Exploring Your New Farm Dream in Ottawa

6. February 2012 by David.

 Exploring Your New Farm Dream in Ottawa

 

Ottawa
When: Wednesdays February 22 & 29 6:00pm to 9:00pm and Saturdays March 17 & 31, 9:00am to 5:00pm
Farm Tours: Saturdays will include both class room time and farm tours on both dates.
Location: TBA, Downtown Ottawa
Cost: $325 (+HST) /person or $450 (+HST) for two people from the same “farm dream” (ex: family, business partners)
To register: Click Here
For more information contact: Cherie Bauman admin@farmstart.ca or 519-836-7046 ext. 103.

Over 12 hours and one day of farm tours, the Explorer course takes a learner-centered approach to exploring agriculture as a career. As a participant in the course, you will be guided through an in depth self-assessment process, designed to help you identify the specific aptitudes, interests, skills and resources that you can bring to a new farm business. You will receive support through the process of researching opportunities in agriculture. And you will meet other serious gardeners, livestock enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs who are also asking themselves, “Is starting an agricultural business right for me?”

*The Exploring Your New Farm Dream training opportunity is eligible for cost-share funding through the Growing Forward Business Development for Farm Businesses program in Ontario. For more information on program requirements, call 1-877-424-1300 or visit the OMAFA web site.
For information on FarmStart and our programs visit www.FarmStart.ca

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The World We Want - Frances Moore Lappé

31. January 2012 by David.

An Evening With Francis Moore Lappé
January 31st (Toronto) and February 1st (Ottawa)

USC Canada presents an inspiring evening with the visionary author of Diet for a Small Planet (1971), Frances Moore Lappé.

Today, she is challenging us to change the way we think so we can create the world we want!

The Ottawa Citizen has published an Op Ed penned by Lappé, entitled Food Scarcity: A Dangerous Myth. Join an online discussion with Lappé Can humanity feed itself? Monday, Jan. 30, from 11 am to noon, at ottawacitizen.com.

 

OTTAWA EVENT February 1, 2012
Place: Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie St. Time: 7:30 pm (doors open @ 6:30) Cost: $10.00 (+taxes), $15.00 (door)	Place:St Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, 310 St. Patrick St. Time: 7:30 (doors open @ 6:30) Cost: $10.00 (+taxes), $15.00 (door)

 

 

The World We Want

A Special Live Webcast Across Canada.

If you’re not in Toronto or Ottawa, you can still catch Frances Moore Lappé live Tomorrow night!

USC Canada invites you to tune in tomorrow, Tuesday, January 31 at 7:30 pm, for a special live webcast of her Toronto public forum. Click here to connect.

This promises to be THE must see and hear event of the season – so do join us!

 

We hope to see you Online!

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Thank You!

6. January 2012 by David.

Thank you for your support in 2011! We appreciate your business. We hope you took the chance to relax over the last couple weeks. We sure did! Barn renovations were put on hold in favour of some slightly more… delicate building projects David Burnford Riverglen Biodynamic Farm PS For those who are wondering: Yes, we do have eggs available! We also have carrots and rutabagas. Yum

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Market Money for Christmas

12. December 2011 by David.

Here’s a new way to share top quality, local, organic produce with your loved ones.

This Christmas, encourage someone you know to enjoy produce from our stand at the Little Italy Farmer’s Market, or right here at the farm.

Our ”market money” is exchangeable at either location for any item we have available. That includes vegetables, eggs, or meat products, depending on the season. It can be used anytime we are open in 2012.

Many of us know someone who could use a little incentive to purchase good food. This gift makes it easier for them, while supporting your favourite local farm!

Simply email us your name, mailing address, and tell us the amount of market money you’d like to purchase. Then send us a check or email transfer at your convenience. Our high tech printing machine (ahem) can make any amount of market money you wish. Market money will be mailed out on, or before, Monday, December 19th to make sure it arrives before Christmas. We can mail it your own address, or directly to the recipient of your generous gift.

