Car-sized Tree on Christmas day meets Ontario!

There will be no photos or details about this past Christmas dinner. Let’s just say that this year taught me that although a warm, hearty meal is one of the best parts of the season, if you’re stuck in a snow storm in Northern Ontario, you have no good food left from shopping four days earlier in Vancouver, not one restaurant or grocery store has been open since you left Regina, and the only place to find food is at a gas station, it becomes exceedingly clear that the company one keeps is the most important part. Thank heavens for microwave dinners. (PS. You will never again see a sentence like that on this blog from here on.)

Highlights from Portland

• Saturday Market (on Saturdays and Sundays) full of artisans and knick knacks, and highly entertaining.
• Saturday Farmers’ Market, with 140 vendors, live music, chef demos, many prepared foods for the muting right there, and a dedicated staff pleased to help you navigate and make the most of everything it has to offer.
• The Japanese Gardens and the Rose Gardens. WHOA!
• Alberta, Mississippi, Hawthorne and Alphabet neighbourhoods.
• Great restaurants including (links on the Restaurant Rundown page): Higgin’s, Wildwood, Beast, and Little Bird

Read my article on Teafarm for Good Food Revolution!

We’ve seen the Is it local? episode on Portlandia, and laughed at its ridiculousness. And we’ve seen the heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market with all of their charismatic bumps and scabs as we balk at the price tag. On menus we have read Red Fife wheat, or Berkshire Pork in an item’s ostentatious description. But why should we care?

It’s important.

Genetic biodiversity is losing steam. Noah would be sorely disappointed in the procession off that ark compared to a mere fifty years ago.  In an effort to raise bigger organisms faster, shortsighted agriculturalists have been streamlining, and at the same time have been putting their own economic and environmental futures in jeopardy. The market favours those animals for which there is demand, and which turn a profit. The breeds that, instead, take their sweet time to grow, or have not yet had their time in the food marketing spotlight, get the short end of the stick. Money speaks louder than good sense. The rare breeds become even rarer when there is no demand. With this in mind, asking where your chicken comes from at a restaurant, or what breed it is, or how it is raised, becomes an act of support for the perpetuation of interesting and endangered organisms. When the chef realizes that the customer would value eating, and pay for, Chanteclair chicken, chef will add it to the menu, and in turn, farmers will have a reason to raise them. The Slow Food Ark of Taste is fundamentally based on this concept, putting those organisms that are on the verge of extinction, but which have unique and culinarily significant characteristics, at centre stage with the intention of helping to grow demand.

Thankfully there are some exceptionally brilliant human beings who are doing what they can to keep the gene pool swimming strong for breeds that tend to be smaller, take longer to grow, or produce more delectable and historically significant yields. These farmers are taking care of our future. They see the value in raising plants and animals that do way more than just fill human tummies.

One such rare breed of pigs, called the Large Black, sometimes referred to as English Blacks, is making its mark on Vancouver Island. It is listed as critically endangered on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Piggy Siesta

There are at least three farmers in the Cowichan Valley and Nanaimo with productive sows and boars, and one on Pender Island. There are only twelve breeders listed on Rare Breeds Canada across the entire country stewarding this gene pool, and they are going to have to work together to perpetuate the breed well enough not to compromise its integrity or distinction. At this point, the farmers on Vancouver Island are coming up against a roadblock. They would prefer to infuse genetic diversity even more so at a micro level into their herds. Because there are so few sows and boars that are being raised for production, rather than meat, inline breeding is beginning to reach its limits in the west. The Vancouver Island farmers are thinking about taking their best sows on a field trip, five provinces away, to set up wild love affairs with handsome Ontario boars. But what happens in Ontario, won’t stay in Ontario.

Wayne's briny bacon ready for the smoker

The sows will hopefully conceive, their litters birthed back home in the comfort of temperate BC. This all in an effort to increase supply to kitchens such as Organic Fair and the Sooke Harbour House. These docile, resilient, floppy-eared, pig powerhouses will grow to over 400lbs, and produce beautifully marbled and succulent flesh perfect for bacon and other porcine delights.

