Spring is a wonderful time (unless my big ‘ol ego is involved)

Spring is a wonderful time. Of new beginnings, fresh starts, of abundance. The standard cliché. As a new urban farmer it’s also a time to be completely and wholly overwhelmed. To loose sight of why I’m out in the field and frustrations with the people around me who are so in tune with their abundance. Me, on the other hand, have abundance in the form of thistle, lams ears, something green and menacing I can’t identify, and a curly leafed fellow the goes from nothing to covering everything in 60 seconds flat. I have an abundance of some kind of beetle that have eaten my radish to the ground and peas (planted in late March) are only starting to make an appearance like that ultra cool kid that is always late cause they got somewhere to be. Damn diva peas.

 

The weeds. Oh. The. Weeds. I’m doing my best not to begrudge the weeds, those biodynamic nutrient accumulators. I understand their role – making way, aerating, don’t hate your weeds they are a sign of health… – but I don’t have to like it.

 

I have been humbled, stricken silent and dumb by the amount of physical and mental work that is required for the task of farming over 4000 sq. ft. that I feel dreadfully underprepared for. At the outset organic farming takes a lot of work, of time and energy, than I was certainly not anticipating.

 

To a certain degree, this is a defining moment. When I choose to look at what I am doing, give my all, and stand back knowing that I did what I could and marvel and the power of regeneration while recognizing my limits or I could feel damn rotten about the whole thing, compare myself to other farmers plots with tears and frustration and throw down my trowel in disgust at the audacity of mother nature to get in the way of my red bulls blood beets. The past week I’ve been leaning towards the latter.  (Though when I write it down it does seem just a wee bit dramatic).

 

Reflecting on the season so far I would say a couple of things. First, I would have prepped my garden beds different and with a significant amount of mulch to keep the weeds at bay while I was away for a couple of weeks. In the bed prep I would have gotten the soil a bit more broken down and less clumpy – I don’t know if it makes a difference but it would have fit in with the other plots better. I think I also would have thought harder about how much land I really wanted – another humbling moment. I was offered more land and wanted to be tough and take it on – cause, you know I could take on anything. The taming of the ego is one skill I am working on but I will pay for it this summer with humility and deference.

 

I will also write more often because it gives me clarity on this journey. That my goal is not necessarily the perfect plot (but my, would that be a treat!) but to learn growing skills, support the other farmers, and showcase for my therapeutic horticulture clients the delights of nature.  And I’m going to be ok with that, hopefully the people around me will be too. 

Photo of one of my plots before I left for a couple weeks – looks so peaceful at that point…

The Greenest City

Since the Fall I’ve had the privilege of interning with Jane Hayes – permaculturalist,  life coach, garden coach, teacher and lovely friend. I’ve been learning about building a business in a way that reflections social permaculture as well as lessons in teaching and facilitation. Her visions of a good future are inspiring and help guide my own path. 

This is all to say that you too could learn with Jane!

She has two permaculture courses coming up in April/ May – an Introduction to Permaculture and a URBAN Permaculture Design Course (PDC). The PDC in particular is a very unique opportunity as most PDC’s happen outside the city which increases the cost for the overall course. 

Introduction to Organic Gardening and Permaculture Workshop 
Sat April 14th, 10-5 pm, High Park Children’s Garden

Permaculture gardening is the conscious design of garden ecosystems that mimic the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. We ask and observe, what would nature do? This hands-on workshop introduces permaculture theory and ways to apply it in your home or community garden. Topics: organic gardening basics; permaculture design and practices; working with water; plant guilds (plants that grow well together, help soil tilth and support the larger ecosystem); dynamic accumulators (plants that accumulate nutrients & feed the soil); plants and plant selection; starting new gardens and soil building; putting garden to bed; cover crops & mulches; composting; humans and other animals; working less for more; diversity gardening. 

$70-$100 sliding scale (+HST), includes take home resources.

 

Urban Permaculture Design Course
Friday April 27th – Saturday May 12th
$995-$1495 sliding scale, includes 100+ hours of teaching, most meals, resources. 
Variety of locations in Toronto, with visits outside the city. 

This exciting new course will be offered through 100 hours of teaching and learning over two weeks this spring. We will start with permaculture principles and ethics, moving into design methodologies, which includes observation skills. We will further create a foundation with the earth and life sciences, and journey through natural and cultivated ecologies. For our home systems, we will look at natural building, renewable energy systems, biological waste treatment systems, and food storage. Beyond individual homes, we will explore various forms of sustainable communities, which include green economics and cultural systems. Students will be supported in their personal and professional paths, with quality mentorship. We will be developing skills as permaculture designers throughout the course, which will culminate in a final wholistic design project. Field trips and locations will showcase what Toronto is doing on the eco-front. There will be some evening sessions, which may be open to people not on the full course. Course description, registration and further info here.

Happy Growing and hope to see you there!

 

Growing stronger

What a whirlwind 2012 has already been! The greenhouse is starting to fill with seedling to plant when the soil warms, Garden Jane is getting busy with a Urban Permaculture Design Course and the House of Compassion is digging into garden design and plant ideas! It has been a challenging few months the best way possible – my boundaries have been pushed to explore new meaning and to take a critical look at my assumptions.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about stereotypes, discrimination and assumptions. The recent International Women’s Day highlights and names the many significant challenges that marginalized communities face. The rhetoric of the republican party regarding women’s reproductive rights or Karzai proclaiming that women are legally secondary and inferior citizens are the most horrific of examples. As Martin Luther king Jr. said “injustice somewhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

 

In my world, where I don’t face the same challenges as a women in Pakistan, it is the nuanced, subtle and ingrained discrimination that are the most difficult to address unless we are faced and challenged everyday. As a female farmer I feel this in the discussions about why women become involved with production or retail of good food. The common argument is that a women’s innate empathy and compassion is her motivation for growing. This benevolent sexism is hard to have a critical conversation about largely because it sounds so harmless. Yet it has to be clear that motivations vary as much within a gender as between genders. That we need to grow and question any statement that lays claims to an entire group of people but it is far reaching.  If you know how to do this well – please share!

 

My assumptions about mental illness change every day as I go to the House of Compassion. It has been a wonderful journey over the past few months building trust and getting to know the residents at the House. What has struck me the most was how different each resident experiences their illness. I feel sometimes that when mental illness is represented in media such as movies or reported in the news a person with mental illness has a single persona – one that is violent, unpredictable, ‘insane’ and untrustworthy. I see anything but. The individuals I’m spending time with are unique and go through the ups and downs as well all do. They experience those ups and downs sometimes more severe and it’s at those times that our collective compassion is most needed – not our scorn or dismissiveness. The excitement for the garden is infectious and beautiful, yet I know there will be days where no one is ready to be in the garden space. That’s ok – as in the permaculture principles – I’ll observe and interact and take the simple and small solution of listening.

 

How are your assumptions challenged and how do those challenges help you to ‘grow strong’?

photo by author

When saying yes means so much…

 

Sometimes the universe really listens.  At the end of December I was wondering what my next step was with horticultural therapy when I receive an email from a supportive housing organization seeking someone to help support the creation of a community garden for the residence of the house*. I had met a relative of a resident of the house in the fall and had talked to her about my interest in horticultural therapy. She took my contact details and I thought that would be it. But – she had passed on my details and the ED got in touch with me.

 

The people who live in the house experience severe mental illness that means that they require constant and on-going support. They come to the house through hospitals or the shelter system after being added to a waiting list that is far too long. I had never worked with a population that experienced severe mental illness and didn’t have the experience to act in any therapeutic role. I explained this to the ED who was more than fine – she was looking for someone who could give his or her time, energy and passion to the program and would gel will the residence. Though I still harbored concerns about my ability to be great at the job I said agreed to help develop the garden program than facilitate the program during the summer.

