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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Blustery is one word for the weather on Good Friday, much of which I spent at Haliburton Farm. While we were inside potting a few tomatoes, there was a noise, and this turned out to be what it was: the newly built farm stand upending itself on the newly donated greenhouse, which we were to have finished assembling on Saturday.

Friday night’s reader at Planet Earth Poetry was, therefore, most appropriate: Brian Brett read from his poetry and also from his latest memoir, Trauma Farm, about his 20+ years farming on Salt Spring Island.

Saturday arrived and it was time to survey the damage at Haliburton and marshal the many volunteers who answered the call for help. Ray’s beautiful hoop house, recently filled with over 200 hanging baskets of strawberries, was, shall we say, hooped.

The row covers needed to be replaced.

The Terralicious hoop house was put back together.

And many hands helped to dismantle the farmstand, ready to start putting it back together at upcoming work parties.

The children were put to work panning for gold to fund further repairs.

We had lunch – crowded but convivial.

And after shovelling and wheeling a few hundred loads of wood chips, to keep the weeds down between the rows, we called it a day.

And now, a message from CBAN, which is campaigning for Bill C-474 (Seeds Regulation Act), which aims to protects Canadian farmers who grow crops for our export (and organic) markets, by requiring Canada to perform proper analysis of potential harm before it allows any more GE crops into our fields.

This analysis is not being done at the moment: you may recall that flax contamination badly harmed our exports last year. The matter is urgent because Monsanto aims to introduce GE wheat and alfalfa into our markets, which would cause immeasurable and permanent damage to the purity of our wheat and alfalfa crops, and our ability to export to markets like Europe, which has banned GE products for human consumption. Italy, for example, relies upon Canadian wheat for its pasta industry.

You can listen to the First Reading debate on Deconstructing Dinner’s March 25 episode.

Here’s what CBAN has to say:

Action Alert. Please distribute widely.

Action Alert #3: Take New Action before April 14, 2010!

Support Bill C-474 – before April 14, 2010 – Support Canada’s Farmers! You can stop GE Alfalfa and GE Wheat!

Write an instant letter to Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party leader from http://cban.ca/liberalact474 and ask him to make sure the Liberals pass the Bill on April 14.

You can also write to your own MP at http://cban.ca/474action

Bill C-474 was voted down but not out on April 1. The Liberals support the Bill in words – but will they support with enough votes on April 14?

Private Members Bill C-474 was debated on March 17, and April 1 with an oral vote. The recorded, official vote will happen on April 14.

Your concrete action could stop genetically engineered (GE) seeds from causing chaos in Canadian farming!

Bill C-474 would require that “an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.” The Bill could stop GE alfalfa and GE wheat.

This Bill is critically important because, as we know from experience, the introduction of new genetically engineered (GE) crops can cause economic hardship to farmers. Farmers are at risk when GE crops are commercialized in Canada without also being approved in our major export markets.

Flax farmers in Canada are now paying a heavy price because of this exact problem. Late last year, Canadian flax exports were discovered contaminated with a GE flax that is not approved in Europe or in any of our other export markets (except the U.S.). Flax farmers actually foresaw that GE contamination or even the threat of contamination would close their export markets. That’s why they took steps in 2001 to remove GE flax from the market. Despite this measure, flax farmers were not protected. The GE flax contamination closed our export markets in 2009. It has created market uncertainty and depressed prices. Farmers are also paying for testing and cleanup and may be required to abandon their own farm-saved flax seed and buy certified seed instead. These costs are an unnecessary and preventable burden.

We cannot allow GE seeds to harm our export markets. Please support Bill C-474 and protect Canada’s farmers.

Write an instant letter to Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party leader before April 14 http://cban.ca/liberalact474

Bill C-474 was introduced by Alex Atamanenko, the NDP Agriculture Critic and MP for British Columbia Southern Interior.

For updates, more info and action options, see http://cban.ca/474 or contact Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network 613 241 2267 ext. 6

This action alert was issued by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) http://cban.ca

Last Saturday I attended the final Vancouver Island Seedy Saturday of the season, in Duncan. Lots of people wandered through, looking for seeds, seedlings and advice; there was a seed swap table

and a workshop series, as well as a chance for youngsters to hunt for worms in a wee pile of dirt.

