Our good friends at Oxyoke Farms are looking for more folks to purchase the remaining shares in their highly successful Community Supported Agriculture Project for this summer. If you are interested in weekly deliveries of local, seasonal, organic (not certified) veggies from a Calgary-area family farm, this could be for you!

Contact Robby and Phyllis Fyn at 403-546-0110 or email at oxyoke@telus.net for further details. Check out photos of the farm here, and here’s a multi-part series and video I took of Robby from last summer:

Adapted from Simply in Season’s Zucchini Cookie recipe.

I love these cookies because they’re kinda of like a muffin and, on a particularly trying day, they can be called a vegetable. When I discovered zucchini bread I thought that it was the apex of what could be done with this watery vegetable by way of dessert. I was wrong, so very wrong.

On the downside, these cookies should not be eaten in dough form. The stringy, watery-ness of the zucchini does not become magical and delicious until after baking. Ryan went so far as to doubt how good these cookies would be when he took a little dough from the bowl the first time I made them. Had I been craftier at the time, I would have let him continue to believe that these cookies were unappetizing instead of persuading him to try the cooked version. Now he loves them too and I’m stuck with the paradox of being a more virtuous person with less cookies. Sigh.

Zucchini Cookies

• 1/2 cup of butter – softened
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar (I used honey once and it worked very well)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
• 3/4 tsp of salt
• 1 1/2 cup of zucchini – shredded (I used frozen shredded zucchini from the summer)
• 3/4 cup of chocolate chips

Directions

• Combine butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla.
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
• Add dry ingredients to wet. Add zucchini.
• Stir (and don’t get freaked out – it’ll be fine once they’re cooked)
• Add chocolate chips.
• Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-14 minutes. I take my out as soon as the edges begin to look golden.

Cheyenne Vyvyan is a blogger and mom based in Revelstoke, British Columbia. This recipe was crossposted here and her blog, Happiness Like Bread–a chronicle of her adventures in attempting to eat “seasonally, locally, and deliciously.”

Adapted from Simple in Season’s Liberian Pumpkin recipe.
A brief note on the name of this dish. Quickly reading through the recipe, I read it as “Libertarian” (politics must have been on my mind), but Ryan later pointed on that in was, in fact, “Liberian.” Slight difference. However because this dish is slightly renegade (hot sauce and squash!), I’m going to stick with libertarian. This dish wants small government, dammit!

I liked this dish; I didn’t love it. However, it will be made again because it’s super easy. The most time consuming aspect of it is the chopping. Anytime I have to chop a squash I get a little suicidal. In fact, there is a pumpkin sitting on my butcher block that is the bane of my existence for that very reason. I know–I should deal with it, but even thinking about it totally exhausts me. Lucky for me, I received a smaller, more manageable butternut squash in my vegetable box this week that worked quite nicely.

Liberian (aka Libertarian) Pumpkin

• 2-3 cups of pumpkin or butternut squash – peeled and chopped into 1 inch pieces
• 1 onion – chopped
• hot chili peppers/hot sauce (I used the hot sauce and way too much for me, just enough for Ryan)
• 1 cup of broth
• 1 cup of browned sausage – cubed (Ryan actually made sausage, but you don’t have to be this fancy)

Directions

• Cook sausage in large saucepan (I used my beloved cast iron pan, which is pretty much my only pan) until brown. Remove.
• In the same pan, cover and cook pumpkin, onions, and peppers in 2-3 tbsp of oil (I used the same pan as the sausage, using the oil, therefore being thrifty and awesome) until the onion is transparent and the pumpkin soft (I cooked mine too long, notice the “fuzzy” looking squash in my photo).
• Add broth and cook covered for another 10 minutes.
• Add sausage and cook uncovered until most of the liquid has evaporated (I’m a sauce-addict, so I left a little more liquid than required).
• Serve over rice or thin pasta. We had it over rice last night, but this afternoon, for lunch, I got lazy and served it as is. Ryan didn’t utter the word “renegade” once while eating as is, so I guess it wasn’t quite as libertarian as I originally assumed.

Cheyenne Vyvyan is a blogger and mom based in Revelstoke, British Columbia. This recipe was crossposted here and her blog, Happiness Like Bread–a chronicle of her adventures in attempting to eat “seasonally, locally, and deliciously.”

Okay, I promise that these pancakes tasted MUCH better than the photo above suggests. I have a “point and shoot” camera, what can I say?

We love pancakes over here and probably eat them way too much. When I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to make both breakfast and lunch, I suggest pancakes for brunch. We have about 4000 apples in our fridge right now so it’s imperative that these two food products merge. I use a basic pancake recipe and then add spices like no tomorrow as if I’m making an apple pie. An added bonus is that because the spices give the otherwise white pancakes a brown hue, Ryan thought I used whole wheat flour. Now not only have I provided breakfast and lunch, I’ve provided a healthy breakfast and lunch.

Apple Spice Pancakes

• 1 cup of flour
• 2 tsp of baking soda
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1/2 tsp of cinnamon; 1/8 of cloves; 1/8 tsp of ginger; 1/8 of allspice
• 3/4 cup of milk (I reduced it from 1 cup due to the moisture of the apples)
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp of oil
• 1 apple – shredded

Directions

• Combine dry ingredients and mix
• In a separate bowl, combine milk, eggs, and oil. Mix.
• Add wet ingredients to dry. Mix. Add apple.
• Cook in butter until done. This might take slightly longer than “normal’ pancakes due to the apple factor. Let’s make this a technical term: “Apple Factor.”

Cheyenne Vyvyan is a blogger and mom based in Revelstoke, British Columbia. This recipe was crossposted here and her blog, Happiness Like Bread–a chronicle of her adventures in attempting to eat “seasonally, locally, and deliciously.”

Change.org reports:

The first-ever public study of the health effects of genetically modified corn shows that three patented crops developed and owned by agriculture giant Monsanto cause liver, kidney and heart damage in mammals.

The FDA has approved all three varieties for sale and consumption in the U.S. and all three are in our food supply right now.

More coverage from Change.org.

Ottawa, Monday, October 5, 2009 – 28 countries, including more European countries as well as Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Thailand, have now been affected by contamination from genetically modified (GM) flax in Canadian exports since contamination was first reported on September 8.

Mere weeks are left before farmers in Canada finish harvesting their flax and yet farmers still don’t know the source or full extent of the GM contamination — and it could be weeks before authorities in Canada confirm any details. Flax prices remain depressed.

GM flax is not approved for human consumption in the following 28 countries where contamination has now reached: Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Spain, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, Romania, Portugal, Iceland, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. Companies are removing products from the market as the GM flax has been found in cereals, bakery products, bakery mixtures and nut/seed products. 9 GM flax contamination notices have been filed so far through the European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed.

European authorities have named the source of contamination as the GM flax “Triffid”, which was developed in Canada but was de-registered in 2001 and has been illegal to sell since that time. While there is a test for the Triffid flax available from the company Genetic ID, the Flax Council of Canada is delaying confirmation as it waits for the Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon to develop a new test for Triffid.

“Its been nearly a month since contamination was first found, but neither the Canadian government nor industry has come forward with any answers,” said Stewart Wells, President of the National Farmers Union of Canada. “The continued uncertainty and unanswered questions show the need for more strict regulation of GM crops in Canada.”

“Farmers face the threat of unwanted contamination from GM crops, even when the crops are not supposed to be grown,” said Arnold Taylor an organic flax grower and Chair of the Organic Agriculture Protection Fund of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate. “Someone’s going to have to pay for testing our crops for contamination and any required clean-up. Who will be liable?”

“The Canadian government still refuses to consider market harm when they decide to approve GM crops. This obviously has to change immediately,” said Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. “The entire regulatory system needs urgent reform or we will see even more widespread market chaos.”

The National Farmers Union is the only voluntary, direct-membership national farm organization in Canada. It is also the only farm organization incorporated through an Act of Parliament (June 11, 1970). Articles and press releases are republished here with permission.