Season’s Greetings!

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Fall Reflections

21. November 2011 by David.

You are invited to

Fall Reflections

by Canadian Organic Growers Ottawa

Joel’s coffee will be ready as the doors open at 2:00 on Sunday, December 4th at the Sandy
Hill Community Centre, 250 Somerset East! The Booths will be open and our
Wonderful Volunteers will be featured on Power Point!

Our Keynote Speaker
Stuart Colins from Bryson Farms

there will be tons of gorgeous full-colour photos of Bryson Farm

 

A brief AGM for COG Ottawa

Come and get to know us!

Don’t miss out on the Silent auction

The best for last!
A beautiful selection of organic cheeses
by Organic Meadow
with biscottes and
organic apple cider.

Mmm.. Can’t you just taste that cider?
Welcome!

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Updated Registration Form for 2012 CSA

17. November 2011 by David.

 Registration Form 2012

 Here’s an updated version of our 2012 registration form. Please take a look and forward to your friends and colleagues.

Thanks!

Thuja and Bruno relaxing as I harvest the last of this year’s parsley. Six crates full will make a good fall boost for all the animals!

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Michael’s Letter to the Premier

28. October 2011 by David.

Dalton McGuinty, Premier
Legislative Building
Queen’s Park
Toronto ON M7A 1A1

18^th October 2011

Premier of Ontario, Honorable Dalton McGuinty,

 

Choice is something that is inherent in our national identity.  People come to this country from all around the world because Canada is a place of liberty, and these are the values we hold most dear.

Yet, despite this, I have been fighting since 1994 for the right of men, women and children in Canada to be able to make the simplest and most important of all choices – what they eat.

Over the last 17 years I have made every effort to engage the authorities in a constructive dialogue about the issue of non-pasteurized milk in Ontario and Canada. In return my farm has been raided by armed officers, my family has been terrorized and I been dragged through the courts – first being acquitted and then being found guilty.

Today, farmers like me in Ontario and around the country are scared. We are scared that people with guns who claim to be acting in our best interests will snatch our livelihoods from us. We are scared that we will be tried for the “crime” of believing that informed consumers and citizens in our free country should be able to choose what they eat and drink.

This is why, on September 29^th, I began my hunger strike.

Today is day 19 without food. And whilst I am suffering and my body is weakening by the hour, I am resolutely determined that this will be the final chapter of this 17-year fight.

The right to buy food direct from a farmer is as old as our country. Yet, today, that right is being taken away from Canadians by a government that insists that only corporate Canada be responsible for feeding our citizens.  I respectfully call on you, Premier McGuinty, to meet with me in person, as soon as possible, to find a way of ensuring that this right is respected and that the government renounces in taking away the most fundamental of all our rights – that to choose what we eat.  The end of my hunger strike is dependent on it.

I am very hopeful that we will be able to resolve this issue, once and for all, by working together in an open and constructive way and I very much hope that the opportunity to do so comes soon.

Yours respectfully,

Michael Schmidt

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If You Eat, You Better Occupy Wall Street

26. October 2011 by David.

Dave Murphy

Founder of Food Democracy Now!

The recent carnage to the American people’s way of life began more than 30 years ago when the Reagan administration crafted deliberate policies that stopped enforcement of antitrust laws at the Department of Justice, encouraged an orgy of corporate mergers and launched a three decade assault on common sense government oversight. Since that time, politicians of both parties have embraced the radical notion of “free” markets that decoupled risk from accountability.

Occupy Wall Street was born out of a legitimate frustration with the collusion between Big Business and elected officials of the U.S. government. And nowhere is that collusion so great as in food and agricultural production where four firms control 84 percent of beef packing, 66 percent of pork production and one company, Monsanto, controls patents on more than 93 percent of soybeans and 80 percent of corn grown in the U.S.

