Urban agriculture is a necessary movement to obtain sustainability in Toronto.
This is why I'm dancing, and why you should, too:
http://sivers.org/ff
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Shades of Grain
Report from beyond our sprawling fringe:
A few weeks ago, myself and two other City Seed aggies took the weekend to tour farms in the area of Clinton in Huron County (2.5 hours north of here). Until this point, we had mostly been interacting with small- and medium- scale farm operations. Not so, in Clinton. It’s all about BIG GRAIN up here. We’re talking 100s and 100s of acres per farm.
I enjoy checking out the rural scene. We, as urbanites, are so disconnected from the issues that plague the farmers that surround us. And they from us. It’s nice to find out what’s up out there beyond our sprawling fringe.
Interesting things:
On the U.S. When it comes to big grain, the U.S. is top dog, and we are but a flea upon its back. Yet the Canadian government, when it comes to big grain, acts as if the U.S. doesn’t exist. “Our government supports us nil, and we are 50 kilometres straight east of Michigan. In grain, Ontarians are absolutely worse off than our American counterparts. In the senate, California has 28 million people with 2 senators, North Dakota has under 1 million with 2 senators. Nebraska has 2 senators. Iowa has 2 senators. So what Iowa wants, Iowa gets. Go figure.”
On biofuels. “My pet peeve of the day is biofuels. Try to explain to a starving child that her interests have been well-served by having 4 billion bushels of corn go into ethanol. You can’t.”
On conflict between eastern and western Canada. “We don’t know what we’re doing. Never have, never will. We had the three western premiers saying recently “We need more export-oriented stuff.” Eastern Canadian premiers said, “No, we don’t need exports, we need to protect our dairy and poultry. We’ve got a classic case of… put it this way, Canadian agricultural policy is the policy equivalent of constipation. Nothing goes anywhere.”
On income stability. We sat down with a guy that does the taxes for about 90 farmers up there. Only 2 of the 90 farm full-time, while everybody else earns the majority of their income from other sources – like carpentry, brick-laying, plumbing, etc. That’s the reality of farming in Canada.
So that is what is up in Clinton!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Recall of 'In-Store baked goods'
I came across this hilarious recall on the Loblaw's website.
I love how it exposes, so starkly, the discrepancy between what is marketable to consumers - cute, home-cooked, mama's-oven styled cookies, BAKED IN STORE, versus the secret economies-of-scale truth: They mass-produce this dough for national distribution, with so little care for each individual cookie, that shards of metal ended up in batter all over the country, undetected. Mama would never have let that happen.
Please find the hilar parts italicized and bolded.
Voluntary Recall of In-Store Baked President’s Choice® Decadent Chocolate Chunk Cookies, 352g package
To Our Valued Customers:
Loblaw has issued an advisory not to consume in-store baked President’s Choice® Decadent Chocolate Chunk Cookies with the UPC number 0 6038383903 8 because the product may contain small round, one millimetre in diameter, metal pieces.
The affected product, in-store baked President’s Choice® Decadent Chocolate Chunk Cookies is sold in the bakery department, in packages of eight cookies weighing 352g with UPC number 0 6038383903 8. Please note this recall only affects this specific in-store baked President’s Choice® cookie.
Customers are advised not to consume the affected product. They can return the product to any Loblaw store where the customer service desk will provide a full refund or contact customer service at 1-888-495-5111 or customerservice@presidentschoice.ca
We have removed all the potentially affected products from our shelves in our stores across the country.
We apologize for any concern this recall may have caused. The health and safety of our customers is paramount to us and we are committed to providing our customers with a clean and safe store environment and offering products that are produced, sourced and handled responsibly.
For more information regarding the recall, please contact:
President’s Choice Customer Relations
1-888-495-5111 or customerservice@presidentschoice.ca
Friday, December 3, 2010
Ontario's bounty
As this experiment unfolds, I am populating the following map with the farms that produced the food I have purchased. Check it out!
Ontario bounty on Toronto's shelves
I discovered something awesome in the process: Canada has an egg-tracing program! If you are so inclined, you can take an egg out of its carton from your fridge, go to the egg-tracing website (EggSacTrace), type in the bar-code that can be found on the egg, and it will tell you the farm that produced it.
