First ever event sells out | People eager to reconnect with where their food comes from and learn skills of past generations
FRASERWOOD, Man. — It’s billed as modern day homesteading and focuses on traditional ways to gather, prepare and process food.
Kevin Albo and his family came to the Do-It-Yourself Homesteader Festival at Nourished Roots Farm this month to receive hands-on instruction in raising chickens and perm-aculture gardening that they could take home to Anola, Man.
“You maximize the space you’re using so everything you grow is useful and benefits the land,” said Albo, who likes to grow heirloom seeds.
He thinks interest in these practices is growing.
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“A lot of people are not comfortable with it (modern food production) anymore and want to return to a more natural way of doing things,” he said.
Robert Guilford, who raises chickens at Clearwater, Man., demonstrated a lightweight chicken coop and watering system that can be pulled behind a truck a metre each day to provide free-range chickens with fresh pickings.
Metres away, Kristine Zylstra-Moore was teaching the basics of raising chickens to a tent full of people.
She said she was surprised by how many people, especially urban residents, want to raise chickens.
“They have gardens and want to be involved in raising food. They’re moving from gardening to livestock,” she said.
Other sessions at the day-long event included growing mushrooms in logs, companion planting in spiral herb gardens, cooking with dandelions and building a compostable toilet.
Festival organizers Adrienne Percy and Kris Antonius said the first-time event sold out, despite a soggy farmyard from unrelenting rain the previous day.
“We thought it was a movement before and now we know it,” said Percy, who lives with her husband and school-aged children on their 320 acre farm near Fraserwood in Manitoba’s Interlake, where the event was held.
“It’s all the skills you may have seen in your grandma or great-grandma’s house,” said Percy.
Antonius said people want to know more about their food.
“We’ve seen a trend of people wanting to shop at farmers markets more and want to reconnect with where their food comes from and the skills of past generations,” said Antonius, who plans to build her family’s home here in the near future.
The women’s goal is to create a centre for education on the farm, where more workshops are planned this year.
Percy writes about natural healing and teaches classes in traditional food, fat rendering, culturing dairy and fermentation. Antonius, a former schoolteacher, combines her love of the natural world and children and would like to work with school groups here.
“That’s really the place to start, is with the kids,” she said.
Percy, who grew up on a nearby farm, said her family inspired her to make changes in her life.
“My parents were my inspiration. They did everything they could to make sure we were well fed.”
She and her husband were working at city jobs with children attending day care and eating “what was passed off as food” when they decided to seek alternatives at Nourished Roots.
“We’re losing some really important skills. I want them to know what real food is, to know the responsibility of stewarding the land and taking care of animals,” she said.
“People really don’t know how much food they have out their own front door (mushrooms, berries and other edibles growing in the wild).”