Ironically, on the day that Occupy Wall Street launched, I was in San Francisco at a conference appropriately named “Justice Begins with Seeds” to discuss the problems of excessive corporate control over our food supply. The incredible growth in the use of genetically modified (GMO) seeds and the excessive corporate influence of biotech seed companies have in Washington was high on the agenda. Much like the ubiquitous credit default swaps of the mortgage crisis, which became toxic assets for the global economy, this new technology of GMO seeds is less than two decades old, but already appears in an estimated 75 to 80 percent of processed food that Americans eat everyday.

In 2011, an estimated 94 percent of soybeans, 88 percent of corn, 90 percent of cotton, 93 percent of canola and 95 percent of sugar beets produced in the U.S. contain GMOs. And since most items in the grocery store include common ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, vegetable oils made from corn, soybeans, cottonseed and canola, with 8 out of every 10 bites of processed food, Americans are consuming genetically engineered foods without knowing it.

Despite a recent Reuters poll showing that 93 percent Americans support mandatory labeling of GMO foods, politicians in Washington and Monsanto lobbyists have so far blocked this basic right.

Even now, more than 50 countries around the world require labeling of GMOs, including citizens in the European Union, Japan, Russia and even China.

Food Democracy Now! recently released an exclusive, never before seen video taken in 2007 of then Senator Barack Obama promising a room full of more than 400 Iowa farmers and rural activists that if elected he would immediately work to label food that “has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they’re buying.”

Incredibly, President Obama made this comment during the Iowa caucus, in a mostly rural state with a leading agricultural economy, which he won by a wide margin and helped launch him to the White House. With the national conversation now raging about corporate influence it’s curious that he hasn’t kept his promise since taking office.

In another portion of the speech, more widely circulated, Obama offered the hope that his administration would differ vastly from the administrations before him.

“For far too long, you’ve had to listen to politicians tell you one thing out on the campaign trail, and then close the door and do another thing in Washington when they make rural policy. You’re sending your message, but sometimes you can’t get through because there’s a lobbyist who’s already on line,” professed Obama.

Four years later however, the shine of Obama’s victory has worn off, leaving many of us to wonder if this isn’t the most agribusiness friendly administration yet. The approval in one year of three new biotech crops (GMO alfalfa, sugar beets an ethanol corn) and a Roundup Ready bluegrass for lawns represents the same threat that financial deregulation and the resulting economic crash does to our food supply.

Even this week, more news of the Obama administration’s love affair with food and crop biotechnology is making the rounds, with an announcement last Monday that the Food and Drug Administration recommended the commercialization of GMO salmon (despite flawed scientific research). Currently the evaluation is under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget, but if the administration is as cavalier with GMO salmon as they have been with other GMO crops, the first genetically engineered animal could be a plate near you soon.

At the same time the Obama administration has decided to “plow ahead” with the indiscriminate approval of GMOs, a flood of recent studies have disproven several previous claims by the agricultural biotech industry, such as the perilous rise of superweeds, insects becoming resistant to the genetically inserted insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and a disturbing report out of Canada that found that 93 percent of pregnant mothers tested had the genetically engineered Bt toxin in their blood, something biotech scientists claimed was impossible.

In the 1990s, when agricultural biotech companies wanted to make sure nothing got between them and profits, they rotated executives into high-ranking positions in government to help write the rules that govern approval of GMO crops.

In the most famous example, former Monsanto attorney and super lobbyist Michael Taylor oversaw biotechnology regulations at the Food and Drug Administration that placed rBGH, a synthetic hormone, in the milk supply, despite the objections of agency scientists, and implemented the policy declaring genetically engineered foods to be “substantially equivalent” to naturally bred seeds and animals, the main Catch 22 of why GMOs are not required to be labeled in the U.S.

Currently, Michael Taylor is back at the FDA as the Food Safety Czar. So much for closing the revolving door.

For everyone who eats, the events that brought down our banking system and the lack of accountability for those who rigged the rules in their favor should be lessons in the making. Today’s system of industrial agriculture has become too concentrated, while corporations and commodity groups are continually advocating for the same type of policies and practices that outsource the risk onto society while privatizing all the profit.

