Food Action Coalition Meeting

This hasn't been a good week for me to blog, so I nearly forgot to tell you about the local food coalition meeting on Monday evening.

Our eyes were really opened as to what all is going on in our valley to support local agriculture. Here are some of the highlights.

If anyone reading is from the Kootenay region, you might want to get into purchasing grain shares for autumn 2009. What this means is that for $125.00 (paid by April 30, 2009) you get one *share* of local whole grain, which includes 20 pounds Hard Spring Wheat, 20 pounds Hard Winter Wheat, 20 pounds Spelt, 20 pounds Khorasan (also known as Polish Wheat or Kamut), and 20 pounds Oats. Your family can purchase more than one share, and there are additional shares available for lentils and red fife wheat. Sounds like I might need to purchase the grain mill attachment for the KitchenAid!

We have a community greenhouse. Now, this I didn't know. I know there's a community garden--it's just up a block from where I work. But it sounds like the greenhouse is involved in projects with schools and the senior center as well as having 55 participants in a winter harvest project. We need to find out more about this, methinks.

The farmer's markets have been running on Saturday mornings the past couple of summers, and we've gone into town a number of times to get fresh produce that we aren't growing ourselves. Good to know these will continue and that they are looking for ways to expand and be more efficient. I'd like to see them get off a gravel parking lot and into a venue that would offer shade, like a park.

The Garden Hoe folks (I posted a photo of Barry--now I know his name!--on the Seedy Saturday post) talked about the challenges they face in their greenhouse and market garden business, namely time and weed management. They're excited because a group of about 30 regional restaurants are actively seeking local produce.

Jim and I have talked about raising chickens again for meat. We've really wanted to do this because we wanted to know where our meat was coming from and that it was naturally grown (if not organically). But it's a big undertaking, and we are always short on time and energy, so we're very pleased that we'll be able to purchase chickens from a new business start-up here in the valley who has built a poultry barn and fenced off an area for the birds to get outside. We've ordered 10 birds for June pickup and 10 more for October pickup. These will be roaster size (5-6 pounds) and the expectation is that the price will be similar to that of the grocery store. If anyone reading this is local and wants to get in on this, just ask us for the guy's phone number. He's still taking orders as far as I know.

The main presentation of the evening was by Susan, a local beekeeper and orchardist (cherries are the big local crop). She gave comprehensive insight into the challenges facing beekeepers and how to get into the business, saying that there is need for more hives locally to satisfy demand. Who knew that huge apiaries from the prairies bring truckloads of hives to over-winter here in our milder climate and then hire the bees out to pollinate the orchards? Her talk was extremely interesting to both of us in that this is an avenue we've seriously considered pursuing and now we have the information to evaluate.

Apparently these meetings are held monthly, with various local agribusinesses presenting their challenges at each one, as well as reports from the various arms of the coalition. Very interesting. I'm glad we went.

Seedy Saturday

We attended a one-hour workshop, followed by a seed exchange, on Seedy Saturday (yesterday). Sadly, though sponsored by College of the Rockies, the workshop was held in a church basement at the same time as a garage sale was going on in the other part of it. There were pillars (big enough to hide behind) marching down the center and no microphones, so all together it was extremely difficult to hear the speakers.

I'm not convinced that I'm going to get into saving my own seeds, anyway. (Would I have been if I could have heard everything? Who knows!) I'll definitely make a larger effort to buy open-pollinated seed, though, in the event I change my mind and also to help create demand for heritage varieties. Last summer Hanna and I planted several heritage seeds we'd found from Salt Spring Seeds we'd purchased on an adventureseome day on Salt Spring Island last May with Jen (who needs a blog to link to again...)

Strangely, there was a way better selection of Salt Spring Seeds at yesterday's workshop than the girls and I found on the island last year. We purchased several kinds to try in this year's garden.

For me, the highlight of Seedy Saturday was chatting up folks, including neighbors, Dan and Val, whose blog we'd already discovered, Grunt and Grungy's Garden. Dan was one of the speakers, as his area of expertise is saving tomato seeds. They currently have a seed bank of over 700 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and they'll mail them to you wherever you happen to live. Check it out if you're interested! I picked up a few. Does that mean I'm starting transplants? Eep!

Because I'd been unable to see or hear Dan's presentation, he gave me a quick run-down afterwards at his table.



Here's a close-up of tomato mush in various stages of seed harvest. It's a messy business:



The fellow from Garden Hoe Farm was there, obviously ready to have his picture taken, though I didn't catch his name:



He had a variety of seeds available for donations to the cancer society:



Creston Valley Food Action Coalition had a booth there as well:



Last year was their pilot year in providing local grains through Community Supported Agriculture. Area residents purchase grain shares in spring and receive bags of grain in the fall:



This is something we're interested in looking into as a direction for some of our own land: seeing what we might be able to produce that is in demand by this local organization.

All in all it was a good time of meeting neighbors and Talking the Talk.