Tuesday, April 30, 2013
THERE IS A FOOD revolution taking place around the world and Haliburton County is part of it. More and more people are realizing that their good health depends on healthy food. People are looking to the past to learn about a time where farmers produced food without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides (because they weren’t invented yet).
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Haliburton County Grain CSA meeting hosted by David Bathe (and his board of directors) at the Spectrum Healing Centre located just north of Minden. More than 40 people gathered to listen to the work that David and his supporters are doing to grow organic, fresh grains for the people in our county. The grain CSA is planning to grow wheat, barley, buckwheat, oats and soybeans. They have reached outside of Haliburton County to learn from other successful grain growing organizations.
Board members of the grain CSA recently travelled to the Northern Grain Growers Conference in Vermont where they talked to farmers who are making a profit growing the organic grains, and they talked to owners of bakeries who are doing booming businesses in that area because of the fresh grains.
The CSA also visited Tom Manley of Homestead Organics in Ottawa who grows grains organically and is very successful. Tom Manley is convinced that the production of organic food is a sustainable and profitable way to meet the needs of the population in concert with the needs of our planet.
“We believe in the triple bottom line of profitability, social responsibility and environmental stewardship. The sustainability of our business and our community depends on the balanced care of these three pillars,” his website says.
After David finished his excellent presentation about why he is so passionate about growing fresh and organic grains, a representative from Haliburton in Transition talked about the work they are doing such as working with 44 families last year to buy cold, hardy fruit trees and shrubs for Haliburton. They are working on another group order for this year.
The last speaker of the day was Rosie Kadwell who stood up to speak about the premiere of the Harvest Haliburton documentary on Thursday, May 2 at 5:30 p.m. at the Northern Lights Performing Pavilion.
Our entire county can only benefit from all the great work that these people are doing to ensure good food for us to eat!
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