Food = Connection

"The thing I love most about food, is its powerful ability to create connections. How much it connects us to the environment, to old memories, new memories, or to each other. How much it is able to make us see and feel." 

The Environment
Since food comes from the environment, by walking around the garden and connecting with the food crops, we can get a sense of what is going on in the environment. For example, one of our routines is to taste test the leafy greens. By tuning in to the flavor of the leaf, and how it varies from week to week, we can understand how much stress the plant is under. For example, if the leaf is highly bitter this tells us it was likely exposed to high temperatures. We can literally taste the secondary metabolites that the plant released during a stressful time, which is the bitterness. Who knew lettuce could be so bitter about the heat!

Extra bitter and spicy arugula.

Along our walk-about, we also keep our eyes wide open to discover what is going on in the environment as well. We came across a patch of beans that were yellowing and dying off. For some plants, this may tell us that the soil is lacking in nitrogen. However, legumes are nitrogen fixers so this shouldn't be the case. When we pulled one of the dying plants out of the ground we found that the root looked short and like it had been chewed, leading us to believe that an insect pest population is present and eating the roots. Some further investigation of the soil and plants is needed to find out what insect this may be.

Sad root of the dying bean plant.

Old Memories

The smell and flavour of food evokes so many things in us - memories, nostalgia, things that are connected to our past. In some mysterious way, it helps us to feel again a sensation of the past, of something we otherwise might not have access to. 

One of the last things we had left to harvest for the market was some licorice mint. Licorice mint is a beautiful mint-coloured plant with thick and full leaves that taste sweet and spicy when bitten into, a unique combination of licorice and mint flavours. It also has an intensely beautiful aroma to it. It is a plant that isn't forgotten after a nose or palette has come in contact with it.

As the market vendors were setting up, one of the men called out to me and asked me what I was harvesting over here. I told him it was licorice mint. He looked surprised and delighted, and let me know that he hadn't seen or eaten that in years. I offered him a stalk of it, and he came joyously skipping over like a young child to accept it. He mowed down that licorice mint stalk like Bugs Bunny would a carrot. As he was chewing, he told me stories of how when he was a child there was a spot in Burnaby that a whole bunch of it grew. Him and his other young friends would go hang out there and munch on the licorice mint all day.

Licorice mint.

Later on I got to sell food at the market stand. It's so exciting being at the market stand as new foods become available throughout the season, and seeing people's reactions to it. Some people have never seen some of the local in season crops like licorice root, while others have strong nostalgic reactions to it. It's strawberry season now, a crowd favorite, which makes for all sorts of beautiful and magical stories. One of the first customers I had saw our strawberries and her face lit up. They don't exactly resemble the pale red strawberries at the grocery store that are mostly white and flavorless when you bite into them. The strawberries we have are different sizes, varying shades of deep berry red, and you can smell there sweetness from a good distance away. Just by seeing and smelling them, the woman at the stall remembered the complexity of juicy flavours a strawberry can have. She told me about the strawberry bushes that used to grow in her backyard before she moved to the city, and how exciting it would be when they would start to bear deep red, juicy fruit every year. She bought a carton of our strawberries and contentedly was on her way. 

New Memories

Another exciting crop that we had at the market was garlic scapes. Many people had never eaten or even seen them before, which made for plentiful questions and conversations. I'd say about 10 people who have never eaten garlic scapes before went home with a bag full of them. At some point afterwards, for the very first time, they will have the experience of cooking a new vegetable, smelling its' aroma, and tasting all of the compounds it is made up of. These sensations will leave an imprint on that person, memories of the people and feelings in their life during this new experience. And all of these sensations will create some sort of memory the next time they come across garlic scapes again. 

Another new crop for many people at the market was arugula. In fact, an older woman who had bought a bag of arugula for her very first time last week had come back this week to ask more questions about it. She had created her very first memories with this leafy green - she put it in some of her salads and in some of her sandwiches. Now she was looking for more ideas about what to do with the rest of it. This delighted me. Rather than doing a quick Google search, she came back to the very people who grew it to ask what they would do with it. We gave her a few more ideas like putting it in soups, pasta, or making pesto. I'm excited for the potential new arugula memories that are yet to be made for this woman. 

