When And Where Are All Those Toronto Farmers’ Markets?
Thanks for all the great feedback on the St. Andrew’s market update yesterday: we’re all sad that it’s not happening this year, but hopeful for next year.
In the meantime, I started to mark my calendar with the other markets close to me, realized that it was too much info for my private calendar so ended up creating a public calendar of all of the Toronto farmers’ markets from the Farmers’ Markets Ontario site:
You can add this to your Google calendar using the button at the bottom right of the calendar so that you see it overlaid with your own calendar, or go to it directly so that you can bookmark it. Click on each item in the calendar for details, or switch to Agenda view using the button at the top right to see them in a date-ordered list.
Since someone had created nice Google map locations for each of the markets, I also pulled those together into a single map so that you can see what’s close to you:
View Toronto Markets in a larger map
You can zoom and pan directly on this map, or click on the link at the bottom of the map to open it directly so that you can bookmark it.
If I’ve missed any, let me know by adding a comment to this entry. I did not validate that the FMO entries were correct, I just used them as printed on their site; until today, they still had the St. Andrew’s market listed as active for 2010 and there may be other errors.
Alas, St. Andrew’s MyMarket Is No More (For Now)
Last year, we (the local volunteer committee) worked with the MyMarket organization, the farmers and the City of Toronto to help bring you the Historic St. Andrew’s MyMarket. I blogged a number of times about the market, including this last update in March following the planning meeting that was held with MyMarket, the farmers and volunteers from all of the markets. At the time of that meeting, I noted that the feedback wasn’t promising: we only had two farmers willing to commit to our market for this year, and the stringent rules of the MyMarket program meant that we couldn’t include other vendors unless they passed the MyMarket “certified Ontario farmer” program.
In early May – when we should have been planning for the opening day – MyMarket informed us that not enough vendors were interested in participating in our market this year. We looked into the possibility of organizing an independent market to replace it, possibly with the few vendors who did want to participate plus those that we could approach on our own, but it wasn’t possible to get everything in order for a market this year: there were issues of negotiating with the city for use of the space, licensing and insurance, managing the market on a weekly basis, and organizing the farmers and other vendors. As unpaid volunteers with no government mandate behind us, it just wasn’t possible.
We haven’t given up, however: 2012 will mark the 175th anniversary of the original St. Andrew’s market, and we are working at resurrecting a market in 2011 that will be sufficiently successful to carry us over into 2012 and the years to come. That could mean getting the city involved to run the market, or some local fund-raising to cover the costs of rent, licensing, insurance and a market manager.
Hyper-local markets like St. Andrew’s are the only access that many city-dwellers have to farm-fresh produce: nearly 100% of our shoppers arrived on foot (or bicycle), and a large percentage don’t even own cars, which makes a trip to more distant farmers’ markets unlikely. We have a few other farmers markets downtown; although none are close enough that I’ll be walking home with a load of fruits and vegetables, they’re worth checking out. The closest three are weekday markets in non-residential areas, targeted at workers on their lunch hour rather than full-on weekly shoppers:
- Closest to St. Andrew’s, at just over 1km, is Metro Hall. Thursdays, 8am-2pm.
- A close second is Nathan Phillips Square, 1.5km. Wednesdays, 8am-2:30pm.
- Closest MyMarket (certified Ontario farmers), at 2km, is Sick Kids. Tuesdays, 9am-2pm.
The next two closest markets are on evenings or weekends, and in residential areas, although each are 2km or more from St. Andrew’s and its dense residential surroundings:
- Closest evening market, at 2km, is Trinity Bellwoods (the park is closer, but the market is in the northwest corner of the park at Dundas and Shaw). Tuesdays, 3-7pm.
- Closest weekend market, at 2.4km, is Liberty Village. Sundays, 9am-2pm.
Stay tuned in the coming months for more information on our plans for St. Andrew’s Market in 2011.
Special for Earth Hour: Solar PV at Tower Power Toronto
Tonight at 8:30pm we’ll celebrate Earth Hour, when we all turn out the lights for an hour. Although mostly symbolic, this should actually translate to reduced power consumption; in Ontario, you can track this on the IESO Earth Hour site which will show a graph of actual consumption against that of a typical Saturday night.
Being green is a trendy thing to do, but some people have been doing it long before it became fashionable: the members of Tower Power Toronto, for example, who focus on energy savings for multi-unit buildings such as condos and co-ops. I attended a meeting of the Tower Power group earlier this year to hear all about solar photovoltaic (that is, solar panels that make electricity directly rather than heating water) and some of the recent government initiatives to make this a reality for small condo buildings like mine. We met at the Windward Co-op, where they have already undertaken a number of green initiatives such as thermal solar (solar hot water heating as a pre-heat for domestic hot water) that has reduced their hot water costs by 40%.
