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The following transcript is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Link to Audio and Episode Info Here
Show
Transcript Deconstructing
Dinner Kootenay
Co-op Radio CJLY Nelson,
B.C. Canada January
21, 2010 Title:
Speerville Flour Mill Producer
/ Host: Jon Steinman Transcriber:
Alicia Grudzinskas Jon Steinman: And welcome to Deconstructing Dinner - a
syndicated weekly radio show and Podcast produced at Kootenay Co-op Radio CJLY
in Nelson, British Columbia. This show is heard on radio stations around the
world including CHSR 97.9FM Fredericton, New Brunswick. I'm Jon Steinman. On
today's episode we listen in on some great interviews and tours with the
operators of Speerville Flour Mill - a locally-owned and operated business in
New Brunswick that has for over 25 years been supplying the Maritime Provinces
of Canada with local organically grown grain and foods while supporting over 30
farmers in the area. We'll also meet Nova Scotia farmer Andrew Kernohan who is one of those farmers supplying
Speerville with organically grown grains. Deconstructing Dinner visited with
Speerville and Andrew in September 2009 while we toured throughout the two
provinces. Similar
to the efforts that we've documented on our Local Grain Revolution series,
developing and maintaining local organic grain economies is no easy task in
light of the vast majority of grains consumed in North America coming from
areas where grain growing has for over the past 100 years become as centralized
as it has. But while the Speerville Flour Mill has not operated without
enduring many challenges, they are a great example of the role of food processors
in supporting regional farmers and economies and the power with which demand
from the eating public for
local organic products can generate some necessary muscle to get those products onto the shelves of national
grocery retailers. We'll also learn from farmer Andrew Kernohan that growing
organic grains in the Maritime Provinces is quite the noble challenge. increase music and fade out Before we visit with
Speerville Flour Mill, a quick update on the National Democratic Dialogue on
Canada's Prison Farms that will now be taking place on February 1st.
We introduced this live webcast event on last week's episode and if you haven't
already viewed our updates on the Deconstructing Dinner website or our Facebook
page, there have been some changes since we first announced the event. As it
happens, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a Cabinet shuffle shortly after
that announcement, replacing Canada's now-previous Minister of Public Safety
Peter Van Loan with Vic Toews. Because Minister Toews represents a political
riding in Manitoba, the location and date of the event has changed. So again,
the panel will be hosted now in Steinbach, Manitoba at the Mennonite Heritage
Village on February 1st. The event will be broadcast live over the
internet and as a media partner of the event, Deconstructing Dinner is
coordinating setting up a way for any one tuning in to pose questions to the
panelists. Again the panel has been set-up to discuss the in-process closures
of Canada's prison farms - a decision that has upset many farmers, eaters,
prisoners and prison-workers alike. We featured a one-hour episode on the issue
back in July 2009 and the efforts to stop the closures have not stopped. As
part of the efforts to raise awareness of the issues, event organizers have
chosen to host the event in the riding of the recently-appointed Minister of
Public Safety Vic Toews. Invited and confirmed now to sit on the panel will be
the NDP's Rural and Community Development Critic Niki Ashton, Liberal
Agriculture Critic Wayne Easter, Liberal Public Safety Critic Mark Holland, and
Green Party of Canada candidate Kate Storey. Minister Toews himself did receive
an invite but despite the event being hosted just down the road from his
office, he will not be attending. In his response to the invite, his
communications advisor repeated the very same comments that have already
infuriated people across the country, that is that "The prison farms are
based on an agricultural model from an earlier era. Agriculture has
changed. As in many other sources of the economy, capital has replaced
labour." Of course such a perspective is seen by many to be inaccurate and
dangerously ignores the realities of capital-intensive farming and the growing interest
in labour-reliant models.
Again, the live event will take place on Monday, February 1st
between 1:30-3:30pm CST, that's 4:00-6:00pm Newfoundland Standard Time,
3:30-5:30pm Atlantic Standard Time, 2:30-3:30pm Eastern Standard Time,
12:30-2:30pm Mountain Standard Time, 11:30-1:30pm Pacific Standard Time. Stay
posted to deconstructingdinner.ca or our Facebook page for more info and
updates. music fades in and out It
was back in September 2009, when after spending an overnight in the New
Brunswick capital of Fredericton, I travelled west on the Trans-Canada Highway.
