Review: The Town That Food Saved

The Town that Food Saved (Rodale, $25) is among the most engaging, thoughtful, and manure-stained-honest appraisals of local agriculture and edibles since Michael Pollan rocketed to cult fame with a seven-word manifesto about plants.

The town in question is an otherwise unremarkable little dogpath called Hardwick, Vermont, which popped up on the national foodie scope a few years back after author Ben Hewitt wrote a magazine piece about its happy convergence of iconoclastic producers, food-related non-profits, cafes, doers, and dreamers. The New York Times followed suit, as did assorted other buzz-makers.

Why the fuss? It turns out that Hardwick hosts a wide range of innovative agricultural businesses and thinktanks, a semi-cohesive spontaneous community of “agrepreneurs.” The mix includes salt-of-the-earth farmers, publicity-hungry eNGO executive directors, and values-driven business people who are accomplishing a great deal with minimal fuss. While many small-town Americans still get groceries from Buy N’ Large, Hardwick has cooked up an almost-sustainable honest-to-god local food system of CSAs, co-ops, value-added geniuses, and everything in between.

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When Times Are Hard, Eat Your Yard!

I recently spent a few days in Seattle–one of my favorite American cities–and was amazed to discover how many homeowners have planted victory gardens in their front yards. In much of America, the front yard is the place for a few roses, maybe a rhodo or two. But in Seattle, especially the Ballard neighborhood where we stayed, “curb appeal” evidently means raspberries, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and even the odd chicken or two.
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I’m “For Bowen.” (But Not Your Bowen.)

A petition is presently circulating through my community; it opposes a proposed development on the grounds that it is “far too big for our island.” The Cape Roger Curtis Neighborhood Plan has its shortcomings, sure, but also its strengths—including space set aside for a seniors care facility, affordable housing, community food gardens and composting, an outdoor amphitheater, bike paths, $7 million dollars worth of amenities, and hundreds of acres of protected parkland. More than 75 percent of the development is within a five minute walk of its center crossroads, where a bus stop, general store, or car co-op lot could potentially be located.

The plan embodies a number of smart-growth principles, and in my mind it is a better choice than the alternative—no parkland, just a sprawling subdivision of 58 10-acre lots, each likely crowned with a single McMansion. Though the opponents of the plan insist that the land owners do not have the legal authority to build out that sprawl nightmare, the truth is, they do. And they might end up doing just that if the community says thumbs-down to the proposal currently on the table.

Those behind the “no” petition are running a well-organized campaign that includes phone tree work. So far more than 650 people have endorsed the document; in doing so they affirm that they are “For Bowen.” That doesn’t sit right with me, so I wrote this letter to the local paper this week.

If you call me on the phone and ask me if I am “for Bowen,” here’s what I’ll tell you.

Grow Your Own Bread!

Making homemade bread has taken on a whole new meaning.

Brock McLeod and Heather Walker will teach you how to start your own wheat field. Even if you live in the heart of the city.

“We want to see a reintroduction of people growing grains for themselves in their backyards,” says McLeod who, together with Walker, has created Island Grains, a new participatory farming project on Vancouver Island.

“If we can start growing wheat locally, if there is enough demand for it, well, that could really help revise the food system.”

The idea is simple: Hand over $65, and McLeod and Walker will lease you a 200-square-foot slice of Makaria Farm, their 10-acre organic spread near the town of Duncan, in the fertile Cowichan Valley. They’ll also give you a grain seed of your choice, seminars with guest experts, and basic infrastructure support, including irrigation and tools. (”Yes, we have a scythe!” notes the website.)

You’ll attend a few guest-expert seminars, plant your crop, then show up for at least three subsequent days — two or more to tend (weed) your plot, and one to harvest and thresh, using a low-tech plywood threshing box and a standard household fan to separate the wheat from the chaff. You’ll leave the program, and your plot, with your own grains — which you can mill into flour as needed at home in your blender or food processor.

That includes your own back yard, which McLeod says offers more potential than you might imagine. Quoting tables provided in Gene Logsdon’s book, Small Scale Grain Raising, McLeod explains that 1,100 square feet — a 10 foot by 109 foot plantation — could produce about 60 pounds of wheat.

“You can probably get about two loaves of bread per pound,” he says, “so that would be up to 120 loaves of bread per harvest.”

That’s two loaves per week for a year. Out of what might presently be a lawn.

“It is a brilliant idea,” says Dan Jason, a longtime food activist and owner of Salt Spring Seeds, who will be supplying the project with red fife wheat, barley and other grain varieties. “It is neat way to introduce people to the whole concept of grain-raising without a lot of land.”