THEN, take a trip out to the farm and meet the farmer! Just kidding. Well, half-kidding...
Ontario bounty on Toronto's shelves
I discovered something awesome in the process: Canada has an egg-tracing program! If you are so inclined, you can take an egg out of its carton from your fridge, go to the egg-tracing website (EggSacTrace), type in the bar-code that can be found on the egg, and it will tell you the farm that produced it.
THEN, take a trip out to the farm and meet the farmer! Just kidding. Well, half-kidding...
Thursday, December 2, 2010
On the Radar
Food security has been on people's minds lately. You see it in the newspapers all the time, in positive and negative lights:
The Enviropig
BC company seeks approval for gene-modified apple
Cheese recalled due to listeria
Mad cow, e. coli
Large-scaled wine shipments from New Zealand versus small truckloads of wine from Ontario, which is better? For the people? For the air?
Michael Schmidt acquitted of all charges in raw-milk case
The quiet but crazed shift from Ontario to Chinese garlic
Food imports at an all-time high, yet demands for our exports to the US shrinking
What are your thoughts on this? Do you even think about it? Talk to me.
The Enviropig
BC company seeks approval for gene-modified apple
Cheese recalled due to listeria
Mad cow, e. coli
Large-scaled wine shipments from New Zealand versus small truckloads of wine from Ontario, which is better? For the people? For the air?
Michael Schmidt acquitted of all charges in raw-milk case
The quiet but crazed shift from Ontario to Chinese garlic
Food imports at an all-time high, yet demands for our exports to the US shrinking
What are your thoughts on this? Do you even think about it? Talk to me.
Year of the Locavore
Hello and merry December, y’all!
You may have noticed that the last entry was in first-person, following a host of third-person entries described as ‘CSF,’ in general. The farm has been a group effort, to be sure, with a posse of urban farmers tearing around on our steeds (bikes) and tearing up the sod, but the ‘I’ behind the last entry is me, Erica Lemieux, the facilitator behind the foliage of CSF.
A coordinator of cultivation. A sower of seeds, a SPINner of spinach.
And I have an announcement!
I am conducting a 30-day experiment. Starting DECEMBER 1st (aka yesterday), I will ingest only local food for one month.
This mad undertaking is for the purpose of obtaining a better understanding of where our city’s food comes from, and thus more effectively doing my part to increase our urban food shed.
Some of you may be thinking, Didn’t you do this last year, Erica?
Yes, yes I did.
Why aren’t you just a permanent locavore, then?
It’s not easy! How could I live without grapefruit?! Coffee?! Chocolate?! Shark fin soup ?! (just kidding) But I have learned a lot this year, and am once again approaching this wild world of FOOD with a concerned curiosity that I just can’t shake.
My culinary boundary will be Ontario’s borders, for sake of practicality. I have noticed that food is not necessarily labeled from the farm at which it is grown, but from where is processed or packaged or distributed, making it nearly impossible to make a set limit of kilometres. (Or is it? I’m going to experiment with googlemaps… more on that later)
It is not going to be pretty, this experiment.
Or necessarily healthy,
Or with the smallest energy budget or carbon footprint,
Or the tastiest.
No, in fact, it will be none of these things. It is Ontario in December, not at all a realistic time or place with which to confine sustenance. On top of this, I’m a gal from the city, so my acquaintance with our surrounding rural stock is fragmented at best.
These days, we have huge knowledge gaps between what we eat and where it came from. Where did it come from?! I ask, in regards to a nugget of cereal resting in my hand. How could one possibly know, from the information we are given on the label. Knowledge gaps so large and encompassing and embedded, that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know, you know?
It’s kind of like those little cartoon fish in the ocean. Those two little fish and the one older fish. The older one, swimming past, says to the two younger ones, ‘how’s the water, guys?’
Puzzled and contemplative, the little fish swim on. Finally, one says to the other: “What’s water?”
That’s what I want to find out. What the HELL water is.
Except, you know, human-stylez.
It is almost 2010, The Year of the Locavore, and what better way to ring in the new year than with some local chicken thigh, VQA red wine, and some all-Ontario borscht. This is going to be a bizarre and, at times, unpleasant experiment. Some may even say foolish, or pointless. But I say, hey, the proof of pudding is in the eating.