I then made my way down a beautiful country road and arrived in the small
hamlet of Speerville - a community that if it was not your destination, it would likely
never be noticed. With only a small number of families living there it's
amazingly supported by multiple food
and agricultural businesses. There is a small meat processing operation serving
the needs of local hunters and farmers. There's Speerville Farm operated by Stu
Fleischaker and Nancy Cantafio. The farm is a small, heavily diversified farm,
with products ranging from eggs and meat to vegetables and homemade
mustard. They offer home delivery to the Woodstock and Fredericton
areas. Stu happens to also be one of the founders of the Speerville Flour
Mill which is located right beside his vegetable garden. And that brings
us to one of the features of today's episode, another business in the
community, the Mill itself. Started
in 1982, Speerville Flour Mill is one of only a small number of small-scale
organic flour mills operating in the country and certainly one-of-a-kind in
Canada's Atlantic Provinces. Despite the demise of so many small-scale food
processors, Speerville has maintained its roots and has further become a
well-known name throughout the provinces. Wherever I travelled in New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia there wasn't anywhere I went
where the Speerville name was not synonymous with good food. As I
arrived in the community, Speerville President Todd Grant and his brother Tony
were heating up a portable wood-fired oven that was resting on a flatbed
trailer attached to a pick-up truck. The oven was about to embark on a journey
to Prince Edward Island where it would later be used to bake breads made with
Speerville's organic flours. Todd Grant shared the history of the mill and how
he got involved in this unique local food business. Todd Grant: I guess the mill started back in the
late 70's, early 80's. It was a community business that basically was built so
that farmers could bring their grain to the mill to be cleaned and given back
to the farmer himself. That didn't really fly I guess, so, a few years later
one of the gentlemen that actually helped build the building itself decided
that he would start a mill and, so he bought his first load of grain from a
local farmer and he milled it into flour and sold it to a local bake shop and
perseverance, a desire to have quality food from local farms and the rest, I
guess is just history. It kept growing from there. I was
the first full time employee back in '90. I come fresh out of high school
looking for a place to work. At that time was a modern, average everyday kid
eating food from the grocery store, had no realization, no thoughts of quality
and where it come from and things like that. But, as my time at the mill
involved, I got very interested. We grew up on a small farm here, myself and my
brothers, raised our own meats and milks and things like that. So I guess it
wasn't long sinking into me, the importance of local food. So back in '91, '92,
I expressed an interest in buying into the mill to potentially, hopefully own
it some day, to do with it what I thought needed to be done, and you know, I
guess the rest is history. Jon Steinman: With the Speerville Flour Mill being the
only organic mill of its kind in the Maritime Provinces, I asked Todd if the
mill was integral to the many farmers throughout the provinces who cultivate
organic grains. Todd Grant: I do believe so, yah. Having an
alternative marketplace for your product was what was needed to get people into
growing food quality grains, with the hope of organic grains, with the hope of
being able to have a successful farm. Jon Steinman: So how has that evolved, how many
farmers right now are supplying here - where are they coming from? Todd Grant: All over Atlantic Canada. We've probably
got thirty five to forty farms, upwards of a couple of thousand acres in
Atlantic Canada being farmed organically and producing human foods. Jon Steinman: So this is all throughout New Brunswick,
PEI, Nova Scotia? Todd Grant:
Yup. All over,
I guess. Jon Steinman: And what are they growing? What's coming
into the mill? Todd Grant:
We're buying
organic spelt, organic oats, organic wheat, organic wheat - the variety red
fife, rye, some soft winter wheats. We as well had a farmer last year
experiment with corn. Tony Grant: Tested flax. Todd Grant: Coming in, yah, the test with flax
haven't really proved out yet, but we are doing some trials, I guess. Those
would be the bulk grains that, basically, we've built our business around. Jon Steinman: So, and would you say the mill has been
growing, you know, since you got involved? Todd Grant: Yup, I dare say that, you know, every
year we're growing probably ten percent. People are starting to get a little
concerned about their food and the 100 mile diet, there's lots of little things
that have encouraged them to look deeper into the food system out there and so,
I believe we're gaining a little support every day. Jon Steinman: The Speerville Flour Mill currently
employs 12 people in production, warehousing, office-work, such as marketing
and distribution. The backbone of their business are the many health food
stores, buying clubs and bakeries who they sell to including national retailers
like Sobey's, Atlantic Superstore (which is a Loblaw chain of stores) and Co-op
Atlantic - a chain of co-operative grocery stores throughout the Atlantic
Provinces. Speerville products are only
sold in Atlantic stores. President
Todd Grant works side-by-side with his brother Tony who I also spoke with and
who will shortly take us on a tour of the mill and warehouse, and Tony is
equally passionate about operating a business that provides the most natural
and freshest foods possible. Tony Grant: I'm Tony Grant, Todd's older brother.
