AND LET'S DITCH THE TERM "ORGANIC" TOO

Last time I posted I was chasing after the use and abuse of the words artisanal and rustic. I proposed that we ditch them, at least for awhile, until we can give them meaning and substance again…

The next word on my hit list, even more abused and distressing, is of course “organic”. Do we really want to keep on with this hopeless label? I remember when the first mindful grocery opened in my hometown of Ottawa, an “organic” shop in the Market area, selling bulk this and that and vegetables and fruit fresh and dried and frozen, grown without pesticides or other chemicals. It was entirely new as an idea for a food shop. I’d been lucky: most of what I’d eaten growing up had come from my mother’s vegetable garden, or from local farmers, and bore little resemblance to the offerings in the grocery stores, for sure.

But why is it called “organic?” I remember asking the woman who owned the store. Well we want to convey that it’s “naturally grown or naturally produced food” she said. You know, like the magazine “Organic Gardening”.

Yes, I knew the mag, for my mother had a subscription. Sometime later she also took out a subscription to Harrowsmith, then a small Canadian-published magazine.

I don’t think the words “sustainable agriculture” were in the air at all then. We knew about pesticides because of Rachel Carson’s work… but still, they weren’t scary to most people. Soon after the opening of the store I had a chance to work with farmers and people in small rural communities in the Ottawa area. I met a woman who was very engaged in local political issues. She and her husband farmed, and she also had a huge vegetable garden. It’s so great she told me, I have no weeds in my garden. The pesticides my husband puts on the fields also go into the garden before I transplant my starts in the spring. It’s so clean and weed-free.

Yikes! I thought, but tried not to show any appalled reaction to her. I did ask her if she wasn’t concerned at all about the pesticides, and no, she wasn’t. It’s such a small amount, she said. And the food is washed and cooked…

There are probably still many farm gardens which produce huge amounts of food for families thanks to chemical fertilizers and the application of herbicides to keep weeds down. For sure people need to be fed.

But it occurs to me that perhaps we’d have less wasted food if it tasted better and if we paid a little more for it. Wouldn’t we be more mindful as we shopped? And more mindful about figuring out how to use leftovers?

So if when you see the word ‘organic” you try substituting the word “sustainable”…see how it feels. Of course we all have different views about what sustainable means. But it’s less about “purity” (not achievable and frankly an elitist idea don’t you think?) and more about process and an acknowledgemnt that we’re all in this together.

We need to figure out food systems that give us all access to food that tastes good and has nutritional value, and in a way that enables us to go on farming and feeding humanity. That means paying more for food, paying attention to food and how it’s grown and produced, and most of all, that means having respect for the people who do all the work of directly feeding people every day, all over the world: the farmers, the people who transport and process agricultural production, and those who sell it, as well as the cooks who get it onto the table. 

SUMMER RISKS AND SUMMER PLEASURES

Here we are suddenly in mid-August, with the first corn at the farmers' markets and the crabapples on the big tree in the front yard now pink-red and glowing like decorations on a Christmas tree.  I'm not ready for summer to be over, but already the re-entry to university classes is less than a month away.  And there's a little sad news: The tomato plants in the back yard are suffering from a blight that I'm told is related to potato blight.  It's carried by spores, they say, that float up from the ground.  The result is that although there's fruit, the leaves and branches are gradually turning brown and dead, so the plants are weaker and also very pathetic looking.   There's none of the lush green curtain of growing plants that is the usual mid-August view out the back door.  And by September I expect there will be no more tomatoes, for the plants have stopped growing and flowering.  Such a shame, for those late season tomatoes are always such a treat. 

How do farmers cope with this kind of unpredictability, with disease and drought and loss? How not to be anxious all the time if your livelihood depends on fickle weather and the interplay of bugs and disease?  Those of us who are not completely dependent on our gardens for our food and our survival, and who have a more urban-style expectation that we can control outcomes, are so remote from the realities of nature's cruel edge.  Maybe that's why we flinch at paying full price for the fruits of farmers' labours: because we're deluded and ignorant.  And let's face it, we don't really want to know how hard life is for other people.  Their health is our health, but we don't usually think of things that way.  We want to think of ourselves only, and to assume everyone else is fine...