Bags of arugula.

Not only are there adults at the market trying garlic scapes and arugula for their first time, there is also a baby at the market literally seeing many things for his very first time. Ocean, less than a year old, is alive for strawberry season for his first time. How exciting is that?! The bright red fruit catches his attention. His Mom has only just started feeding him solid foods, introducing one new thing a week, and strawberries have not yet made the list.. Seeing how drawn he is to this red berry he has not yet tasted, she plans to give him his very first strawberry sometime in the next few weeks. That will be a berry special day indeed!

Ocean interacting with a strawberry for his berry first time!

Each Other 

"If a woman could see  the sparks of light going forth from her fingertips when she is cooking and the substance of light that goes into the food she handles, she would be amazed to see how much of herself she charges into the meals that she prepares for her family and friends." - Maha Chohan

And one of its' most special traits, in my opinion, is that food connects us to each other. So many beautiful moments and conversations take place on market day, that wouldn't have happened if we didn't have an abundance of beautiful fruits and veggies between us. I learn about who our customers are, what foods they like, the type of food education they have. I begin to care about the people who buy our food, and grow it with them in mind. It can become a very personal deed. On the other hand, customers learn who their farmers are, what their passions and life goals are, what their struggles are, and the variety of ways they enjoy their food. Customers can show up not just for the food, but because they believe in who the farmers are, what they are doing, and they wish to support that. When eating the food, they have someone in mind they can think about, to be grateful for. The market manager collects anonymous feedback from customers on their experience at the Kwantlen Market, and she told us during the market that someone had written their reason for coming to the market was to buy food from the very nice students - that's us! When relationships are made between the people who grow food and the people who eat it, it's a powerful thing. 

A small family with a large dog popped by the market stand at one point. They bought some leafy greens and a box of strawberries. Daisy, the large dog, was sniffing the new purchases. The Mother took a strawberry from her bag, asked Daisy to sit and then popped the berry in the dog's mouth. I knew that strawberries were a crowd favorite, but I had no idea it was the same among the canine world. 

Another woman came by and bought some strawberries. She told me they were for her mother. We got on to talking about how beautiful it is to give people food as gifts. She told me that her mother is in a nursing home, and every time she goes to visit her mother, she brings a handful of food with her, usually some strawberries. Her mother loves strawberries, but they don't often have them at the nursing home. Her mother's elderly friends at the nursing home would see this and would get excited by it, so she began bringing more food, and more strawberries to share with her mother's friends during her visits. And that's where this box of strawberries was heading. I gave her her change and she was on her way. A couple of minutes later she returned though, and decided that she needed a gift for a friend who had invited her over for dinner that evening. So, she bought another box of strawberries. 

Strawberries.

The Beauty of it All

Food can be so beautiful. So many colours, flavours and stories to appreciate about it. One of my favorite things to do at the market stand is to make everything look beautiful, so that others may also see it's beauty. I've discovered a new found passion for making bouquets of flowers. At first they were kind of awkward, but week by week they have gotten more beautiful, I must say. 

Flower bouquet beside basket of kale.

I remember an elderly man telling me a story last summer. He told a story of a group of astrophysicists who set out to discover why the universe would create humans. What purpose did we have here? All of the other animals, the plants, the sea creatures, the mircoorganisms, had a meaningful place in the ecosystem. There was a natural harmony, a balance that existed among them. Why then, would Mother Nature take the chance of introducing humans, a species that could very well disrupt this harmony? "And so the atrophysicists concluded," the elderly man told me, "that even though everything was in balance before humans existed, Mother Nature was still missing one thing. She was missing something that could appreciate her beauty. And so she made humans". 

It's an interesting thought too, that no other species may be able to admire the bouquets of flowers I made for the market the way that humans can. Perhaps no other species can look at the stars in the night's sky, the mountains in the distance, or a bowl of freshly picked strawberries with the same sense of gratitude and appreciation for its' beauty that we have the capacity to. And sitting in the midst of a farmers' market, among a table of beautiful food, I think that we humans begin to remember the uniqueness we hold to see nature's beauty, and we live out that purpose again. 

Piper and I, getting stoked on beautiful bouquets.