Nov 14 2018
food security
Oct 3 2017
Why Kids Should Learn to Garden and Do Art
Truth is, I’m worried about the kids. The world is changing. Major shifts are underway environmentally, politically, economically — in just about every way, really. Just like kids need to learn to tie their shoes and brush their teeth, I believe they need to learn how to grow their own food, because it’s part of taking care of themselves. If kids don’t eat well, they won’t be healthy, and if they aren’t healthy, they can’t do much of anything in this challenging world.
I have been teaching gardening for the past two years at the Boys and Girls Club of Moncton, and I have been supporting that learning with “garden art.”
In early spring, when the kids are released from the grey confinement of winter and we tear out old debris, turn the soil, and plant seeds, then energy and excitement abound. Delight is always the initial reaction. From one tiny seed comes a plant and then … food. If that’s not miraculous, I don’t know what is.
Once the initial euphoria wears off, everyone sees that it’s a lot of work. It can be an effort to get up the requisite gumption and everyone groans with the prospect of numerous tasks. We need to take care of growing plants — fertilize, water, weed and nurture.
But early in the game we find our gusto again. We commit and come to love the green, growing garden. Why? Because the more you nurture a living thing the more connected to it you become. True for plants, pets and people. They learn patience, reverence and respect for how long it takes to grow food. They learn to observe.
Looking for Beauty
Children find beauty everywhere in the garden. What is beautiful about doing art with children in the garden is that they see it as someplace to be, someplace they can spend time with growing things.
Furthermore, we look for beauty in the garden and have fun expressing that in art, and there the learning deepens, the mind is calmed and the soul is fed. Some see glowing light around the plants and draw that. Some talk to the plants and caress them like pets. They gently hold small bugs found in the soil or on leaves and watch them wiggle their antennae and give them names. We draw these bugs or create some out of found natural objects, paint and glue. Some of the kids dance and play. Gardening is a theatre where simple acts are an antidote for cynicism and a balm for the imagination.
Growing Food Makes You Generous
Growing your own food is the single most important act you can do to reclaim power politically and socially. With this basic activity you break your dependence on the corporate food system, using your labour and skills. Who knows what is going to happen to our food supply in the next few years? Who knows how it will be for the kids?
By growing your own food, you save money. It’s an economic buffer. And you know where your food comes from and what you’re getting. You become more connected to other people. I am compelled to generously and proudly share food with family and neighbours. And the kids are too. They always want to bring some home for their families.
Vegetable gardening is the single most important thing you can do for health. It works the body, the mind and gladdens the spirit. Homegrown veggies are more nutritious. Many people have never experienced, or have forgotten, the amazing flavour and intense vitality that comes from fresh vegetables and herbs. Feels like life bursting into your mouth. There is absolutely no other experience like it. In my mind, eating well is a form of self respect.
Even Raw Onions
The kids can’t wait to pick and eat the food. And they eat it all. Even raw onions. Even raw turnips and beets. I do show them how to cook too, but sometimes they can’t wait.
Cooking is just as important as growing food. I teach them to cook and they always love what we make. They also love the way the other children love what they make. The proof that the food is delicious is that it’s always gone at the end.
Growing your own food is a practical and loving way to connect with your kids. It’s an opportunity for fun, conversations, learning science, seeking beauty, and fostering expression through the visual arts or writing stories and poems. And with all of this comes a sense of collective accomplishment.
Gardening and Art Go Perfectly Together
I love doing art with them to help them experience the garden more deeply. We study leaf shapes and talk about photosynthesis and press the leaves into clay to make pendants. We observe the bees, butterflies, hummingbirds visiting the plants and talk about pollination.
The level of detail that children observe the garden is fascinating in itself. They love the leaves and the bees and the fruit and the bugs. They really love the bugs.
We watercolour paint coffee filters and make them into butterfly wings. We make windchimes for the garden out of recycled silverware, their tinkling tones reminding us to eat healthy meals. We make plant growth patterns by blowing paint with a straw on paper. We decorate small clay pots and plant seeds in them to take home so they can observe the whole sprouting process more closely.
We make garden lanterns out of paper cups and paper bags and battery-operated tea lights so they can observe plants at night in their own yards or gardens.
We make necklaces and bracelets out of seeds and beads just because it’s fun and everyone wants to adorn themselves in an earthy, sprightly way like fairies or elves.
In a Garden is Hope
Gardens are all about hope. And so are children. It’s marvellous to watch how much they love to go out each week to see how much the garden has grown.
