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Serenity on the Farm
Serenity Farm had an open garden yesterday, and I’d wanted to see what went on there for a while.A therapeutic farm, it’s a small (half acre) site that grows flowers, vegetables and herbs, and boasts a small orchard with pears, apples, plums and figs.
The farm was established to provide a working space for people with mental illness, as well as others working off community orders. And it’s attracted a team of volunteers who come a couple of times a week to help out (more always wanted!)
The project has been going for around 10 years and sits in a sunny field on the grounds of 
the Seven Oaks Tertiary Care Facility, in the Blenkinsop Valley. It’s always cheering to see how much food can be produced in a small space with volunteer effort, and the beans and tomatoes were abundant, as were the flowers and fruit – the plum tree was laden and the small apple tree boasted enormous apples. A crow presided from a nearby branch, presumably keen to judge the scarecrow competition that was underway.
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Readings in my Garden
Murphy awaits an audience It’s not every day you get to host a reading in your back yard, but yesterday was that day for me.
Judy LeBlanc and I cooked up this idea some months ago, to give her a proper launch and reading for her new novel, The Broken Heart of Winter.
We invited as many people as I could imagine squeezing into my living room (not
knowing what the weather would be like) and when the forecast was for sun (and then HOT sun!) we reconfigured the plan to hold the reading outside. All it took were a few borrowed chairs (thanks be to neighbours), a garden canopy and rented sound system (thanks be to Brian and Judy) and masses of lovely food (thanks be to the baking goddesses, friends and summer produce).
The event came off pretty seamlessly. We ended up with just under 30 people perched in shady chairs or lounging on the lawn beneath the over-laden apple tree. Murphy the dog was delirious with pleasure at having so many bare legs to greet, and nobody reported direct hits from falling apples or Garry oak acorns.
I enjoyed reading a few poems from Larder that had been set or inspired by my garden, and Judy gave a good sampling from the three sections of her novel, covering the recent and more distant history of Acadians as lived and told by a cast of women characters. After which our guests relaxed into party mode for a couple of hours.By late afternoon, the temperature had reached a rather symmetrical 30c or so and a few of us repaired to the beach down the road, dodging the extensive litter of Canada geese guano (mercifully dried out by then, so less intriguing to Murphy) to take a cooling dip in the Gorge.
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Poets in my Garden
Poets sur l’herbe I have been hosting Planet Earth Poetry workshops in my home and garden for the past 8 years or so. It is a glorious time for me, feeding creative spirits and having poets roaming around the property.
This year the workshop was led by Jenna Butler, who kindly and carefully led poets of all levels of experience through some difficult environmental territory, under the theme “Songs for a Changing World: Writing Our Hope and Grief About Place”.
Participants spent some time introducing themselves and reflecting on their relationship with land (and water) before embarking on studying poetry models and being sent off at intervals to write.My role in these events is Chief Eavesdropper and Provisioner, and it gives me a chance to do some recreational cooking and try out some new recipes. It’s also an opportunity to relive a past life: long ago I spent weekends and holidays enjoying the warmth of the kitchen at Strawberry Creek Lodge in Alberta, cooking alongside my remarkable mentor Tena Wiebe at workshops, retreats, wedding celebrations and meetings.
There’s a favourite New Yorker cartoon of a kitchen, captioned “So this is where the magic happens“. Here’s my version, showing my PEP workshop catering preparations.
One of my tasks is to provide a lunch to the poetry mentor, and this was Sunday’s lunch for Jenna: Watermelon Gazpacho, Pepperwiches, and Plum Panna Cotta (with fresh blackberry sauce). I was relishing the opportunity to use some summer ingredients, including plums from my garden, some salad vegetables and local blackberries. My nutrition training also influenced the menu which was strong on colourful vegetables and containing no ultra-processed foods. Tena taught me the powerful lesson that serving food made from scratch, with love, is a truly satisfying way to live (and eat)!
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
