Archive for 2007
Events
Season’s Eatings
In mid-winter, we celebrate the solstice, Christmas and Hannukuh, and sometimes Eid and Diwali when the lunar calendar aligns with the Julian calendar. Hard on their heels is the global welcoming of the New Year.
At every table during these festivals, we eat! We laugh, we share, we salute absent family and friends, and we pass the peas, the polenta, the parnsips and the paneer. Each festival is imbued wiith the importance of eating. The ingredients vary, but the intention does not. The familial community of the table, the practical nourishing of body and soul, the joy inherent to wellness and abundance… these are the messages and miracles of the holiday season in any culture.
But in the midst of plenty, there are many who have fallen on hard times. Please share.
On this mild and lovely winter’s day, on behalf of Slow Food Calgary’s steering community and myself, I wish for all of us the peace, prosperity and plenty that is the gift of our planet.
dee Hobsbawn-Smith, Calgary Convivium president
Community, Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local
Carrots From Concrete
Where our food is grown is not an esoteric debate. It has real implications for all of us–rural dwellers, city folk and everyone in-between.
Most of us do not grow our own food. We do not keep urban gardens, nor do we have community gardens or community-supported agriculture (CSAs), where a number of families buy shares in a farmer’s yield.
Even though we don’t grow it ourselves, it is surprisingly easy to ignore the question of where our food comes from. It is easy, in the face of our global market—pineapples from Brazil, soybeans from China, salad from California, cherries from Chile. But what will happen when that global garden’s gate swings shut, by any of a number of man-made or natural disasters? War. The end of cheap oil. Earthquake. Pandemic. Floods or famine.
Data released in the May 2006 Canadian census shows that nearly 2,500,000 Albertans– 73 percent of the province’s population– live in the “Calgary-Edmonton Corridor”, the 400-kilometer band of land that connects the two cities, including the cities of Airdrie, Wetaskiwin, Red Deer and Leduc, and the small towns along the way. Eighty-one percent of Albertans are urban residents; 71,660 of the province’s population are farmers.
In the ten-year span from 1996 to 2006, the number of Albertan farms decreased by 9,576. We are surrounded by lost farmland.
Calgary’s arms have embraced much of the rich land around the city. Drive west, and observe Springbank’s remaining farms stitched side-by-side to suburban sprawls. Bearspaw’s high-bluff view of the big bend in the river—formerly a rural sight– is hemmed in by houses. Cochrane and Okotoks are minutes from Calgary city limits.
The racetrack and mall development in Balzac have buckled up the narrowing agricultural belt between Calgary and Airdrie. The annexation of Airdrie may not be far behind; the Calgary Airport Authority already operates the Airdrie Airport.
Farther north, farmland has been annexed by the town of Innisfail for residential development immediately north of the town’s existing border.
The corridor along the QE2 highway will eventually be a mass of residents, with accompanying high-speed rail and electrical transmission lines. The drive north may eventually happen without the chance to view a single piece of open arable land under cultivation.
It was painter Paul Cezanne who wrote, “The day is coming, when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”
Gert and Betty Lund’s organic carrots are a mainstay in my home, as in many other Albertan homes. My dog loves those crunchy sweet carrots, and so do my sons and I. The Lunds, who farm just north of Innisfail’s town border, are pioneer organic growers in the province; their first farm in the Knee Hill Valley, 20 kilometers east of Innisfail, was certified in 1984, and they moved to their current 60-acre farm in 1992.
The Lunds moved for easier access to the highway that is the artery of Alberta, and onto a larger plot of land. Their land is part of ten quarter-sections of land (1600 acres, or 3953 hectares) north and west of town that has been recently annexed by the town of Innisfail for development.
Because of the annexation, Lund expects his taxes to increase without any increase in services. The Lunds have not decided on a course of action. “Stand in the way of progress? You’ll get run over. But if I was 20 years younger, I’d get a shark lawyer with big teeth,” he says. At age 55, Lund says he is too old to start again, and he doesn’t know of any certified-organic land available in the vicinity. “All the little towns in central Alberta are expanding,” he observes, adding that it takes three years to transition conventional land to organic production, plus another five years to realistically learn a patch’s proclivities and nudge it into optimal production.
Dale Mather, Innisfail’s chief administrative officer since 1986, says that farmers like Lund are free to sell or continue farming their land until development begins, which may be in five years or forty.
The town of Innisfail has a current population of 7,700, including town councillor Jason Heistad, his wife and their three young daughters. “We don’t want to be like the lower mainland of British Columbia,” Heistad says. “I am sure they didn’t think that all that farmland in the Fraser Valley would be eaten up by paving, it is some of the best farmland in the country.” Heistad expects growth– for Innisfail and along the entire corridor. The town is aware of the concerns of farmers and is addressing them, he says, but adds that growth is “a no-brainer.” And perhaps it is. Except for the small wrinkle of farmland converted from carrots to concrete.
Events, Global
Slow Food Nation
The inaugural Slow Food Nation festival will take place in San Francisco on Labor Day weekend, 2008. The date is changed in response to input from farmers who were eager to show their produce at its peak in late summer, as well as new opportunities to use some of San Francisco’s most emblematic public spaces. Slow Food Nation is happy to announce its partnership with both the City of San Francisco and Fort Mason Center. The use of these spaces has been made possible by the generous support of the City of San Francisco and the Fort Mason Foundation.