In a garden — in our garden — there is growth, change and renewal, but mostly there is hope. And lots of it.
Recently I had an experience that opened my heart wide. A sweet small boy with huge brown eyes, dark lashes and a half moon smile still full of baby teeth, twirled and skipped as we made our way to the garden bed. He had recently arrived in Canada.
“I’m happy,” he said to me.
“That’s great! If you’re happy I’m happy. Why are you happy?”
“Because you are growing food for us.”
And he ran off to see how the peas were doing, plucked a pod and popped the whole edible “pois mange tout” into his mouth. So simple and satisfying.
Growing food is hope, making art is hope. Children are hope, growing so much in one season just like the plants. And with hope we are like the plant’s roots, always seeking what is fertile ground. And we are forever like the sunflowers, turning our faces toward the sun.
Sep 28 2017
Evolution of a Gardener
I am always surprised and delighted when I see a little garden in an unlikely spot in the neighbourhood — behind a dilapidated steel shed, in a little alcove at an apartment building, or wrested from the woods at a seniors’ residence.
Kate Doyle, now in her fourth year of gardening, has a plot in the small yard of her downtown core home. These are tender beginnings, to grow a little food and to have an activity to share with her three- year-old daughter, Annette. Kate designed the efficient space-saving garden boxes and her husband, Eric, constructed them.
Young Gardener
Annette, aged three, loves tomatoes, tiny tomatoes that she helped plant. She knows that you eat them when they’re red.
She was excited about my suggestion to grow a sunflower house with her daughter or start a fairy garden complete with twig furniture. These are the kinds of things young mothers new at sharing gardening activities with their kids need to know. She and Annette went seed shopping together so they were sure to grow things that Annette would like to eat. Tomatoes — she especially likes tiny tomatoes!
During our visit in July the beans and peas were doing well and in August the zucchini and tomatoes were producing like crazy.
Kate is wowed by the produce of Aaron Shantz of Our Food SENB who shares an office with her at the United Way of GMSENB, and she takes some inspiration from him. His mega broccoli heads and tasty farm fresh eggs are enough to make her swoon.
Kate says she’s also connecting and learning on social media. “When I asked just yesterday or the day before, ‘How are your gardens, friends? What’s happening?’ I thought I could name like four people that had gardens, but there were about 30 comments from friends that I would never have expected to have their own gardens.”
Sharing Your Garden
Sharing how your garden is growing is a large part of the fun. You always have stories to tell.
The gardening bug
There is a contagious aspect of gardening. Kate’s neighbours have taken to growing vegetables, too, and now it’s connecting the neighbourhood in unusual ways. They got together and bought a truckload of soil; they help each other weed and pick stuff; and they even take in each others laundry if it threatens rain.
“We live on a street where there are so many awesome people. The other day when we were going to get that thunderstorm I realized that my blankets were on the line and I just messaged the group, hey, can one of you go take my blankets down, I’m not going to be home until five, five-thirty? They went and did it. They even folded them for me!” I think gardening fosters this kind of trust and consideration.
Gardening fosters trust in yourself, too. Kate says, “…the more I do it, the more confident I am in my techniques and my abilities.”
Garden Running Riot
In Scott Carsons garden, vegetables run riot, climbing wherever they can.
Scott and Angelina’s riot of a garden
A few blocks away, Scott Carson and Angelina Iapaolo are growing a garden in a battered asphalt driveway and minuscule backyard. There is an archway back entrance to this Driveway Called Eden with a trellis covered with a bounty of tiny tomatoes — free for anyone to sample. It’s also an invitation to come in.
Plants are growing everywhere. Beans are sending out scout tendrils onto the fire escape of the adjoining building. Squash vines are climbing up the back steps to the second floor. They’re pushing the boundaries over to the neighbour’s lot. But the neighbour doesn’t mind and was inspired in his own way to start growing flowers. The bright pots and blooms on his balcony are the perfect complement to this vegetable profusion.
Scott Carson
Scott, his coffee and his garden on a Sunday July morning.
Scott is the main gardener and quietly goes about his work. His close-set eyes focus his attention intently on the plants. Scott is a musician (pianist) and I swear he sometimes seems to be listening to the small squeaks, hums and groans of the growing green things telling him what they need and when. Sun, water and fertility — lots of fertility. Scott fertilizes with horse manure throughout the season with great results. Scott and his partner, Angelina, are rewarded for their efforts with LOTS of food. In mid-July they already had giant heads of purple cabbage — enough to start making sauerkraut. In August, it was salsa making season with a profusion of tomatoes. September yielded zucchini as big as Scott’s forearm.