I'm the middle of three. I guess I came to the mill six years ago. Electronic
technologist by trade, but when my wife and I decided we wanted to start a
family, I thought that I should be working closer to home and Todd had an
opportunity at the mill with some - needed some help with management and
setting up the business for growth and, so he asked me to come and be part of
the team. I've been very happy to be there, been intrigued by everything that
I've seen from the time I walked through the door. Wasn't as aware as I should have
been about our food and some of the things that are in our - the food that
we're eating and some of the easy cures that we have, the easy fixes that we
have. And I've really been pleased to have had the opportunity to work at
Speerville and work towards a cause that is much bigger than myself. Our
family was incredibly lucky to have been raised or had the opportunity to be
raised on a small farm in rural New Brunswick. We had our own beef, our own
pork, our own eggs, our own chicken, grew a huge garden and did a lot of
canning, so not a lot of our food was from the grocery store. As we grew up and
moved off on our own we succumbed to the modern conveniences and that was where
I did a fair bit of my grocery shopping as well. I did
have a medical challenge as well. My wife and I want to have children, and I
wanted to be closer to home, but I developed the disease acid reflux disease,
which of course, I'm sure you're aware, is not a disease at all, it's a diet
problem. I was on the road a lot and ate out of restaurants and a lot of
processed meats and potato chips and pop and the things most of modern society
eats. I guess after two weeks on the Nexium, because I had gone through a
number of different products over a couple of years trying to control my acid
reflux disease, and I had a really bad reaction, blacked out, cold sweats,
seeing black splotches, went to the hospital immediately. They did a bunch of
blood work and tried to diagnose the problem and came back three hours later
when I was feeling fine - it effected me for about an hour - three hours later
when they come back to tell me that I had a flu, nothing more than a flu, I
showed him again the Nexium package, I had eight of the ten symptoms that it
warned about on the back of the package. The doctor assured me it was just a
touch of the flu and just go home and take it easy for the week, wrote me -
gave me a doctor's note. I
felt it was horrible that that doctor wasn't going to attribute any of my
reaction, which I had never had any reaction like this before in my life, to
the Nexium, so I went to see my family doctor who had described the Nexium to
me. He as well refused to make a report on it, he said that symptoms like this
have never been reported on a drug like this, if you were going to have any
symptoms it would be within the first twenty four hours. And, I guess, I'm
saying, well maybe it was because doctors like you wouldn't make a report. You
know, here I am reporting it, and it did happen, and you are not making this
report. So I
guess all of these things came together with the right timing, Todd asking me
to be part of the organization as well, came together with the right timing for
me and start working at the mill and start to realize that I need to take my
diet back into my own hands and that I don't have a disease called acid reflux
disease, what I had was an eating problem, and I very easily fixed that eating
problem by changing the way I eat and starting to eat real food, much like the
food that I was raised on when I was growing up. (Sound
of people walking on stairs.) Tony Grant: These are the original stairs of the
first co-op. Just wait there a minute I'll be. Jon Steinman: Sure. Tony Grant: Lights here. So this is where we would
receive grains. The incoming grain would go into one of these three tanks and
if it needed dried it would go into our dryer, a six ton batch dryer right
here. Any grain when it lands here, there's an incoming grain report done,
samples taken, and the audit trail process starts right there when the grain
arrives. From
there it would go into our seed plant and in our seed plant we have four bins
upstairs, two 15 ton, two 12 ton, and they will hold the grain until we're
ready to bring it down into our seed plant into the various equipment. Jon Steinman: This equipment looks pretty old. Tony Grant: Most of our equipment is old. This is a
Frano 500, it's probably 60 or 70 years old.
To see it in operation some people might not believe that it could do any kind
of a job, it rattles and shakes and bangs. But that's what its doing cleaning
grain, it needs to rattle and shake and bang. And we do have to do some
maintenance to it every year, there's no question about that, but this old gear
is solid. You patch it up and it will work forever almost. And
then from there we hit our gravity table. Gravity table is a really neat piece
of machinery with the heavy grains going to the top and the lighter gains
coming to the bottom, as you can see. Jon Steinman: And why are you segregating those? Tony Grant: Well, I guess for a number of reasons.
