Brockville Climate Action Group

Ottawa Citizen / Laura Robin / 03 July 2008

What's new: It isn't new, exactly -- a swing back to local eating has been simmering and gaining steam for a couple of years -- but it seems to have hit a critical mass and is bursting with fresh enthusiasm and fresh produce. "It's boiling," says Andy Terauds, president of Ottawa's Farmers Market at Lansdowne Park. "There's no question that over the last year it's gone from a simmer to a boil."

The new signs: Huge, happy crowds filling their cloth bags at Lansdowne every Sunday (when the market is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.). Chefs shopping at local markets and crediting local producers, by name, on their menus. A new market on Main Street at Saint Paul University attracting its own crowd Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. New signs, literally, at the ByWard Market, where, as of last week, green dots mean the produce has been grown within 100 kilometres of Ottawa. And, last week, the market at Lansdowne added new Thursday hours, from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. "We're so happy because it's too long to go from Sunday to Sunday," says Judith George-Landles, who walks to the market from her home in Old Ottawa South.

Why local eating has become so hot: "Last year it was simmering along, getting warm, then there was winter," says Terauds. "But then the whole tomato thing happened (when some brands of U.S. tomatoes were found to contain salmonella) and it just really set it off. People remembered the contaminated spinach from an earlier year. And suddenly people want to buy local, because you can ask questions, you can talk to the person who grew it. I think it's going to take off even more as people realize that local food is safer as well as tastier." Environmental, health and safety concerns seem to have reached some sort of critical mass just as local produce is coming into a fresh, gorgeous peak.

What's ripe locally now: Strawberries, the Ottawa area's first true fruit of summer, started getting ripe about June 18 and are at their luscious, juicy best now. Fresh, local peas are tender and sweet. Garlic scapes, lettuces and other greens are full, crunchy and vibrant. Rhubarb is still tender and greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers are ripe.

The customers: "We really feel it's important to be eating well and supporting local farmers," says George-Landles.

"We've been in other countries, in South and Central America, where you see those fellows with tanks strapped to their backs, spraying, and getting these bright green crops for shipping," adds her husband Bill Landles. "This is more like Europe, where you shop at the local market and talk to the producers. Anybody can go to a grocery store."

Terauds says that while there's still a big gap in Canada between those who eat and those who grow food, and while we still have a long way to go to get back to where we were even in the 1970s -- when, he says, there were hundreds of local producers at the ByWard and Parkdale markets -- "(Lansdowne) market is making a huge difference. Customers are walking around with smiles on their faces. In the grocery store, they're glum."

[ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE ]