Edmonton City Market and Who is Your Farmer?

Who takes pictures of their groceries? I know I am not alone; it is peculiar to some people, but every foodie will understand. I get so excited when the outdoor markets open in the spring, and just as exuberant during the bounty of our harvest season. Root vegetables! Though the outdoor markets are now closed for another year, I was so thankful that I could shop in the brisk air last week, and in the fresh, crisp freeze of winter this week. Who is my farmer? I have a few, but I turn to Greens Eggs and Ham first. Good friends, good people, great produce. It is their salad greens in the bag above, and I cannot believe how vast the variety is, how long it lasts (over two weeks in my fridge, and how nutritious and delicious it is. Yes, at $7.50 a bag, it sounds pricey, but you eat it all before it goes bad, so there is no waste, and it is filled with nutrients! Well worth the hard earned dollar. I have other favourites: Sunworks Organic Farms for my chickens and turkeys (now that GE&H is no longer producing them), Sundog Organic Farms for other produce, Irving’s Farms for our pork, Riverbend Gardens for the little red-skinned yellow-fleshed best-banana-shaped-baby-potatoes-in-the-world, and  Mornville Greenhouses for my herbs. There are many more. These are just my regulars.

Here are Tara and I in front of the booth at the City Market she made all by herself to sell the Edmonton Slow Food aprons, T-shirts, and grocery bags she designed and ordered. They are still for sale through Slow Food Edmonton. I bought a T-shirt, and I love it! She sent out an e-mail the night before she was heading out to set up the booth and asked if anyone could help out. I was available until noon, and going to the market anyway, so headed down to help her out. She is one committeed cookie! I did not dress properly. I was not expecting the chill that was tenaciously working at finding a warm place to hide. This is probably the first time since I was a child that my feet were really freezing. Memories came flooding back of the times I was trecking through the snow to or from school and would just keep my head down and move one foot in front of the other as fast as I could, sometimes through sheer will alone, working to get there before I “died”. It felt like I might. Forhead aching, legs chapped, toes unbendable: the pain was intolerable, but I learned to live with it. It was winter in Canada, and winter in Canada, as a child, meant lots of pain from the cold. I wasn’t afraid of it. It was just a part of my life.  I remembered it well, last Saturday.

I purhcased all of my groceries for Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday at the Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market and at the City Market. Root vegetables! Sunch bounty! I feel so blessed to be able to get my food from a farmer within the city limits. I know that I am buying real food grown by the hands of the people I have thanked, and paid. Acquiring food is such an important part of our lives, that sometimes we forget how hard people work to produce it for us. I make a date with myself every Saturday morning to go to the Markets. I love that time in the early morning when I see what is fresh, and inspring to me for the week ahead. This meal would be a very traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. That’s what we have come to expect in our family. Traditional, and then a couple of surprises, just for fun. My fun.

Isn’t the thyme below gorgeous! I usually grow my own, but we were away all summer, so lucky me, I spotted Sundog Organic Farms at the City Centre Market. Their produce is drop dead gorgeous! Second to none. Just last week, they were featured in Edmonton’s See Magazine. Make sure to check out the photo essay at the end of the article.

I found a video on Youtube that is well worth the watch where Jennifer Berkenbosch from Sundogs Organic Farms is addressing what appears to be city hall. (I lost the business card she gave me – AH!, so if anyone knows her contact information, please let me know.)

And while we are on the topic of the importance of buying and eating local, Carolyn Steel talks about how food shapes our cities in the fvideo on TED. It is sixteen minutes, so couldn’t be downloaded to Youtube, but will be time well spent. It is informative, and provocative. I invite your response.