Hands on Harvest: A Guide to Local Food Growers

Carol Pepper | Jun 30, 2010

This year’s Hands on Harvest Guide to Local Products has arrived!

There has been a change in funding for this project in the last year. The County of Frontenac has accepted a proposal to cover the costs of printing the brochure and a group of volunteers has continued to gather the information and carry on the on the work of creating and updating The Guide to Local Products that was started in 2007.

Hopefully, if you are a producer, you made it to the list and if you didn’t but would like to be included, you will find all the information you will need on the brochure. We strongly recommend that you save this brochure so that you will have it handy when you feel the urge to take a tour down our country roads to see all the great products our neighbours have available. Call ahead so that you are not disappointed. We hope to see our community continue to support its store owners and restaurants, so to this end, they are included here again this year.

Check out the local markets, or make a visit to your neighbourhood farm. There is no way to really explain what an experience it is unless you have tried it. It’s the simple pleasure of seeing where your food comes from. Best of all you will get to create a relationship with the producers themselves…you will learn about the farm where you buy your meat, eggs, plants, honey or whatever you purchase. You will find that the animals are healthy and cared for and that the vegetables are fresh and vigorous.

Simply put, you will learn a lot about who grew your food and how it was grown. Take the family along as well, as it’s a very educational experience and one the kids won’t forget it. It’s simply amazing how many products are available. If you haven’t checked it out before, this may be the summer to do it.

A Visit at River’s Bend Farm By Christina Wotherspoon

As soon as you arrive at River’s Bend Farm there is no reason to wonder how it earned its name. One can’t help but to stop and gaze at the Mississippi River that runs by Bill and Ellen Raeburn’s farm, providing a beautiful backdrop for both home and work. They care for chickens, cattle, horses, bees, geese, and ducks, but their primary efforts are dedicated to raising North Country Cheviot and Suffolk sheep.

Working with the animals is one of the best aspects of living on the farm for both Ellen and Bill. The look on their face as they watch a lamb jump and play in the field makes this apparent. It’s amazing to see that after years of working with the land and animals, Bill and Ellen still approach what they do with a sense of excitement and curiosity.

With all the time and care that goes into raising these animals, of course it’s difficult to part with them when the time comes. Sometimes you can't help but get attached, but it is this level of caring and commitment that makes a small family farm like this so special. They seem to have found a way to accept this harsh aspect of farm life by trying to keep the bigger picture in mind from the beginning - that they are raising these animals for meat. Great efforts are made so that the animals have a high quality of life, from the beginning until the very end.

One of the other big challenges of living on the farm is being at a distance from the hardware store. (along with most everything else) This makes it very important to make lists and plan ahead in advance of making a trip to town. People who are used to life in the country can surely relate to this problem. When you have the responsibility of caring for and protecting a large number of animals, that tractor part, bag of feed, or piece of fencing can play a critical role on the farm. Waiting for another day to make the trip can be a big problem.

Bill and Ellen are not the only protectors of the sheep. They also have a donkey that lives with the sheep and will chase off predators such as wolves and coyotes. I had heard that donkeys are good protector animals but I didn't realize how tough they can really be. They discourage predators from coming close and they will chase, bite and kick anything that comes too close. Another important worker on the farm is Kate, the Border collie. She was at our side as we moved around the farm, keeping an eye on everyone and everything. Like the donkey, she deters predators and will chase after them if needed, but she also lets Bill know when a predator is in the barnyard, will herd errant sheep, and is a constant companion.

In the near future, Kate will have an additional job as a trainer for a new Border collie puppy, although it’s hard to imagine another dog that could do her job nearly as well.

As well as managing all the animals, the Raeburns also have a large garden where they grow a lot of their own food. And on top of that they are also helping other people to be able to do the same thing by creating a community garden. They have made arrangements with neighbours who would like to be able to garden but who don’t have any arable land available. There are a couple of families who live on the other side of the Mississippi River and paddle to the garden to plant their vegetables in the fertile ground at the Raeburn farm. There is deer fence around the entire garden and a source of water is also available. This is the second year that the community garden is underway on the Raeburn farm, with great success for all concerned.

There is an adventurous spirit at the Raeburns’ as the season starts up, with talk of the new and different crops being attempted each year.

The community garden is a one that may catch on even more, as people discover the joys and benefits of gardening and growing their own food. When the gardeners arrive from across the river, they carefully find their way up from the shore to the garden and leave the same way.

This is an apt expression of the idea of having a small ecological footprint in food production. 

Raised with Love on Tiraislin Farm by Kirsten Jackson

Taking care of farm animals is a big challenge. Especially when you grow to love them, and then sooner or later, having to turn them into food.

I know for a fact that Rosemary Kralik would agree with me. Rosemary has been working on Tiraislin Farm, where she lives, for ten years now. Her number one goal is to make sure all the animals have a great life and are very happy before their life is over. Rosemary decides that if the animals haven't had a great life on the farm, that she will keep them on the farm for another year or two. When it comes for the animals’ time, it is a very gentle process. When the animals are injured, Rosemary tends to them herself, if the injuries are very serious or something she can't fix, a vet comes out to the farm. Rosemary has about 100 animals including: 24 Highland cattle, 35 sheep, 22 lambs, 8 goats, 1 donkey, 1 guanaco, 50 chickens, 20 yaks and nine horses. The meat that Rosemary sells is yak, Highland beef, and lamb. It costs $15 a pound. Rosemary believes that it's not enough just to have healthy animals, they also need to be loved. This is the real value in her products.

