Food
Holland Marsh Farms
By Christine Sismondo
Lettuce rows at VanHart Farms.
I'm going to come clean here.
I'm not really a 100-mile diet kind of gal. Not even a 500-miler. Because, frankly, I'm not prepared to live without pineapples, bananas, collard greens, avocadoes, lemons and artichokes. They help me get through my day. Especially in January.
Before you report me to some higher authority, I want to say that I do try to do my bit. I buy locally grown stuff when it makes sense. I generally attempt to maximize the bounty of the seasons and take advantage of what's best at any given time. As we all know, it simply tastes better.
Anyhow, eager to defend my position that off-season collard greens flown in from wherever are better than no collard greens at all, I decided to try and find out just what is grown within a hundred miles of where I eat - downtown Toronto.
Fortunately for me (and the rest of us eaters), I didn't even have to go the whole 100 miles to discover a bounty of local produce. Holland Marsh, known as Canada's vegetable patch, is only about 35 miles (55 kms) north of Toronto. But, between all the hardships facing the farmer and the encroaching development, it looks like we just might have to eat it to save it.
Of course, how to eat it can sometimes present a big challenge. It's not always easy to know where your carrots and onions are coming from ? even if they're labelled "Grown in Ontario." It's a pretty big province, after all.
Laura Young, whose tireless efforts at saving Holland Marsh family farms practically make her the brand ambassador of the region, explains on the drive up there that they are in the process of changing that. Young knows the ground well ? she grew up on a Holland Marsh farm, which her family still owns.
"A couple of big farmers have trademarked the names 'Holland Marsh Carrot' and 'Holland Marsh Onion' recently, although I haven't met with them to see what they plan on doing with that yet," says Young. "And Woodbine racetrack features 'Holland Marsh Salad Greens' on their menu."
Young is also working to establish a Holland Marsh farmers' market with Bradford-West Gwillimbury resident, Caroline Weatherhead, and Iggy Natoli - an entrepreneur Young credits with having started area farmers' markets long before they were popular.
Although Young et. al. have only been working a short time on the dedicated Holland Marsh market, she laments the fact that the location may have come too late for our visit. It should be up and running soon, though, at Highway 11 and Barrie St. in downtown Bradford.
Chit-chatting with Young and gazing out the window - en route to write a story about local farms - Les Nessman suddenly comes to mind. I wonder if I, too, might one day be honoured with the Copper Cob award. Or, better yet, maybe even the coveted Silver Sow. As a kid, watching WKRP re-runs, I never thought I'd want to mimic Nessman. Quite the opposite, in fact, since farm reporting was actually shorthand for Nessman's being hopelessly out of touch with modern, urban sensibilities.
We've come a long way since. Blame it on locavores and the slow food folks if you want but farmers are the new rock stars. Michael Pollan was a major player in the rising market share of the agriculturalist, since his description of Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer Joel Salatin stole the hearts, minds and stomachs of Omnivore's Dilemma readers.
Fortunately for me (and for the rest of us eaters) Holland Marsh has Ron VanHart, its very own rock-star farmer.
VanHart and his wife, Loretta, own the stunning VanHart All Organics farm in Kettleby. Although this is the family farm which VanHart grew up on, the couple hails from the film industry. Ron has co-ordinated stunts for films like Cinderella Man, X-Men and John Q and a range of advertising firms. I ask him, given that innovative farmers are close to attaining celebrity status these days, which of his jobs is getting him more publicity.
VanHart smiles and explains that he's one of the few people in the region who can honestly talk about family farms, since so many have been taken over by monoculture and agri-business. Also, he's doing less film work these days, in part, because of the dollar-related slump in the industry.
"Plus, I'd rather come here and fight with the bugs," quips VanHart, "At least they don't talk back."
In fact, VanHart doesn't have to wage battle with the pests all that often. He's been working on an innovative all-organic (as you might expect) biological pest-management program, which includes bees doing the pollination and the introduction of Encarica Formosa larvae, ladybugs and shell rock dust from Nova Scotia to control the bugs. And he claims that paying careful attention to crop rotation is half the battle in minimizing pest damage.
"Mono-crops are where you see the real use of pesticides," explains VanHart, "Not to mention the fact that that type of agriculture quickly depletes the soil of its micro-nutrients."
VanHart takes us over to his greens. It's a beautiful sight: Row after row of rotating arugula, iceberg lettuce and collard greens line the black soil to the edge of his lot. I reach down and pick up some of the black, moist dirt ? you can feel the richness of the "miracle soil."
Holland Marsh is such an incredibly productive farming region (nearly half of Canada's onions and carrots and a total of about $50 million in produce per year) as a result of its nutrient-rich soil. The reason it's such a fertile patch? Well, it's mainly because of the muck. Muck soil, that is.
Muck soil is what's left after draining a marsh. It's been praised as "miracle soil," (although not without some controversy from wetland conservationists) for its dense concentration of micro-nutrients - a result of partially decayed vegetable matter.
Farming on muck soil is akin to farming on peat moss. And that, apparently, is a very good thing for carrots, onions, arugula and, most importantly, my collard greens.
