruining the peas for eating.

 

 

 

 

Below, Carolyn shows off her Jerusalem artichokes. Every year, she said, she digs them up and leaves none behind, and every year they gallop back larger than life: I am grateful I had only planted mine in containers, and even there they happily go on self-propagating. Another reliable returnee is oca (oxalis tuberosa), a hardy little tuber from Peru via New Zealand, which sports lush, four-leafed foliage and produces lemony morsels ideal for roasting. Carolyn has introduced it to our area, selling tubers at Seedy Saturdays for several years now, and they volunteer back each year. New this year is the asparagus pea (Tetragonolobus purpurea) which looked a lot like one of the wild greens we picked when I was in Crete – probably was the same, since this hails from the Mediterranean. Pretty and tasty.

 

 

 

 

 

One other novelty item Carolyn’s been selling through Seeds of Victoria is the strawberry spinach (Chenopodium capitatum), which was rather beautiful.

After that it was time for a sip of juice – which Carolyn makes with a steam extractor – and a look at some of her seed-saving. We also got a pep talk about the gut flora which have become a great topic of interest to her through her research for her cookbook, as have recipes involving fermentation which feed those beneficial organisms.

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend marked the 20th anniversary party and plant sale at the Greater Victoria Compost Education Centre, where a life-sized red wiggler was handing out gummi-worms and birthday cake, while outside were a number of vendors, including foodista turned tea-wallah, Libby Seabrook, offering some delicious herbal concoctions. Also spotted was Farmer Tina from Corner Farm in North Saanich, digging a nearly released local book.

 

 

 

Seedy weekend

What has come to feel like a rare weekend of glorious (if not warm) sunshine brought out the seedies at Duncan’s Seedy Saturday. I’d been to one other at this venue, in 2010, and it’s grown hugely in popularity since then.

It takes place at the Mercury Theatre, which is getting a little small to contain the interest. Upstairs was mobbed; downstairs was quieter, and featured my friends from Haliburton Community Organic Farm.

 

 

 

RogerFoucher

Meanwhile outside there was some action: food vendors,  plus fruit and nut trees and bushes, and a display of edible weeds from the highly knowledgeable wild foods educator Roger Foucher, who will be offering a workshop on wild & cultivated perennials in Victoria on April 1).

I got away with only five packages of seeds, and a shiny new blackcurrant bush. With luck I’ll be growing part of my own Christmas cake this year.

 

Chocolate, gastronomy and Seedy Sunday

The writers and artists at the SWG winter retreat spend a lot of time thinking about food, and chocolate is one of the essential treats we administer to keep us healthy, happy and creative, meditating on all those dark sweet flavonoids as we search the cold white fields for inspiration. With Valentine’s day around the corner, it never hurts to spend time thinking about chocolate: what is it, where is it made and by whom? The industry has a poor record of exploiting producers and depending upon child labour, so if you want  your valentine chocolate to mean what you think it does, you should have a listen to this and ask questions wherever you buy your chocolate. Fair Trade chocolate is always the best choice: if you don’t eat the rest, savour the thought that you are contributing to a better world, one calorie at a time.

Once you have bought the best, most fairly produced chocolate you can, you might like to whip up a little mousse. This one sounds like a good bet, particularly if you are catering for the dairy-intolerant. I was a little surprised to see the recipe credit go to  Hervé This, one of the fathers of molecular gastronomy, as it’s remarkably low tech.

Speaking of gastronomy, I have just come across a 2010 broadcast of The New Gastronomy, from one of my favourite BBC radio shows, The Food Programme. It discusses academic training in gastronomy, starting with the University of Gastronomic Sciences, where I spent 2007 earning a Master’s of Food Culture & Communication (as documented on this blog). It’s an interesting look at the field of gastronomy and how and why it is being taught, though the Italian segment looks only at the three year undergraduate degree rather than the one year master’s that I did. (And I find Sheila Dillon‘s mispronunciation of Alice Waters’ name rather endearing). Other courses in the US and England are also discussed. It gave me a sense of renewed satisfaction that I had done the course.

Seedy Saturday takes place next weekend in Victoria which means winter is on its way out, and locals can start to plan for spring, buying seeds, swapping their home-reared seed and taking in a few talks about gardening. The event, which aims to encourage the sharing of seeds in the interests of protecting our country’s seed diversity, has got bigger every year, and I’ll be sorry to miss it, so am doubly grateful to have made it to the GTUF seed swap last month. GTUF will be at the Victoria event this year, joining other UFs (as we call our community food security groups) in a discussion of urban farming and food security.