Local pudding?
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
History of The Junction
While sprinkling zoo-poo on a patch of land on my street, I wondered: what makes up this soil?
What growing, trampling, eating, dying, fighting, dispersing, gathering, arranging, rearranging of things makes up this brown stuff underneath our lawns?
This is what I found. Below you will find 11,000 years boiled down into one blog entry:
The Junction (and surrounding area)
11,000 years ago: Ice age recedes, people start to emigrate from the south. Iroquois and Huron groups arrive on the scene.
Deciduous forest stands quietly. It is made up of black walnut, butternut, tulip, magnolia, black gum, oak, oak, oak, more oak, hickories and sassafras.
1600s: Early European settlers arrive. Etienne Brule finds five big lakes. Due to the rich soil and moderate climate, much of the area begins to be cleared for agriculture.
Forests give way to slash-and-burn-styled agriculture. Tobacco, corn, squash and beans supplement a hunter-gatherer diet of fish and venison.
1640s: Many Hurons contract smallpox and measles brought in by the British, die. The Mississaugas move into the area. Henry Hudson sets up shop in a bay. Lots of battles happen. Land is seized, lives are lost. The Brits take land from the French, who had taken it from the Huron.
Subsistence life gives way to trade. Agriculture intensifies. Lots of animal husbandry. Lots of furs and pelts. Lots of bartering. The waterways are good for that.
1787: The area is purchased from the Mississaugas by the British, who four years later name it "Town of York."
1830s: John G. Howard buys land in the area for $1000, converting a portion of it to farm sheep. He later sells his sheep farm to the City of Toronto, but stipulates: "for the free use, benefit and enjoyment of the Citizens of Toronto for ever and to be called and designated at all times thereafter High Park."
1850s: Just north of the park, a horse racetrack is built by the Keele family. (My street, High Park Avenue, was one of the straightaways of the racetrack. Pacific Avenue was the other. Crazed! Little did I know I walk the path of the ghosts of galloping Seabiscuits and Roan Inishes of the days of lore). First Queen's Plate in Canada: my street. No big deal.
1880s: Daniel Clendennan buys up the racetrack, converts it to railroad. It links the Canadian National Rail with the Canadian Pacific Rail.
1884: The village of West Toronto Junction is founded. Industry starts popping up wildly. Foundries, mills, wire factories. Heintzman's Piano Company, Canadian Cycle and Motor Co, Campbell Milling.
Agricultural land gets divided, sub-divided, and sub-divided again. Farms turn into urban properties.
1900s: Clang clang. Hammer hammer. Foundations are laid and the sky is scraped with buildings. People pour in from all over the world on the same waterways that once brought fur out. Urban agriculture is encouraged by Mayor Conboy to 'expand the production battalion' during WWII. 'Dig for victory!' he cried from his onion patch on Bloor Street.
Buildings churches schools hospitals houses galore. Land gets pigeon-holed into little rectangles and European-styled lawn is rolled out like carpet atop the soil. It looks very nice. The victory gardens fade away, along with the threat of war... The perception of fruits and vegetables growing out of the ground becomes inconceivable by young urbanites. I, for one, imagine that apples have always appeared in pyramidal form, shiny and waxed, under the glowing lights of a grocery store, naturally. They grow back there in the room marked 'Employees Only,' right?
2010: The two churches on my street are being converted to condos. Worth mentioning just because it's hilar.
2010: The enterprise City Seed Farm arrives on scene, begins rototilling lawns, converting aesthetic greenspace to productive food gardens! Yee-haw!
2011 and beyond: Every yard in Toronto is edible. Sound like a plan?
What growing, trampling, eating, dying, fighting, dispersing, gathering, arranging, rearranging of things makes up this brown stuff underneath our lawns?
This is what I found. Below you will find 11,000 years boiled down into one blog entry:
The Junction (and surrounding area)
11,000 years ago: Ice age recedes, people start to emigrate from the south. Iroquois and Huron groups arrive on the scene.
Deciduous forest stands quietly. It is made up of black walnut, butternut, tulip, magnolia, black gum, oak, oak, oak, more oak, hickories and sassafras.