Angelina is the networker and the one who gives voice to what they are doing here with their amazing garden. She is grateful that the landlord, the owner of a fast food joint next door, lets them create this jungle of food. But I clearly see that it is the landlord that should be grateful. The garden adds to the beauty and the safety of the property and the neighbourhood that otherwise would just be decaying old houses with peeling paint and sagging porches.
Scott says gardening, ”…also elevates the energy of the area it is in.”
I can imagine this garden as a set for a sci-fi movie. The plants seem innocent enough but they grow like crazy at night when no one can see them — their conspiratorial aim: overgrow everything. Make it green. Make it beautiful.
Angelina Iapaolo
Angelina is a great front person and loves to explain their gardening process.
Angelina is the singer of the duo. I envision her and Scott making music in the garden — from the garden — intuiting the voices of plants.
The will to garden
Gardening is hard work and takes commitment. So why do people do it? Beginning gardeners are usually inspired by someone else. The desire to eat better, be more self-sufficient, and also save money are motivations for sure. Angelina says of their garden, “I think its setting, its inception, its bounty have shown people that we are like them, without much, but we made this amazing thing happen on pavement, in a rental, in a shady neighbourhood. People are growing stuff all over now and feeling so great about taking care of themselves. We are no longer an oddity. Gardening to feed ourselves is a purposeful lifestyle choice.”
She also sees their vegetable growing project as a kind of template for action. Angelina plans to share her knowhow. “When I get it all down pat I want to help replicate it for others.”
Gardening with Children
Gardening with children at the Boys and Girls Club of Moncton.
Me, Elaine, the Gardener
My grandparents introduced me to gardening. I remember being five years old and planting onion sets with them in the spring. Now, I am an avid and fairly successful gardener both at home and at the Boys and Girls Club of Moncton, where I am coordinating a gardening project, completing the circle and working with children. My grandmother grew a lot of tomatoes and I remember the fruits heavy on the vines and the green tomato chow and dill pickles she would make in fall. Something that I thought was so simple and ordinary at the time now comes across as a beautiful memory and profound lesson.
Art in the Garden
We did art with the kids because gardening is aesthetic experience.
This gardening thread was picked up again years later when I was in my twenties. I started a garden when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin in the backyard of a house we were renting. We had just read Plowman’s Folly, a book about how the practice of plowing destroys the structure and micro-organisms in the soil. They encouraged disc harrowing to prepare the soil instead. We did the next best thing, or so we thought.
We tied some cinder blocks to a garden rake and scratched away at the sod. When we dug in to plant, we discovered that someone must have worked on cars back there because we unearthed old spark plugs, distributor caps, hunks of rubber, tempered glass and shards of metal. (They made cars out of steel back in those days.) Probably the soil was soaked with oil and gasoline too because nothing much grew except some beans, but that small success was enough to keep going next year and the next. With gardening, even a small reward keeps you hooked. That’s part of its magic.
The thing about gardening is that right away you have to pay attention, you have to observe and ask questions and find solutions. Why did this plant do well and not the others? You have to look for the subtleties.
The way of the garden
In my backyard garden now, the beets are doing well, probably because I added Borax to the soil. (Beets like boron and our soil here lacks it.) It was hard to germinate peas, beans and carrots this spring, probably because it was cold and wet in May and early June and I tend to plant early.
Tomatoes are doing OK but not as well as last year. I should have rotated their position to a new bed. Peppers, I have aplenty. Lots of sun!
I have zucchini but no cucumbers yet because they are too shaded, but I did rotate their position. Were there no bees to pollinate them? You see how this works?
An avid gardener likes to grow more and more every year. And they like to take on challenges, like growing melons or exotic, finicky vegetables. This year my watermelon only grew big enough for a Barbie doll picnic!
Raindrops on turnip leaves
I’m going outside now to listen to the rain hit the leaves in the turnip patch and to see if the ears of corn have plumped up. You see, it’s like this. You think about it more and more and find yourself in the garden at odd hours, taking care of it. In the fall it might be a cool starry night and you’re wondering if it’s going to frost and you don’t want the garden to be done for another year, yet. And the things that you lavish attention on and take care of, you grow to love.
The ultimate reward of course is eating. Never before has food tasted so good. My husband, Archie, and I roast up pans of fresh vegetables from the garden in olive oil and lemon juice and eat them with torn off hunks of baguette. Gardening makes life good. It makes you realize that it’s the simple things that are so very, very good. And you want to keep it all coming — next year and the next and the next.