Eggs await removal

There is a common, yet irrational fear of placing one’s uncalloused fingers into a chicken coop for the first time. I’ve heard this phenomenon expressed by several seasoned friends and acquaintances who have embraced the joys of raising chickens. It starts when you walk toward the coop. Within a few metres the scent of ammonia becomes salient, the warmth created by roosting hens, and rooster counterparts, emanates from their humble abode, and the clucking, chirping and cock-a-doodling rings in the ears. You brace yourself for the collection event, which deep down you know will bring joys of custards and frittatas, with certain caution that comes while reaching in.

Chickens don’t want you to have their eggs. Eggs are potential chicks. Mamas don’t generally like to give up their offspring, and they certainly don’t want to know that their potential offspring are going to, instead, be scrambled into your breakfast, or the best part of the salade niçoise you’re going to have for lunch. It’s the very fact that the hens don’t want you to take away all that they have worked so hard pecking away at grubs for, that one experiences caution when collecting eggs. Hens peck. Not hard, but they peck, and they have angry eyes, especially when they are broody. There is also the real fear that one can screw up. Eggs have been designed, since dinosaurs roamed the earth, to withstand the mass of a full-sized hen sitting atop the nest. Hens can incubate them into all of their potential glory, but they are still supremely delicate when handled by non-hen hands. A mere brush with the edge of the door frame when turning around too quickly to exit the coop, or a roll off of one’s palm onto the straw lined floor below could be the disappointing end to one of the most important and profitable farm chores. Other fears exist for city slicker fingertips, like goo, and slime, and heaven forbid, poo. All of these things have the probable outcome of oozing under manicured fingernails and into any open wounds one may have obtained while picking thorny blackberries earlier in the day. All of these fears are ridiculous, it’s true, but they are authentic.

My farmer friends tell me that once you get pecked a few hundred times, the fears dissipate and collecting eggs becomes less romantic and just another thing you do on the farm. I’ve done it about fourteen times, and I still find it romantic. I still light up with joy while carrying all of our eggs in one overflowing basket. With perseverance and dedication, and the usual quest for experience, I have started a diligent practice in the art of collecting eggs.

On the farm at which I am currently residing, there live fairytale-feathered poultry. Their eggs are not deposited like automated, bimonthly transactions in a predetermined amount, currency or location. These freelance, free-range eggs come in all textures and colours. They come from chickens with hairdos that Tina Turner would envy, and fancy foot feathers that splay out over talons for which Elton John might shell out thousands. They come from ducks that waddle around two-by-two circumnavigating the greenhouse a la Miss. Clavel. They quack like young moms around the sandbox on a gossipy Tuesday before the end of a mat leave. They come from miniscule quail. Quail with fresh cream, and milk chocolate-coloured feathers that ornament cages. They are beautiful and just as diverse as the heritage breeds accounted for in the latest 4-H county fair competition.

Angry-eyed hen

The moment that makes it all worth the initial agony, apart from whisking dark orange yolks into sweet crème brulee, is when those untrained fingers wrap around a warm, round nugget nestled in a layer of straw. All is well in the world if you’re lucky and hens peck away at rubber boots, nowhere near within pecking distance of delicate skin. A warm egg fits perfectly into an adult sized palm. A blue hue, or cloud white, tan like the fur on the neck of a grazing deer, or toffee brown reminiscent of chewy molasses candies in Halloween harvest pillowcases. Each egg comes with a personality; pointy, type-A, and uniform in tone, or round, voluptuous and spotted. The quail eggs are especially charismatic with patterns that would give Pucci a run for his money. Each tiny offering, each miniature miracle is a whimsical mess of polka-dots and speckled splendour.

All in one basket.

The first of, now, many harvests was the most exhilarating. I walked proudly into the farmhouse with 32 chicken eggs, 4 duck eggs, and 9 quail eggs. Other days the hens will have taken a well-deserved siesta from the grind and I will carry home a meager half-dozen. Each day is different and each day comes with that much more confidence when sticking an arm into the hutch. The jaw loosens, and lips turn up at the edges. It only takes a few pecks on the wrist from a cheeky bird before the realization comes that it’s really no big deal; shoulders drop. Egg collecting now becomes the highlight of every afternoon. I place each one in my basket, tuck my strong arm underneath, and make careful strides toward the house where they will be given individual, tender love and care, be cleaned and then tucked away, points down, into a cardboard cot ready for market.