But before they entered the hall, visitors could stop to chat with a local forager,

who had a table full of edible weeds, a pot full of burdock & dandelion root tea,

and lots of information and advice on using and eating native greenery, including dead nettle, which is blooming in many a local garden bed just now, and which resembles wheatgrass when juiced, and whose leaves can be eaten.

Meanwhile back inside, some interesting plants on offer..

Lots of familiar faces including Carolyn Herriot with her always remarkable range of Seeds of Victoria – and featuring some fine looking succulents

and Providence Farm, with a mixture of plant starts and produce

some young Metchosin Farmers

and of course Haliburton Farm was represented by some sturdy seedlings

and a fine farmer, Elmarie Roberts of Haliburton’s Sunbird Farm, which grows organic flowers and vegetables.

And then it was Monday again and time to gear up for a Slow Food Cheese & Charcuterie event at Sips Bistro. We began with the charcuterie, which included ham and headcheese from Choux Choux Charcuterie

and also duck prosciutto (one from Oyama Sausage Co. and one from Two Rivers Specialty Meats) and buendnerfleish, one made from beef (Oyama) and the other from muskox (Continental Sausage Co.)

before moving on to the cheese. Here we sampled a couple of soft cheeses – Natural Pastures‘ Comox Brie, followed by Little Qualicum‘s Island Bries. Then on to a couple of washed rind Cowichan Bay hard cheeses, from Hilary’s Cheese, both washed with Cherry Point Blackberry Port: Red Dawn (cow’s milk), and Belle Ann (goat). And finished with Hilary’s blue cheeses, one cow (Cow Bay Blue) and one goat (Valley Blue).

Hilary Abbott himself gave us an excellent talk about the cheeses, cheese making, milk production, blue cheese inoculation techniques and many related matters.

Last week was a busy one for Vancouver Island’s food security community, with two significant meetings and a last Seedy Saturday on top.

Tuesday about 50 of us gathered at the university for Sharing Food and Knowledge, a meeting of people involved in food and educational issues convened with the support of UVic’s Office of Community Based Research (OCBR). We had a speedy stream of presentations, kicked off by one from Linda Geggie, introducing the afternoon with an overview of the OCBR’s Capacity-Building Project, which includes UVic and five Vancouver Island post-secondary institutions. Areas of interest include food security and sustainability, and the group aims, among other things, to capture, share and meet research requests by working with interns and researchers. They’ll also do a survey of programs and curricula as well as identifying areas of research already underway.

Other speakers included Steven Earle, from Vancouver Island University, speaking on peak oil and the future of food production on Vancouver Island. Some of the looming consequences of our current situation that he identified include

• reduced food supply
• increasing food prices
• rationing of oil
• conflict
• less available food for all
• and less transported food

He was asked to provide some ideas about what needs to be done on the Island, and these include

• farm without chemical fertilizers and pesticides
• move away from mechanical farming and increase farm labour
• care for the soil
• improve water efficiency
• plant winter crops and storable summer crops
• use open pollinated vs hybrid seeds – i.e. practice seed saving
• practice mixed farming
• and buy local

Tom Child also spoke about his work studying environmental contaminants in the marine foods of coastal first nations in BC. Food sources he’s studying include harbour seals, dungeness crabs, sockeye salmon and butter clams. The highest PCB and PBDE levels he found were in seals (makes sense to find these things at the higher end of the food chain), but the sockeye has the highest consumption so its contamination levels will be the most important.

and Fiona Devereaux, who talked about the Feasting for Change project, which is part of the Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative

and aims to restore knowledge about aboriginal food traditions by putting youth and elders together to talk about traditional foods.

Wednesday was another work party at the farm

where preparations include moving strawberry runners into new beds:

Thursday evening a group of us got together to share some food and hammer out vision and mission statements for the Food committee of the Victoria Transition Town initiative.