My other half is an electrical engineer, and when I told him that I was attending a meeting about solar PV, he pooh-poohed it as inefficient and expensive, costing more per kWh than we could save. He’s right about that: the high cost (and relative inefficiency) of solar PV panels makes it infeasible for generating power for our building directly. Furthermore, even if we felt that it was a good thing to do, the condo reserve fund cannot be used for solar PV projects, meaning that we would have to create a special assessment such that the owners would pay the costs directly. In a building like ours, where the resale timeframe is fairly short, that just wouldn’t fly.
This is where the government incentives come in: the provincial government would really like us to start greening up, in part to reduce the load on current electricity infrastructure, increase the resiliency of the power grid, help phase out coal-fired electricity generation by 2014, and reduce the cost of having to buy electricity from other provinces or states during time of peak loads. If you take a look at the ISEO website, which shows Ontario electricity demand and the price paid for external electricity during peaks, you’ll see that prices for buying electricity from outside the province can be as high as $1.50/kWh. This also has a social value as well as an economic value by promoting micro-generation and green thinking.
To that effect, the Ontario Power Authority started the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program whereby you can sell up to 10kW of electricity that you generate (e.g., using solar PV) back to your local power authority (in our case, Toronto Hydro) for $0.802 per kWh on a 20-year contract. Given the current cost of installing solar PV, and the fact that the panels are expected to have nearly zero maintenance costs during the 20-year period, the panels pay for themselves in about 13 years: in other words, that provides seven years of electricity revenue free and clear after the panels are paid off. Current domestic electricity costs in Ontario are around $0.012 per kWh, so OPA is willing to pay you over six times the current price of electricity in order to subsidize your solar PV installation, since they will eventually save the cost of having to build new power generating facilities.
As mentioned previously, condo reserve funds can’t be used to fund solar PV installations, so there needs to be some other form of financing. Alternatives include:
- Work on getting the condo laws changed so that reserve funds can be used for projects like this. Our local MPP, Rosario Marchese, is working on this, but this could take some time and may never occur.
- Sell debentures to raise the money for the initial costs, then use the electricity revenue to pay off the debenture with interest. Residents of the building may choose to buy debentures, or anyone who is looking for an investment with a decent interest rate. The risk is that electricity revenues are not sufficient to cover the debenture costs, or that unexpected maintenance costs reduce revenues.
- Use PV venture, venture firms that specialize in solar PV installations. They effectively own the solar PV system, installing the panels and taking the electricity, then pay a percentage of the monthly revenue to the building on which the panels are placed.
- Non-profit organizations (including co-ops, but not condos) can take advantage of 0% loans available from the city of Toronto’s Sustainable Energy Funds including the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, which I heard about at a green energy panel that Olivia Chow hosted last year.
- Live Green Toronto (another city initiative) has some limited grant funding for education and feasibility studies; condos are not eligible but could partner with a not-for-profit.
For buildings within the city of Toronto, you’d be selling power to Toronto Hydro, but the contract would be with the Ontario Power Authority, who are backing the FIT and microFIT programs. OurPower, part of the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative can perform assessments on a building to estimate the feasibility and costs: there needs to be a place with good sun exposure (usually the roof) to mount the panels, a method for connecting the panels to the electrical room, an inverter to convert the DC electricity generated by the panels to AC, and a metered connection from the inverter to the power grid. That means that you’d have two meters: one for inbound electricity at the usual market rate (e.g., $0.013/kWh), and one for the outbound electricity that you generate at $0.802/kWh. Ideally, installation would be coordinated with the building roof replacement schedule; otherwise, you’d have to remove and remount the panels during any roof repairs. In addition to the panels, costs include cabling to the electrical room, any modifications required to the roof membrane, insurance, and maintenance (considering a 20-year replacement cycle for the panels, but more frequently for the inverter). Solar PV panels are usually stationary; although panels that move to track the sun generate more electricity, they also have higher maintenance costs due to the moving parts. In order to qualify for the FIT/microFIT program, 50% of the equipment must be manufactured in Ontario, but that can include the framing, inverters and labour costs in addition to the panels. There are some local solar PV manufacturers, including Photowatt and SolGate, making it possible to put together a solution that pumps some money back into the local economy as well as providing green benefits.
How much energy could we really generate with this? Well, our building probably has 200-300 square metres of roof space that could be used; using the estimate of 1 square metre generating 150W in peak sun for a total of about 1kWh/day, that means 200-300 kWh/day, or $160-240/day in electricity revenue. I’m not sure if that 1kWh/day/square metre is an average over the year, or the value for a sunny summer day; assuming that that amount could be generated 1/3 of the time, that’s still $19.5k-29k per year in electricity revenue. As for costs, using a provided estimate of $10k/kW; I’m taking a leap in logic and assuming that’s equivalent to 1000/150 = 6.7 square metres of solar panel, which would be a cost of $300k-450k for the initial installation. That gives an ROI of just over 15 years; assume that my estimate of electricity generated is conservative, I can see how this works out to an average 13-year ROI.