Colorado

The journey started in Toronto, with farewells to friends and family. After a lightning fast and whirlwind springtime of organic chemistry, house-sitting, long distance cycling, and manual labour at residential construction sites, I packed the car and went on my merry way. The initial goal was to get myself to Telluride, Colorado for THE mushroom festival of the year. All of the heavy hitters promised to be there, and I was more than excited to learn new skills, gain knowledge and hear about late-breaking mushroom research. This is an account of the planned and unplanned events along the way.

The first stop was New Buffalo, Michigan. I couldn’t get much further than that as I was held at the border in Detroit for what seemed like forever. Apparently trying to get into the United States in a car full of your worldly possessions and a story about heading to a mycological conference in the middle of nowhere, and then moving to British Columbia is not the most comforting for US Immigrations officers. After a stop for lemonade in the extreme heat of Kalamazoo, my first night included a well deserved jog in the countryside around the motel, the Ship and Shore festival in a little town full of wealthy yacht owners, eating pulled pork off of styrofoam, and sipping mediocre Michigan wine. Couldn’t have been more perfect. Up and at ‘em the next morning, I ventured into the Midwest. Through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. A quick lunchtime stop in Iowa City was lively. There are many young families, university students, a whimsical sand sculpture competition on the main drag, and food co-ops to enjoy. Picked up some locally brewed kombucha, a loaf of bread, some Iowa cheeses and kept on trucking.

Soy and Corn in the Midwest

The Midwestern United States, or the parts of it that I observed from the I-80, were dismal. For as far as the eye could see there were two crops: the heavily subsidized, genetically modified, Round-up Ready soy and corn. Sometimes there would be a massive, foul smelling feedlot dotting the landscape, but rarely. Hundreds, if not thousands of meat cows rammed into confined pens, sometimes with their sad faces braced between bars, subjected to those two crops, as feed, in mass quantities. I managed to get in about 800kms over ten hours on the odometer each day, for three days straight. The radio was permanently tuned to either Evangelical Christian dogma stations and Bible studies, new country songs about heartache and tractors, or the Top 40 dance hits I had become so fond of on the Friends for Life Bike Rally in which I participated this past July. I also got a hearty dose of National Public Radio, where I would be informed about the disturbing news and politics of America, especially the current Republican leadership race. It is possible, if not probable, that the next President of the United States of America will actually believe that homosexuality, abortion, and teaching evolution are sins, and that Jesus will save the world in the second coming. You can infer, likely, where I stand on the political and religious spectrums. I wanted to immerse myself in the culture that abounds, through landscapes that spell out “t-h-e-e-n-d-o-f-t-h-e-w-o-r-l-d”. I figured if Icould find Jesus in all of those fields of plenty, perhaps I could be saved too. Alas, when I would make a pit stop at one of the many rest areas on the Insterstate, there would be notices warning resters not to drink the water, as it was so contaminated by nitrates.

Hmmm... I'm thirsty!

Not really hard to see why, what with all the spraying and fertilizing, and insecticiding, and the like that those crops require. I don’t think I can be saved if I die of dehydration first. Later on in the journey I would learn that it could very well be mushrooms that might mitigate this problem, but I digress.

The culinary part of the journey didn’t really begin until I arrived in Denver. With the crossing of two time zones already, I was gaining time and waking up at ungodly hours in the morning. So, I arrived in Denver, Colorado by about 7am one morning from just near Lake McConaughy in Nebraska. McConaughy was the perfect respite from the blazing heat of August for a dip in the reservoir and a lazy nap in the shade at the water’s edge the day before. I parked the car in Denver’s downtown, got on my bike and tooled around the city for hours. First stop was an excellent Americano and blueberry scone, American size for both, which is unnecessarily large. My day continued with a stop at REI, the camping gear Mecca of the Pacific Northwest, and succeeded by my first fresh, green, delicious salad in days, before heading to the Denver Botanic Gardens. The orchid collection, water lily pond, and Japanese gardens were breathtaking, and so was the 40+ degree heat of the desert.

