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You are on the [cover page] of folder [News 2008]Latest News & Announcements 2008
updated Oct. 17, 2008
Oct. 25 - Halloween Dress Rehearsal & Crafts!
The Withrow Park Farmers' Market is getting ready to say a spooky goodbye to its 2nd outdoor market season. Join us on Oct. 25th, from 10 a.m. to noon for a Halloween Dress Rehearsal: carve your own pumpkin, and make a spooky or autumn decoration for your door, porch or room. A special treat will be available to any kid or adult wearing their Halloween costume or another season appropriate decoration.
updated Sept. 5, 2008
September 6, Harvest Celebration
No-Nonsense meets Stuffed and Starved on Sat. Sept. 6!
Join us for a special "meet the author" book sale and signing at 11 a.m. during our 3rd annual Urban Heirloom Harvest Fest on Saturday September 6th, brought to you by Between the Lines (BTL) and the Withrow Park Farmers' Market.
A triple whammy of skyrocketing food prices, escalating levels of obesity and worrisome threats to farm and fish harvests from global warming and climate chaos are making food stories headline news around the world.
Enter the No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, written by Dr. Wayne Roberts, a leading public health policy analyst and organizer who's been warning about just this "perfect squirm" for over three years. The book analyzes the 60-year evolution of a global "cheap food system," and ends with a chapter tracing today's emerging food crisis to decades of severing the natural links connecting food to human, environmental and social health.
The No-Nonsense guide is the first popular book to analyze food problems as part of an overall food system. It's also a happy find among contemporary food books: written with fun and zest, packed with on-the-spot reports of heartwarming experiments around the world, and loaded with hopeful and doable proposals based on the author's years of experience as a professional food organizer with Toronto Public Health, the leading city public health unit in North America.
Here are a couple of nibbles from the book:
"Often criticized as greedy and vulgar, today’s global food system was created in the last months of World War Two as part of an ennobling vision to create a new world of abundance and peace. Claude Wickard, Roosevelt’s Secretary of agriculture from 1940 to 1945, said in 1941 that ‘food will win the war and write the peace’…‘Recommended Daily Allowances’ and ‘fortified foods,’ standard on food packages to this day, came early during the war, part of an effort to keep people ‘strong and healthy’ so they could stay ‘strong and free.’"
"Food systems operate in much the same way as the body’s circulatory system, nature’s ecosystems, the educational system, the solar system, or the capitalist system, where each part is most deeply understood in relation to the whole. And so it is with most food choices, which are rarely fixed in their impact, but have a different effect depending on the system they’re part of."
"Food is no better suited to mechanization than is sex, love, art, education, health, religion or anything else that’s close to body or soul."
WAYNE ROBERTS coordinates the citizen-based Toronto Food Policy Council, and is also an executive board member of both the US-based Community Food Security Coalition and Food Secure Canada. He's also covered international food developments over the past decade as food columnist for NOW Magazine in Toronto; his weekly articles are frequently carried by alternative publications throughout the US and posted on food-oriented websites and listservs.
More Urban Heirloom Harvest Fest activities:
To make it a proper Urban Heirloom Harvest Fest we will have:
- plenty of activities for kids like story telling with staff from the Toronto Public Library's Pape branch from 10 - 10:30 a.m. and 11 - 11:30 a.m., and an ongoing crafts table: pollinator bingo, facepainting and tattoos, honey tasting, heirloom tomato salad workshop, make bees and butterflies, and more
- brought back by popular demand: the Dufferin Grove temporary bake oven, sponsored by Magic Oven - get oven fresh goodies between 10 a.m. and noon
- a peachy keen cooking demo with Riverdale's Madeleine Greey at 10:30 a.m.
- seed saving demonstrations sponsored by Seeds of Diversity Canada and the Toronto Community Garden Network, a pollinator information display hosted by Seeds of Diversity Canada's Pollination Canada program, and a heritage potato display with produce from Toronto's largest urban farm
- musical performances by Alexandra Hickey, Lynn Harrison, and regular market crooner Dave
- Riverdale Meadow Community Garden harvest items and season extension resources
- worm composting 101: find out why worms are good waste diverters, and how to get your own indoor mini composting plant going
- mini Riverdale craft show and sale with Barbara Showler-Lewis and Breeze Romain (jewellery), and Lynn Heath (pottery)
- and more!
Subscribe to our free e-newsletter (the link is on the home page) to get the freshest market news all season!
updated May 19, 2008
The market is launching it's 2008 season with its 2nd annual Spring Fling on May 24, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.!
It is time to welcome back the great taste of Ontario produce and the people bringing it to the city, including yummy prepared foods like Tim Clement's fantastic breakfast crepes, or organic soups by Jim Dunford.
On May 24 you will also have the opportunity to get the know-how on North American native plants from NANPS (the North American Native Plant Society), get heirloom veggie seedlings, herbs, transplants of native plants and more, from gardeners in the community and Urban Harvest, Toronto's heritage seed company. Some items you'll find include asparagus seedlings and currants, as well as a great selection of tomato varieties.
This will also be a great opportunity to meet Gail Gordon Oliver, the editor of Edible Toronto, a free local food focused magazine, and there may be other surprises in store.
Of course, there will also be activities for kids, and a special visit from a West End Flower Fairy offering massages specially designed for gardeners.
Members of the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Organic Growers will be on hand to give you information on anything you ever wanted to know about organics, and to tell you how you can participate in local chapter activities.
Did you know that 2008 is the year of the potato? Seeds of Diversity Canada will be raising funds with unusual potato varieties (there aren't many, so come early), to mark the United Nations' special recognition of agriculture and crop biodiversity.
As a special treat for Spring Fling only, the market will feature the work of local artists and artisans.
Another special is FREE CITY COMPOST as long as quantities last (great for flower beds, shrubs and trees!), courtesy of councillor Paula Fletcher. Bring bags, buckets, and a shovel.
Keep checking in for new updates, and subscribe to our e-newsletter.
The market continues every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine, until October 25!
Upcoming highlights:
Through the Garden Gate
On June 14, we will have a special visit from the Toronto Botanical Garden who will use Withrow Park as their registration place for Riverdale garden tours. To get a full description of the event, please visit http://www.torontobotanicalgarden.ca/events/ttgg.htm.
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Content last modified on July 02, 2011, at 02:55 PM EST