GOODFARE, Alta. Ñ A few years ago, the Kitt family was like many families with young kids: racing to the hockey arena after school, eating at the rink and growing more frazzled by the day.
A trip to Beaverlodge, the nearest town, was an 80 kilometre round trip.
“We had to slow down. It was go, go, go all the time,” said Sam Kitt, sitting at the kitchen table with her husband, Jerry.
So the Kitt family came to a decision: they would step out of the fast lane. They wanted to be able to eat at least one meal a day as a family and enjoy the food they raised on their certified organic Peace River region farm.
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“It’s a lifestyle decision,” said Sam.
A trip to Turin, Italy, last October for Terra Madre, a slow food movement conference that celebrates quality food, confirmed their decision.
More than 5,000 delegates from 130 countries attended the slow food conference, sponsored by the organization launched in 1986 by food writer Carlo Petrini as a reaction to the opening of McDonald’s fast food restaurants in Italy.
The idea of the slow food movement appealed to the Kitts, who have farmed in northern Alberta for 25 years. Their 3,500-acre farm was certified organic in 1990. They raise organic beef, bison, turkey, chickens and pigs.
The slow food movement emphasizes the taste of food as the most important factor, said Jerry.
“People are making a conscious decision to change. At the market I’m regularly seeing new customers who want to shop for organic and local food products,” he said.
Jerry added that business at the family’s farmers’ market booth in Edmonton and Grande Prairie has been steadily increasing.
The trip to Italy with the two children also gave the family a new sense of pride in how they have chosen to farm.
At the conference he heard speakers, including Prince Charles, talk of farmers being the most important people on earth and gave the delegates a confirmation that the way they grew their food was important.
“It made me realize to have a sustainable food system you have to go back to the family farms producing food and not corporate farms producing commodities,” Jerry said.
It was also the first time their son said he might consider being a farmer.
The slow food movement is not just about spending a day cooking a meal and eating it with the family; it’s also about knowing the source of the food, said Ted Buchan, another Peace River region organic farmer who attended the slow food conference.
“It all starts with where you buy your food. If you buy produce trucked in from Mexico and you take it home and prepare it, you’ve missed the point,” said Buchan of Silver Valley, Alta.
He said if the price of energy continues to rise, trucking fruit and vegetables from Mexico and California, shipping wheat to the United States and reimporting it as pasta, and buying frozen lamb from New Zealand, are not going to be affordable.
“People’s lifestyles are going to change because the consumption of energy is not going to be able to continue. They’ll have to shop locally,” said Buchan, a bison producer who sells most of his meat direct to customers.