1600s: Early European settlers arrive. Etienne Brule finds five big lakes. Due to the rich soil and moderate climate, much of the area begins to be cleared for agriculture.
Forests give way to slash-and-burn-styled agriculture. Tobacco, corn, squash and beans supplement a hunter-gatherer diet of fish and venison.
1640s: Many Hurons contract smallpox and measles brought in by the British, die. The Mississaugas move into the area. Henry Hudson sets up shop in a bay. Lots of battles happen. Land is seized, lives are lost. The Brits take land from the French, who had taken it from the Huron.
Subsistence life gives way to trade. Agriculture intensifies. Lots of animal husbandry. Lots of furs and pelts. Lots of bartering. The waterways are good for that.
1787: The area is purchased from the Mississaugas by the British, who four years later name it "Town of York."
1830s: John G. Howard buys land in the area for $1000, converting a portion of it to farm sheep. He later sells his sheep farm to the City of Toronto, but stipulates: "for the free use, benefit and enjoyment of the Citizens of Toronto for ever and to be called and designated at all times thereafter High Park."
1850s: Just north of the park, a horse racetrack is built by the Keele family. (My street, High Park Avenue, was one of the straightaways of the racetrack. Pacific Avenue was the other. Crazed! Little did I know I walk the path of the ghosts of galloping Seabiscuits and Roan Inishes of the days of lore). First Queen's Plate in Canada: my street. No big deal.
1880s: Daniel Clendennan buys up the racetrack, converts it to railroad. It links the Canadian National Rail with the Canadian Pacific Rail.
1884: The village of West Toronto Junction is founded. Industry starts popping up wildly. Foundries, mills, wire factories. Heintzman's Piano Company, Canadian Cycle and Motor Co, Campbell Milling.
Agricultural land gets divided, sub-divided, and sub-divided again. Farms turn into urban properties.
1900s: Clang clang. Hammer hammer. Foundations are laid and the sky is scraped with buildings. People pour in from all over the world on the same waterways that once brought fur out. Urban agriculture is encouraged by Mayor Conboy to 'expand the production battalion' during WWII. 'Dig for victory!' he cried from his onion patch on Bloor Street.
Buildings churches schools hospitals houses galore. Land gets pigeon-holed into little rectangles and European-styled lawn is rolled out like carpet atop the soil. It looks very nice. The victory gardens fade away, along with the threat of war... The perception of fruits and vegetables growing out of the ground becomes inconceivable by young urbanites. I, for one, imagine that apples have always appeared in pyramidal form, shiny and waxed, under the glowing lights of a grocery store, naturally. They grow back there in the room marked 'Employees Only,' right?
2010: The two churches on my street are being converted to condos. Worth mentioning just because it's hilar.
2010: The enterprise City Seed Farm arrives on scene, begins rototilling lawns, converting aesthetic greenspace to productive food gardens! Yee-haw!
2011 and beyond: Every yard in Toronto is edible. Sound like a plan?
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Prepping the land
Two CSF gals prepare a backyard by planting a cover crop and mulching it with autumn leaves.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
What a Re-leaf
Exciting days at CSF.
CSF has, in efforts to get all the backyard beds prepped for the winter, reclaimed a bunch of 'waste' from around the neighbourhood. A sizable future-soil stockpile of sorts.
Bags of leaves, manure from the High Park zoo, worms, wooden palettes, stakes from the mayoral election signs, etc.
When you are a farmer, never-before-seen heaps and scraps start to register on your radar. Well-decayed compost, for instance, starts to look like gold.
Last week, CSF went to visit Mike, the full-time Compost Facilitator at FoodShare, at Brock and Bloor. He had his Tuesday volunteer transferring some finished compost from one bin to another. Every time the shovel sliced into the pile, it made the sound of paper ripping. Shhhhooooooooop. An amazing metal-cutting-through-good-soil sound that has taken on a strong connotation of cha-ching for one CSF member, originally as a treeplanter and now, again, as an urban farmer. As the teen volunteer shoveled this rich, dark, crumbly stuff around, we couldn't help but dream of the day when our food scraps and yard waste would look like that. Gold.