Success not Always Wild
One Barbie-sized watermelon this year, but it tasted so good. Next year I’ll get it right.
Jun 19 2017
A Comic About Jill Van Horne
Our first comic. These will be published as part of our work on whatever we’re doing at the moment. This is about our video profile of Jill Van Horne, Network Development Coordinator for Our Food SENB. You know, the person who took Aaron Shantz’s place.
We are adding a new feature to our work that should see us publishing more. Our original goal of long form text and now video take us a long time to publish and so we disappear for long periods of time.We will now work simultaneously on comics of what we’re doing.
I’ve long been a fan of comic journalists like Joe Sacco (Palestine) and Harvey Pekar (American Splendor). Their work is engaging because it takes you into the story from a different angle.
Although my drawing is not ready for primetime yet, I can produce fun stuff like you see here. It’s a mix of Photoshopped photos and screen grabs and hand drawn textures and inked lettering.
They will be chronicles of our reporting, behind the scenes shots, sneak peaks, as well as invitations to engage readers.
Elaine Mandrona and Jill Van Horne at a Community Food Mentor gathering in 2017
Oct 11 2016
Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security
At the dunk tank station for a charity fundraiser one Saturday morning in August, Kate Doyle was squatting on the sidelines with her partner, Eric Babineau, and their three-year-old daughter, Annette. They were watching spectators toss practice balls while Kate waited to be the first celebrity dunkee. Then a big guy stepped up, drilled a wild pitch high, hit a steel support causing the ball to ricochet past Kate’s little family and close to Annette. And a look somewhere between a poised rattle snake and an angry Rottweiler came over Kate’s face. The guy didn’t apologize, didn’t even look her way because, I think, he was embarrassed; but he must have felt it, that look of someone who was not offended, but guard-dog pissed that someone almost hit her little girl.
If you don’t know this reflex-to-protect side to Kate, or if you think it’s limited to staring daggers, then I don’t think you know Kate Doyle at all. But let’s rewind.
Lots of opinions
Kate says, “I’ve always had a lot of opions.” Perhaps her boss at the United Way volunteered Kate while she was on holiday to be a celebrity dunkee, she hoped all those opinions would translate into a lineup of people prepared to pay money to dunk her.
Gardens, and Shine Theory
My wife, Elaine Mandrona, and I were interviewing key players in the Moncton area food movement and Kate came to us via Aaron Shantz of Our Food SENB. Kate’s employer, the United Way of GMASENB, sponsors his organization, and he and Kate work closely out of the agency’s office in the Community Peace Centre on Church St. Kate is the Community Impact Manager and, among other duties, works with people applying for funding.
She’s keen to ensure conversations are two way, even if it is her is being interviewed, so it’s no surprise to hear she swears by Anne Friedman’s Shine Theory, which embraces collaboration over competition. “When you shine, I shine,” she said. “It’s related to feminism. It really resonates with how I work with people.”
Except for us, Oak Lane was deserted and quiet that morning and we chatted about food, the food movement, children and gardens — her garden, in particular.
We only learned about her Roller Derby career later, but we’ll get to that.
Moncton's Oak Lane
We interviewed Kate in Oak Lane, downtown Moncton. On a summer morning, there could not be quieter spot.
It always starts with a small box
“We’re going to start with a small box,” Kate told Eric, announcing her foray into gardening four years ago. Eric said, “Oh, OK. A small garden box.” A four-by-four box was made. The most recent expansion plans (four times that box) were hastily sketched and fired off in an email to Eric from work with the question, “Can we amp this up?” meaning the garden. Eric, ever supportive, said, “OK” and took a couple of vacation days and made it for her.
The garden also began expanding into potted tomato plants and herbs along the deck, and now that Annette is more helpful, Kate said, “I would love to see it take up the whole yard.” After all, she pointed out, there is a playground nearby if Annette needs to play. We think she was joking, and she may think she was joking, but you never know about gardeners.
Eric Babineau Kate's partner
Kate and Eric met through music. Kate often had bands crash at her place in Fredericton and Eric had left behind the triple-extra-large t-shirt he had bought at a concert. He connected to Kate via MonctonLocals.com (pre-Facebook message board) but for the life of her she couldn’t remember anyone at her place who was anywhere near big enough to wear a 3xl t-shirt. Eric is a small, or medium at most. He went over to retrieve his shirt, they got talking and the rest is history. He’s never worn the shirt.