As we head into chillier months, this Moroccan delight will fill you up while allowing you to use root vegetables, which store nicely into the winter. Tagine is a stew full of flavor and spice (but it isn’t too hot). It’s best served with a fresh loaf of whole wheat bread- something that isn’t pre-sliced and can be used to soak up the sauce.

Cut vegetables, combine with spices and broth, then place in a slow cooker for 3-4 hours on low heat.

- 4 cups vegetable broth
- 2 medium white onions, quartered
- 1 can of chickpeas
- 1-2 small tomatoes (optional)

Root Vegetables (all cut into large chunks):
- 5 carrots, peeled
- 4 medium potatoes
- 2 parsnips, peeled

Spices:
-2 tablespoons of dried parsley
-2 tsp. cumin
-2 tsp. tumeric
-1 tsp. ground ginger
-1 tsp. cinnamon
-1/2 tsp. cayenne

1/2 hour before serving, toss in 1-2 cups of dates for an extra explosion of flavor!

What is Retail Supported Agriculture?

As far as the North American local food movement is concerned, it’s not a concept that has yet been coined in any notable way. The Kootenay Grain CSA (community supported agriculture) project located in the Kootenay region of British Columbia is now changing that.

Community Supported Agriculture is most often a model exclusively serving individual eaters (shareholders), whereby the eater invests in their food at the beginning of the season, providing the farmer with much-needed revenues up front when expenses are highest. The CSA model guarantees the farmer a market and secures the eater with whatever the harvest unearths. While eaters might not be used to such an idea, it’s not a stretch for most eaters to commit to such a model. Retailers on the other hand are in a different position as the volumes of food used by bakeries, grocers and restaurants are substantially higher, requiring a much more significant investment. At the April 2009 meeting of the Kootenay Grain CSA, farmers and steering committee members discussed how businesses might be incorproated into the CSA project and the discussion that ensued was fascinating to say the least. Could this mark the beginning of a new model? Deconstructing Dinner sat in on the meeting to find out.

Sprouting Grain

When shareholders in Canada’s first CSA for grain received over 80 pounds of five varieties of whole grains in late 2008, many were left wondering what to do with it all. In comes Lorraine Carlstrom, a Nelson, B.C., resident who saw an opportunity to share her experience and create some part-time employment at the same time. Lorraine offered a series of workshops to CSA shareholders and on this episode, we listen in on a class on the ins and outs of sprouting grain. As Lorraine points out, sprouting grain has significant health benefits.

Voices

Lorraine Carlstrom, Chapter Leader, Weston A. Price Foundation (Nelson, BC) – Lorraine is a member of the Kootenay Grain CSA and a chapter leader of the Weston A. Price Foundation – a nonprofit, charity founded in 1999 to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated nonindustrialized peoples established parameters of human health and identified characteristics of what he saw as optimum human diets. Dr. Price’s research sought to demonstrate that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health generation when they consume nutrient-dense whole foods. The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism.

Matt Lowe, co-founder, Kootenay Grain CSA (Nelson, BC)
Brenda Bruns, co-founder, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC)
Drew and Joanne Gailius, farmers, Full Circle Farm (Canyon, BC)
Keith Huscroft, farmer, Huscroft Farm (Lister, BC)
Roy Lawrence, farmer, Lawrence Farm (Creston, BC)
Wayne Harris, farmer, Mountain Valley Farm (Lister, BC)
Abra Brynne, foodshed animator (Nelson, BC)
Jenny Truscott, miller (Creston, BC)
…and others

The European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed has confirmed the contamination of Canadian flax exports with a genetically modified (GM) flax, devastating Canadian flax sales to Europe. The GM flax has been illegal to grow in Canada since 2001 when flax growers forced the government to take the product off the market. A German company confirmed the GM contamination in its cereals and bakery products.