 

Winter and early spring is time to grow trust with the residence. I go to the house for an hour a week to chat to the residence about garden things or anything they would like to talk about.  What I’ve noticed in my conversations so far is that, like most people, they just want someone to listen to them. Really listen without judgment or advice giving. The residence tell me about the family gardens or farms they had as a child or food that they love to eat and help to cook. Sam* described all the ways he loved stir-fry – so we talked about creating a stir-fry garden bed and his imaginative ideas for the garden just spilled out of him. Another resident recalled all the flowers he had in his garden as a child and how much he would like to see them again.

 

The space is already ready to be planted – complete with compost that had been donated. It is just waiting for some excited and eager hands to help it grow. What is particularly special about these kinds of gardens is that we are not just growing flowers, herbs and food, we’re also growing the people who work in the garden. Skill, self-esteem and confidence all develop in a nurturing and support environment that I hope to create.

 

Saying yes to something that, to be frank, is fairly intimidating and daunting is sometimes that best thing to inspire creative solutions and renewed energy. Will you say ‘yes’ to something that scares you?

 

* To maintain the confidentiality and privacy of the residence I won’t name the home or use real names but will just refer to it as the House.

Music of the Heart

When I finished my masters I also wanted to find ways to give back to community while incorporating diversity into what I do. The arts have always been a part of my life in some capacity so I sought after something that does a social good through the arts. This is when I saw that ad for a board member for the Talisker Players, a chamber music group that also has a unique and amazing outreach component that really drew me in.

 

We had our first outreach concert for a concert series called ‘Rumours of Peace’. The concert itself was a beautiful arrangement of singers, spoken word, harps, cello, violins, timpani’s, all those exciting instruments to watch. For me the real treat was a concert at the Maxuel Meighan center – an all-male drop-in community space. A group of around 20 men tentatively took their places in the small chapel in the basement, eyeing the shine of the instruments in the soft light.  I tided chairs, checked in with the musicians and fielded that quiet questions from the men there for the concert. They wanted to know what will be played, how the Talisker Players came about and to share stories of their own interest in music.

The concert started with Mary, the brilliant artistic director, giving an introduction to the concert and some of the meaning to the arrangements. The men listened and nodded gravely when Mary talks about the futility of war and the hopes of peace that course through the music. The music starts with the baritone who says with gusto and confidence “What the bullet sang!” before launching into a spell binding experience of music, song and the images that those create. I took time to look around the room to see how the audience received the challenging operatic piece and everyone was transfixed. All through the concert the audience listened with attentiveness and engagement. The applause at the end rang through the halls with a standing ovation and smiles.

 

After the concert many of the audience members took time to shake the hands of the musicians, myself and Mary with thanks and praise of the music. Free tickets and TTC tokens to the full concert at Trinity St. Pauls were handed out to anyone who wanted to experience the full concert. As we tore down the audience helped to carry all the bit and pieces and heavy equipment to the waiting cars. I watched over the equipment as it was brought up and a young-ish fellow who was part of the audience struck up a conversation. He told me how much he enjoyed music and that he had learned the banjo while in prison. He had only been out of prison for 6 weeks after 15 years behind bars. It got me thinking about the power of music and I believe in the power of nature to heal and find solace in what can be a dark and confusing world.

 

At the actual concert dates many of the men who were offered the free tickets join the audience at Trinity St. Pauls. The respect, awe and joy of the music was evident both at the outreach concert and at the concert at Trinity St. Pauls and I look forward to future concerts that we can share and experience with the broader Toronto community.

 

Young Farmers

As of 2006, 2.2% Canadians working as farmers, those working on farms are getting older and farms are getting larger and larger. This means that we loose diversity within farming and the knowledge of farming.

Yet there are folks out there who are challenging those statistics – check out this blog and report to find out more!