At the end of the 20-year contract to deliver electricity to Toronto Hydro, you’d be in a position to renegotiate a contract with them to continue to provide power, or switch to providing power directly to your own building if then-current price of electricity makes that a better deal.
When you talk about residential solar power, many people think of thermal solar, but there are some fundamental differences:
|
Solar Photovoltaic |
Thermal Solar |
| Photovoltaic panels generate electricity directly from sunlight | Water in pipes warmed by sun used as a pre-heat for domestic hot water (hot tap water or central building heat) |
| Generates revenue by creating electricity to sell back to Toronto Hydro | Generates savings by reducing gas consumption for domestic hot water system |
| Panels connected by cabling to building electrical system | Panels connected by (water) piping to building hot water system |
| All electricity sold to grid, hence no wasted capacity | Hot water used only by building and can’t be shared |
| Peak capacity during summer when demands on power grid are at maximum | Peak capacity during summer may be wasted if more hot water is generated than building requires |
| ROI can be calculated before project start | ROI is based on actual gas costs over life of project |
It used to be the case that thermal solar was the only economically feasible alternative for residential buildings; however, the FIT/microFIT program brings the cost-benefit calculations for thermal versus PV much closer together.
If you’re in Toronto and interested in learning more, come out to a Tower Power Toronto meeting. OurPower hosts a wiki page for Tower Power Toronto; it’s sadly out of date, since it shows the next meeting as the January meeting, but it contains contact information and I may take it on myself to update the page when I receive notice of the next meeting.
I’ll leave you with a video of Rob Hopkins from last year’s TED conference, on transitioning to a world without oil:
MyMarket Planning Meeting
I spent half of yesterday at a planning meeting for this year’s MyMarkets, run by Farmers’ Markets Ontario: several of the farmers showed up, plus volunteers from some of the five markets. We spent an hour on each of the markets, with the farmers discussing what worked and didn’t work at that market, things that they’d like to change, and whether they plan to apply for that market for 2010. Richard Brault, one of the other St. Andrew’s MyMarket volunteers, was there with me to plead our case for farmers to sell at our market this year, and try to get some meat and cheese vendors there.
Although we had the lowest attendance of all the markets last year, it was our first year (all others were in their second or later years), and we also had no meat or cheese vendors. This meant that some people skipped our market in favor of either heading to the grocery store or waiting for the Liberty Village market the following day in order to be able to do most of their shopping in one place.
The numbers of attendees and vendors at each market isn’t correlated, but I would guess that a wider variety of produce than what we had could improve the attendance:
| Market | 2009 attendance (from December review meeting) |
2009 # of vendors |
| Sick Kids Hospital | 12,000 | 8 |
| St. Andrew’s | 5,800 | 10 (peak, although 6-7 on any given day was more typical) |
| Liberty Village | 9,500 | 19 |
| Bloor Borden | 13,000 | 12 |
| East Lynn | 18,000 | 14 |
The biggest of the markets doesn’t have the largest number of vendors; in fact, the market with the largest number of vendors (Liberty) had the second-lowest attendance in 2009. I think that Liberty was heavily promoted as the place to be, resulting in the large number of vendors who ended up competing with each other: one of the three meat vendors who was there last year skipped the last month because he wasn’t even making gas money; he had asked to shift to St. Andrew’s market mid-season, but somehow that didn’t happen. The key is finding the right mix of vendors for each venue: items requiring refrigeration, for example, aren’t as popular at Sick Kids market, since it is most frequented by hospital staff who are just starting their shift, and don’t have a place to store cold or frozen items until they head home. There’s also an issue of demographics: Liberty Village, home to more hipster singles per square foot than most other areas of the city, saw declines in sales for most vendors, but Kind Organics with their trendy (and delicious) organic greens did booming business there. We have a similar demographic to Liberty, possibly a bit older but just as child-free, so in general need to have smaller packages for the smaller households, and are very keen for organic produce.
The feedback from the farmers at the meeting wasn’t especially promising, but we’re not giving up hope yet. Only two farmers were firmly committed to returning – Bosco Farms, who had the largest vegetable stand and did fairly well last year, and Cedar Creek Farms, who sold out of their cut flowers every week. There were a couple of maybes, including a meat vendor who could also run a sausage-on-a-bun stand. The combination of low numbers last year plus the Saturday date, when we are competing for the farmers’ attention with all the other Saturday markets in the province, meant that many may not be willing to risk another year at St. Andrew’s in order to see if we can make it the success that we feel we can. Applications will be going out from FMO to the farmers soon, and we should know by mid-April whether enough farmers will commit to St. Andrew’s for another year.
