Care for some latkes? New Vaughan community farms spur bartering of up to 1,000 pounds of fresh produce

In the latest sign of growing demand for urban community gardens or farms

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 6, 2021
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Who knew starting new community farms in Vaughan would unleash bartering of up to 1,000 pounds of fresh produce between two York Region organizations.

“It was just kind of a lucky sequence of events,” said Kate Greavette, executive director at the York Region Food Network, which runs six community gardens through out the region, with three of them being in Vaughan.

Greavette was contacted by Fred Winegust, who is in charge of stakeholder relations at Reena, a non-profit organization that provides housing and support to individuals with developmental disabilities within a framework of Jewish culture and values.

This year, a federal grant has allowed Reena to grow a surplus of eggplants, tomatoes, arugula and parsley for example at its new community gardens.

“Fred from Reena had reached out and said, ‘Oh, we have some eggplants,’ and it created this interesting opportunity for us to share some of the vegetables we have available. So we were able to give them some of the surplus corn that we had in exchange to eggplants,” Greavette recalled.

“So it just allowed both organizations to kind of increase the diversity of produce available.”

Greavette gave some estimate of the total bartering, and it's impressive.

“It was right up until the end of last week that we were kind of exchanging fruits and veggies back and forth,” she said in an interview Nov. 29. “I haven't done the total, but I would say it's probably upwards of 7,00 to 1,000 pounds that we've kind of exchanged back and forth of fresh produce.”

The food network also exchanged lots of potatoes to Reena.

These potatoes came just in time of Hanukkah in late November lasting until Dec. 6, also known as the Festival of Lights for Jewish people, where latkes -- type of potato pancake or fritter -- reign supreme, and is traditionally prepared to celebrate the occasion.

“The making of a potato latkes is a big deal. 'I asked how many potatoes do you have?' And she said, 'about 350 pounds worth.' And these all come from York Region farmers. So here we are, and we're trucking stuff between Aurora and Thornhill.”

The bartering has also allowed Reena to begin its ‘friendraising’ campaign, when it distributed about 170 bags of ingredients used for latkes with each bag had about 10 potatoes or about 3.2 pounds of the starchy vegetable in addition to five beets, two onions and some canola oil.

After writing the application carefully in January, Winegust was notified May 22 that Reena was successful in receiving $249,289 in grants from the federal government’s agriculture Canada local food infrastructure fund to implement a vertically integrated local food security social enterprise.

“The grant was used to make two farms,” Winegust said. One farm is in Concord on Hwy. 407, and the other was at Reena Community Residence in Maple but the latter moved to Clark Avenue.

When Winegust was asked why did he come up with the idea, he replied, “local food security.”

“So if you've heard the buzzword that's going around,” he exclaimed, in reference to the disruption of the supply chain breakage due to the pandemic.

“The idea here behind the federal government’s grant to us is, ‘We're gonna give money to organizations that can help create or grow a local food infrastructure dealing with at risk communities and trying to make sure that they had access to food one way or the other' and -- again -- because of COVID-19.”

“It's even more important that we have a good source of food,” he added.

Greavette, too, has noticed an uptick in demand for urban food production.

“So we have a lot of people who are looking to grow their own food,” she said for many reasons including a boost for their mental and physical health, access to green space or simply expressing an “interest in just having a little bit more control over their food sovereignty.”