Young and Beginning Farmers need Capital, Land, Health Insurance

http://ht.ly/7P9tZ

 

Farming in the City

 

 

“…the whole idea of urban agriculture is to get the people to think about where there food comes from and to think about the idea that cities can be farm areas as well, and produce lots of food.” – Curt Collier, Deputy Director of Grown

 

I have been meeting many new people lately and have found myself stumped by the standard question “So, what do you do?”. I’ve been trying to find other ways of getting to know folks that is not predicated on what they do as paid work – yet the question is often the default. I have been stumped because I stopped working in a traditional paid job to pursue my love of gardening, food and healing. I’m fortunate in this way as my husband works a job he loves and can support both of us as I built my life work.

 

I’m developing an identity for myself though, simple words that can say when I’m asked what I do. I can say I am a farmer – though this does not necessarily capture everything it is a good start. I am indeed an urban farmer with Fresh City Farms, a urban farm located in Toronto. I had heard about Fresh City while studying and was really drawn to the idea of farming in my community and contributing to the sustainable food system in Toronto. Its model of hyper-local food that is so amazingly fresh is not necessarily entirely unique – young urban Farmers and Backyard Bounty farm are also in the city – but it is not very common particularly the year round food box and salad greens grown in the green house (and perhaps potatoes as well if my tire potato bed works out!).

 

At the moment I spend my Tuesdays up at the greenhouse – planting, harvesting, building soil among other tasks. I love the feeling of dirt on my hands and hard work that has makes the day go a little too fast sometimes. The conversations over seedling thinning or transplanting are rewarding and delightfully silly making for such a positive atmosphere in the green house that I can’t help but be drawn back each week. I get to share some of these stories in addition to beautiful food at the CSI Spadina farmers market. What I love is people’s curiosity about the food, the sharing of how to prepare food and the conversations among the vendors.

 

What will be a challenge will be how to also make a business that can contribute to household expenses in an industry that is not known for its money making prowess. What I hope to do is to make value add products such as lotions, healing salves, women’s healing tinctures/ salves and perhaps even some delicious food folks can take away. Though there will be challenges this work in something that I’ve always wanted to do and I’m lucky that I’ve found a way to do it. So come on spring!

 

Gardens and Healing

My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant’s point of view.  
- H. Fred Ale

 

Where my life takes me will largely be the result of conversations, suggestions, ideas, and conjectures with people I meet along the way. This I am fairly sure of. As this blog was a suggestion, so is my foray in horticultural therapy. The idea was suggested to me as just something to look into, which I forgot about until a family emergency got me thinking about supporting those with mental illness.

I needed support to support others so I had gone to a traditional therapist to seek guidance, reflection or at least an unbiased ear. What I got however was a disinterested and, to be frank, terrible listener who did not hear a thing I was saying. I should have not been surprised by this, my family has sought support for mental health and additions in the past to find it does not exist where we lived (only religious based service was available) or it is wholly inadequate and sometimes painfully devoid of care. I do think there are services that are likely valuable and therapists that listen with compassion and care but in my personal experience I have yet to find them.

It was at this point I was also studying permaculture with Jane Hayes and I got to thinking about these two worlds. That is when I revisited hort therapy. The idea that through the cultivation and care of plants with gentle guidance, an individuals physical, spiritual and mental well-being could be supported and fostered, really appealed to me. It seemed so intuitive, few would argue that interaction with natural and garden spaces create a sense of worth and calm.

Permaculture lends itself to hort therapy itself in so many ways. The ethics – care for others, care for the earth and fair share, speak to the need to support each other in a sustainable way. Permaculture values all aspects of nature, including, and perhaps especially, the marginal. Those who have been marginalized through struggles with addiction and mental illness can carve out a space for themselves in the garden in such a unique and empowering way. Creative responses to change and acceptance of the inevitable changes in seasons I saw as a gentle language to support someone through a rough period. I believe that permaculture allows people to recognise the fragility of a plant in themselves and find a space to nurture and support that plant or garden and in turn support themselves.

