Learnin' time

Steve Green could've just introduced me to Lesley and left it there. But he didn't. He awarded Lyndon and myself with a scholarship into the FarmStart workshop, (http://www.farmstart.ca/) run by an organization whose mandate is to help people (like Lyndon and I) who are completely foreign to farming get their foot in the door. They taught us about the challenges of farming, the importance of keeping your pillars and morals intact, recognizing your weaknesses and strengths, the best ways to gain practical experience, working out financials, the importance of marketing, and so much other great stuff. I feel like I really wrapped my head around the immensity of the project I had taken on, and I was more excited than ever to get started. The people I met there were equally as inspiring.

After that, we found ourselves at the Guelph Organic Conference. We attended lectures about worm compost (worms take your garbage and turn it into fertile soil), compost tea (take those worm droppings and propagate the good microbes in it, and pour that on your plants), biodynamic agriculture (having a flow of energy move throughout your farm to minimize external inputs, as far as I've understood it anyway), fruit tree care, greenhouse selection, and honey beekeeping. There's just so much fascinating stuff to learn about.

Steve also lent me Eliot Coleman's "The New Organic Grower", which I promptly started reading as though I were about to write a final exam. I would also highly recommend binge-watching his nostalgia-inducing 90's TV series "Gardening Naturally" if you can find some time.

Can't even start to explain how much I appreciate everything I've learned in the last few months.

Our First Acre

Our First Acre

The Community Garden of Hope

I didn't grow up on a farm. To my advantage, I admit, I grew up in an area where cars share the road with tractors, where little wooden structures line the road boasting modest harvests of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers; a place where corn and bean fields were a common location of mischievous teenage "bush-parties". For a large part of my life, this was the extent of my interaction with the world of agriculture.

I went to school for biology, wanting to learn about different plants and living organisms that decorate this planet. One of the major lessons I learned was the dire state of conservation due to cultural attitudes toward nature. Nature is viewed as a resource, rather than the source of all things. I knew that whatever I decided to do with my life, it would have to involve preserving some part of a traditional life that works in accordance with nature and in close contact with it. The hope is to gain a greater understanding of how the world works.

Over time I came to an overwhelming realization that traditional mass-production agriculture wasn't living up to my expectations.

Food, managed like a commodity on assembly line, necessitated harsh chemicals without question or thought of how this could impact the invisible web of life including the microbes on the plant, the consumers, or the natural environment. This attitude plays out logically from a system that promotes material wealth at all costs. 

We can all do better as citizens of this planet.

We can make conscious choices of what we eat. We can take greater responsibility for finding a trustworthy farmer and supporting them, or by transforming your lawn into a food garden.

Community

Diving Into Windsor's Organic Community

Steve Green, coordinator for the Downtown Windsor Farmer's Market
(http://downtownwindsorfarmersmarket.blogspot.ca/)
Photo Credit: Metro News

I came to the sudden realization that I had been suppressing my desire to be a farmer. When I decided to start communicating to people my dream of becoming a farmer, I was received with concern and sympathy. It seems like there's this cultural attitude depicting farming as the last possible resort lifestyle, as if the people doing it today only do it because they have no other choice. Maybe the amount of work involved is more than any of us are up to in modern Western society. If this is the attitude we perpetuate toward agriculture, we are going to lose touch with the very thing that is responsible for the formation of communities in early human civilization.

Lesley Labbe, operator of Our Farm Organics
(http://ourfarmorganicsontario.com/)
Photo credit: Windsor Star

Shortly following this revelation, I contacted the Downtown Windsor Farmer's Market coordinator, Steve Green. He sat and listened knowingly while I poured my heart out about my concerns for the overuse of pesticides, the loss of small-scale local agriculture, and the calling of a rural life. Immediately, he set to work setting me up with organic farmers in the area, one of which was Lesley Labbe. Although I never got the chance to work on her farm, seeing the lineups at her vegetable stand was all the evidence I needed that there was real demand (even in Windsor!) for locally grown organics. She's since given me invaluable guidance and moral support. It's encouraging for me to see another woman taking charge of such a successful organic farming business.





These people are just one part of a growing community in Windsor-Essex, a community I'm just now becoming aware of. I'm rediscovering this city, and people like these two have given me hope that I don't have to move to the coast to find these attitudes and world views that I find so refreshing.