The GM flax, called the “Triffid”, was approved by Canadian regulators in 1998 but the Flax Council of Canada convinced the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to remove variety registration for the GM flax in 2001, making it illegal to grow. Flax growers took this action to protect their export markets from the threat of GM contamination. Approximately 70 per cent of Canada’s flax is exported to Europe.

“This is an absolute nightmare for flax growers and why we worked so hard to have the GM flax removed,” said Terry Boehm, a flax grower and Vice President of the National Farmers Union. “Flax growers forced the GM flax off the market eight years ago to prevent any threat of contamination and protect our export markets. GM flax was never wanted or needed. We knew it would destroy our European markets and now we fear this has happened.”

At the beginning of this month, cash bids for flaxseed in Western Canada fell dramatically based on rumours of GM contamination.

“This contamination is extremely shocking as GM flax has not been grown in Canada since 2001,” said Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. “Where did this contamination come from?”

“This is a major international contamination incident that shows how dangerous any GM crop field testing and development is for farmers and consumers,” said Arnold Taylor, an organic flax grower and Chair of the Organic Agriculture Protection Fund of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate.

“Germany never approved GM flax but thanks to Canada we are eating illegal and unlicensed flax in our bread and cereal,” said Stefanie Hundsdorfer from Greenpeace Germany. “This again proves that once released into nature genetically engineered constructs are uncontrollable and cannot be recalled. At least now it’s clear that the industry is unable to control its products.”

The GM flax was developed by controversial scientist and industry proponent Alan McHughen when he worked at the Crop Development Centre of the University of Saskatchewan. In the wake of the 2001 controversy the Centre halted its GM research.

This revelation of GM flax contamination comes right in the middle of another huge scandal over Canada’s approval of Monsanto’s eight-trait GE ‘SmartStax’ corn without any health safety assessment.

“Consumers are reeling from learning that Health Canada did not approve the new ‘SmartStax’ GM corn and now they find out that their flax could be contaminated,” said Sharratt. “GM is out of control, we clearly need a moratorium on all new GM crops and foods until we can examine the entire system that regulates GM in Canada.”

For further information:

Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, (613) 241-2267 ext. 6; Terry Boehm, National Farmers Union, cell: (306) 255-7638 or (306) 255-2880; Arnold Taylor, Saskatchewan Organic Directorate, cell: (306) 241-6126 or (306) 252-2783; Stefanie Hundsdorfer, Greenpeace Germany, 011 49 40 30618 358 (cell), 01149 171 8780 810

The National Farmers Union is the only voluntary, direct-membership national farm organization in Canada. It is also the only farm organization incorporated through an Act of Parliament (June 11, 1970). Articles and press releases are republished here with permission.

Jonathan Wright is a Calgary-area farmer and co-founder of one of the city’s first community supported agriculture programs. Jon operates a zero-emission farm called Thompson Small Farm near Carbon, Alberta with his partner Andrea.

I am forty-five years old. I consider myself to have lived a luxurious life in terms of the spectrum of experience that has been available to me and the leisure to seek it. Yet by the developed world’s standards of today I have only ever been modestly privileged.

I never flew in an airliner until I was twenty-two. This seemed pretty normal to me. Why would anyone need to engage in such an extravagance any sooner than this, after-all? Even at the time I recall thinking that flying to Winnipeg for a wedding was a bit excessive. Contrastingly, I know young children today who are already veterans of international and trans-continental flight. I understand that that while this sort of excess was pretty much the sole territory of a choice few adults in my youth, it is considered neither extreme nor abnormal for people of all ages today. We have become in my incomplete lifespan, even amongst the common ranks that include myself, a people of extreme indulgence, and nowhere is this more evident than in our near incessant transit.

Travel. It is one of the least sustainable things we do today, the way we do it. Yet if we are not traveling, then it is likely we are planning to, and if not in the active planning stages, chances are we are looking forward our next physical journey. But any awareness of the global situation forces the conclusion that history has picked a particularly perverse and ill advised juncture to find us suffering under the spell of a malaise that flies in the face of all that is intuitive given the indisputable evidence of our times. Call this malaise as others have “the travel bug.” It is rampant among us, and I don’t think this perception is just my heightened awareness these days as a guy who’s returned to horse-farming.