Rather than encourage a diversified portfolio in agriculture, the Obama administration and the USDA are doing everything in their power to put all of global agriculture’s eggs in the biotech basket.

If people and elected officials think the collapse of the global economy was a disaster, wait until it happens to our food supply. The truth is, if people really knew about the collusion behind what they were eating, both parties would be in the streets. For some reason, Obama has so far sided with chemical and biotech seed giants like Monsanto, who keep insisting that Americans should be dining in the dark. It’s time to remind President Obama of his promise, after all there’s nothing more important than the food that we eat and feed our families. And some things are worth fighting for.

 

Follow Dave Murphy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/food_democracy

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We’re Still Open!

22. October 2011 by David.

It may be getting colder outside, but are garden is still full of delicious vegetables! Visit our farm store and its selection of fresh, biodynamic vegetables. These days you will find:

Orange and multi-coloured carrots, daikon radish, red and Chioggia beets, kale, green and rainbow swiss chard, yellow, russett and purple potatoes, yellow and red onions, chinese cabbage, spaghetti squash, buttercup squash, beta mix, spinach, salad mix and more!!!

We are open:

Tuesday & Thursday: 3pm to 6pm

Saturday: 8am to 4pm

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Canada is the only G8 country which does not allow the sale or distribution of raw milk

21. October 2011 by David.

 

 

Farmer’s hunger strike for raw milk goes on

 

Valerie Hauch Staff Reporter

Though weakened by a 19-day hunger strike, Durham dairy farmer Michael Schmidt has drawn his line in the sand — it’s milky, white and unpasteurized — and he intends to defend it to the death, even if it’s his own.

The 57-year-old farmer and advocate of organic raw milk held a news conference at Queen’s Park Tuesday and also read a letter he was delivering to Dalton McGuinty in which he stated that his hunger strike would continue, unless the premier agreed to meet with him in person as soon as possible to discuss the right of people to buy food directly from farmers.

When the Star asked if he was willing to continue the hunger strike until he died, Schmidt’s solemn response was “Yes.’’

“I will go right to the end. I wouldn’t do that if I wouldn’t have tried for the last 17 years to establish a dialogue. If there had been one gesture of dialogue … but there was none,’’ said Schmidt.

The dairy farmer is appealing a recent Ontario Court of Justice decision that convicted him of 15 provincial offences related to selling unpasteurized milk. The provincial government had appealed a lower court decision in 2010 that ruled in Schmidt’s favour, allowing him to continue his raw milk co-operative.

“I came from Germany,’’ said Schmidt, who immigrated here in 1983. “I have seen the aftermath of a situation where people didn’t rise up when there was still time to rise up … This is more serious than most people think,’’ he said.

“What I’m asking is not impossible,’’ he said. “I’m not asking that the laws be changed right away… I’m asking that the harassment of farmers be stopped, that people have a right to make a choice in the foods they eat and that we start a constructive dialogue.’’

Schmidt, who says he has lost more than 30 pounds since his hunger strike began, had been drinking one glass of raw milk a day in addition to water, but for the past 10 days has stuck to water.

Only farmers taking milk from their own cows are allowed to drink it unpasteurized. Canadian law requires milk sold to others to be pasteurized, quickly heated to at least 63C, to kill off pathogens.

Schmidt has argued that he is not selling raw milk but giving it to the cows’ owners, people in his co-operative who buy shares in the herd.

Canada is “the only G8 country which does not allow the sale or distribution of raw milk,’’ said Schmidt, who has a master’s degree in agriculture.

Instead of engaging in constructive dialogue with him and others in the co-op, Schmidt said, the government has done nothing but stonewall and have his farm raided “by armed officers. My family has been terrorized and I have been dragged through the courts.’’

Meanwhile, he says, there’s a growing underground market for raw milk that is potentially more dangerous because it’s unregulated.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1072160–farmer-s-hunger-strike-for-raw-milk-goes-on?bn=1 

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