The Real Dirt on Farmer John - Film and Discussion

Please join us for The Real Dirt on Farmer John by Taggart Siegel

An epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. An outcast in his community, Farmer John bravely stands amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and violence. By melding the traditions of family farming with the power of art and free expression, this powerful story of transformation and renewal heralds a resurrection of farming in America. The film is a haunting odyssey, capturing what it means to be different in rural America.

Thursday November 12, 7pm
5288 Joyce St., Vancouver BC
FREE

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The Renfrew Collingwood Garden Club/Workshop Series meets every second Thursday of the month from 7-8:45. It’s a place for gardeners to meet other gardeners--for workshops, film nights, talking circles, healthy snacks, and building community through food-growing. You are welcome to bring a potluck snack and a friend; we bring the tea and coffee.

Nourishing stories

Click below to watch a ten-minute documentary about the Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program, featuring several of our program participants. We had an amazing time this year, and hope to host the program again in 2010!

Although the 2009 coupon program has drawn to a close, community kitchens will continue throughout the winter and spring.

Space is limited so please contact us to register in advance. Participation is free, but registration priority is for people who live or work in the Renfrew Collingwood Neighbourhood. We also need to know if you have child-minding needs.

Last Wednesday evening of the month: 5-8pm
Middle Sunday of the month: 11-2:30

Next up: Sunday November 15 11-2:30. Traditional vegetarian recipes from India. Our volunteer kitchen leader will be Renfrew Collingwood resident and part-time Neighbourhood House staff member Kiran Virma.

The art and science of home canning

Canning workshop with delicious home-grown grapes.

Canning!

Home canning is both an art and a science. There is lots of potential for innovative flavour combinations and your own personal touch--but there's also potential for food spoilage and contamination.

Don't be intimidated by the risks--preventative measures are built on simple common sense. Specific new knowledge (such as recommended processing times for jars and types of food) is easily accessible in library books or on internet sites.

Beware! Anyone with any level of expertise can claim to be an internet expert. If in doubt, check out your good old local library for materials guaranteed to be rigorously reviewed. Be aware that our knowledge of food safe practices has improved dramatically in the last 25 years or so. Some traditional family recipes (including methods and processing times) are now known to be unsafe.

To be on the safe side, canning recipes from before 1990 should not be used, especially if they do not include instructions for processing. For example, some recipes call for the "open kettle method." In this method, food is prepared, placed in a jar, and stored. The jars aren't heat-processed at all. This method presents a serious food safety hazard.

At the library, choose materials published in the mid 1990s or later. One excellent (though not very colourful) resource is the 1994 USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning. This version contains important updates from earlier editions.

Until about 50 years ago, home canning techniques were common household skills. Today we are witnessing the rising popularity of local food, and a growing awareness that the preservatives in commercially-processed food are harmful to our health. A renewed interest in home canning is part of this movement.



Following up on an earlier post on home canning in a historical context (click the image above to flip back), here are some highlights of our canning season, and some words about safe canning practices.


Barry and Jessica filling jars with grape jelly.

Jars: Regular and wide-mouth Mason-type, threaded, home-canning jars with self-sealing lids are the best choice. These jars and lids are inexpensive and can be found at most hardware and grocery stores. With careful use and handling, the jars may be reused many times. They only require new lids each time.

When jars and lids are used properly, jar seals and vacuums are excellent and jar breakage is rare. Some jar brands you might find at the store include Bernardin, Kerr, and Ball.

Any jar labeled "Mason" will be compatible with the Mason standard metal screw band and lids. These include certain jam and pasta sauce jars. We have had good experiences using Classico pasta jars, but be aware that the Classico company does not recommend using the jars for home canning.

Make sure to inspect jars carefully before use, as seemingly insignificant scratches or chips weaken the integrity of the glass. This can make jars more prone to breaking during heat processing, which can be messy and dangerous.

Prior to use, jars should be washed in hot soapy water and rinsed. Boil for 10 minutes to kill bacteria, and leave jars in the hot water until you fill them up. This prevents cracking that is sometimes caused from pouring hot food into cold jars.


Program participants setting out to pick wild blackberries in Renfrew Ravine.

Rings and lids: It is best to use reusable metal screw bands with one time use lids (pictured here). Don't reuse old lids as they will not form a proper seal and the risk of contamination is high.