Although the volunteers are doing this in order to benefit our community, we have to recognize that the farmers are running a business, and can’t afford to subsidize our market by showing up when they’re not making money: one farmer estimated a stable repeat customer base of only around 60 people at St. Andrew’s each market day. Saturdays are a popular day for markets all over, and if a farmer can take their produce to market somewhere closer to where they live and make more money, their choice is clear. Although larger famers can deploy at two markets on the same day, the smaller ones just don’t have the logistical support to do that. Unfortunately, since we are using a city-owned parking lot that is in use during the week, we can’t switch to a weekday market unless it were to start fairly late in the day. We’d also be competing with the Trinity Bellwoods, City Hall, Metro Hall and Sick Kids farmers’ market (although not all are certified local MyMarkets) on various weekdays. Add to this the proximity of Liberty Village market, both geographically and temporally, some of the vendors heard that people were going to the Liberty market on Sunday instead of St. Andrew’s on Saturday because they could do more shopping there due to the broader range of foods offered.
Farmers are pretty practical people, however, and realize that without the farmers’ commitments, we can’t get the critical mass of customers there for a successful year.
So what are the possibilities for the continuation of St. Andrew’s market?
First, and we hope that this happens, is that FMO is able to find enough farmers to commit to St. Andrew’s for 2010, including meat and cheese vendors. We believe that we have plans in place to bring in more customers this year, and make it a success all around.
Secondly, we could look at some sort of hybrid market, where we have some of the certified local farmers referred by FMO, but also encourage local businesses to participate. The addition of a local meat or cheese shop, if we can’t get those through FMO, would add greatly to the appeal, as would baked goods or other ready-to-eat food from a local restaurant. I think that we should stay food-focused, disallowing flea market or craft stands (although that’s just my opinion), and not bring in any business that directly competes with the FMO farmers in order to maintain the highest standards of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Thirdly, we could look at some way to combine Liberty and St. Andrew’s market. With Sunday, they clearly have the more popular day for farmers, but they have no one involved from the local community, which puts a much larger burden on FMO to provide all the promotion and logistical support. If we brought our kick-ass group of volunteers to bear on a Sunday market, that could really work. However, all of our volunteers are local to St. Andrew’s (2-1/2 km from Liberty, which is a long ways when you consider that we all walk to St. Andrew’s now) and many don’t have cars; supporting a market in Liberty Village just wouldn’t work for many of us.
We’re crossing our fingers and waiting for mid-April to find out which farmers have decided that we’re worth taking another chance on. Think positive thoughts, and hope for the best!
The Little Market That Can
2009 was the first year of the Historic St. Andrew’s MyMarket, and we’re hoping that it wasn’t the last: a meeting tomorrow could decide our fate.
A bit of history: the Historic St. Andrew’s MyMarket is one of five verified (that is, the vendors are verified to sell only their own produce) farmers’ markets in the urban Toronto area. I’m on the local volunteer committee for the market, and worked on much of the social media side of promoting the market. The farmers, Farmers’ Market Ontario (the organizers) and volunteers from all of the markets met in December to review the season; check out my post about that meeting (including the presentation that we gave, below) for more details.
The highlights of our first year:
- Opened on June 6th, ran every Saturday until October 24th
- More than 25 volunteers actively involved in organizing events, promoting the market, and helping with market-day logistics
- 11 vendors, although not all were there every week, depending on the growing season of what they were selling
- Almost 5,800 visitors over the season
- 8 cooking demos with local restaurants
- Banners, postcards, sandwich boards, email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blogging and even an Ignite presentation for promotion
We were the smallest of the five MyMarkets, as could be expected in our first year: the more established markets in a family residential neighbourhood have as many as three times our visitors, although we came in at more than 60% of what the trendy Liberty Village MyMarket drew, even though it had 18 vendors including meat and cheese (sorely lacking from, and missed at, St. Andrew’s).
Tomorrow, we have a meeting with FMO and the farmers to talk about this year’s market; I’m headed out to Brampton with one of the other volunteers to talk to them about St. Andrew’s. Going to a market is a big committment for the farmers: they have to pay FMO ($500, I believe) for the season for each market that they attend, which covers the booth space and marketing costs; plus, they have to get themselves and their produce to market every week at the assigned time, rain or shine, and stick around even if a lot of people don’t show up. It’s a tough job, especially when you consider that they’re spending the rest of their time actually producing what they sell. This should be obvious, but if they don’t sell enough at a market, it’s just not good business for them.