Sumac – A Tasty Treat By Joyce Bigelow

The sumac seed head makes a delightfully tart and refreshing drink with a light pink colour. It is delicious hot or cold, and is easy to prepare, nutritious, unique and free. This beverage has been called sumac-ade, sumac lemonade, Indian lemonade, sumac tea and probably other names that I haven’t heard yet. Whatever people call it, they find it is delicious as lemonade.

When I mention making sumac tea, many people ask, “Isn’t sumac poisonous?” Poison sumac, however, is very different from the true sumacs and is, fortunately, less common. All of the true (edible) sumacs, like the Staghorn Sumac, have dark reddish or purple fruit borne in erect, tight clusters. The surface of the fruit is fuzzy or grainy. The poison sumac, Toxicodendron vernix, is in a different genus (along with poison ivy and poison oak). This shrub has berries that are whitish, waxy, hairless, and hang in loose, grape-like clusters. They are quite unlike the red seed heads (berries) of the edible sumacs. Poison sumac also differs in that it rarely grows in dense, pure stands, such as are common at the edges of fields in our area, and in that it inhabits swamps rather than dry areas.

Preparing the tea is simple. First, pick the berries. I usually use six to eight average-sized clusters for a pitcher of sumac tea. The large clusters of sumac "berries" are so easy to collect that in just a few moments you can have enough for a pitcher. These berries are just seeds covered with a thin coating of hairy substance, which holds the flavour. I usually snap off the twig just below the fruit by bending it quickly, but pruning shears or a knife work, too. If you pick the berry heads before they are ripe, dark red and mature, they will not have developed their flavour and will produce a bitter brew. But don’t wait until the rain washes out their flavour, either. Usually, the first clusters are ready sometime in July, with the prime time being in early August. Sometimes a white, sticky substance coats the berry heads. Don’t let this scare you, it also holds good sumac flavour. To enjoy this refreshing summer beverage in the middle of winter, you can pick the heads in prime time and dry them, so you don't have to worry about using washed-out berries. Remember: do not wash the red seed head, for the flavour is contained in water-soluble crystals on the outside of the berries.

After you pick the berries, you may prepare the tea two different ways:

Take the berry clusters, crush them up a little with your hand while putting them into a pitcher, pour cold water over them and then let the pitcher sit in a cool place, such as your refrigerator, for one to two hours. Your taste buds will know how long. Keep the water cold to prevent bitterness. Strain the results through a fine strainer or cloth to remove the seeds and hairs and serve sweetened to your taste with sugar, honey, maple syrup, etc.

Some people say that pouring boiling or hot water over the berries makes for poor flavour, for it leaches tannin from the stems, causing the drink to become bitter. However, I prepare it this way all the time, for a nice hot tea. Cover the seed heads with boiling water and allow to steep. I leave it up to an hour for a concentrated base, which can be diluted with ice for sumac-ade. Strain the brew through a cloth. The resulting pinkish liquid should then be sweetened to taste and diluted if too strongly flavoured.

The tartness of sumac is partly due to ascorbic acid (vitamin C) so there is also a health incentive to drink this beverage.

What else can you do with sumac? I sometimes make a potent sumac concentrate by soaking four batches of berry heads in the same water, one after the other, for one-half hour each. This concentrate makes a wonderful and very tart jelly. It can also be boiled with wild apples, elderberry and other that need a touch of tartness to liven them up in jam or jelly. Also, the young, thick, tender tips of sumac shoots (especially staghorn) in early summer can be peeled and eaten raw or cooked. They are sweet and delicious, much like raspberry stalks. I understand the berries make a delicious wine, too. Sumac can be dried, crushed and used as a spice. You can finely grind the sumac berries in a coffee grinder and use it for seasoning salads and it is great sprinkled over fish and grilled. And last but not least:

Sumac Meringue Pie

Combine: 2 cups sumac tea (prepared as above), 1 1/2 c. sugar, 1/2 tsp. salt, 6 tbsp. cornstarch

Cook in double boiler whisking constantly until thick. Beat 4 egg yolks; add a little of the hot mixture. Stir and pour back into double boiler. Cook and stir 2 minutes longer.

Remove from heat. Add 2 tablespoons butter; cool. Pour into baked pie shell.

Top with meringue prepared by beating 4 egg whites with 6 tablespoons sugar and ½ tsp vanilla. Bake at 350 degrees until browned.

One warning - since sumac is related to cashews and mangoes, anyone allergic to those foods should avoid it, or proceed with caution.

The sumac is a wonderful tree, deserving of much more attention. Unfortunately, the fact that it shares names with a tree with a bad reputation has made many avoid it. That leaves more for us, but either way there's plenty of sumac to go around as it grows like a weed around here. Why not try some this summer?