When canning, wash lids in hot soapy water, and rinse well. Place lids in HOT, not boiling water, for 5 minutes before using. This helps to melt the wax inside the lids and will form a better seal when heat processing. When sealing jars, try not to touch the underside of the lid to reduce potential bacteria transfer. The rings can be reused and are really only to hold the lids down during heat processing.

Most two-piece lids will seal with a "pop" sound while they’re cooling, as the lid gets sucked down by the vacuum created by the contents cooling and contracting inside the jar. After cooling jars for 12 to 24 hours, remove the screw bands and test seals.

You can press the middle of the lid with a finger or thumb. If the lid springs up when you release your finger, the lid is unsealed. Or try tapping the lid with the bottom of a teaspoon. A clear ringing sound means a good seal. If it makes a dull sound, the lid is not sealed.

Some traditional methods call for sealing jars using paraffin wax. Although paraffin sealing wax is available in the canning section of the grocery store, this method is no longer recommended.


Blackberries reducing. If possible, use stainless steel or glass pots for this process. An aluminum pot like this one may affect flavour.

Pectin: Pectin is a natural product made from fruit. If you feel ambitious, you can even make your own from lemon seeds, apple peels, and cracked plum pits (don't try this with peach pits or apple seeds! They contain harmful substances). Pectin helps your jam or jelly to set. You can make preserves without pectin, but need to add LOTS more sugar and/or cook fruit for longer and/or freeze your preserves. I personally don't think it's worth the trouble, from a nutritional or storage perspective.

There are a lot of amazing-sounding recipes available in books and on the internet. Remember that each pectin brand and product is slightly different and will call for specific quantities of fruit, and a specific order of operations. Most pectin packages come with free recipes inside the box--use these recipes as your basic guide, and modify according to your other recipe ideas. Otherwise you might be disappointed by preserves that are too watery or too stiff.

On a related note, even in the midst of a bumper crop, it's inadvisable to double or triple a recipe. If you've got a glut of fruit, it's better to do two smaller batches than one giant batch, even if you plan to double every ingredient precisely. Bigger batches require longer cooking times, which can result in runny or watery preserves.


Najia crushes a bowl of donated home-grown grapes to make jelly. As a group of local seniors advised us, a good jelly can't be hurried. If you're going to make preserves, make sure you have lots of time. We all tend to take shortcuts when we're in a hurry, and these shortcuts can result in less-than-desirable products.


Is this a frostbitten apple? We have no idea.

Fruit! What kind of fruits can be canned? The answer is...almost any kind of fruit or vegetable can be safely canned--but not all can be safely canned at home.

To avoid disappointing results, avoid under- and overripe fruit. Recipes are designed for perfectly ripe fruit and you might end up with overly stiff or overly watery results. I once combined 50% under ripe and 50% overripe plums and got pretty good results, but hey, maybe I was lucky.

As a general rule, fruits (such as strawberries, plums, and blackberries) have a high acid content and should be cooked, jarred, sealed, and processed in a boiling water bath. Vegetables (such as corn and beans) are low in acid content and therefore have a greater tendency to spoil. They should be processed in a pressure canner, where the higher heat and pressure will kill bacteria more easily. Pressure canning is a whole other topic with specific sets of safety recommendations.

Some fruits have a low acid content--notably figs and Asian pears. You can still make preserves with low acid fruits but you'll want to add lemon juice, heat process as usual, and store the jars in the fridge.

*Note: Pumpkin and squash should not be canned at home. It's not a good idea! Even a pressure cooker won't necessarily kill all the bacteria. The risk of contamination is too high. On the bright side, you can definitely freeze pumpkin pulp for winter pies and pudding galore.

Unsure of the acid content in your fruit of choice? It's best to consult a reliable guide before proceeding.


The tasting committee: at the end of the workshop, participants snacked on fresh blackberry and fig jam with peanut butter and whole wheat toast.


You can improve efficiency and safety of home canning by setting up clean and organized work stations. This is especially helpful when you've got a large group participating.


Unlabeled jar of food poisoning mystery. I found this at the back of my cupboard and it's apparent from the cloudiness and discolouration that it isn't safe to eat. Interestingly, it smelled (suprisingly) fine once opened, which just goes to show you appearances can be deceiving. Make sure to label your preserves jars with dates and contents to avoid lethal mysteries like this one.


"Don't touch the inside of the lid!"


Barry, master of the paring knife.