Vacant lots that are not paved - gold.
Discarded wooden palettes (potential material for compost bins) - gold.
Discarded windows (potential greenhouse siding) - gold.
Huge pile of poop at the High Park zoo - gold.
Good things are happening this week, and CSF can thank the generally glorious weather for that. We have been enriching (yak and buffalo manure), seeding (winter rye - Secale cereale) and mulching (autumn leaves) the beds in backyards all over the High Park/Junction area.
At CSF, we leaf no man behind.
CSF has, in efforts to get all the backyard beds prepped for the winter, reclaimed a bunch of 'waste' from around the neighbourhood. A sizable future-soil stockpile of sorts.
Bags of leaves, manure from the High Park zoo, worms, wooden palettes, stakes from the mayoral election signs, etc.
When you are a farmer, never-before-seen heaps and scraps start to register on your radar. Well-decayed compost, for instance, starts to look like gold.
Last week, CSF went to visit Mike, the full-time Compost Facilitator at FoodShare, at Brock and Bloor. He had his Tuesday volunteer transferring some finished compost from one bin to another. Every time the shovel sliced into the pile, it made the sound of paper ripping. Shhhhooooooooop. An amazing metal-cutting-through-good-soil sound that has taken on a strong connotation of cha-ching for one CSF member, originally as a treeplanter and now, again, as an urban farmer. As the teen volunteer shoveled this rich, dark, crumbly stuff around, we couldn't help but dream of the day when our food scraps and yard waste would look like that. Gold.
Vacant lots that are not paved - gold.
Discarded wooden palettes (potential material for compost bins) - gold.
Discarded windows (potential greenhouse siding) - gold.
Huge pile of poop at the High Park zoo - gold.
Good things are happening this week, and CSF can thank the generally glorious weather for that. We have been enriching (yak and buffalo manure), seeding (winter rye - Secale cereale) and mulching (autumn leaves) the beds in backyards all over the High Park/Junction area.
At CSF, we leaf no man behind.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Vision
One CSF member is also an executive member of the Young Urban Farmers. Yesterday, she went to a 2011 planning retreat for the group. The energy was striking around in hot bolts, like a veritable brain storm. This fervor comes from the many successes YUF had this growing season. With good reason, the plume feathers are out and a'ruffled. Tiny successes (from every sprout of Italian broccoli to every leaf of Bambino lettuce in every backyard), to media attention (from The CBC to The Globe and Mail and... back to The CBC again), to unexpected collaborations all over the map. The network is strengthening and deepening like moist dirt.
During our storm, some major lightning (ideas) flashed, and, seconds later, thunder (goals) struck. Words like 'inter-cropping,' 'nutrient-cycling,' and 'well-rotted manure' got tossed around as if by Jupiter himself. Yeehaw!
CSF draws much inspiration and skills and ideas from YUF, and hopes to bring it with just as much hot-wire energy to the High Park/Junction neighbourhood.
This is the flava of our project:
City Seed Farms - Bringing It to the Table
The Vision
To provide a food source to our community by our community, here in the High Park/Junction neighbourhood
To expand the urban food shed in Toronto
To bring unconventional farming to the convention, one backyard at a time
The Mission
To employ organic (non-certified) farming methods
To use carbon-neutral transportation – we will be delivering all food by bicycle
To plant heritage seed varieties adapted to Toronto’s unique climate
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Garlic
Today two City Seed farmgirls planted a bed of garlic!
Having never planted garlic before today, we pooled tips from many different sources - Ed from the High Park allotment gardens (we came across him mulching his garden yesterday).
"Make sure you keep the soil loose around the clove. Also, try to keep a mix of five parts soil to one part s**t , or else you'll burn your plants."
"Burn them?"
"Yes. because poo is salty." Even more confused, I consulted The Google later. It turns out, the osmosis effect of water from clove -> to manure (low salt to high salt) dehydrates and eventually 'scorches' the plant. Sh**ty.
We also called in mom-help. "Do we remove the roots? Do squirrels like garlic?"
I was pretty sure the answer was no and no. I was wrong on both counts.