We’re all hyped for the meeting, then received an email from FMO two days ago that said “Realize it sounds ominous…not much interest from farmers…it will be an uphill climb.” Eeeek! This is the first that we heard that there might not be enough interest from the farmers in order to have a market this year: we’d been focusing on ensuring that we could get access to the city-owned parking lot where we hold the market, lining up chefs for cooking demos to try and hold one every week, and working at increasing our volunteer base to a solid 30 people. We were a bit taken aback to think that the farmers might not want to come back.
Not much that we can do now except to show up, lay out our strengths in terms of volunteers, what we learned last year and how we plan to start earlier and ramp up faster this year. Stay tuned for more details after tomorrow’s meeting.
Living on a food budget of $7.50/day is not a real hardship
I read this morning that Ontario university students are complaining that their OSAP loans/grants only allow $7.50/day for food; for the poor dear who will have to give up her $4.50 Starbucks fancy drink, that appears to be a true hurdle in life. Oh, please.
Let’s look, for example, at the dinner that I made last night – note that this was not a dinner made with the purpose of proving a point about low-cost dinners (since I hadn’t yet read this morning’s article), it was a dinner that I chose to make because it’s healthy, delicious and easy to make. In a slow cooker, I put the following (prices are rounded up):
- Lamb shoulder chops on the bone, 0.5-0.75 lb., $4.50 (price is accurate, not sure about the weight)
- Large can diced tomatoes, $1.50
- 2 huge sweet potatoes, about 3 lbs total, $2
- 4 large carrots, $1
- 1 cup dried green lentils, $0.50
- Spices (1 tsp cumin seeds, a whole red chili, 1 cinnamon stick, 3 whole cloves), $0.50 or less
That’s $10 for a lamb and vegetable stew that makes at least six servings, or about $1.70/serving. I served it with a slice of whole-grain bread that I happened to make myself, but adding bread or pasta or rice for a carb would not add more than $.50/serving. The key is to use meat for flavor, not as the main event: the lamb on the bone makes the stew very rich tasting without adding a lot of meat, while the lentils boost the protein. As an added bonus, there’s almost no fat in this except for small amounts in the lamb, so this is pretty healthy. If you’re vegetarian, do it without the lamb and add more lentils, or some other legume; if you don’t like lamb, substitute an inexpensive cut of beef or chicken, but be sure to include the bones in the stew for full flavor. If you don’t want to eat the same thing several days in a row, package some of it up in serving-sized containers and pop it in the freezer, for those days when you come home hungry and didn’t plan ahead.
If you really think that you need more meat than that, check out Amanda Laird’s crock-roasted chicken: a whole chicken, a bit of spices to rub on it, and you have four or more generous portions of chicken for about $7, or $1.75/serving. You can often get whole chickens at a cheaper price than this, so could do it for less. You can eat the chicken as is, add to pasta, or make sandwiches from it; it can last you an entire week if you’re careful. Save the broth that collects in the bottom of the crock to make another soup or stew, it’s very rich-tasting and can be used instead of a cut of meat, which will reduce the cost significantly. The nice thing about a slow cooker is that you can just throw some things in in the morning, turn it on, and head off to class for the day, coming home to a home-cooked meal.
Okay, that’s the main meal for the day. For breakfast, fresh fruit, yogurt and cereal will set you back another $2 if you buy the large-size yogurt rather than the individual servings, and a large box of cereal, shopping at regular grocery stores rather than convenience stores. An apple or pear weighs about 1/2 lb so will cost $0.75-$1; a liter of house-brand yogurt will be less than $3 and provide 4 servings for $0.75 each, and a large box of cereal will provide 10+ servings for about $4, or $0.40/serving. Oatmeal, if you buy in a large bag, is even cheaper, and can be made quickly in the microwave. Throw in another piece of fruit for good measure for a breakfast total of less than $3.
That leaves $2.50 for lunch, which means that you’re not eating meat. Load up on veggies: buy salad greens (preferably something like cabbage, spinach or arugula that can double as a cooked veg if you like), carrots (unpeeled, not the overpriced “baby carrots” in little bags), cucumber and other veggies that you can eat raw – it’s better for you, and easier to carry to campus if you need to. If you must have dressing, make it yourself with oil, vinegar and dried herbs. Add some bread if you’re carrying out, or cook some rice or pasta at home. I often make a lunch of whole wheat pasta, a few veggies lightly microwaved or sauteed while I’m cooking the pasta, and a drizzle of olive oil or a spoon of pesto as a sauce. A few capers or sundried tomatoes (which I buy in bulk at Costco) add a lot of flavor without much cost. If you need a protein boost, cook an egg or open a can of chickpeas. Consider $1 for the veggies, $0.50 for the carb, and another $0.50 for olive oil, pesto or whatever you use to dress the pasta or the veggies. If you got your apples on sale, you can even afford to thrown in one of those as well and stay under budget.