Dave, slicing apples. Disposable gloves are part of good food safe practices, however, many people feel a sense of false security while wearing gloves. They are only effective against contamination if changed regularly, which many people forget to do. Frequent, proper hand washing throughout food preparation is more effective than improper use of disposable gloves.

The fruit used in our canning workshops is locally-grown and often organic. It is donated by local residents through the Grow-a-Row Share-a-Row program, or donated via the Vancouver Fruit Tree Project. Blackberries are picked by volunteers in one or more excursions to the beautiful Renfrew Ravine.

This coming week, Vancouver Fruit Tree Project will be hosting a celebration of their amazing work. Please see the invitation here.


Other canning resources.

Fresh Choice Kitchens is the Community Kitchen program of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. Earlier this year, they hosted an inspiring group of local leaders in a "train-the-trainer" workshop on safe canning practices. Tara Moreau of SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) reflected on this experience on the SPEC blog. You can read her thoughts here.

The USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning: here.

The National Centre for Food Preservation: here.

Pick Your Own.Org (slightly disorganized but full of recipes and helpful advice): here.

Buggy about bugs?

Skewered silkworm pupae, a popular street snack in Beijing.

Edible Insects.

"There are so many good and tasty reasons to eat insects that the 20-per-cent minority of Earthlings who don’t practice entomophagy – insect eating – should listen up.

Ants, termites, locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, caterpillars and moths are among some 2000 species of insects enjoyed as snacks and seasonal delicacies by most people in the world, especially those to the South and East who remain closely connected to their aboriginal and folk food heritages."

Read the rest of Wayne Roberts' fascinating foray into the world of edible insects--nutritionally dense, low in cholesterol, and shunned as food by about 20% of the world's population.

"Food safety authorities may be the fly in the ointment, since they’re the ones who insisted on working the bugs out of Western food preparation. They rate insect “infestation” a greater danger than antibiotic “infestation” in cooped-up fish, chicken and cows, or pesticide “infestation” in fruits and veggies. But even our food police permit some bugs to get into our soup. The US Food and Drug Administration allows, for example, up to 75 pieces of insects in 55 millilitres of hot chocolate and up to 60 aphids in a portion of frozen broccoli."

Hmmm.....

Creating a Pollinator's Paradise

Parasitic mites cluster around a female mason bee cocoon.

According to the Canadian Wildlife Federation, approximately one-third of all human food is prepared from plants which depend on animal pollination. Of all animal pollinators, bees do the large majority of the work.

Most Canadians are familiar with honeybees and bumblebees, but in fact, there are about 800 types of bees in Canada alone. Some live in large colonies, others are solitary or live in small groups. Some build hives in high places, others dig small burrows underground, or nest in hollow twigs.

In recent years, scientists have noticed a marked decline in bee populations. Many farmers in Canada even rent travelling beehives to help pollinate their crops because there aren't enough wild bees around to guarantee a good harvest. There are many theories about why bees are slowly vanishing--some theories include climate change stress, increased pesticide use, widespread monocrop food growing practices (less pollen diversity leads to undernourished and unhealthy bees), and fragmentation and degradation of natural habitats.

Declining bee populations will have a major impact on garden plants, wilderness areas, and food crops. To address these issues, and to raise awareness of the importance of bees to our food and ecosystems, Environmental Youth Alliance has partnered with around 150 volunteer "bee stewards" in the Vancouver area. These volunteers are helping to create bee-friendly habitats in our urban environment. Through the Pollinator's Paradise project, voluteers can take simple steps to support a healthy bee population in the city, such as "beescaping" and monitoring bee activity.

The focus of the Pollinator's Paradise project is the blue orchard mason bee. They are non-aggressive (they don't sting), native to the area, multiply easily, and are extremely effective pollinators (they love apple, cherry, and pear trees). Mason bee stewards throughout the city care for bee "houses," "high rises," or massive "superlodges." They plant flowers and trees preferred by bees ("beescaping"), and reporting on bee activities each month.

At the Food Security Institute, we host two small mason bee houses on the Rooftop Garden, and one "highrise" at the Collingwood Community Garden. On the Rooftop Garden, volunteers planted a border of edible and bee friendly flowers. These included: borage, coneflower, three types of sunflower, marigolds, lavender, calendula, and nasturtiums. These flowers, along with the many flowering fruit and vegetable plants, attracted several different types of bees throughout the spring and summer. Planting flowers in a variety of shapes and colours helps invite an assortment of pollinators as well. We noticed bumblebees preferred borage flowers:


Borage

Many tiny bees flocked to these carrot flowers. Perhaps their small size gives them better access to pollen in the tiny flowerheads:


Flowering carrots

For more information, or to volunteer as a bee steward, please visit The Pollinator's Paradise website.