Apparently squirrels like to dig up garlic bulbs just to check them out. They're just curious. They'll sniff out the scene, play around with them a bit, just for a second, just to see how it feels. "Oooo, is this a tulip bulb? Nibble nibble. Nope. I'll just leave it here, beside the hole."
(I wonder... if I left out some turkey for the squirrels... would the tryptophan effect overpower this detrimental curiosity?)
IN EITHER CASE, we successfully planted 3 beautiful varieties of Ontario garlic!
Triple Cord Mennonite garlic from a cute little heritage seed shop on Sorauren Avenue, some massive bulbs that we picked up at the Dig In! UofT Local Lunch last week (in celebration of World Food Week), and some garlic from Ed at the High Park allotment garden - straight from his garden to ours.
Can you chive with that?
Having never planted garlic before today, we pooled tips from many different sources - Ed from the High Park allotment gardens (we came across him mulching his garden yesterday).
"Make sure you keep the soil loose around the clove. Also, try to keep a mix of five parts soil to one part s**t , or else you'll burn your plants."
"Burn them?"
"Yes. because poo is salty." Even more confused, I consulted The Google later. It turns out, the osmosis effect of water from clove -> to manure (low salt to high salt) dehydrates and eventually 'scorches' the plant. Sh**ty.
We also called in mom-help. "Do we remove the roots? Do squirrels like garlic?"
I was pretty sure the answer was no and no. I was wrong on both counts.
Apparently squirrels like to dig up garlic bulbs just to check them out. They're just curious. They'll sniff out the scene, play around with them a bit, just for a second, just to see how it feels. "Oooo, is this a tulip bulb? Nibble nibble. Nope. I'll just leave it here, beside the hole."
(I wonder... if I left out some turkey for the squirrels... would the tryptophan effect overpower this detrimental curiosity?)
IN EITHER CASE, we successfully planted 3 beautiful varieties of Ontario garlic!
Triple Cord Mennonite garlic from a cute little heritage seed shop on Sorauren Avenue, some massive bulbs that we picked up at the Dig In! UofT Local Lunch last week (in celebration of World Food Week), and some garlic from Ed at the High Park allotment garden - straight from his garden to ours.
Can you chive with that?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Hello and thanks for following the progress of CSF!
City Seed Farms is a SPIN farm initiative.
The seed, with all the genetic information coiled up tight in a tiny, shiny casing, is the SPIN FARM MODEL, started by Wally Satzewich in Saskatoon.
The soil, a microscopic metropolis of metabolism, is the group of committed/excited individuals that make up City Seed Farms.
The sun and water and wind and nutrients are those the unique terroir of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Toronto, hark! Oh this place, tilled and carved into formation from the receding glaciers. This place, originally named after the Huron word toronton, or 'place of meetings.' This oh so fertile place, where people came pouring in on the great junction of waterways, and stayed for the great abundance that burst forth from its soil.
CSF loves Toronto. We see potential underneath every lawn for productive, delicious vegetable gardens.
Follow along on this blog for the adventures of the first growing season of CSF, or drop by! We're setting up now to sprout to life in spring 2011.
This week, for instance, you'll probably find us assembling a bike trailer and compost bins for as cheap as possible... so this should get interesting.
Hail dirt,
CSF
City Seed Farms is a SPIN farm initiative.
The seed, with all the genetic information coiled up tight in a tiny, shiny casing, is the SPIN FARM MODEL, started by Wally Satzewich in Saskatoon.
The soil, a microscopic metropolis of metabolism, is the group of committed/excited individuals that make up City Seed Farms.
The sun and water and wind and nutrients are those the unique terroir of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Toronto, hark! Oh this place, tilled and carved into formation from the receding glaciers. This place, originally named after the Huron word toronton, or 'place of meetings.' This oh so fertile place, where people came pouring in on the great junction of waterways, and stayed for the great abundance that burst forth from its soil.
CSF loves Toronto. We see potential underneath every lawn for productive, delicious vegetable gardens.
Follow along on this blog for the adventures of the first growing season of CSF, or drop by! We're setting up now to sprout to life in spring 2011.
This week, for instance, you'll probably find us assembling a bike trailer and compost bins for as cheap as possible... so this should get interesting.
Hail dirt,
CSF
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