VanHart doesn't just rely on the bounty of the earth, though. No peat moss gathers on this man, who is busy growing 10,000 of the prettiest greenhouse tomato plants I've ever seen. Even in the greenhouses, he uses Holland Marsh soil. He boasts just about every heirloom variety you can name. I pick out a Belricchio, a beautifully flawed Italian heirloom. VanHart tells me I'm not alone, his uneven and imperfect tomatoes are the ones getting all the attention from customers, who often come directly to the farm to buy produce. (For those unwilling to make the trek, they are also available at the Summerhill Market and a number of farmers' markets, including a recently opened one at Bloor and Borden in the Annex in downtown Toronto.)
VanHart isn't alone in his innovation in Holland Marsh, however. Perhaps it's the long history of waves of new immigrants bringing new techniques and new vegetables to the region but the area, in fact, seems to be the poster child for a healthy mix of progressive methods blended with tradition.
For example, there's the nearby Hempola farm, where they invite visitors to come and buy their hemp salad dressings, flour and nuts; a woman who raises poultry for immigrants used to raising and killing their own back home; and Earl Young, of Norman Young and Sons, who has gone online to try to promote and brand his hand-picked premium-quality kohlrabi, dandelion greens, beets, Swiss chard and, of course, collard greens. He's hoping his high-quality vegetables combined with the "eat local, eat fresh" movement will translate into customer loyalty.
Even the flower farmers are branching out. With intense competition from cheap imports, flower farmers like Herman Schakel are increasingly marketing their products directly to bride-to-be's who are looking for places to cut corners in their budgets.
At Mid-Valley Gardens, they've taken it a step further. Bert Hanemaayer, who has been farming the land since 1952, has refashioned his farm several times over. He switched from tomatoes to roses 35 years ago and now not only grows flowers but also makes the flower arrangements for weddings, thanks to the design talents of daughter-in-law. Every weekend the shop is bustling with wedding centrepieces and bouquets waiting to be delivered.
The Hanemaayers' expansion into a full-service flower stop has been a crucial business move, given the prices of flowers from Ecuador and Colombia. Hard to imagine this but, even with expensive fuel prices, it is still cheaper to ship this perishable product from South America. In part, the prices are low because of the cheap labour but, some surmise, they are also cheaper because there are fewer restrictions on pesticides like DDT outside of North America. Worse, perhaps, is the lack of transparency in the farming practices abroad. Nobody is really certain which chemicals are used and which aren't. Here in Ontario, obviously, practices are tightly regulated.
Edible flowers on that salad? Better make sure they're from Holland Marsh - not Ecuador.
But of all the innovators I met in the area, perhaps the couple who embodied the new, dynamic philosophy of the family farm is John and Kathryn Gorzo.
"You have to be innovative - or else you go out of business," says Kathryn, a University of Guelph agriculture graduate.
Kathryn explains that she had the degree, her husband, John, had the farm. None of this is to suggest that John wasn't familiar with experimental farm practices, however.
"John seems to be the one who everyone's always asking about. 'What's he growing now?' says Kathryn. "Then, a few years later, everyone's growing it."
Three years ago, the Gorzos were the first to grow artichokes in Ontario. In their first summer, they had enough to supply the entire local market, and boast that the quality was better than the California imports. At the time, John says, California only shipped its "seconds" to us. Now, faced with local competition, our market commands a better product from out west.
Unfortunately, there is such a thing as too many artichokes. As is often the case, finding a processor willing to pay a reasonable price for the excess of his crop proved nearly impossible. The same story emerges time and time again when speaking with farmers about their challenges: that the middleman processors and distributors have a tight monopoly. Both consumers and farmers lose, thanks to this deficiency in the system - just one of many reasons why setting up independent farmers markets is considered a crucial step in fixing the broken food chain.
The Gorzos have also grown celeriac, coloured beets and purple carrots and are now on to organic lemons and an intensive sprout business. They have an amazing greenhouse stacked with trays of pea sprouts, sunflower greens and wheatgrass. Still, traditional methods are revered here. The Gorzos brush each sprout by hand to avoid mould growth. With 30,000 trays of sprouts per year, that's a lot of brushing.
John Gorzo is confident that the new health claims on wheatgrass' behalf (as a digestive aid and, more controversially, as a preventative for cancer, heart disease and diabetes) from the West Palm Beach Hippocrates Health Institute will continue to make his sprouts a growth industry.
I worry that he'll be upset when I write about his operation. The secret of his wheat grass will be out and, before too long, everyone will be trying to grow it. He shrugs.
"I'm a farmer. I go and plant seeds in people's minds. I don't care if I get credit. And I'm happy that I've planted a lot of seeds."
And Gorzo doesn't mean just the wheatgrass and artichokes. He's politically active and has challenged the federal government's policies sharply at times. Two years after CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization) was implemented and appeared to be failing the needs of farmers, he went to a local meeting where the Minister of Agriculture was defending the program.
"I stood up and said to him, we've experienced the worst two years in our entire history and you're telling us you want to keep us right where we are?"
While Gorzo sees a lot that's wrong with the system, he also sees a lot of promise in the heightened awareness among the public about the importance of local food and supporting the family farm.
"You know that fair trade that they have for chocolate and coffee?" Gorzo asks rhetorically, "They should have that for us."
Indeed. And I'll certainly do my part to pay a fair price and eat it and save it. I'll take all the artichokes and all the organic lemons the Gorzos care to sell me. And if Laura Young can drive me to dairy farm and locate a pound of organic butter, I'll be a convert to locovorism - at least while summer's on.
In January, all bets are off.
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