AAsk where your food comes from and how it was grown.  Among the advantages of eating locally grown food is the opportunity to get answers about your food.  Did you grow those beans yourself?  Were any herbicides used on those fruits and vegetables? Are your eggs from chickens that are kept in cages or barns, or are they able to roam outdoors?  What varieties of tomatoes do you grow?  How long will this apple keep? For local food, you can talk to the person who grew it.  For items grown in New Zealand, California or China, you’ll be left with questions, not answers.

 

CCommunity gardens.  Nowhere to garden at your home?  You live in an apartment or your yard is too shady for vegetable production?  There could be a community garden in your neighbourhood where, for a small fee, you can use a portion to grow vegetables, herbs or flowers for your own use or to donate to a community meal provider or some other good cause.  Contact OPIRG Kingston (www.opirgkingston.org) for more information on community gardens in Kingston.

 

EEaters.  When it comes to food, let’s call ourselves eaters.  Marketers see us as consumers – a cold, depersonalized identity that commodifies us and what we require to sustain us, commercializing and trivializing it. Instead, call yourself an eater. We are all eaters, participants in the intimate act of putting food past our lips, onto the tongue, chewing, savouring, enjoying the taste, the textures, the pleasures of food.  At least, that’s the way it should be.

 

GGoats.  Goats are raised for meat, mohair and dairy products. In 2004, there were more than 62,000 goats in Ontario, 34 per cent of the national herd. While the Ontario herd grew almost 40 per cent from 1996 to 2001, the number of producers in the province, 2,342, declined by seven per cent. 

 

 

IIn season.
Eat blueberries in blueberry season, strawberries in strawberry season, and tomatoes in tomato season.  Out of season, you can still eat locally by putting root vegetables in a cold storage area and preserving foods – freezing, pickling, drying, making jams, jellies, chutneys, and salsa.  Start small, and follow up-to-date recipes for safe and tasty results.  Here is a simple salsa recipe that does not involve canning:
      

Remove papery husks from tomatillos and rinse well.  Cut in half and place, cut side down, on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Place under a broiler for 5 to 7 minutes to lightly blacken the skins.
Put tomatillos, lime juice, onions, cilantro, peppers and sugar in a food processor or blender and pulse until all ingredients are finely chopped and mixed.  Season to taste with salt. Cool in refrigerator.
Serve with chips, or as a salsa accompaniment to Mexican dishes.

 

KKohlrabi.  A little-known, hardy biennial, also called turnip-rooted cabbage and stem turnip, it tastes like a combination of mild turnip, radish and cucumber, and is grown as an annual.  “It has a swollen stem that makes it look like a turnip on tiptoes.  The swollen stem can be white, purple or green, topped with a rosette of blue-green leaves,” Consumer Guide Gardening Quarterly noted in its spring 1976 edition. You can eat the leaves when they are tender – steamed, stir-fried or in a soup.  Peel the bulb, and slice it into sections to eat raw or steamed. 

 

MMulch.  A mulch is any cover spread over the surface of the soil – to conserve moisture, to inhibit weed growth, and to prevent frost damage.  A mulch that decomposes (straw, wood chips, sawdust or other plant material, and cardboard or newspaper) will break down and add nutrients to the soil.   Thick layers of mulch can be used to kill grass where you want to develop a garden.  For an established garden, apply mulch when the soil is wet and has been recently weeded.

OOwls. Owls and other natural predators are an important part of maintaining balance among the plants and animals in an ecosystem. Small rodents, for example, damage and consume garden produce and farm crops. Owls help keep the rodent population in check.

QQuestion the global food system.  Why are we shipping apples from New Zealand, Chile and South Africa, when we grow apples right here, in the Kingston region?  Even apples from British Columbia, while still Canadian, are seasoned travellers by the time they get to us.  Why, indeed?  Because we have become accustomed to eating out of season.  Because we have subsidized fuel and transport systems to bring produce to us below cost. Because gigantic food processing, distribution and retailing companies operate on economies of scale – where costs per unit go down the larger the output – and only want to deal with equally gigantic food producer companies.  We, individually and collectively, have the power to change the global food system into thousands of local food systems.  Make the individual choice to eat more local food in the months ahead.

SSlow food.  Arising in the 1980s in reaction to ubiquitous fast food outlets, the slow food movement wants us to take pleasure in preparing and eating food. (What a concept!)  From the Slow Food Canada web site: “We should learn to enjoy the vast range of recipes and flavours, and recognize the variety of places and people growing and producing food.  We should respect the rhythms of the seasons and conviviality.”  As well, slow food members support the defence of food and agricultural biodiversity around the world.  More than 800 Slow Food Convivia, or chapters, are active in 80 countries.

 

UUrban agriculture.  In the urban landscape there are many empty spaces where food can be grown – rooftops, vacant lots, green areas around established buildings, sunny parts of residential lots – in fact, anywhere enough sunlight, water and soil exists or can be provided to sustain plants.  In Toronto, FoodShare has several interesting projects involving food production; one involves an unused greenhouse at a mental health centre that became a part of therapy for interested residents and a source of food.  In Vancouver, the city council set a goal of 2010 community-shared garden plots by 2010, as an Olympic legacy project.

WWater and warmth.  Along with sunlight and healthy soil, water and warmth are important conditions for plant growth.  Of course, too little or too much water or warmth creates problems for plants.  The climate changes we are experiencing have brought greater variations than we were used to in the decades of the recent past.  We will need to find ways to adapt to a new, more difficult environment for farming.

YYearning.  About an hour into a garden work bee this summer, I asked one of the weeders, kneeling among the vegetables, “How’s it going?”  He replied, “This is very satisfying work.”  And so it is.  Helping things to grow – the actual physical, tactile contact with plants or animals, soil, water, and sunshine – fulfills a basic human need to be in touch with the earth.

 

Dianne Dowling is an elementary school teacher and with her husband owns an organic dairy farm on Howe Island.  She has been a member of the National Farmers Union for several years and worked on the Ban Terminator campaign, the Save Our Seeds project, and the Kingston and area NFU Feast of Fields.

Caolan Weima Majury is a grade 10 student at Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School, and a keen student of animals. For several years, he has been bringing pleasure to others through his artwork.