Snap peas, tiny tomatoes and feeling full
We arrived at 9:00 am on a Sunday in July to photograph this garden and to meet Annette and Eric. The mid-summer sun was shining harshly making it all the more evident that the garden was sparse and struggling. (We were warned.) But seasoned and committed gardeners know this is how gardening goes, and that in July the game is far from over. When we returned in August it was lush.
However, a snap pea and cherry tomato harvest was never going to happen with a three-year-old loose and feeling entitled because, after all, she helped plant them from seed. For small children, snap peas and cherry tomatoes are too perfectly sized and positioned to imagine they aren’t growing just for them.
This year Annette reached the age when children become aware of a garden’s magic, that it can turn playing in the dirt into real food. Kate hopes this magic will parlay itself into a life-long, healthy relationship with food. Kate said, “We’re taught to be thin and beautiful instead of being healthy and full.” What she wants is for Annette to believe: “‘I can make my own food. I can be proud of what I eat. I can eat things that are good for me and make me feel good.’”
Snap Peas Magic for 3-year-olds
Snap peas are so magical they’re just sitting there waiting to be eaten by three-year-olds. Annette helped buy seeds as well as planted this year and really knows her way around the garden. Kate hopes gardening at this age helps Annette develop a natural and healthy relationship to food.
Where do gardening bugs come from?
The gardening bug, on Kate’s side, skipped at least one generation. She remembers picking strawberries with her family, but there was no agricultural tradition despite living on PEI, where farming is everything. On Eric’s side, though, there is an uninterrupted gardening tradition, including a sister who homesteads. Kate’s garden evokes Eric’s memories of raiding his mother’s garden, “pulling carrots out, wiping them on the grass, and eating them right out in the yard.” And last fall the three of them joined the Babineaus in picking a million apples — with Kate, everything is measured in millions, tons or hot minutes — processing some of them into apple butter that she slathers on pork chops.
Counting Tomatoes
Kate and Annette’s potted tomato plants. Annette loves tiny tomatoes and loves to count them. Of course, if you keep eating them, counting is less of chore.
Food for the Millennials
Food was simple for Baby Boomers because the food system was largely hidden: buy food at the grocery store; eat it; throw the scraps away. Millennials like Kate, though, felt the repercussions of the “invisible food system” and grew up feeling compelled to examine their habits and choices more closely.
Kate always thinks things through, usually by talking them out with friends both on- and offline and has been doing this since adolescence on PEI. “I always had a lot of opinions,” she said. “I tend to take a very hard stand on a lot of things.”
One of those stands was on eating meat. In her teens, Kate committed to being vegan as a protest, not against meat, per se, but against how industrial farms mistreated livestock and their keepers. She only gave veganism up in her late twenties when she became pregnant because she felt she couldn’t balance her and her baby’s nutritional needs with the time constraints of being a working mom. Still, eating meat brought up the same concerns about mistreatment. It was local farmers like Murray Bunnett, who raise their animals humanely, that helped her find balance, ethically and nutritionally.
And she’s comfortable with that decision — to begin eating meat again — because she has examined other assumptions about food. Concerning a brand of tofu she loves: “You think in your head tofu is healthy and is a good thing to eat and you’re being ethical because you’re not killing an animal. But I was thinking, Ok, hold on, this tofu came from China: How was it produced? Who is producing it and what conditions are they living in? Is it any more ethical to be buying this because it’s not killing an animal versus me supporting a local farmer who is treating his animals fairly with love and kindness and compassion? Where’s the balance there?” For Kate, the key to navigating the myriad issues around food is to strike that balance, a good stand for anyone who must work with people in the local food movement.
Kate at Home
Kate lives with her partner Eric and their daughter Annette in older house in Moncton core that’s been redone. It’s one of places where there is more building than lot. Still, Kate would like to make the most of it with as much garden as possible.
Four Year Gardening Veteran
Kate has been gardening for four years, now. She said the first year was terrible because she was too timid about
Kate and the food movement
“It’s a lot like roots,” Kate said of the movement. “It’s happening underground. It’s really incredible how people are collectively working through all these things.” But she, too, has become a player because she is the Community Impact Manager for the local United Way. Kate estimated during this past summer that, with a food box program she worked on, she spent two days a week on food and garden-based projects. What’s more, she said, “A lot of the work I do may not be directly food related, but food is part of it.” She regularly meets with farmers like Murray Bunnett, community food workers like Janet Hamilton of the Mapleton Teaching Kitchen and homesteaders/activists like Aaron Shantz of Our Food SENB, so she can’t help but be steeped in all that is going on. And she is in awe.