Despite the fact that I involve myself in circles of high concern for our environmental issues (social issues, really), including many with a keen awareness of the implications of peak oil production, it is nonetheless still true that virtually no-one I know is willing to stay put these days. While Rob Hopkins, founder of the “Transition Movement” says that “…we are going to see extraordinary levels of change in every aspect of our lives,” I despair when I look around me and witness quite the contrary – it is the “same-old same old” indulgences of our industrial era I see being taken to extraordinary levels, almost as though we are doing it out of spite. Nowhere does this seem to be more visible than in our travel habits. We’ve never driven bigger vehicles and we’ve never driven faster. (Try driving the speed limit and you’ll see about this last one!) We’ve never spent so much time on planes and in our cars.

I suppose I understand this, at least in part. The restlessness of the times in all of us, the feelings of futility we may experience in the face of our obstacles, the desire to do something that may be at the root of all this running off. Certainly traveling is doing something. It focuses attention in a way that feels important. It provides, in fact, all the trappings of a potent narcotic. At times I’m sure we resort to travel as a medication – out of the desire to escape from the malignant forces around us that grows ever stronger as these forces escalate. Certainly it doesn’t help that many choose to remain in intensely unsatisfying places well worth escaping from, places like the suburbs for instance, arguing as my one friend does, “I don’t need to live somewhere I prefer. It’s more convenient here and I can just go anywhere in my car on my days off.” Then, even more perversely, I have heard people say, “If oil is going to get scarce soon, I better take advantage of what’s left and use it now.” Understandable as this may be on one level, it is nonetheless especially counterintuitive when, to invoke Rob Hopkins again, oil is “such useful stuff” that every drop will be needed to fuel legitimate enterprises aimed precisely at weaning ourselves off of it. The argument being that it takes energy to change, and right now, for us, “energy” means oil. Shouldn’t “don’t squander it!” be our mantra, then?

And what then does constitute legitimate energy use in our times? Increasingly among my peers, the stated argument for spending so much time traveling is education. I admit that this sounds legitimate at first utterance. I have long heard it claimed that travel is the best education, but I am then tempted to be glib and ask why, if that is so, with more folks traveling more easily than ever, do we often seem more intensely ignorant than ever of the most significant details affecting life on earth? And in an escalation of this smart-assery, I could point out that I know a number of folks who have traveled the world all their lives and who are nonetheless implacable dullards…

I am nonetheless willing to subscribe at least in part, if just perhaps for the point of argument, to the spirit of traveling as a vehicle of education. Of educating others, perhaps, or as I hear more from my peers these days, specifically as a way to gain education about how to live in a post-hydrocarbon world. But where, I would ask, do you go to do that? A couple of short decades ago, most of the developing world relied little on oil, and could have shown us much. Today, the opposite is mostly true.

Point in argument: a common destination for my peers these days is Europe. Europe is where they will go to somehow learn how to properly live here in Canada. I’ll be devil’s advocate then and ask why it is, if Europe is the place, do we host the irony of a steady stream of Europeans right here in Alberta who journey all the way to our little farm in Canada to ostensibly learn the same things? I think the obvious answer is that the point is not the place – neither place, in fact, is doing things right on the whole, but there are nonetheless plenty of useful things to learn just about anywhere if one does a little digging. That if the truth be spoken, it is not the learning but the act of traveling that is the point for these people. The place matters only so far as it must be somewhere else. Only then do you get the hit, the fix that the drug of travel delivers. Hence, perhaps, the need in some for excuses in the first place.

Watching all these important people incessantly running off gives me great trepidation these days. I have a growing intuition that we are crossing the threshold where there’s far greater value to be had – and provided – in staying home, on a grave multitude of levels. You can only be in one place at one time. Using energies in far off locales, do you not then potentially dilute whatever positive impact you might have had at home?