Water lilies at the Denver Botanic Gardens

I was drenched and parched from riding around for hours, drinking copious amounts of lemonade and water as I scoped out the perfect restaurant for dinner. Back to the car, I loaded my cooler with the necessary groceries that I would need for the next week in the mountains, and headed to the Denver International Airport to pick up my friend who would be accompanying me to the festival and beyond. We dined at Fruition, an excellent meal, fit with local ingredients, fine wines, and friendly service. It was lovely to be in the company of an old friend, a animated city, and eating really good food. Back in the car after dinner, my friend and I headed to Bailey, Colorado and I had my first encounter with the Rocky Mountains.

Bailey, Colorado

We woke up to such remarkable beauty in the morning, which we hadn’t fully appreciated on our drive the night before, and soaked up the changing and dramatic landscapes of the mountains and valleys on both side of the Great Divide. The altitude was sickening, but we managed to pull through and acclimate in time.

Colorado Rocky Mountains

After much needed espresso and wine store stopping along the way, we made it to our destination. Our arrival in Telluride, Colorado was smooth sailing. We were greeted by our new friend, and most generous host, John Sir Jesse, at a pub in town. He lead us up the mountain in a gondola to Allreds Restaurant. John used to run the entire festival, now he leads forays throughout the weekend, and hosts special guests of the festival, but no longer takes on a big leadership role. Regardless, he is in the know when it comes to the backwoods in the area, all of the good mushroom spots, and is currently in the process of writing a field guide for the area’s most common flora and fauna. The views from our dinner table at Allred’s boggled the mind, they were so stunning. Our meal was complete with local, wild Elk carpaccio, fresh seafood and mushroom pasta, and finished with a sip of Green Chartreuse. We descended the mountain in the gondola again and drove out to the mesa where we would be housed for the next six nights.

The mushroom festivities started before the official start of the Telluride Mushroom Festival. John took us to scope out where the foray leaders should take their delegates later on in the week. Four of us jumped in the car and John lead us up terrifying, dirt road, switchbacks to Dunton Meadows. There we found a most rare species of blue chanterelle, the Polyozellus multiplex, your normal apricot-scented yellow chanterelle, several boletes, and many shrimp russulas. All good for the picking, and eating later for dinner. We even found some of the ubiquitous, Amanita muscaria, the mushrooms of fairytales, gnomes and fairylands, ate them in the forest, and enjoyed the inensity of the flavour that lasted on the tongue for longer than ten minutes.

Eating Amanita muscaria at Dunton Meadows, Colorado

We chomped on wild leeks, very different at 9,200 feet in the mountains from the ones I am used to in lowly Ontario. Upon our return home, preparations for a pre-festival party got underway. About 30 lively guests showed up and all of them inherently interesting mushroom people. My sore, bruised and swollen mushroom related knee injury was rubbed down by one of the mycophiles with a salve filled with Chaga and Reishi mushroom extracts, both brimming with mighty medicinal properties. The swelling went down, and I was fed Giant Puffballs fried up and coated in cornmeal, John’s famous Shingled Hedgehog (Hydnum imbricatum) soup, chanterelles dry-sauteed and slathered on toasts with delicious cheeses, and a salad garnished with buttery shrimp russulas. We drank Colorado white Pinot Noirs, then hit the sack ready for the next day of mushroom fun and the official opening of the festival.

For six days, hundreds of crazed mushroom-a-holics took over the small mountain village at 8,750 feet above sea level. We danced from venue to venue listening to speakers tell of their research in psychedelics, ethnobotany, fungi from the Amazon that affect the behaviour of insects, wildcrafting, culinary and nutritional aspects of mushrooms, and big changes in taxonomy, to name a few. The week was a whirlwind, complete with much hiking up mountains with our heads down. We were meditating on colour, shape, pattern and texture, working on very little sleep, consorting with the pros, and meeting fabulous people representing mycological associations from all over the USA and Canada. There were costume prizes at the big parade, mushroom rap performances, drum circles, hula-hooping hippies, and fancy French dinners. If you like mushrooms, you’d like this festival, so run, don’t walk to the 32^nd annual event in 2012.

