King residents ‘ready and raring’ to get back into community garden

King City residents want #homegrown produce in community garden

Yorkregion.com
May 6, 2020
Laura Broadley

Community gardens weren’t considered an essential service by the provincial government for the first few weeks of physical distancing.

On April 25, the provincial government changed course to declare community food gardens an essential service.

Local medical officers of health will provide advice, recommendations and instructions that the gardens must meet in order to operate, such as physical distancing and cleaning and disinfecting practices.

For those gardeners in King Township, the news came with a sense of relief.

“Community gardens are very important. A lot of people don’t have yards, especially if you live in a condo or something like that,” said Monica Choy, environmental stewardship co-ordinator with King Township.

Choy said gardeners want to get their cold weather seeds into the ground.

“People are ready and raring to go,” she said.

There are 10 plots in the King City community garden.

“The King City community garden is smaller so we’re not as heavily affected by all this,” Choy said.

Even though people are allowed to use the community garden, there are still rules to be followed in the age of coronavirus.

“We’re going to have to come up with some rules and regulations for the King City community garden before we let people in and make sure people sign off on all these best practices,” Choy said.

Other sectors of the food service industry are also changing.

This season will “absolutely” be different for farmers’ markets, which will have to demonstrate to public health units that they are selling prepackaged food, aren’t allowing non-food items to be sold and have proper protocols in place governing issues such as physical distancing and available hand sanitizer, Catherine Clark, executive director of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, said.

“Markets are to be considered essential services. They are not events. It’s a shop and go (approach).” she said.

“It’s (usually) a social thing, you meet your friends, you’re in a park. No, as organizers, that’s not the way the markets are going to operate this year. You’re going to be asked to move along. You gotta get in and you gotta get out.”

York Region public health works closely with farmers’ markets, including now to ensure COVID-19 precautions are taken, Scott Cholewa, manager of infectious diseases, said.

Markets are encouraged to have their vendors set up so customers can preorder and prepay online, have curbside pickup and have items prepackaged to eliminate handling, he said.

York Farm Fresh, a nonprofit organization uniting farmers, farmers’ markets and others promoting local food growth in York Region, has a section on its website yorkfarmfresh.com showing the measures a number of local food producers are taking to provide safe, local food during the pandemic.

And on April 27, the federal and provincial governments announced an investment of up to $2.5 million to help the agri-food sector expand online, providing more opportunities for producers to grow their business and offer more food choices for families who are shopping from home during the COVID-19 outbreak.