Friday was Food Matters! – a day of workshops and local food hero celebrations. The meeting was held at the Native Friendship Centre and attracted lots of foodie folk from thither and yon. The day started with workshops, including one on community kitchens operating in Victoria. Some of these are participant-run, where people gather to share bigger cooking tasks, like canning, for largely social reasons (with some education picked up along the way) while others are funded and incline towards helping people on low incomes learn to manage food and nutrition through communal cooking. In both cases, participants work together to prepare meals or dishes on a large scale that are divided into portions to take home.

A lunch followed, which was a little disappointing – I played count the seasonal vegetables in the veggie wrap and came up with… one: asparagus, which is seasonal in California just now. It also featured zucchini, red pepper and eggplant (at best these last two will have come from BC greenhouses at this time of year, but that’s not an ideal source either). The halibut chowder

was both seasonal and delicious and was the work of Carrie Pollard (who runs the HEAL – Healthy Eating Active Living – program at the centre)

and the VNFC’s own community cooking enterprise: this brings locals together to prepare a soup each Friday for the centre’s Friday soup kitchen, which provides soup, bread and fruit to people who wish to participate. (But of course I have recently seen End of the Line and any fish consumption is now troubling to me.)

Linda Geggie read an excerpt from farmer-poet-novelist-memoirist Brian Brett’s Trauma Farm – a happy coincidence as later that evening I learned that Brian will be reading in Victoria next week.

There was a talk by Gilbert Wilkes called Demystifying New Media: how media can help us reach and engage our audiences and each other. This covered a lot of ground and was particularly focused on ways foodies could use feeds and aggregators to filter food information.

At the end of the day I wandered out to see the garden that volunteers from the centre and the community have been building, and it is in enviable shape, all the raised beds waiting to be filled:

Friday night was Planet Earth Poetry, with three featured readers: Michael Kenyon, from Vancouver/Pender Island; local poet Michael Bond,

who gave us his first full reading, after several years of popular appearances at the open mic; and Richard Lemm,

wrapping things up.

A screening I attended of Dirt! The Movie last Wednesday turned out to be more than it seemed. One of the Sooke Awareness Film Night offerings, it was held in a local school where we encountered a hall full of people and stalls,

offering seeds, seedlings,

vegetables, snacks,

awareness

and even tips on mushroom growing before the screening. The film itself was very watchable, and although it did talk about the dangerous loss of topsoil happening around the world (the scenes of coal strip mining were particularly appalling) and the risks of erosion, desertification and pollution that go hand in hand with this, it offered a good number of optimists and activists working to improve the situation. The film’s advice: do what you can; plant trees; replenish the soil you work with; and be aware of dirt’s role in our lives.

Sunday’s entertainment was a trip to Esquimalt, where VIVA‘s monthly Raw Vegan Potluck event regularly attracts 30 or 40 people

who bring all manner of dishes to share

Hemp cheese… raw vegan chocolate balls… nettle sweet potato casserole with edible salmonberry blossoms

Blueberries & bananas in cashew cream… raw vegan zucchini pasta with pesto… and strawbs.

The society also offers a raw food lending library, and a vendor was there selling ingredients, cookbooks

and tools of the trade.

Each meeting features a speaker: this month it was raw food nutritional advisor Shawna Barker, who teaches, consults, cooks and sells raw foods (at her Living Foods kiosk and through a Meals on Wheels enterprise). Her theme was Nutrition 101, with some extra nutritional tips for raw foodists (mostly around getting enough vitamin B12 – her top tip was to use an algae marketed as E3 Live).

I enjoyed it – though like all potlucks you get pot luck with the food. But some was very good and the requirement for ingredients labels means you can really know what you’re eating; some of the participants provided recipes rather than straight labels, which would be helpful for some of the more complicated dishes. Because to novices, preparing raw food can be very complicated indeed. My main qualm about this way of eating is the dependence on imported ingredients; very few of the dishes were local or seasonal (I brought a brussels sprout slaw, and there were several other salads featuring seasonal greens) though my personal favourite – kale chips (dressed and dehydrated) – was definitely seasonal, and disappeared quickly. By the time I reached it there were only a few crumbs in the bottom of the bowl, but they were tasty. Here’s one I took earlier!