Learning From the Garden Up

When chef-instructor Andrew Hewson asked a student to fetch a bunch of basil from the refrigerator, he was shocked – and appalled – when his student returned with a handful of carrots.

 “These students simply don’t know. They are training to be professional cooks, and they have never grown a vegetable or seen produce in its raw state.” That realization prompted Hewson, then as fresh in his job as a teacher as his students were as cooks, to ask his department head about planting a garden.

It took three years, but in 2010, the first crop was planted in SAIT Polytechnic’s garden. The same year, Hewson was awarded the Cadmus Fellowship. Under its aegis, he embarked on research toward implementing changes to the SAIT Professional Cook Training curriculum to connect culinary arts, agriculture and sustainability issues.

The disconnect Hewson witnessed in his students took root and grew slowly, post-World War II, when the mass commercialization and industrialization of food production combined with the migration of North Americans to urban centres. Six decades later, city dwellers like Hewson’s students eat mostly packaged food and have no contact with farms and farm life.

One conference Hewson attended, Taking Root, started the wheels turning to create a national farm-to-school program in Canada. It won’t be as simple as planting a garden in his own school’s back yard: initial tasks are finding funding and establishing an organizational chart. “The scope is intimidating, but eating well is a lifelong thing, and there are lots of models now in the UK and the US we can draw on.”

In 2010, Hewson travelled to Cuba, recognized as a world leader in sustainable urban farming, with University of British Columbia agrologist Wendy Holm. “It’s amazing how Cubans have transformed their food system to support themselves out of sheer necessity, and embraced sustainable organic farming, much of it urban,” he comments. Hewson believes that what needs to change is local political will. “It should be an easy thing, to convince someone at a municipal level of the importance of local food production.”

There are many ways to get involved in the lifelong learning of good food. Here are a few options.

Slow Food, an international organization founded in 1986, defends food and agricultural biodiversity worldwide

Slow Food’s aim is to protect cultural culinary identities, ingredients and gastronomic traditions, and defend domestic and wild animal and vegetable species. The Calgary chapter – Hewson is on its board – promotes the connection between growers and consumers -- whom Italian journalist and Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini named “co-producers” for their vital role in the circle of growing and eating— through workshops, sensory tastings, farm tours, dinners and the annual harvest Feast of Fields. The Slow Food Calgary publication Alberta Snail Trail maps nearly 80 producers who observe the “good, clean and fair” tenets of Slow Food.

Learn to cook

Canning classes at The Jungle Farm, Slow Food Calgary and The Cookbook Co. Cooks offer a classic preservation method. Other options include kids’ summer camps and adults’ hands-on and demonstration classes at SAIT Polytechnic and The Calgary Board of Education’s Chinook Learning Services, from spun sugar work to ethnic food and pizza.

Chef-instructor Val Andrews’ canning workshops “slow us down and connect us to our past, our heritage, our food supply and the earth,” she says. “When we can, we preserve tradition, build family and community and re-learn traditional skills.” Each time she teaches someone to can, Andrews remembers her parents and grandparents and the gifts they passed on to her. The urge to preserve food addresses more than hunger, Andrews says. “People are literally hungry, for good food from a local food supply, and for deep connections.”

Challenge the status quo or run for office

Paul Hughes, founder of the Calgary Food Policy Council, has a brief but hard-to-miss history as a food activist. Hughes, who is running for mayor of Calgary, is facing a bylaw charge for “possession of chickens.” His case may be heard before the October 18 election. Hughes claims his six urban laying hens represent 300 other birds kept by 40 Calgary families.

Beyond urban chickens, Hughes comments widely about the difficulty of sourcing locally grown foods. “If we’re serious about sustaining ourselves, we have to start growing our own food. We need more farmers.” Access to affordable farmland is the most formidable hurdle for would-be farmers, he says, and suggests that vacant urban land be made available.

Start a community garden

There is nothing new about urban gardening in Calgary, says Gail Blackhall, coordinator of the Community Garden Resource Network, a three-year project of the Calgary Horticultural Society. “The Vacant Lots Garden Club began in 1914, with a goal of beautifying vacant lots while making them productive.” At its peak, over 3,000 gardens occupied vacant lots across the city. “These gardens’ decline coincided with the rise of post-war industrial farming and food production,” Blackhall observes. The sole remaining garden --in Bridgeland-- has been declared a provincial historic site.

In 2009, 21 public community gardens and 25 private community gardens were created, up from a total of 11 gardens in 2008. 2010’s “geometric progression” counts over 60 gardens, with more slated for autumn sowing.

“Gardens give people a chance to re-connect with nature and childhood memories of pea-stealing.” And they provide parents a chance to offer their children fresh vegetables. “Even kids who hate vegetables often love freshly picked peas,” Blackhall remarks. A community garden can be big or small, on public land, city parks or in a private yard. Each garden reaches out to the wider community, sharing its harvest with whoever needs fresh produce. The healing and unifying power of soil and seeds makes a difference, one seed at a time, growing community along with supper. As Blackhall says, “People are number one.”

Hughes says it differently. “Everyone should know a farmer.”

There are several ways to cultivate local roots. Buy local directly from the grower: shop at a farmers’ market. Visit a farm. The Calgary City Palate has been conducting farmgate tours for over a decade. Drive yourself to one of the dozens of Albertan farms that offer u-pick or pre-picked produce, meats, poultry, flowers and grains at the farmgate.

Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)

Farmers following CSA practices sell annual subscriptions to a set number of clients before the onset of spring planting. The clients become virtual partners in the farm, sharing risk and reward with the farm family. Many CSAs are farmed according to biodynamic principles, or practise organic, holistic and ecologically aware tillage and tending methods. In Canada, more than 40 CSA farms are listed by the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association; there are a dozen (some unlisted) in Alberta.

Mutually beneficial, CSAs mean that the farmer runs less risk and wastes less-- time, labour and expense-- on marketing, sales, packaging and distribution. Most importantly, the farmer has a guaranteed market, and knows who is eating her food. An investor feels a sense of community and has a relationship with the farmer who feeds her. Her food is seasonal, fresh, and has not traveled very far. She has regained a small measure of control and knowledge about her food supply and how her food was raised.

The simplest of all local food learning expedients is the one that chef Andrew Hewson turned to: plant a garden

dee Hobsbawn-Smith is a poet, chef, advocate, writer and author. Her local food website, www.curiouscook.net contains farmgate listings, CSAs, farmers’ markets, profiles of local growers, recipes, book reviews and local food information.

Why Eat Local? Local food…

• travels shorter distances to market

• is picked ripe

• helps farmers pocket a higher percentage of every food dollar

• stimulates a local multiplier effect. Studies have shown that every dollar spent with a local food business generates up to $2.50 in additional local economic activity

• keeps farmers on the farm

• creates employment to help maintain rural communities

• is often heirloom varieties and lesser-known crops that ensure biodiversity

• protects farmland and open space from development by keeping family agriculture a vibrant and competitive land use

• builds long-term mutually beneficial relationships between producers and consumers

• reconnects eaters with the source of their food.