Today I went to the weekly Saturday market at the Brickworks, here in Toronto.  It's an attractive place, with lots of farmer vendors and beautiful produce, especially at this time of year. As always there were people there with their dogs, many of them large, and an overwhelming number of them not well behaved.  There's something a little sick about dogs sticking their noses into food that's on display, drooling over it or sniffing it or whatever they do, and exploring the samples of elk, for example, set out on a table for customers.  Maybe I'm being too picky?  It's not the dogs that are the problem, it's the owners who don't take responsibility.  Now I'm sounding really grouchy!

My friend Dina tells me that at the large organic market in the Laurentians there's a big sign "interdit aux chiens".  What a good idea!

On another topic, a more inviting one, I was at Potz's store yesterday, "4-Life" in Kensington Market.  He carries local produce, labelled with the name of the farmer who grows it, as well as eggs and butter etc, and some frozen organic meat too, and is a great guy, always open to new ideas and people.  He had some long flat beans for sale that looked like sword beans, but weren't.  They were locally grown by a guy named Trevor, I think, who is also a chef.  Potz gave me a few and told me to grill them or cook them in a hot skillet.  

Later in the day some friends dropped by for a drink, so I heated a little olive oil in the cast-iron skillet and put the beans in, whole, pressing on them to scorch them a little on each side, a matter of several minutes.  A little fresh garlic from the garden, coarsely chopped, then went into the oil briefly.  I cut the beans crosswise into 1/2-inch slices, added the garlic, then sprinkled Malden salt on top.  They were great little tender green mouthfuls, ideal with the cold Kronenberg or white wine people were sipping.  If I find out the name of the beans, I'll add it into this post.  Meantime, keep an eye out for them.  Oiled and grilled they'd be great too.

While I was in Umbria I picked a large hatful (having brought no bag with me) of wild blackberries.  The last time I picked blackberries was ages ago, on Vancouver Island and on SaltSpring, when the kids were very small and I'd taken them to visit my then 103-year-old grandmother.  Blackberries are always a treat that you have to fight for a little, for the brambles scratch and leave you marked for a week or so.  (My ankles are still scarred from last week.)  

It's all worth it when you eat them fresh, popping them into your mouth one by one, or bake with them, for example as I did in Umbria:  I rolled out a rather butter-rich pastry (made with 00 Italian flour and one egg), put it on a baking sheet and sprinkled on chopped walnuts, then piled on a mound of blackberries.  The pastry was very soft.  I folded it up over the mounded berries leaving only a smallish opening at the top of the pile.  It baked for about half an hour at 400 and then needed another half hour to cool and settle into firmness.  

The stars were bright and the moon up as we cut into the crostata, another summer pleasure to savour in the moment, and to look back on with gratitude.

HEALTHY LOCAL AGRICULTURE MATTERS

It's a rainy Saturday morning, quiet, with only the sound of drips onto window ledges and spattering raindrops on leaves, and then that sprinkling lighter sound of fine rain as it hits the ground.  Out the glass doors at the back, open to let in the slightly chilly moist air, there's a wall of green.  It's the ivy on the garage, lushly in summer leaf, a green wall at the back of our compact garden.  I have the impression that if I had different ears to hear with, I'd also catch the slurping sounds of the growing tomato and pepper and cucumber plants out there, as well as the herbs, sucking up this fresh rain.  

The problem with a rainy Saturday morning is that it does the outdoor farmers' markets no good.  There are two major ones in central Toronto, at Brickworks and at Wychwood, both of them relatively new (in the past five years).  At Brickworks there's a huge roof over everyone, so the rain is a problem "only" because it is apt to discourage shoppers from turning up.  But at Wychwood vendors must rely on tents and canopies, and shoppers are stuck walking in the rain., so it's uncomfortable as well as discouraging.  Those who usually go by bicycle, like me, will most likely stay home, as I am doing today, writing this blog rather than pedalling through the lovely empty early morning streets.

The largest farmers' market here, long-established, is downtown, at St Lawrence Market, in the "north building".  The south building has a permanent market of fishmongers and cheese merchants and butchers, etc etc (open Tuesday to Saturday).  The north market is only on Saturdays, and is packed with vendors selling meat and cheese and vegetables and fruit, and bread and sweet baking, as well as some prepared foods.  There's no hard rule about local only, as there is at the outdoor markets, nor any requirement that foods on sale be organic or sustainably grown, though as consumers' awareness of those issues and labels grows, who knows?