I am definitely not on a food budget, and I spend more than $7.50/person/day, but to be honest, I don’t spend that much more unless we eat in a restaurant, or it’s a special occasion with a more expensive cut of meat, such as a rack of lamb or that amazing Berkshire pork roast that we had at Christmas. I also don’t spend a huge amount of time on cooking: the slow cooker is definitely my friend for evening meals, and lunch will be leftovers, salad and whole-grain bread, or a quickly-prepared meal such as pasta. If you don’t have a full kitchen, get yourself a slow cooker and a rice cooker (you can often pick these up at yard sales for a few bucks) and a microwave (which you probably already have), and you can do pretty much everything with these three appliances.
There are a couple of keys to success in low-price eating:
- Don’t buy processed foods. They’re not good for you anyway, and that processing costs money.
- Eat less meat. There are many other sources of protein that cost less, have less fat, and are easier to learn to cook if you’re intimidated by the raw meat aisle in the grocery store.
- Skip the junk food.
- Buy larger-sized packages of items that you know that you will eat, since they are cheaper per serving. This includes non-perishables such as rice and pasta, but also meat and vegetables if you can consume them before the best-before date, or if you can freeze them for later use.
- Shop at a regular grocery store rather than a convenience store. If possible, shop at a discount chain, such as No Frills or Costco. For example, I buy a case of canned tomatoes and a case of chickpeas at Costco, bringing the cost to around $1/can (half the price of grocery stores), since I use the tomatoes in stews and soups, and have the canned chickpeas on hand to add to a salad for lunch. Costco requires a membership and a car, of course, but that’s what parents are for. If you go to your local No Frills and buy the No Name house brand, it’s not much more expensive.
- Plan your menus a couple of days in advance, so that you can shop for what you need, think about cooking a meat dish that can be reused in another dish later in the week, and do any preparation needed in advance. For example, buying dried chickpeas then soaking and cooking them yourself is way less expensive than canned, but you need a day of lead time.
You don’t have to eat poorly when you’re on a budget, even one as tight as $7.50/day. And if you want to eat more meat, you can always get a job to pay for it – that’s what the rest of us do.
Cloud 9
I was on Cloud 9 on Saturday night…or rather, I was *at* Cloud 9 (A Comedy of Multiple Organisms), Caryl Churchill’s 1978 two-act play dealing with preconceptions of gender and sexuality. Act I and II are 25 years apart based on the characters’ ages, but in a wonderful twist, the first act is set in colonial Africa as an allegory of the repressive attitudes of the 1950s, and the second act is set in the late 1970s, which was current day at the time that the play was written (although the dialog was pretty timeless, and could be today). Furthermore, the same seven actors play different characters in each of the two acts, regardless of gender or race: the character of Betty, for example, is played by Evan Buliung in the first act (he was magnificent in the white dress and garters) and by Ann-Marie MacDonald in the second act. Add to this that two of the actors – Megan Follows and Ann-Marie MacDonald – are well known even to me, a cultural cretin who has to be invited to events like this by my more artsy friends.
The interesting thing about this Toronto production of Cloud 9 is how they’ve made the production transparent through the use of social media. CBC’s Spark podcast had a clip on this (starting at around 40 minutes into the January 24th/26th podcast) featuring the director, Alisa Palmer, discussing how they put information about the play, casting, characters, staging, rehearsals and behind-the-scenes comments online before the play ever opened: something rare in the somewhat secretive world of pre-opening-night theatre. Rose Plotek, the assistant director, wrote many of the blogs posts on the main site (cross-posted to their Facebook page), but there are also very candid contributions from actors Blair Williams and Ann-Marie MacDonald, as well as video clips of rehearsals and interviews:
Cloud 9 is playing at the Panasonic Theatre until February 21st. Great script, excellent actors and fabulous costumes make for a fun night out.
CrisisCampTO Planning Meeting
I spent this afternoon at the initial planning meeting of CrisisCampTO, the Toronto manifestation of Crisis Commons. Although this is happening here and now in response to the earthquake disaster in Haiti 12 days ago, Crisis Commons has a broader mandate:
We are an international volunteer network of professionals drawn together by a call to service. We create technological tools and resources for responders to use in mitigating disasters and crises around the world
We’re here today to work on anything that can be done to help, in collaboration with other Crisis Commons teams all over the world, on the various projects that have been defined by Crisis Commons based on requests from NGOs to fill a need that they have. The bulk of the projects fall under the category of software development, but there are also teams for social media, logistics and more general duties.