“I think that Moncton has this really cool vibe happening right now. Things are literally growing,” she said. There are the little things. “We walk downtown and we see planters with food in them. You may not notice, but you walk by Calactus (Café) and there’s little strawberries and grapes. I know it’s small scale. I know it doesn’t address broader issues, but it’s really cool to live in a community that that is a thought people have: ‘I am going to make sure there is food ripe for the picking.’” And there are big things, like how area food banks have shifted to a progressive food centre model like the Peter McKee Community Food Centre. Kate feels that in Moncton “we’ve really embraced arts, culture and now we’re looking at food for social change which is important to me.” In fact, she claims, “I love Moncton, and I will fight anyone who says that’s it’s not the best place.” Which is tall praise from a woman who, just a few years ago, hated Moncton; hated it so much it took Roller Derby to change her mind.
Eve McQueen In the yellow helmet
Back in her Roller Derby days, Kate was a blocker, eventually a pivot, a special position that kind of directs strategy. She’s the one with yellow helmet. (Marc Henwood Photography)
Eve McQueen, because Katefrontation was taken
Understanding Kate is easier if you factor in Roller Derby. I put it in upper case because when Kate talks about Roller Derby, it sounds upper case, like the Roman Catholic Church or the House of Commons. She played for the Lumbersmacks.
“I was really strong and I was unafraid. And I hit really hard,” Kate said of her Roller Derby era, the era pregnancy and then a shattered knee ended.
Finding Roller Derby was about finding her squad, her crew. “I loved this being something started by women for women with no ulterior motives around it. It was a place all women could go, all women shapes, ages, sizes,” she said. “It’s not often that women are allowed to have a space and be proud of who we are and our bodies and what we’re able to do. So it was really cool.” It was a tight community. (Roller Derby was first played in 1935 and has waxed and waned in popularity. The Twenty-First Century iteration is largely dominated by women’s teams.)
Eve McQueen was her show name. “I wanted Katefrontation but it was taken.” The name was inspired by Eric because, “If you look at Eric, I feel there is a striking resemblance to Steve McQueen.”
Roller Derby dominated her life, but that is to be expected with Kate. “I’m an all or nothing kind of person. My whole social life revolved around it. I want to go back, but I can’t.”
She can’t because she returned too soon after having Annette. “I was desperate to get back. I needed to get out of the house. I missed my friends and I missed roller skating. I really loved it.
“The second night back we’re doing a scrimmage and I should not have been playing. I was still all loosey goosey from having a kid because your muscles are all messed up and I went to go in to hit somebody.” Eve McQueen was a blocker. There are blockers and jammers. Jammers do the scoring through holes blown through the opposition by blockers. “I hadn’t been on roller skates in a year and a half and I twisted the wrong way and twisted my knee and shattered the whole thing.” And it was over. Forever. Reconstructive surgery is an option for professional athletes, but, apparently, Roller Derby at the Lumbersmack level doesn’t qualify.
Annette
The shattered knee might have officially ended The Roller Derby era, but it had really ended the year before, more specifically, within five minutes of Kate finding out she was pregnant. In that five minutes, she informed her teammates that she couldn’t play. She lied to them, mind you, making some excuse because she was torn by her loyalty to them, but her baby immediately shot to the top of her list of priorities. Eric’s, too. Both had jobs involving a lot of travel or long hours, but both found jobs closer to home. Kate said, “Our entire life has revolved around our child this year.”
All the signs of great parenting are there: their obvious belief that their kid is the smartest kid, ever; “tons” of pictures on Facebook; the way they talk to her like she’s a fully functioning person, not a baby; the pride in her helping in the garden despite the episode of washing it out with the hose on the wrong setting.
A Fine Gardener
Annette demonstrating her garden watering skills. Now that she’s three, she is helping with some of the chores. Watering is a favourite chore and she is quite good at it, but one of her first efforts nearly washed the garden out because the hose was set to jet rather than shower.
Annette is happy, confident, bright and independent. And she’s uni-lingually French. “We decided it was really important for her first language to be French. It’s not my first language, it’s my husband’s,” Kate said. Kate did French immersion in school, but said that despite understanding really well, she had no confidence in speaking the language. While the decision isn’t exactly unusual in Moncton, for me, as someone who has struggled for years to learn French with marginal success, it strikes me as courageous to put a language between you and your child and then expect to bridge that gap by the time the child can speak. Kate said, “It’s been a learning process for me to describe all these things in French,” but she made it. But that’s what I learned about Kate in our four meetings, that she commits to these things, unreservedly, wholeheartedly, no looking back — veganism, Air Cadets(see sidebar), Roller Derby, gardening, French for her girl.
