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.