Our first goal today is to find a development project for the bulk of the Toronto team to get involved with, and learn how to plug into other Crisis Commons groups around the world. There is quite a bit of infrastructure already in place to connect up, including IRC channels (retro, I will definitely need a refresher course) and voice conference lines, plus a rapidly growing wiki.
I have a pretty broad range of skills to apply here: although I don’t really write code any more – unless I’m really inspired – I can do all the other stuff around development (requirements, testing, documentation). I also do a lot of social media stuff, and have attended more unconferences than you can shake a stick at, so can help with the local social media efforts such as wiki gardening, Facebook and Twitter updates, and more.
The main goal of today is to get ready for next Saturday’s CrisisCampTO (time and venue to be announced shortly), by getting some basic team structure in place and selecting one or more projects to which we will be contributing. That way, when newbies show up next week, they can start contributing immediately.
One of the things that we learned about today is Sahana, an open source disaster management system that was created in response to the Sri Lanka tsunami in 2004. There’s a Sahana instance set up just for Haiti, although it still needs a lot of content added, and possibly some development to add specific requested functionality. We also saw OpenMRS, an open source medical records system, and Ushahidi, an SMS-to-web service that accepts requests for assistance sent by text message to a specific shortcode, and makes them available to aid agencies. If you check the feed from Haiti, you can see requests for food, water and medical assistance that have been received, translated if required, and logged for followup. In summary, there are a ton of free, open source projects that can be applied to the Haiti disaster; some of them as is, others requiring some customization. This is were we all come in.
This is cross-posted from my business blog, since I couldn’t decide where it belonged.
MyMarket 2009 Year-End Review
After spending the summer and part of the fall as a volunteer at the local St. Andrew’s farmer’s market, I thought that I’d seen the last of that great group of people – the farmers, the Farmers’ Market Ontario team and the other volunteers – until next year, but I didn’t count on the year-end review, celebration and luncheon hosted by FMO to bring us all together one last time in 2009. The purpose of the day is to review the progress of each of the markets this year, and bring together some ideas of what worked and didn’t work at the markets. Oh yeah, and we got to start the day with Angela Russo’s fresh-baked fruit muffins!
I especially like that they had assigned seats that mixed up the market volunteers, farmers and others so that we didn’t just clump together in our cliques: I was seated with two farmers and a volunteer from another market, none of whom I had met previously, and had great discussions with them.
There are five MyMarkets, each of which is certified by FMO to include only vendors who grow their own produce: East Lynn Park, Sick Kids Hospital, Bloor • Borden, Liberty Village, and Historic St. Andrew’s. The volunteers and/or market manager for each market gave a short presentation:
- East Lynn Park, taking place on Thursdays from 3-7pm: they’re a big-ish market with 15 vendors, drawing 18,000 shoppers over the entire season, which is roughly the same as last year. They were impacted by the city workers’ strike since some people were under the impression that the market was cancelled during that time; the lack of city-run facilities such as the wading pool meant that less people came out to the park and ended up as accidental shoppers. Since they block off the street during the market, they have issues with moving and setting up barricades; since they’re in a lower-density residential area, they also have more issues with parking for shoppers. They had some good ideas for next years, such as improving the MyMarket website to link to the individual market websites and other social media sites (I’m obviously in big agreement with that); since they don’t have any local restaurants giving cooking demos such as happens at other markets, they’d like to get that started as well. They also see the need for prepared food at the market to make it more of a destination for people. They have great community support, and involve local children’s groups and artists as well as providing community service opportunities for youths to do setup and teardown at the market each week. They also had a partnership with a local food bank, where food that would have probably been thrown out by the farmers at the end of the day went to the food bank. They had a number of green initiatives, such as Not Far From The Tree, handing out information. They also had a lot of child and family-oriented events such as face painting; obviously, this doesn’t work in all locations (such as ours) where the demographics are radically different, but lots of good ideas at work here.
- Sick Kids Hospital, taking place on Tuesdays 9am-2pm: this was the first hospital in Canada that allowed a farmers’ market to be held on its grounds, driven by their director of nutrition and food services. They just finished their second year; in 2008, they had 10,300 customers over the season, increasing to 12,000 in 2009. They obviously had a lot of traffic from the hospital staff, not just of Sick Kids but of the two other hospitals and many other businesses along University Avenue in the same area. They obviously have some different logistics issues than the rest of the markets, and have to be very cognizant of the fact that they’re set up in front of a very busy, fully functioning hospital, situated on a busy thoroughfare. They have a difficult time hosting events because of the location and the low numbers of volunteers.
