Redefining Thanksgiving
Young farmers are bringing the harvest back to the urban home, and getting back to the roots of being thankful.
Two years ago, Shirlene Coté gave up her desk job to become a full-time farmer.
Coté is part of a small but thriving young agrarian movement that is finding novel ways to bring the harvest into urban homes.
Most of us will celebrate the harvest this Thanksgiving without picking or pulling a single thing that will be served on our tables, but we don’t necessarily want our celebratory meal to come shrink-wrapped either.
Organic, hand-harvested, farmers’ market produce may be pricier than a load from the big box store, but it is as close as many of us will come to fulfilling the Thanksgiving narrative we seek with unfailing nostalgia each year: a meal that is emblematic of sharing, co-operation, bounty and union, all the goods we have harvested, all the difficulties we have survived, for which we give thanks.
For Coté, who named her small Burnaby acreage Earth Apple, farming is a vocation as devotional as a daily prayer; it is also an act of social justice that is both environmental and deeply personal.
Although she had always worked at the intersection of food and social justice, designing food programs for community centres and working with the 100 Mile Diet Society, she wanted to do more than just promote food security. She wanted to plant and grow.
“I felt like the most direct form I could contribute was to just do it,” says Coté, 37. “Right now, 80 per cent of farmers are 10 years or less away from retiring. It’s frightening.”
While family-owned farming is quickly being replaced by largescale factory farming, small scale is growing in B.C.
Farmers’ market sales jumped 147 per cent in B.C. between 2006 and 2012, according to a study carried out by Dr. David Connell of the University of Northern B. C. and the B. C. Association of Farmers’ Markets, and now contribute $170 million to the province’s economy.
Coté’s farm started with potatoes, one acre — “a place to play with” — and a desire to grow.
Now she shares three acres with another farmer, grows more than 40 varieties of vegetables, and sells at local farmers’ markets.
To grow the connection between her farm and the city, she started a CSA program. (CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, a model that is similar to a subscription service to an individual farm. You pay in advance and get a weekly share of the harvest, a model that is workable for either fresh organic produce, or poultry, pork or beef.)
Coté didn’t grow up steeped in the politics of farming and food security: she was raised in city apartments with a single mom.
“Thanksgiving was really just about us having a really yummy, big meal,” she recalls. “It was about us coming together in a meaningful way, and sitting at a big table, which we didn’t always do, and to play games after. It was a celebration.”
Coté celebrates Thanksgiving now with a big group of friends, but as a food producer who sells at the Trout Lake Farmers Market, she gets really excited about everyone else’s Thanksgiving. “People come and tell you their recipe ingredients, what they do traditionally in their family. It’s so cool to hear everybody’s family stories and see people so excited about good food. It’s pretty emotional.”
She describes cultivating her “garden farm” as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Everything on her Earth Apple booth at the farmers’ market has been hand planted and harvested. Coté is up with the sunrise seven days a week, even earlier on farmers’ market days to pack her truck, often in the pouring rain. What sustains her is the support from her regular customers.
“It’s a fairly lonely lifestyle,” she says. “When I go to the farmers’ market it’s also my time to socialize, to have conversations.”
Young agrarians Alyssa Belter, 30, and David Tanner, 28, met as students at the University of Victoria. Both had grown up in the suburbs, but shared a strong environmental ethic.
“Both of us were really attracted to farming as a way to tangibly make a difference and live our values,” says Belter.
They moved around from farm to farm, doing apprenticeships — Tanner learned how to operate heavy equipment, Belter to make cheese — and have turned their dreams into Plenty Wild, a 10-acre organic farm in Pemberton.
“We’re really happy here,” says Belter.
Because they grow a variety of crops, including some storage crops like squash, potatoes and beets, for winter, “harvest” is an ongoing event that begins in May and continues through December. “It’s very satisfying especially when you see what you are producing, all the different colours.”
Belter and Tanner have no employees, but parents and siblings have come out to help when the harvesting load is heavy, and friends that visit end up getting their hands dirty too.
Like Coté, the couple is up with the sun every day, spreading lime or compost, picking tender greens, dividing crops into boxes for the three farmers’ markets they attend throughout the year in Squamish, Whistler and Lonsdale Quay.
Since becoming a farmer, Thanksgiving means more than ever for the couple.
“What we’re doing now, I just feel more and more thankful,” says Belter. “It’s such a beautiful place and especially because what we’re eating now is stuff we’ve grown.”
And there’s another benefit. “Thanksgiving is a lot tastier now, too.”
The connections they make selling directly to customers is “extremely rewarding,” adds Belter.
“Sometimes when we’re alone on the farm and having a tough time with some pest, or things are not looking as good as they should, we go to the farmers’ market and, getting a really awesome response, we say, ‘ OK, it’s all OK.’”
Belter and Tanner also raise pigs, which they pre-sell in half or whole shares and they also provide harvest boxes through a CSA program, which customers can pick up weekly at the market.
In terms of the happiness quotient, Belter and Tanner have plenty to be thankful for this year.
“We love our lives. If we can dream it, we can do it. We get to work outside and live in this beautiful place. We’re very happy.”
What we’re doing now, I just feel more and more thankful. It’s such a beautiful place and especially because what we’re eating nowis stuff we’ve grown.
ALYSSA BELTER (BELOW)
FARMER, PLENTY WILD