A note from Growers in this year’s guide:

If you live in Central or North Frontenac, you will find a copy of the Hands on Harvest Guide in this week’s Frontenac News. It is also available at retail outlets throughout the region, and as a .pdf file at Frontenacnews.ca.

Some of the producers in the guide had some comments about the work they do and the goods that they make. They are reprinted below (the numbers correspond to their location in the guide).

#9 Zigrid and Gordon McCarthy:

The agriculture that we do represents our personal need for clean food, grown with care, and served fresh.

Our excess is sold upon availability to a privileged few. We develop new relationships through this contact.

People live in such a fast paced world. We have time, and we are so blessed. We just pass it on.

- Gordon McCarthy

#10 Silent Valley Alpaca Farm

At Silent Valley, we think of the Alpacas as the soft secret of the valley. These beautiful, intelligent and intriguing animals range over 400 acres of historic farmland. People visit us just for fun. The feel of the Alpaca fleece is sensuous, soft, and exquisitely luxurious. At Silent Valley Alpacas, we have a newly renovated ranch store in the Matter-o-Thyme Cabin.  We invite you to visit our website at www.silentvalleyalpaca.ca . We hold a Natural Fibre Festival on the September Labour Day Weekend. 

- Robert and Hanne Quigley

#11 D&M General Store

This year we are celebrating the 100th year of our family's traditional maple syrup operation!

#12 Lorie’s Home Baking

Our Products are made with natural local honey, eggs, fruit and unbleached flour.

#16 Ravensfield

I work with biodynamic principles because I believe that is the most holistic and the best way to grow the highest quality food and at the same time bio-remediate the earth. It is a completely mixed farm – animals are an essential dynamic. We need the energy from the manure that is going into the crop.

- Titia Posthuma

#17 Mountain Grove Seed Company and Spah Beauty Products

My focus is on providing local, historic and heirloom seed that has grown in the area for generations, much of which originated from my great-grandmother’s farm. Each year I continue to broaden my selection. I am a member of Seeds of Diversity, the Canadian seed exchange. I love providing beauty products that are all-natural and my focus is on creams, lotions and moisturizers made with pure cocoa and shea butters and local beeswax.

- Dawn Morden

#18 Elm Tree Farm

We are a family farm that specializes in growing a wide variety of fine organic produce. Our “home-style” gardens are filled with exotic salad greens and gourmet vegetables. The quality of our produce comes from the use of biodynamic preparations on our gardens and compost; growing open-pollinated heirloom cultivars selected for great taste and mineralization of the soil.

The more nutritious the soil, the more flavourful the food! We are working towards growing food year round as well as providing ‘put up’ food. We have also begun to teach people how to do this kind of gardening on a smaller scale.

- Tom Waller and Allaine Nordin

#19 Bill MacDonald

We are fully equipped and insured to help you with judicious and sustainable management of your forest resources

- Bill MacDonald

#22 Dragonfly Herbs

Growing herbs for sustainability.

Add a few herbs to your vegetable or flower gardens. Harvest them to dry just before they flower for the best flavor and high oil content. Using herbs during the winter months gives you an extra health boost at a time when flu and colds abound. Using local or your own herbs ensures that you are getting a quality product and one that is grown to your specifications without pesticides. Taking “herbal medicine” can help to alleviate or prevent a health problem but using herbs in our foods on a daily basis adds to the health benefits we get from eating locally sourced foods.”

- Kathy Martin

#23 Community Herb Garden

What is an Herb?

The Old Farmer’s Almanac Book of Wisdom says, “Botanically, an herb is a plant …... that naturally dies to the ground, having no persistent stem structure. For most gardeners, an herb is any plant grown principally for its flavour, fragrance or medicinal properties.”

At the herb garden we focus mainly on the second definition, as this is where most people’s interest and needs lie. However visitors to the garden will also find a bed of indigenous herbs (wild flowers) under the botanical definition as well as other useful plants. The garden is, after all, a teaching garden as well as a source of fresh herbs that you might otherwise have to go outside of the community to find.

Plants are labeled and most have a description sheet as to their traditional or recommended uses. If you are not sure, visit on Wednesday mornings, when the volunteers are at the garden, working.

During salad season especially, you can’t beat fresh herbs for flavour.

- Sally Angle

#27 Ludwig Ratzinger

Our chocolate bars are made from "noble-grade" Criollo, Trinitario and Wild Cocoa beans from selected suppliers in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Madagascar and the Dominican Republic. The chocolate is manufactured in Switzerland under the highest quality standards.

- Ludwig Ratzinger

 #29 Steeles Apiaries

Our honey is natural, local, and not pasteurized. The bees go to the wildflowers and that gives the honey a unique flavour. The landowners and farmers who live nearby are happy about the pollination that the bees provide, and the cottagers are happy to get a local product from us. I love the work - I grew up on a farm and this just feels natural.

- Keith Steele

#30 Audrey and Earl Bain

“We enjoy what we do… getting back to the basics of growing our own food as well as some for others.

- Audrey Bain

Hands on Harvest Brochure (PDF 333 Kb)