- Bloor • Borden, taking place on Wednesdays 3-7pm. They see this a key community event that takes place in their neighbourhood, where the locals can come out and see their neighbours participating as volunteers, driven by three fairly active neighbourhood associations and supported by two of the local business associations. Just finished their second year, they had spent a lot of money in their first year on print, but found that word of mouth was most effective, as well as the cards that were mailed to homes or placed in local businesses. They combined this with on-the-street volunteers handing out fruit samples and the market cards to remind people that the market is back at the beginning of the season. They had a great idea for their weekly draws:
“market bucks”, where the winner of the draw received four $5 vouchers to be spent at any vendor in the market. They also reorganized their layout to have a central social area with a coffee/tea stand run by a not-for-profit organization. They had several product feature days, some of them combined with cooking demos by local chefs, but some as simple as corn roasts or apples and honey. They had 12-13,000 customers throughout the 2009 season.They also took the food leftovers to a local charity, an idea that we should all be thinking about. - Liberty Village, taking place on Sundays 9am-2pm. In its 3rd year, this is the probably the largest of the markets with 18 vendors including meat and cheese, as well as several local businesses and restaurants who did demonstrations or otherwise participated, although their attendance is lower than some others at about 9.500 for the year. However, they have less neighbourhood involvement since the residential area in Liberty Village is still growing and likely a very young (and single) demographic that are unlikely to be involved in volunteer activities. The area, however, is growing rapidly which is likely to ensure continued success for the market.
- Historic St. Andrew’s (that’s us!), taking place on Saturdays 9am-1pm. Colin Mooers, who was instrumental in getting the market starting and current heads up our volunteer committee, gave a presentation with me about our market:
To wrap up the morning, we had a session on what worked and didn’t work at the markets this year. Here’s some of the ideas that came up from everyone:
| What worked | Areas for improvement |
| Live music | Direct contact with local chefs to get them shopping at the market |
| Volunteers chatting with the shoppers to create a sense of community | Hire local students to assist farmers and organizers at market |
| “Market bucks” as weekly draw prize and available for purchase by local businesses (e.g., real estate agents) to give to patrons | Weekly updates from the farmers of what’s coming to this week’s market for pre-market distribution |
| Sandwich boards on market day to draw in pedestrian traffic | Program to allow local businesses to buy produce from farmers for direct donation to food banks |
| Cooking demos by local chefs | Reduce carbon footprint through farmers collaborating on distribution to markets |
| Encouraging viral distribution of market information via email | Music levels too loud for farmers to have discussions with patrons |
| Uniform MyMarket branding | Competitive price point |
| Mini markets at places such as Queens Park | Greater variety, including cheese, meat, eggs, mushrooms and flowers, to allow for one-stop shopping |
| Great support from FMO and MyMarket organization | Promote understanding of why prices are higher for quality of produce |
| Profile a farmer each week tied in with weekly product features | Too many vendors selling the same product |
| “Official” start times restricting vendors from selling to early customers | |
| Educate shoppers on preserving fresh food (e.g., freezing) for later consumption |
We stayed for a delicious lunch, including Angela Russo’s incomparable apple pie, but skipped out on the afternoon session on “innovative marketing made easy” featuring Lori Colborne.
All in all, a great day that generated a lot of great ideas.
Giving Technology Back to the Community
I’m a strong believer that technology can be a way up for those in financially disadvantaged circumstances: without some computer skills, kids can’t compete in school, and don’t meet the minimum requirements for many jobs. One way that I can help – and probably many of you reading this – is to donate to programs that provide access to computers and training to people who can’t afford to buy them. There are a number of ways to do this: you can give money, you can give used computer equipment, you can give your time, and you can promote the programs to others who might do the same.
This week, I replaced my mother’s old computer, and was left with a working (although underpowered, by today’s standards) computer with keyboard and mouse. I immediately thought of Little Geeks, a program that refurbishes old computers, provides them for free to kids in need, along with 12 months of internet access and some training on how to use it. They use reBOOT Canada as their drop-off depot; reBOOT is a charitable organization that “provides computer hardware, training and technical service to other charities, non-profit organizations and individuals with limited access to technology”. I headed off to reBOOT yesterday to drop off the computer, and had a chat with Nicholas (I believe this was Nicholas Brinckman, the Executive Director). He mentioned that they’re trying to get funding from the Aviva Community Fund to build 50 learning centres across Canada, in partnership with community centres and schools.
If you support this idea, go to the reBOOT project page on the Aviva Community Fund site and vote for their project (registration required). You can vote once per day until this round of voting ends in 11 days, and I encourage you to drop in there daily to cast your vote if you believe that this is an important initiative. They make it easy to link to the page on Twitter and Facebook, so use your social network for good. You can also help out by dropping off your old computer equipment – and encouraging your employer to do the same when they sunset old computers, printers and other equipment – or volunteering some of your time to help with computer refurbishment.