But that Saturday morning by the dunk tank, what I knew about Kate Doyle was all gardens and Shine Theory. Watching her squatting with Annette and Eric, and Kate with that angry-Rottweiler look on her face, I was caught off guard, my camera dangling by my side, wondering what was going to happen. It was only later that day that she told us, “When I am loyal to something, I will do anything for those people.” And she hadn’t yet told us that she had been a bruising blocker for the Lumbersmacks, and that she “hit really hard”(present tense), and that despite not looking it, she was really physically aggressive. I didn’t know the depth of her commitment to the things she loved and believed in and the lengths she’d go for them. If I had known that, I would have had the camera at the ready because with Kate Doyle anything could have happened.
Diana Gregory of the local Canadian Mental Health Association gives a sopping Kate Doyle a hug. Kate, in her typical thorough way, Googled all about the dunk tank; in particular, how do you get out. Turns out, there are steps in the tank.
Sep 22 2016
ACORN’s first Homesteader Symposium
Homesteading is changing. As more people want to take control of their food, lifestyle and consumer habits, homesteading is becoming an urban pursuit as well. That’s why we found ACORN’s first Homesteader Symposium every bit as applicable to our life in Moncton as we would have living in rural New Brunswick.
Over 40 people from a broad cross section of local people attended the daylong workshop on Sunday, September 11, held at the Dieppe Farmers Market.
Not just a rural pursuit
Evidence is everywhere that doing it yourself isn’t just a rural phenomenon anymore. Yards, lawns and vacant lots in cities are turning into food gardens. Workshops on wild-crafting, making household items like soap by hand, and doing more with less are popular. And Facebook groups like Back to the Land in Moncton or NB Gardeners and Wildcrafters have many urban members, including us.
The Internet broke that barrier of thinking homesteading can only be done outside the city limits by making homesteading skills available to anyone with a smart phone, tablet or computer. It might have started out as homesteaders sharing experiences with other rural homesteaders, but anyone with a yard and an independent streak can see they can do most of those things, too, once they stop valuing their green carpet.
Nice balance of skills
There are so many skills needed to be self-sustaining, choosing a day’s worth of information to present must have been challenging for the organizers. But the topics of how to produce all (most) of your food, root cellaring, extending the growing season, wild edible and medicinal plants of the Maritimes, food forest gardens and lacto-fermentation techniques provided a nice balance.
Food Forests
Estelle Drisdelle’s taught us about turning your lawn into a food forest. We started doing research on how our willow at the back of our Moncton lot might be the centre of a little food forest. Since we stopped mowing around it, it has become way more interesting.
Estelle Drisdelle’s presentation on food forest gardens that mimic a forest ecosystem to grow food, medicinal plants, pollinator plants and create habitat was fascinating. A food forest garden is beautiful, low maintenance and resilient. The ones in Sackville that she helped create withstood major flooding whereas conventional gardens there did not.
My husband, Archie Nadon, and I are going to do one in our Moncton backyard where the willow tree has created a haven for diversity since Archie has stopped mowing.
Lacto-fermentation
And, just as I was getting ready to do some conventional pickling this season, Shannon Jones and Bryan Dyck of Broadfork Farm taught us about lacto-fermentation.
No boiling involved, just preserve your veggies with brine. There are three methods: sauerkraut, kimchi and immersion. The resulting ferment is, Shannon assures us, tasty and excellent for maintaining good gut bacteria. I made the first test bottle this morning.
Shared hard-earned experience
All the presenters were great and shared their hard-earned knowledge and experience. For example, Rebecca and Robin LeBlanc of Bathurst both work full-time as teachers and raise their three children, but also manage to grow vegetables and grain, make cider, cheese, press sunflower oil, raise chickens, and milk a cow!
Photographs of their home-grown food was mouth-wateringly stunning. When I asked Rachel “How do you do it all?” she answered, “It’s a lifestyle. We are used to working very hard, but we also enjoy what we do.”
And Alyson Chisholm of Windy Hill Farm gave us lots to think about the pros and cons of greenhouses to extend the growing season. I did not realize that the snow has to be cleared off of them all winter. So maybe movable tunnels that are taken down in the fall are a better option for me. And on it went.
It all sounded so doable and so inspired were we that we think ACORN should start offering an urban homesteader symposium.