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Community, Events, Local
Raw Milk Debate
On Wednesday, October 24, Raw Milk Canada presents an interactive lecture by farmer and raw milk advocate Mark MacAfee. MacAfee is co-owner of Organic Pastures, located near Fresno, California. MacAfee’s farm was featured in the New York Times in August 2007, in an examination of the issues and risks surrounding consumption of raw milk. Be an informed consumer. Learn about the difference a natural grass-based diet makes to the health & nutrient density of milk, the changes that occur to milk during pasteurization, and why pasteurization was introduced in the first place. Who should and should not drink raw milk? When is raw milk safe to consume, and for whom? What about legaliities?
Tickets are $12 in advance, available by phone at 215-0565, or in person at Community Natural Foods; $15 at the door. The Calgary lecture is at Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Centre, and begins at 7:00 P.M.
MacAfee will be speaking in Edmonton on October 23 and in Vancouver on October 25.
For further information, visit www.realmilkcanada.com or www.organicpastures.com.
Community, Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local
Do you have time to tootle?
by Karen Anderson
“Tootle” is not a word I had heard before I moved to Calgary. According to Webster, it refers to “proceeding in a leisurely way.” For the past nine summers, The City Palate has sponsored a “Foodie Tootle” led by food writer and chef dee Hobsbawn-Smith, where 40 or so folks slow down for a day of touring some of Alberta’s finest farms.
I run food tours around Calgary, and was delighted when a few people suggested I lead them on a pre-Thanksgiving “Turkey Tootle”. The idea was to help people organize their Thanksgiving feast in a “100 mile diet” sort of fashion. Consumers would learn where their turkey and all the fixings come from, and they would meet the people raising their food. It is exactly what people wanted. So I thought.
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Community, Events, Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local
Slow Food Calgary and Infuse/Forage Catering present…
Join us for another in our successful and popular “Kitchen Party” taste workshop series.
This one is with Peter and Judy Haase at
Forage/Infuse Catering
3510 – 19th St. SW
Tuesday November 6, 2007
6:30 pm
Join Peter and Judy Haase of Buffalo Horn Ranch and the crew of Forage for an up-close evening of information, fine buffalo fare and camaraderie next door to Forage in the Infuse Catering kitchen.
Learn about Peter and Judy’s efforts to bring back the bison and develop a fine breeding herd in the process while producing great local eating.
Slow Food Members $35.00
Non members $45.00
For tickets, call The Cookbook Co. Cooks at 265.6066 or Janice Beaton Fine Cheese at 229.0900
Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Summer Peaches
Summer Peaches
Sunday in the Similkameen valley arrives cool and cloudy. Rain falls early, the first drops in weeks. It means the pickers can sleep late, past their normal five AM wake-up, maybe even have a rare day off. You cannot pick peaches in the rain.
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Community, Slow Food Calgary
One fish, two fish… Slow Fish?
One of my favourite memories from my youth is the lazy summer days I spent fishing with my Grandfather. He knew all the best spots in our corner of the Bay of Fundy and how to time our expeditions with the tides. We’d pull into a cove, drop anchor and bait our jigging lines. The water was so clear and the bottom so undisturbed that when you really paid attention you could see the flounder scuttle slightly along the ocean floor. We’d cuss a little at them, an essential step according to “Pappy”, and then we’d jig’em up. I loved taking the wheel to steer the boat back to harbour while “Pap” filleted the fish flawlessly on the side of the boat and washed everything down with sea water. He finished just in time to dock the boat and I would be home and have the fish in a fry pan within 10 minutes.
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Events, Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local
6th Annual Feast of Fields
The sixth annual Feast of Fields was held at Rouge Restaurant (1240-8 Ave SE in Inglewood)on Sunday September 9, 2007. Nearly 300 supporters of eating local gathered in the historic garden with regional chefs and growers for an afternoon of conversation, food, music and prairie sunshine.
Music by Simply Sinatra serenaded attendees as they sipped lemonade and black currant punch, locally-brewed beer, Canadian wine, and coffee. Food for this year’s Feast was created by seventeen chefs and caterers, working with ingredients provided by over thirty local producers and growers to celebrate Alberta’s harvest. The growers and producers were on hand in the marquee tents to greet guests and discuss food (fabulous), weather (perfect), politics (unending) and next year’s crops (hopeful).
An information booth provided interested consumers with data gathered by the University of Alberta on food miles of organic and conventional produce, and researcher Kristi Peters shared her findings on foodsheds.
Slow Food Calgary thanks our hosts, Paul Rogalski and Olivier Reynaud of Rouge for their ongoing and gracious support. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect venue for Feast of Fields than the garden and orchards of Rouge. Thank you as well to the chefs and caterers who turn their hands to such tangible expression of good eating, and to our beverage suppliers for delicious libations. Slow Food Calgary is powered by hope, sunshine and volunteers– thank you to all who shared their hands, expertise, enthusiasm, artistry, interest and joyful engagement in all things locally and deliciously edible. In particular, Slow Food Calgary acknowledges and thanks the committed and hard-working growers of Alberta who participate in Feast of Fields, and in feeding us all.
Community, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Highway and Byway Shopping in Alberta
Foodie Tootles 2007
Each year, I sift through maps, lists and websites, drive dusty backroads and ride rock-hard highways, looking for good growers to visit. Each year, the magic vine that connects good eaters to good growers adds another tendril or two, via phone calls and enthusiastic emails, telling me about this or that little farm, about this beef or bison rancher or honey harvester. The thrill of finding great growers, especially sustainably-inclined food producers, is almost as great as walking the fields and crouching over berry patches in the high prairie sunlight.
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