Reply To: Food Ecology & Sustainability
Hi Nancy,
I too have a small scale farm…I haven’t lived on the mainland in several years, but I do remember community food initiatives through meals on wheels in Langley/Aldergrove area.
I use our road side stand, our annual tomato/pepper plant sale and seed sales to generate income for our farm, and 15% of our sales is donated to Lunch Meals for Kids via a community food program in Nanaimo. Since 3 out of 5 kids in city of Nanaimo don’t have enough to eat daily, I believe this is my best way to help local food security…not just producing food, but getting funding to the folks that can get food to those who need it today.
Also, there’s a group of us that do a community bake every Saturday. Our neighbours (a country block away) built an outdoor wood fired oven that is very large, and can fit up to 14 loaves at once, and we bring our sourdoughs and enjoy getting together and making/sharing foods.
We usually have a big meal together, and share plants, veggies etc. Last weekend I brought 20lbs of turnips, and left with 10lbs of crabapples which I don’t grow, flower seeds and some veggie seeds.
We food share with each other once a week, bake our weekly bread, and have a richer sense of community. The group is quite diverse, young and old, many different religious background and cultural backgrounds, and we get to sample many different foods. It’s truly a blessing to live in a place we can do this!!
Communitybaking.ca is the website if anyone is interested:). I’d love to see more community ovens pop up around…everywhere!