After organizing an impromptu, post-festival send off party to cook up all of the mushrooms we had gathered over the past several days, my new friend Charris and I managed to find an empty house in town with a gorgeous kitchen, and invited our other new friends to join us to wrap up the week’s events. The guest list included, but was not limited to, Paul Stamets, Larry Evans, Danny Newman, Sinclair Philip, David Arora, Gary Lincoff, Mike Beug, Daryl Hannah, Joel Kyle, John Sir Jesse, and thirty or so other great folks that wanted to join us as we savoured all of the flavours of August’s wild harvest. It was surreal and fabulous to be surrounded by the most knowledgeable, the realexperts in the field of mycology, the guys that write the books. The group represented all of the many aspects of the study and use of mushrooms that one can think of. There were academics, soil and water remediators, chefs, nutritionists, taxonomists, and enthusiasts all having a great time over mushroom frittatas, mushroom salads, mushroom antipasti, and mushrooms eaten right out of the frying pan. The party was followed by another early evening foray again at Dunton Meadows, this time leaving with pounds and pounds of tiny, perfect chanterelles in our colourful baskets.

Chanterelles

Shingled Hedgehog with TEETH!

The next day, most everyone had left town and so did we. With my friend sitting pretty in the passenger seat, we drove through valleys, mountains, high desert, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon. The landscapes were forever changing as we headed toward the Pacific Northwest en route to Eugene, Oregon. Idaho boasted endless, aired deserts, and emerald-green fields of potatoes and other cash crops. As soon as we hit Oregon, the crops diversified. We passed lentils, onions, collard greens and hops towering above hedgerows. One might have mistaken the area as Mexico, as everyone seemed to be speaking Spanish, and we ate some succulent ceviche with housemade tortillas at a roadside market. As we approached the Cascade Mountains in all of their glory, the Three Sisters leading us on our way, we stopped for Oregon Pinot Noir and local trout on a bed of delicious greens for lunch in Bend. Continuing through the Cascades, we sulked as we drove past the unmistakable destruction of the evergreen forests by Asian Pine Beetles, and giggled when we dipped our feet into crystal clear rivers rushing alongside the highway.

Pine Beetle in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon

I dropped my dear friend off in Eugene, and carried on for the last leg of my solo tour into the downtown core. The skies opened and I started speaking to a local couple taking refuge under an awning. As luck would have it, they turned out to be great company, and we decided to stop for a beer and some live music at Sam Bond’s in the up-and-coming Whiteaker neighbourhood, just bustling with skinny-jeaned hipsters. The micro-brewed stout was the perfect end to a long day of driving in the suffocating heat.

Carrying on to Florence on the Oregon coast, I had completed my 2011 ocean-to-ocean driving adventure across North America.

Pacific Ocean

My first views of the crashing waves and tidepools of the Pacific were complemented by steamed clams and chowder and a peaceful sleep in a campsite surrounded by old growth Sitka spruce forests. Portland followed, and if I would have been able to obtain a greencard, I may have never left the food-phenomenal city.

Portland Graffiti

I ate and walked my way through Portland, which I think deserves it’s own blog post, and ended up staying for four days, despite my thinking I wouldn’t even make it there at all on this trip. Was I lucky, or what! After Portland, I got back in the car, which had been happily parked for those four days, and made my way up through Washington to the Olympic Peninsula. I slept by the crashing waves of the Strait of the Juan de Fuca just outside of Port Townsend, and the next day hopped on the Port Angeles ferry to Victoria, eventually landing in Cobble Hill to spend the next couple months on the farm.

The Plans - Photo Credit, Bruce Dienes

Eighteen years have passed and it’s been a long and fruitful journey for the volunteers, directors and staff of the Wolfville Farmers Market. Starting with three vendors in a parking lot, this community hub has been transformed into a bustling intersection of business and pleasure. Live music plays prominently every Saturday morning like a piper, enticing neighbours and tourists alike to spend an hour or two taking in all of the flavours of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. Well known for its sensational array of apples, berries, organic produce, and rich, red soils, the region is an integral piece of the Nova Scotia food map. It’s a true coming of age story for the little farmers market that can, and with a big fundraising campaign underway, the Wolfville Farmer’s Market is casting off its outgrown, outdoor shell and will be moving into its new home in September, 2011.

The story reads in an all too familiar tone, like many other Canadian agricultural regions: gloomy, desperate, and slated for development. Warehouses and processing facilities of yore are empty shells, if they stand at all, and what used to be the source of much of Nova Scotia’s edible offerings is in limbo. Rezoning and other threats to Class A Agricultural land sets precedents that could see the region experience even more food insecurity. With a move toward imports and industrialized agribusiness, the Valley now produces only about 8.4% of what Nova Scotians actually eat, according to a report by the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, 2007. Just as the story veers in even more dire directions, progressive movement is under way to change what can be changed.