Here, in point form, are some interrelated reasons I have come up with just off the top of my head why you might consider kicking the travel habit if education is your stated goal…

• Learning to live somewhere else may not be transferable – it may not be the same thing as learning to live where you plan to settle. Even a farm down the road may not be the same as a farm a mile distant, requiring a different knowledge and skill set to coax the best from it;
• There are growing movements and enterprises at home that are of limited resources and considerable vulnerability that desperately need the involvement of people like you to become resilient, and the pool of help is currently limited. Your presence in your community is vital today, your absence may be potentially lethal to fledgling ventures;
• Shouldn’t you be saving the resources you’re expending in travel doing instead the actual work required of change?;
• We have the information we need, more than we need in fact – what we don’t have yet is the concerted effort for real change – stay home and help it begin in earnest!;
• Education does not replace execution anymore than awareness replaces action. In fact, many cultures do not use the word “knowledge” if there has been no successful application. Education on its own, without the majority being engaged in application, is at worst little more than a self-absorbed cycle producing nothing of tangible worth;
• You learn far more by doing, and again, you are better to be doing what you do of importance wherever it is you call home. You will then additionally have a head-start on your own enterprise or one directly valuable to you, and you won’t need to worry about the new knowledge not translating to your home turf;
• This is the age of easy info – stay home and take advantage of this instead of cheap airfares and the last of our easy oil; for a point in case, I learned to train and farm successfully with draft horses right on our own place by doing with newly purchased untrained horses what a stack of books no farther away than the kitchen bookshelf advised – no seminars, no courses, no long roadtrips, no airplanes.

What then of the resources other than oil you may be squandering in travel? Even if you were traveling by bicycle, foot, horse, or sailing ship, is the money and time and energy you’d spend on travel not more important to your local community? To establishing yourself in your place of choice? To developing an inner stillness, perhaps? When you get back, how much of value has evaporated from your resources? Has it been replaced by something of reciprocal worth, or is life “over there” simply a different life that may well not translate to home? If it does translate, was it necessary to journey around the world to find it, worth the costs not only to yourself but to all of us?

We all ultimately bear the costs of one another’s extravagances. A wealthy man might argue that he can afford to drive a Hummer, but he’s wrong – in the larger sense, he can’t afford it, and more importantly, neither can any of the rest of us afford his driving a Hummer, either.

I understand that it wasn’t so long ago, in the days when travel was indeed more aptly described by the root travail, when we all knew more of the art of having to derive our contentment in situ. Aside from the fact that travel once entailed a level of courage and competence it mostly does not today, we simply didn’t have the “insane levels of mobility” (as one author described things today) back then. We were very much subject to the Tyranny of Place. I have long suspected, and am now learning from experience, that there may be more life satisfaction to be had in coming to peace with this tyrant than in running from it.

Earlier in this decade I turned down a prestigious speaking gig at the first wolverine conservation symposium in Sweden when the supreme irony of what it would take to get me there (trains and planes and etc.), not to mention the personal resources misplaced – to talk about conservation(!) no less – came home to roost. What seemed important was at second glance really just an opportunity for self-indulgence, for disseminating information at great expense to many (including the wolverines themselves) already published in the literature, available in journal form and online. Since then, I travel very little. An hour’s trip by car is an adventure these days (and one I’d rather be experiencing with my horses), but I suspect that many today wouldn’t even consider this “travel.” I suspect that many don’t consider such trips at all, in fact. We just do them – easy! But the less I travel, the more I become attuned to the subtle yet infinite variety of my particular chosen place, the less I wish to travel. Perhaps this should come as no surprise – if you accept that travel is a drug for us, the first step to kicking the habit is to refuse to indulge it.

Each location on earth is in fact many different worlds, changing hour by hour with the sun and moon, changing as well with the weather, the seasons, the birds and the animals and the people that come and go, the inner space of the observer. What liberty in discovering that all the satisfaction one needs from life is right here within and around you on your own home turf!

We are at a point in history where we, your neighbors and your communities, need you here, at home. Has there ever been a compelling time to stay put?