What is your fibreshed?

In general, it feels there is a growing awarness of the importance of supporting local farmers and sustainably grown foods.  100-Mile diet, locavore, slow food, bioregional eating, local food challenges, food buying clubs, CSA's (community supported agriculture), community gardens, school gardens, and farmstart and mentorship programs for young would-be farmers, are just some of the options and ideas that have become increasingly available in recent years.  And this is a good thing.  There is the great quote we see on bumper stickers around here: "farmers feed cities", a reminder not to forget the dependance we in our urban areas have on farmers (and farmland) around us.  I remember Michael Ableman, a keynote speaker at an the Canadian Organic Conference in Guelph a few years ago, getting a standing ovation when he noted that farmers should get the same respect (and earnings) as the most prestigious doctors and lawyers.  So, the local food movement has slowly brought a little more of this acknowledgement and support to the farmers.

The Fibreshed Project takes this one step further.  This project is a one year challenge to wear clothes sourced (and dyed) from fibres grown close to home (within 150 miles) - as a way of raising awareness about the incredibly unsustainable  clothing industry (the ecological and social impacts of the clothes we buy/wear); as well as aiming to support local farmers who produce fibres that are largely undervalued (e.g. thousands of pounds of wool discarded each year because of lack of market).  If the farming, milling, production, manufacturing of many of our clothes could be done closer to home, this would be a significant ecological and social contribution.  Read this beautiful blog, and be inspired to start building networks with your local fibre-producing farmers.

100-Mile Thanksgiving Feast...in Manitoba, AND the Landless Farmers Collective

I had the fortunate opportunity to travel out west to see family over Thanksgiving. Manitoba is a province that is proud of its farmers, having always been supportive of their local growers and producers. The 100-Mile / eating locally / locavore idea has caught on quickly, with many more tasty options available than would at first have been imagined in a province with long winters and shorter growing season than Ontario. In particular, I found there are many more locally grown organic grains available, as well as some exciting urban farm initiatives going on in Winnipeg.

My family has been happily growing, picking, sourcing, and preserving local foods all season and treated us to an amazing harvest feast. Here's what we had...

From my parent's garden: fresh garden tomatoes, and grapes saved from the last grapevine,
From a friend's organic farm and preserved by my mom: homemade crab-apple sauce, pickled cucumbers and beets, apples and lentils for a vegetarian salad, peas and corn,
From a local organic grain farm and baked by my mom: homemade bread (made of local grains - rye, spelt, wheat, flax), with local butter,
From my sister's partners urban farm (an very innovative project called the Landless Farmers Collective): potatoes, herbs, kale, and homemade apple cider from wildcrafted apples,
From another nearby farm: for the carnivores a free-range turkey,
For dessert of course there were homemade local apple and pumpkin pies, with whole wheat crusts, and a taste of maple syrup from urban tapping of 10 downtown maple trees,
and I brought along herbal tea from our garden. Mmmmm...

More on the Landless Farmers Collective - they are a group of 4 people who had been farming with an organic CSA just outside of the city. They decided to do an urban farm (market garden and CSA) this season, and be able to deliver the produce by bicycle, trailer and cargo bicycle. They approached the city about using a large parcel of downtown land, just infront of the Pan Am Centre and near a highschool. They received approval to till up the land, and set up about 1/2 an acre of raised beds in permaculture style. The garden is gorgeous, with curves and spirals, and not many straight-lined rows to be seen. The group received several grants to help with capital costs (trailers, storage bins, tools), including money from the city, province and also Heifer International. Not a small feat, to be planning a huge garden, marketing your sales, working with volunteers and the community, and also applying for grant money! That's another reason why a collective of four people works well, using each of their strengths in different ways to get the various aspects of the project done. The Landless Farmers Collective also values education, and worked with teachers at the highschool to bring the students out of the classroom and into the garden throughout the season. The week I was in Winnipeg, the group had their last session with the students, showing them the final harvest, talking about winter gardening, demonstrating hands-on seed saving, and reiterating the problems in our global food system, the importance of local food security (and what we can do about it locally). A very inspiring project!

First spring salad from the coldframe

Enjoyed our first harvest of fresh greens (spinach, arugula, dandelion, various salad varieties, chives, oregano, cilantro) from the coldframe tunnel. What a treat - celebrated with a bottle of 100-mile Niagara wine and homebaked wood-fired oatmeal bread! We also dropped off a bag of freshly harvested greens to friends around the corner who have been eating a strictly 100-mile diet for the past year, with one month left to go. We've been impressed by how they've managed to do this, including grains, flour, protein sources, etc. We will be joining the 100 mile challenge this summer (100 people for 100 days, eating 100 mile diet) and hope to glean some ideas from these friends on where to source out the best in local varieties.

Farmhouse Meal

Speaking of delectable, even gourmet local foods prepared in simple ways in the home kitchen (see previous post on fermented foods), we felt so lucky to consider our meals of the day. We eat many local grown or prepared foods including many from our own garden, and try hard to eat in season as much as we can. Often we can start to take this for granted, but the day's meals seemed especially wonderful in the context of the earlier fermentation workshop. Here is what we had - no photos were taken as we were simply enjoying the foods as a family.

Brunch with our friend who dropped in from out of town:
- buckwheat flapjacks made with local organic flour (buckwheat and whole wheat) and local free range eggs from our backyard hens
- served with local maple syrup, homemade organic yogurt and strawberry/peach sauce made from organic fruit we harvested and preserved this past summer
- maple glazed tempeh made with locally produced tempeh (produced in a small-scale production facility on the next street over from our house), made with local maple syrup, and cayenne, garlic and herbs from our garden
- herbal tea from our own herb garden
- our baby Maya, who's just started solid foods, ate local pure applesauce we'd canned in the fall for her (made from wild harvested apples, and apples from our own property)

Dinner as a family consisted of this:
- creamy roasted carrot soup with local organic carrots, herbs from our garden
- served with a small dollop of organic yogurt and fresh rosemary (from our greenhouse)
- herbed biscuits made with local organic flour, served with organic goat chevre
- assortment of ferments - stuffed local wild grape leaves and dilly beans made by one friend; the best sauerkraut I've ever had, prepared by another friend; sour cherry wine made by another friend who led a winemaking workshop here last year
- as we were finishing up dinner, the same winemaking friend made a surprise visit with another large carboy of freshly racked local homemade rhubarb wine he wanted to share with us!
- fresh greens are sprouting in the greenhouse and soon we'll harvest our first salad of 2009

We felt well nourished, and so blessed by our incredible array of talented friends who are making such bold and wonderful forrays into local foods!