For a list of all that went on, here is a link to the event posted on Facebook. (Note: since this is a link to a Facebook event, it might have been taken down.)https://www.facebook.com/events/1223595117684739/
Aug 17 2016
Matt McGraw
Matt McGraw’s office, today, is jam packed with guitars, two pianos and floppy, old, worn baseball bases. The whiteboard behind his desk is covered with drawings done in erasable orange marker by his partner Hilary Cantin. Everything here is in progress in a free-flowing kind of way and everything could look different tomorrow.
The Interim Program Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Moncton — regardless of how many kids there are on any given day, Matt always has time to listen to a child’s concerns.
When I brought the idea of an Intergenerational garden to Matt at the Boys and Girls Club of Moncton, he jumped at it and has been an incredible supporter the whole time.
Since the club is a drop in centre, when there is an activity on offer, one of the staff will “go round up kids who want to garden” and we go ahead to wait for them. Here is Matt leading a group eager to work.
The kids love Matt. They peer into his office door to see what he’s up to and are always eager to follow him when he has something to show them, like how to plant basil.
His bright blue eyes get brighter when he talks about projects he has overseen, like the small garden he started last year with the help from RBC. “We just planted,” he says. “We weren’t overly vigilant about it but things grew.” So when I approached him with the idea to add five new beds this year, create a kid-illustrated handbook, and involve seniors he jumped at the chance.
Matt always has time to listen to the children’s concerns and take them seriously, even if all they want is to go have a drink of water.
For Matt gardening know-how has somehow skipped a generation — his. “(That) knowledge has been disconnected from our generation,” he says. “It’s important to make that connection point so that it can trickle down to the youth, too, especially as it’s becoming a feasible way to feed yourself.”
Since the club is a big drop-in centre, the process for involving kids is a staff member will be selected to “go round up some kids who want to garden” and off they go and off I go with my volunteers down to the garden to wait for them. Soon, like a scene from the Music Man, a staff will come around the corner at the far end of the building leading a group sometimes as small as three or four kids or sometimes as large as nine or ten. And we garden or draw. Or eat.
Mostly, the younger kids are involved. “They’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Matt explains. “We let them do as much work as they can weeding, and teach them proper watering techniques and how to plant different seeds.
“There’s an eagerness to learn among all of the youth that participate in the gardening program. Some of these youth are invested just to get their hands dirty and try something new, while others come with home-grown gardening experience of their own. Either way, our youth are ecstatic to garden, and ask everyday “how are the vegetables?””
Harvesting is the reward
The best part of gardening is, of course, eating. Here we’re snacking on beans. Children from the top: Mohammad, Zackaryia and Youssef.
Matt remembers the fun of harvest time from the previous year. “The most excited I’ve seen the kids was lifting up the cucumber leaves and seeing these big field cucumbers, just monsters,” he says. They pickled their yield last year but this year he hopes the harvest might supplement, in a small way, the food they provide for the kids at the club and even become the basis for teaching healthy cooking. “We want healthy body, healthy mind, essentially passing on knowledge of how to prepare a meal.”
Possible model for the community
Matt sees this gardening initiative spreading to the greater community as children influence their parents. “I would like to see just about any piece of lawn being used for something rather than just green carpet.”
For Matt, the results are beautiful and rewarding. “I love getting to the end of your season and seeing food growing and really, really enjoying it.”
For fun, I gave Matt some Sea Rocket, an edible beach plant, and challenged him to grow it in his garden. That’s it on his desk. He took it into his care with the same enthusiasm that he gives to all the kids at the club. That’s his partner Hilary Cantin behind him doodling on his white board. She’s an artist who also works with us on the Inter-Generational Gardening Project.
Jun 20 2016
New Farmers Symposium Held at Dieppe Market
We spent time at a conference for New Farmers in April at the Dieppe Farmers Market. While we would love to report on what all happened there because we were impressed with everyone there, we have a couple of reservations, mostly because we were not officially invited as journalists and second, because we are not new farmers.
As community journalists we want to establish a foundation of trust with anyone we work with. Showing up uninvited, taking pictures and notes and then publishing stuff doesn’t work for us.
So here are a couple of what we hope are flattering photos and the promise that we want to do more work with this group. They definitely fit into the parameters of our food beat. We most likely will track down the people we talked to and photograph and interview the hell out of them because so many seemed like great resources of knowledge and experience that many others would benefit from.
And they put on a great potluck lunch.
A Gallery from the New Farmers Symposium
Nov 14 2018
Garden Art Lesson Plan 3 where we make garden marker stones
By Elaine and Archie • art, children, food movement, food security, garden art lessons, gardening