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Nicholas23 460 days ago
Ward Teulon, my farmer tutor, is not just growing food for himself, he's growing food for a living. Like most farmers, he needs to sell what his farms produce. One of the way he does that is by selling vegetables at farmers markets. So last weekend I went along to the West End farmers market in Vancouver to find out how that's done. It meant getting up while the rest of the city was still asleep. It meant constantly washing and wetting and cooling food so it would look perfectly fresh when it was put on display. It meant lifting and carrying not just trays of food, but tables and a marquee, and all kinds of paraphernalia like pens and sticky tape and rolls of clear plastic bags. It meant setting up that marquee and those tables and displaying the food in the most eye-catching way possible. It meant being alert and ready when the opening bell rang at nine with information about what the food was, and how it was grown. And it meant a day full of unexpected pleasure. There was ...
Nicholas23 474 days ago
To say this summer has been one of extremes is an understatement. First there was "Junuary" when we thought another Ice Age had come. Then we were fretting about fire hazards because of a lack of rain. Last week finally brought that rain -- torrents of it. Now it's sunny again. Through it all plants have continued to grow -- most of the time. Some will succumb to too much rain or cold or get scorched in a sudden heat wave. But mainly they carried on. And so did the farmers who grew them. I say this because I, too, have carried on in such weather. Enough to get a taste of what working outdoors in pelting rain one day and baking heat the next, is like. Not enough to complain about it. How dare I? But enough to gain more than an intellectual appreciation -- if I ever thought of them at all -- of what the people who put food on our tables go through to do it. When we see farm workers bent over like bows in fields by the side of the highway, how much thought do we give ...
Nicholas23 488 days ago
Actually the garden is in east Vancouver, but its inspiration is English. Edward Moore who created it, learned about growing herbs when he was growing up in England. Now he's taken that knowledge and applied it in a similar environment with similar results. See the video. It's not a big garden -- no more than 150 square feet. But try counting all the plants. Impossible. There are too many -- and too many varieties. Pineapple sage, lemon thyme, sweet Cicely, angelica, anise hyssop, and the mints: apple, chocolate, pineapple, spearmint, and, my favourite, orange, which smells uncannily like an orange when you rub its leaves between your fingers. Dozens of others too, all growing straight and proud and headily fragrant on what was a small patch of scrub ground last year and is now a backyard oasis. Moore makes tea from the leaves. That's what makes this farming. He plucks leaves carefully but purposefully from each plant, mixes them up according to his taste of the day, ...
Nicholas23 498 days ago
For the past seven weeks, I've been learning how to make things grow from City Farm Boy Ward Teulon. Ward has a network of 15 backyard farms on the east side of Vancouver where he grows vegetables for sale in city farmers markets. Now you can learn fom him too. On Saturday, Aug. 9, Ward will present a six-hour (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) workshop on the fine art and rough science of urban farming. Included among the topics to be discussed and demonstrated are income expectations, planning a farm, choosing a site, preparing the soil, learning what to grow and how, organic pest management, harvesting, marketing, and the future of urban agriculture. Ward will also take participants on a tour of some of his farms, including one seven floors up in a Yaletown condo. Space is limited, so if you're interested, be sure to register by Aug. 5. For more information, go to www.cityfarmboy.com, e-mail Ward at ward@cityfarmboy.com or phone him at 604-812-7848. Who knows, it could be ...
Nicholas23 510 days ago
You plant a seed, it grows, and providing the bugs stay away and the sun shines, there is a lettuce or spinach plant where there once was naked ground. It is a sight to savour. If that lettuce or spinach is in your own garden and ready to harvest, you pull it and eat it. In one delicious mouthful you can taste pride, pleasure and virtue. But if you're farming commercially as my tutor, Ward Teulon, is, harvesting a vegetable is merely a second beginning. The beginning of a race to keep what is at that point a dying and decaying organism fresh and alive enough to satisfy a buyer's exacting tastes. This involves keeping that organism cool and wet, often against near impossible odds. It means rushing it to a cooler if you're going to store it, or truck, if you're going to move it, transporting it in refrigerated conditions when it does move, and always always always keeping it out of the sun. There is, believe it or not, something called "the wilting point" in agriculture. ...