Info Booth - Photo Credit, Bruce Dienes

Wolfville shines a bright light on the grim food system every Saturday. The community of Wolfville and surrounding area is putting its farmers market in high gear, with plans to move into a permanent, indoor space by May 21st of this year. The plans are ambitious, and the designs incorporate the beauty that is the mud flats and historical dykes of the Bay of Fundy into its sightlines. Acadia University has leased the currently underused space at $1.00 per year to the Wolfville Farmers Market for 20 years, while the market will be responsible for renovations and construction costs. The totals hover around $800,000.00 for the project to come to fruition. Government grants, community donations and vendors have responded enthusiastically, and as of writing this article, they have raised a total of $535,134.94, plus $100,000.00 committed by market vendors. With upwards of 79% of the funds raised and nine months to go, they are moving quickly toward open doors, and are actively seeking more support.

No longer carrying their homes on their backs, vendors will be able to set up shop, and leave it for six days until the next market, twelve months of the year. This allows vendors to concentrate energy on production and processing to meet a growing consumer demand. No more revenue-light, rainy days, or lack of running water for these local artisans and farmers, the DeWolfe building will have all the mod cons. The market now boasts over 60 regular food and craft tables, selling homemade goods to eager customers. The old apple sorting and packing warehouse will be retrofitted to create an indoor market with an outdoor feel. A wall of garage doors are being installed to make the indoor space feel open and airy in the summer months, while keeping it warm and cozy through the winter. “Come from aways”, tourists and residents alike will find ample parking, seating areas, information boards, and other facilities to make their visit even more worthwhile.

Stewarts Organic Farm - Photo Credit, Bruce Dienes

Sarah and Joey Pittoello, currently farming with Stewart’s Organic Farm, are in the process of purchasing their own farm. These two young, ambitious farmers are excited to have the new building open its doors so that they can include a more permanent source of revenue in their business plans.

Heather Lunan and Ray Burton of Pie R Squared jumped on the bandwagon only months after a move to Wolfville from Calgary and have created a deliciously successful business making savoury pies and quiches sold at market. For Heather, the new building is a very positive development. Not only will it help them economically, but Heather says that with infrastructure in place like refrigeration and power, their product can only get better. Not having to lug around warming ovens, hot plates and coolers will allow the family-run business to concentrate on the pies, develop new recipes and eliminate much of the risk to themselves, and to customers. By having all of the tools they need in place at the DeWolfe building, food safety will not be as much of a challenge, and they look forward to happier health inspectors.

LAcadie Vineyard - Photo Credit, Bruce Dienes

Devin Folks, Information Booth Coordinator for the Wolfville Farmers Market, suggests that by having an indoor space, the customers will have a safer and more convenient place to buy their food, which will in turn support the producers and processors, artisans, and craftspeople of the local economy to grow their businesses. This might come in the form of expansion of product lines, or more time to create value added products in lieu of the time it currently takes to schlep around tables, shelves, coolers, lights, burners, fridges, and other equipment that only have a temporary home in the outdoor space. With a stall in place, these vendors can concentrate their energy on the product they are selling and hopefully generate more revenue, creating more secure employment and income; a common struggle in the sustainability of work for agriculturists, chefs and artisans throughout Canada. Selling directly to the customer, being able to tell the story of the product and its provenance, and having products to sell are all keys to success at a farmers market. This new development will surely make it easier and more convenient for everyone involved to create a strong local food system and vibrant community hub.

One brick at a time, this community-building project is becoming a sound investment and welcomes your support. To purchase a brick in an effort to meet fundraising goals, please visit the Wolfville Farmers Market. They look forward to welcoming you on your next visit.

Greenwich, Nova Scotia

Please visit

Good Food Revolution

to read my ideas on Greenwich, Nova Scotia’s farmland rezoning issues and the  Kings County Municipal Council decision to defer their decision.

http://www.foodnetwork.ca/video/index.html?releasePID=Rbzxpkd88kgelIhF_5xsmuWUiYsZaKYE