So, I started to do my homework and identified the leaders in the hort therapy community in Toronto and area. It has been probably the most touching and enlightening homework I have ever had to do!

I met a therapist, Sharon Stewart, in Guelph who runs the Julien Project and I was blown away by her passion and dedication to her community. She told me a story about a young man who experienced mental illness. He started volunteering and coming more regularly to the gardens. One day, while washing root vegetables together, this young man looked at Sharon and asked her if she knew why he liked coming to the garden so much. She said, no, she didn’t know. He replied that, for him, while he was in the garden, the voices would stop yelling at him in his head. That story wasn’t unique. There were so many stories of growth, rehabilitation, and kindness that came out of the garden. An older gentleman came to the garden after experiencing a stroke. Through the use of enabling tools (retrofitted garden tools) he was able to gradually increase his dexterity and mobility. When his wife joined him in the garden she cried she was to happy to see his progress.

At the Sunnybrook Hospital veterans garden, Phillip Spring, the hort therapist there, told me about the reduced use of pain medications by the patients who spent time in the gardens. His vision was to continue the gardens after the last veteran had passed away to support others who are experiencing post-traumatic stress or other mental illness. He told me a story of a women who had fibromyalgia and chronic arthritis who was on pain medication most of the time. The exception was when she was in the garden. She was able to work for hours absorbed in the task at hand without the brain-fogging pain medication.

These are just two examples of so much good work happening in hort therapy to support our communities. As I continue on my journey, learning about permaculture and hort therapy I hope to expand the idea of health promotion and health care to one the recognises our place in nature and its healing properties. My next step is to reflect on a presentation I gave on my experiences with hort therapy at the Permaculture Living Conference here in Toronto and think about where this journey will be going.

My introduction to permaculture

It all starts with a conversation. That is how I have been getting to know the food and urban farming community in Toronto and how I met a wonderful permaculturalist in the city. I knew that I wanted to do something in the long term that got me in the garden. I loved being in a garden, growing and talking to others about gardening. So I started to identify who the leaders where in the gardening and permaculture community. This is how I met Jane Hayes, permaculturalist, I simply sent her an e-mail asking if we could have a conversation. She was wonderfully open to my many questions and since then I have taken her permaculture course and support her on projects and she supports and gives input into my growing career.

I had learned about the concept of permaculture while living in New Zealand where my husband was completing his masters degree. Permaculture seemed to make a lot of sense then, when I only had a very basic understanding of what it could entail, and makes even more sense now as I gradually increase my knowledge of its principles and applications. Now as I learn from Jane and other permaculturalists in the Toronto community I am seeing new ways of applying myself to food production, professional and personal development.

There is something so emotionally and spiritually satisfying about designing ecological systems that recognise the wisdom of nature while also providing food and medicine for friends and family. I have heard permaculture called ‘revolution disguised as gardening’ – in a time where there is uncertainty about the economy and the future, gardening as a mechanism to save the world is so needed.

Where this adventure is going to take me I’m not sure but I know it will have to have me in the garden, talking with folks and sharing ideas for the future.

Check out Jane Hayes’ great website and learn more about what she does: www.gardenjane.com

Interview on Urban Food Systems with Nevin Cohen

My interview with Nevin Cohen about food, cities and new ways forward (over four videos):

Nevin Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at The New School, where he teaches courses in urban planning and food systems.  He serves as Chair of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, the interdisciplinary environmental research and education center at The New School, and home to the university’s Environmental Studies major.  Dr. Cohen’s current research focuses on urban food policy, particularly innovative planning strategies to support food production in the urban and peri-urban landscape, public policies to engage citizens in sustainable food production, urban planning and food access, and civic agriculture in cities and suburbs. He has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Rutgers University, a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Berkeley, and a BA from Cornell.