community shared agriculture
TRANSCRIPT
ICELAND
Ignatius Farm: CSA1. Leased by the Jesuits who focus on connection with nature
for spirituality and focused on a variety of nature trails and conservation projects
2. Community Shared Agriculture: People buy shares of harvest
3. Also hosts a variety of young farmers trying to start their own farms (Funded by Farmstart.ca)
4. Uses a holistic “Biodynamic” Approach to growing food
5. Under the CRAFT (The Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training in Ontario) program
a. Aims to train new interns to become organic farmers
b. Holds over a dozen Farms, 100 interns
c. Holds weekly workshops and “CRAFT Days”
Ontario: Greenbelt
http://www.ourgreenbelt.ca/our-greenbelt/about-ontario-greenbelt
Ontario Greenbelt• 1.8 million acres (728,000 hectares)
wraps around the Golden Horseshoe
• Area of permanently protected green space, farmland, vibrant communities, forests, wetlands, and watersheds.
• Includes Niagra Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine, Rouge Park, and designated agricultural land.
• Land cannot be taken out of the Greenbelt or replaced
Plowing: Mad Max Tractor
Old Tabacco tractor with reverse driving: Driven with legs
Greenhouse: Our Babies
Full of seedlings, compost, and fucking wasps
Inside the Wasp Infested Greenhouse
Had combustion heating system: Nights were very cold
Transplanting
On a cart mounted on bike wheels, that took five hours to repair
Dropping
Syncronized planters with droppers for speed
The Horrors of Pests
Rowcovers to prevent flea beetles from getting to vegetables
Someone Get Doogie Housier on this Starship Troopers shit
What happens when you plant potatoes too close to one another
Irrigation
Calcium rich groundwater clogged emitters of Drip lines
Dry, Dry Summers
Cucumbers suffering from nutrient deficiencies: Used compost tea
Harvest Day: Transporting
Transport, prewashing, and weighing
Harvest Day: Put ‘em on Ice
Vegetables cooled by freezing ice in tubs from another freezer to cut costs
Harvest Day: CSA Pick Up
After being weighed out, proportions for each member was assigned based on share size; wet blankets used to keep vegetables moist
Interlude: Guelph Culture<-- 1. Other interns forced me to
watch this to indoctrinate me into Ontario Culture
2. Hippies, Anarchists, Oh my!
3. Lots of homelessnessa. Guelph is one of the few cities
that offers them help
b. Youth centre closed down during my stay there, forcing a hundred kids on the street
Community: Music Of Guelph
Best Artist Of the Year:
Best LabelEver:
Community: Coffee + Beer
Community: Hillside Festival
Toronto-Terrana (Known to Western Canadians as #%*#$&%)
Hundreds of Community Gardens; Ex: Near Mental Hospital
Food Assistance in Toronto: Food Share
http://www.foodshare.net/
- Healthy food for community centres and people of lower income.
- Inside of a closed down middle school that acts as a community centre
A Toronto’s Farmer’s Market
Ontario Food Terminal• Supplies 50% of Toronto’s daily food, shipped
to different restaurants, wholesalers, ect.• Mostly conventional farmers appear at the
farmer’s markets, mostly out of necessity– Mostly supermarket owners shop in these stalls– To sell in bulk
• All of the workers at the OFT are recent migrants
• The follies of the “Made in Canada” Label:
no one enforces it, could only be processed
in Canada instead of grown
OFT: Industrial and small conventional Farmer’s Market
Every farmer there told us not to go into farming
OTF: The Shipping News
For specific warehouses rented by various companies
OTF: Storage = Towers of temperature controlled food
Wow, we organic farmers live in an insulated world