Here are some other photo highlights of our bee activities.


Two types of bee on an onion flower.


Allium flowers were surprisingly popular with the bees.


Bees can't see the colour red, so yellow, blue, and purple flowers are good beescaping choices.


Catnip flowers. We also noticed that honeybees crowded around the spicy purple oregano flowers.


In late fall, mason bee houses should be opened up, cocoons collected, and trays cleaned. We discovered that leafcutter bees had also moved in! They live in similar places as mason bees, and line their homes with bits of leaf as you can see.


Mason bees are named after their ability to build out of clay and dirt. Here you can see bee-built mud plugs. The small black specks are bee feces.


Here's a somewhat unusual sight. A female mason bee generally prefers long, narrow holes to make cocoons. Here she's built mud chambers, and you can see three cocoons. Wasps have also moved in--you can see the yellow wasp larvae. These wasps are a beneficial type and can be left undisturbed.


Volunteers Jessica and Dave gently scrape bee cocoons into a cool water bath. We need to wash away any parasitic mites in several changes of water before storing the cocoons in a cool, safe place for the winter. Ideal places include unheated garages or a refrigerator.

In early spring we'll put the clean trays back in the houses, and put the cocoons out to hatch!

Health Canada and Bill C-6: Eliminating Cultural Wisdom & Free Choice in the Name of Consumer Safety

Drying herbs in your kitchen may soon be a crime. Under Bill C-6, the right to eat and to treat our bodies as we choose would be no more, as Health Canada will get more control in deciding which products are safe for the public. Having recently passed its second (out of three) readings in the Senate, Bill C-6 is the latest in a string of similar bills proposed by Health Canada to “help keep Canadian families safe from dangerous consumer products.”

But Bill C-6 is as much about consumer safety as drug companies are about actually healing people. Because natural ingredients are generally time-tested and have been used over generations precisely because they work, most haven’t undergone “rigorous scientific testing”. This bill aims do away with anything that hasn’t been approved in clinical trials, meaning vitamins and minerals, herbal remedies, and traditional medicines such as traditional Chinese medicines. Meanwhile, mass immunizations will be allowed to become mandatory, such as the flu shot, a drug which has been “proven safe” and contains antifreeze, the brain toxins mercury and aluminum, and formaldehyde which is used to preserve dead bodies.

As if that weren’t enough, Bill C-6 gives Health Canada inspectors the right to search for and seize unapproved products on people’s property without a warrant, which is otherwise required by the regular police force. Also under Bill C-6, a person is considered guilty until proven innocent –the opposite from normal court procedures. If natural health product companies don’t have the capacity to prove the safety of a “natural health product” through the scientific method, it will be a wonder for a regular person to do so.

Why is there hardly any coverage of this bill in the news? The intention is for it to be passed quietly without public awareness, and the next thing we know the supplements aisle has shrunk by 80 percent, a health inspector tramples onto our property in search of illegalibles, and a flu-shot needle is stabbed into our arm without our consent.

It boils down to that Bill C-6 violates Canadians' rights and freedoms, eradicating free choice and thousands of years of traditional cultural wisdom, and giving the industrial food and drug companies total domination of the marketplace. For those who would like to maintain their current level of independence in choosing what to consume, send an email to info@parl.gc.ca, call 1-866-599-4999, and/or write to:

The Senate of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario,
K1A 0A4
(no postage required).

For a list of Senator’s email addresses, click here.

The Philosophy of Pig

Pig! A colourful handmade paper lantern featured at the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival.

Today CBC Radio's The Current aired an insightful documentary about saving heritage breeds of livestock that (like heirloom or heritage fruits and vegetables) were developed over many centuries. Many of these breeds have been abandoned for ones that are leaner, fatter, or faster to raise. Now they are in danger of extinction.

The documentary features a farming family whose pigs roam outside and get plenty of playtime and exercise. The pigs are free of hormones, steroids, antibiotics, growth stimulants or chemicals.

To learn more about the lives of small-scale Canadian farmers, or why it's important to save heritage livestock from extinction, you can listen to the 30 minute program here.