Archive for 2008
Slow Food Calgary
Slow Food Calgary Annual Report 2008
This is our first annual report. It is an opportunity to tell our local members what the Slow Food Calgary planning committee has been up to these past twelve months. We have aimed to keep the report concise. We invite members to ask questions about the content.
Click here to access the report.
Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Alberta Farmers – Elna & Doug Edgar – featured in Slow Food Times
Slow Food Times is a Slow Food International newsletter highlighting inspiring developments throughout the global Slow Food community.
It was great to see Alberta’s farming community represented in a recent issue.
Here is the piece as it appeared:
Open Gate: Canadians Elna and Doug welcome students to their farm
Edgar Farms sixth-generation family property in central Alberta, Canada, is today managed by Elna and Doug Edgar who have launched an on-farm educational program, opening their fields to school groups during the harvest window in late May and June.
The tours, for students aged 10 and 11, offer hands-on experience in the various produce of the farm: dairy, beef and asparagus, bean and garden pea crops. Elna encourages the children to ‘touch, taste and feel’ and to pick the produce as she leads them around the property and teaches them about natural life cycles and seasonal consumption.
Continue reading this article …
Slow Food Calgary
Giving that is Good, Clean and Fair: Slow Food Membership Gift Certificates
NOW AVAILABLE…Gift Certificates for Slow Food Calgary Membership. Just fill out the contact form, specifying your request.Instructions regarding payment and receipt of certificate will follow your request.It is simple, sustainable and ethical gift giving at its best.
Community, Events, Global, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Manifesto on the Future of Food
Last evening, Slow Food members and guests gathered in the cozy eating quarters of the Wild Rose Brewery to listen to the tales of two farmers and a chef who attended Terra Madre 2008 in Torino, Italy. The room was comfortably packed. We drank delicious beer from its very source with bowls of steaming chili, sweet, thick slices of Wild Rose Brewery cornbread and wholesome, crusty Red Fife wheat loaves. Our bellies full, we settled in to hear the ardent words of Kris Vester (Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farms), Wade Sirois (Forage/Infuse Catering) and Kathleen Charpentier (Bison Ranchers of the Alberta Short Grass Prairie), three of the 44 people who represented Alberta’s food communities at this global gathering of peasant farmers, artisanal food producers, youth delegates, cooks and academics.
We will be posting condensed versions of their inspired views on both the Terra Madre gathering itself and the vision behind the gathering: to cultivate and proliferate local, sustainable food systems that uphold the Slow Food tenets of good (healthy, tasty), clean (sustainable) and fair (fair prices for product, fair wages for workers).
There were several references last evening to an influential document in the good, clean and fair food movement: The Manifesto on the Future of Food.
Click here to download the Manifesto and its companion documents (Manifesto on Climate Change and the Future of Food Security, Manifesto on the Future of Seeds).
Community, Slow Food Calgary
Students and Youth: We want to hear from you!
Slow Food Calgary would like to work with students and our youth to spread the Slow Food message. We want to hear from young people who care about a healthy, sustainable and delicious food supply for the future.
We want to talk to you about how Slow Food’s vision for Good, Clean and Fair food for the planet may gain life in the places where young people study, work and play.
Click here to learn more about Slow Food International and its Youth Food Movement.
Get involved in the future of food. Students and Youth, we really do want to hear from you: Contact us at Slow Food Calgary.
Community, Events, Global, Local
Tales of Terra Madre
Monday November 17th – 6:30 pm
@Wild Rose Brewery and Tap Room at the Calgary Farmers’ Market
click here for directions
Come join us in listening to the stories and reflections from the Albertans who have participated in the largest Slow Food gathering in the world.
The Terra Madre conference brings together cooks, producers and academics in an effort to work towards increasing small-scale, artisanal and sustainable practices of food production and consumption.
Visit the Slow Food International website to read about Terra Madre 2008 held in Turn at the end of October.
“Tales of Terra Madre” is hosted by the award-winning Calgary-based Wild Rose Brewery. Bowls of hot grub and pints of Wild Rose’s locally brewed beer will be served.
Tickets @ The Cookbook Co. Cooks
722 – 11 Ave. S.W.
403-265-6066
Members: $35
Not yet members: $45
Slow Food Calgary
A Pre-Thanksgiving Kitchen Party at Infuse Catering
Thursday October 2nd
@ Infuse Catering, 3510 – 19 St. SW
for directions and info… www.foragefoods.com
6:30 pm
Tickets: Slow Food members $35
Not-yet Slow Food members $45
Available at The Cookbook Company Cooks, 753-11th Ave. SW / 403-265-6066
www.cookbookcooks.com
There is room for but 24 lucky folks to join Chef Wade Sirois and Darell Winter & Corrine Dahm of Winter’s Turkey farm in the kitchen at Infuse Catering. Chef Sirois always creates something delightful and demonstrates through his preparations, the versatility of our local food products.
Slow Food Calgary
Movie Night “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”
Monday October 6, 2008
@ The Engineered Air Theatre at The Epcor Centre - www.epcorcentre.org
205-8th Ave SE
A Part of the “Movies that Matter” series
Reception: 7 pm / Screening: 7:30 pm
Tickets at the door and by donation only (suggested donation of $15 per person).
Don’t miss seeing this poignant tale. It is a story Farmer John tells about growing up on farm in the 1950′s and almost losing the farm in the 1970′s before reclaiming his farm and rediscovering farm-life through organic, community supported agriculture. Farmer John is not only a farmer-hero of sorts, he is also a talented raconteur.
There will be a cash bar and organic popcorn too!
Community, Events, Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Calgary Farmers’ Market
The opening pages of the September-October 2008 issue of Calgary’s City Palate magazine contain a valuable and important message to local diners. In the section titled “Word of Mouth”, the editors of the City Palate encourage its readership to speak out in support of a local food institution. We share the sentiment.
The Calgary Farmers’ Market has one year left on a five year lease, and is facing the daunting and expensive task of relocating. The Market will not close! But in 2009, it must find a new home and leave its current digs on Currie Barracks, centrally located off Crowchild Trail and Richard Road in the central southwest of Calgary, with several roads in for convenient access. Canada Lands, the landlord of Currie Barracks, is enforcing its lease terms.
Show your support of local producers, local food and the local economy as evidenced by the huge success of the Calgary Farmers’ Market. As suggested by Calgary’s City Palate, write the following people –now! it only take a minute to voice your opinion!– and tell them that you favour the Calgary Farmers’ Market staying put.
Write to:
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at pm@gc.ca;
Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier, at themayor@calgary.ca;
Lee Richardson, Federal Conservative Calgary Centre MP, at richoll@parl.gc.ca or at richardson.l@parl.gc.ca;
Brain Pincott, Calgary city alderman, at brian.pincott@calgary.ca;
Mark Laroche of Canada Lands Co., the developers of the property, at clc@clc.ca;
Lawrence Cannon, Federal Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, at cannon.l@parl.gc.ca;
Jim Flaherty, Federal Minister of Finance , at jim@jimflahertymp.ca;
Alison Redford, MLA , Calgary-Elbow, and Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Alberta Legislature, at calgary.elbow@assembly.ab.ca
You have a voice, and change happens when committed people raise their voices and their wills. Use your voice. Support your community’s well-being, your local and sustainable food supply systems and the sensible idea that good, healthy food should remain accessible. Keep your dining dollars in Alberta, and keep the Calgary Farmers’ Market at the Currie Barracks.
Thank you.
dee Hobsbawn-Smith, President, Slow Food Calgary