The area’s regional agrologist agrees that small-scale grains make a lot of sense. “It sounds like a really good idea, especially for people to get together and learn from each other,” says Wayne Haddow, who works for the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

“We have a lot of under-utilized land in smaller lots on Vancouver Island, and grains do store very well,” Haddow adds. “The opportunity is there.”

McLeod and Walker certainly hope so, too. After growing a successful trial crop of red fife and barley last summer — they threshed it by stuffing a pillowcase and hitting it with a shoe — they’re opening their gates to 50 would-be micro-farmers and advisors in the coming season. (”We’re not the experts,” McLeod stresses, “but we’re bringing in the experts.”)

After launching their website on Boxing Day, the couple sold out all 50 of this season’s memberships before the end of January. They are maintaining a wait list.

The couple have come a long way in just a few years.

Two years ago, McLeod, 29, and Walker, 28, were living in a rented Victoria condo and working nice, stable — albeit boring — civil service jobs. Life was good: They ate out a fair bit, enjoyed the city. “But we weren’t really happy,” recalls McLeod.

So one day McLeod said the words that many of us say when we dream of a better, simpler life. “Let’s get a farm.”

The couple took out a mortgage, and in June 2007 bought Makaria. As they figured out what worked and what didn’t, McLeod came across Logsdon’s book.

It proved an epiphany.

“I’d always imagined that growing grains requires acres and acres of prairie just to make it worth your while,” says McLeod. “But Logsdon shows that just 1/40th of an acre — the amount of space taken up by a single-car garage, is enough space to grow the wheat you need to enjoy a loaf of bread every week for a year.”

They cooked up the idea for Island Grains after listening to the Deconstructing Dinner podcast hosted in part by The Tyee. That program documented the Creston Grain CSA Pilot Project, a community supported agriculture program in British Columbia’s southern interior region that last year attracted international attention.

“We figured, if it is doable, and there’s this much interest,” says McLeod, who grew up on an organic farm, “then we would like to do it here and invite other people to join us.”

Their timing proved perfect. Don Jason reports that his customers have been asking for grain seeds in increasing numbers. “Since about October I have been getting so many orders for barley and wheat and spelt; it is phenomenal, every second order is asking for grain.”

“If you do something inspiring,” says Matt Lowe, cofounder of the Creston Grain CSA project, “it creates a chain reaction. I’m glad to hear that what is happening on the island is inspired by what we are doing.”

Originally published in The Tyee on February 11, 2009.

You’ll also have enough know-how to start your own micro-farm the following season anywhere you have soil and sun.

An Edible Bounty

Thank the gorgeous weather, credit the enthusiasm of this community, but the Second Annual Bowfeast Farmer’s Market was a smash success. Here are a few pics — click on any to go to the Flickr stream where you’ll find more. Side note: If you have some images of the event of your own, please tag them with “bowfeast08.”

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Bowfeast Your Heart Out

There’s a lot of culinary chatter around the house these days, most of it coming from the direction of my wife, Elle — a kind of Tasmanian-Devil whirlwind of organizational energy.

Here, a few choice updates from the land of the carbon-reduced diet:

• Elle is in the process of turning OneDayBowen –the grassroots green group that got its start on our couch, as documented in ALMOST GREEN –into a local non-profit organization. The new group will dedicate itself to on-the-ground solutions to global challenges in areas such as energy and food. Her first project out of the gate is Bowfeast, a single-day celebration of local eating . On Saturday August 16, you’ll find her at the Bowfeast Farmer’s Market in the cove, steps from the ferry dock here on the island. We’ve only got a dozen or so farmers here on this island; with thin soils and plenty of hungry deer, it’s a challenging place to grow food, for sure. But you can meet seven of those farmers in one place, plus microfarmers selling fruit and veg picked that morning from their own food gardens. A good time
• Bowfeast isn’t just the farmer’s market, though. It’s all about encouraging people to eat as locally as possible for the day, and to share the summer harvest with friends. We’ll be hosting a Bowfeast dinner for 17 in the garden at our place that night. Plus, if we host guests in the Eco-Shed that night, they’d be welcome to join us. A special deep-green Bowen evening, indeed
• Elle and I have joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture ) venture just getting started here on the island. This project is still very much early days, but has huge potential here.
• Finally, I got my hunting license yesterday. Some of you may have read some of my past work [note: link downloads a .pdf file] on this subject. Executive summary: I’d kill for some local venison. The season starts September 1; I’ve been practicing with my longbow and can still split an apple at 200 yards. Well, almost… Stay tuned.