The St Lawrence Farmers' Market is there year-round.  So is the Wychwood Market (it moves indoors in cold weather, into a beautiful galleria space in the refurbished TTC barns).  And so too is the Thursday market at Dufferin Grove, to the west of downtown.  So people who go to those markets can and do develop the habit of going each week ... and it is habit that can sustain a market.  In fact without it, the markets have to rely each week on consumers knowing about a particular market and then deciding to go.  Habit and necessity are much more reliable sustainers of farmers' markets than last-minute whim.

And why am I going on and on musing about this, as the rain intensifies outside?  Well once you've seen how hard farmers work, especially farmers doing family-farm-scale sustainable agriculture, the fact that that hard work is not enough, that they also have to cope with the vagaries of consumer behaviour at fledgling farmers' markets, makes you anxious for them, and in fact anxious for us all.

How can we make the essential-to-life work of farming a rewarding and rewarded part of our community?  How to keep this thing called sustainable local agriculture on track?

The local markets are one element.  And we need to get in the habit of relying on the markets.  But relying in what way?

In North America we are generally rushed and have the habit of doing "one-stop shopping", getting it all over with at one large comprehensive grocery store.  Most of us don't have the luxury of a European-style set of small specialty shops: the butcher, the fish monger, the cheese-seller, all within easy walking or driving distance.  The large grocery store is the substitute for that.  And so for us "reliance" on a market means we feel confident that we will find all the food we need to shop for all at the one location.

Very few of the farmers' markets can provide that.  There is meat, and vegetables, and fruit, but no dairy apart from a little cheese.  The only exception is the St Lawrence Farmers' market in the north building.  And what buyers can't find there they can get in the permanent south building market.  So the larger better established markets will, I hope, continue to function reasonably well for farmers and for consumers, but the very small ones will probably fade away, as the cost of bringing in food for an uncertain result becomes too expensive and discouraging an equation.  

Getting locally-grown and -produced food into grocery stores is the other important piece of the puzzle.  (I'm leaving aside for the moment the CSA (community-supported agricuture) movement, which is hugely important way of ensuring reliable markets for farmers; and also the resurgence of urban gardening (urban farming is the new buzzword)).  

It is happening.  Independent grocery stores like wonderful Fiesta Farms here in Toronto, are developing long-term relationships with farmers and stocking their shelves, especially in the produce section, with locally and sustainably grown food.  Hurrah!

All this is not just about Toronto, or other cities in North America.  Most industrialising countries face the conflicting pressures of on the one hand feeding people affordably in the short term (the most food at the cheapest price), and on the other protecting local food resources and local agriculture for the long-term future (emphasis on local and sustainable).

 

So the question remains:  How do we keep the local food scene vibrant?  How do we discourage the importing of foods that are displacing the locally grown versions ?  (Garlic from China, which floods the market in Thailand and Vietnam as well as in North America, undercutting the better-quality locally grown garlic, is the quickest example, but there are many others.)  This is the real "health issue"...

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It's still raining.  There was a heavy downpour and now we are back to drizzle.  I went out for several hours (a few paragraphs ago) to have dim sum with my friend Dina.  We found ourselves eating three-layer pork and other rich and hearty fare, as we sat in our sweaters - on June 20!  Bring on the hot weather, say I!!

And once it comes, the summer heat, I promise to be a little more light-hearted here.  Something about the chilly damp brought on this serious questing tone today.  Hope you stick with me nonetheless.

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A final note, that brings me back to the garden and the rain:  The garlic and shallots that are planted in odd spots around the edge of the garden have strong aromatic leaves that I harvest in handfuls, then chop and stir-fry.  Now their lovely curling scapes have formed, and those too I snap off, chop and stir-fry.  Other green candidates in the garden include arugula and tat soi. The fresh gathered greens are all part of a mid-morning addiction that starts with leftover rice put into in my favorite bowl of the moment and then set aside.  Into a hot wok goes olive oil, then a little mustard seed until it pops, then a fresh egg, which is fried and flipped over before being lifted out onto the rice.  The wok goes back on the heat and the chopped gathered green stuff goes in to get a quick hard dose of heat.  I turn it out onto the egg and rice, then squeeze on some lime juice and drizzle on some nam pla prik (fish sauce with hot chiles chopped into it).  Sometimes some torn fresh herbs (shiso, parsely, arugula...whatever!) go on top.  There's nothing better!

I have a feeling I may have written about this earlier.  Sorry if I'm repeating myself!