You can see there's some vetch and some small seeds in here, but there is also
a lot of these kernels are fusarium damaged kernels on this small side, on this
light side. But you can see that 99 percent of the table is covered with good
grain and the fusarium damage is just down here in this lightest section of the
table. Jon Steinman: This is Deconstructing Dinner and you're
listening to Tony Grant of Speerville Flour Mill - a unique business based in
the community of Speerville, New Brunswick. The business processes organic
grains grown throughout the Maritime Provinces into dozens of products and
Deconstructing Dinner visited the business in September 2009. Photos of the
mill are posted on our website at deconstructingdinner.ca and listed under the
January 21st 2010 episode. So,
from here where does the grain then go? Tony Grant: From here, I guess once it's cleaned,
into these wagons. It would go into the tanks out back, the finish tanks, you
probably saw those on your way by. Not much to see, I guess, just a bunch of
grain bins. Yeah, so it'd come out into one of these tanks out here. From there
it would come back into the mill which, I guess, we can go back upstairs. If
you just get inside that door you'll be in the light. Jon Steinman: So what are we looking at here? Tony Grant: This is a scouring machine, these are
both scouring machines. Jon Steinman: Scouring is...? Tony Grant: Just a final - I guess it's smutting and
scouring - just a final clean before it goes to the mill, to knock any of the
grain dust off or any small particles out, especially with the oats. You can
see on this one that - can't tell you when it was made, but it was patented in
the UK in 1838 - very old machines, still work very well though. July 23rd
1872 is the oldest patent date that's printed on it. Jon Steinman: So, they have certainly been used since
the beginning of the mill. Tony Grant: Yes, actually, these - I think both of
these machines, or this one, at least - came out of a mill that was in
operation in the early 1900's. Jon Steinman: Around here? Tony Grant: Yah, about 10 miles from here - Slater
Mill - and it was in operation until probably, I don't know, likely the '20's
or '30's, thereabouts. But this old equipment was still in it. These two
elevators that you see right here came out of that mill as well. These
elevators are over 100 years old, believe it or not. It's just a bucket
elevator, pretty simple technology - a belt on a pulley with buckets. Yah, so a
lot of this equipment was actually used 100 years ago. So
this is where the grain would come in from the tanks outside, all labeled very
well and, as well, a part of the organic process. Any time that any grain is
drawn from any of these tanks it is recorded in our organic audit trail; how
much was used, what it was used for, what pack size it went in to, and the date
that it was milled. This
is what we call the mill warehouse. Our offices are upstairs and when the
members of the co-op - the First Co-op - where building this building they
didn't have much to work with - very, very little money to work with, basically
time and effort was all they had. So you can see they've tried to cover the
stack wall a number of times with stucco to get some measure of insulation from
the winter winds. This area that we're standing in right now, small section was
their original warehouse, this was the first edition to the mill. So if
we want to step in here, this is the original mill, still where 90 percent of
the processing takes place now. There are a number of machines in here, most of
the machines that are here, we have done a lot of work to them, some of them
almost been completely rebuilt. We pride ourselves in rebuilding old equipment.
I guess it's our opinion rather than spending 25,000 on new, if I can buy a
shell for 2,000 dollars and put 5,000 dollars into labour to fix it back up,
I'm much better off, I've got that guy working for me and there's going to be
some slack time and why not have him working for me rather than - rather than
going home with short hours some weeks. Jon Steinman: As Tony Grant concluded his tour of the
mill operation of the Speerville Flour Mill, we made our way a few hundred
meters down the road where the business maintains their warehouse space. Upon
walking into the warehouse, it became quite clear that the Speerville Flour
Mill has grown into becoming a notable distributor of many foods and grocery products. Tony Grant: Most of the product that is in area, I
guess out in the 30 by 30 we have some bulk grains, incoming and outgoing stuff
that would be coming in, and in this area this is where we would build most of
our health food stores and grocery store orders. You can see it's mostly all
cased product. I guess you can see here salts, and as well we have a pasta line
out of Quebec. We have considered a number of times putting in our own pasta
line, but haven't gone that far yet, it's a totally other business so set aside
from our milling. So,
in here we have a number of products. This section would be for our bakeries
and our food group customers who are going to be buying chick peas and basmati
rice and sesame seeds and red lentils, green lentils, buckwheat flour, all the
stuff that they'd be buying in a 25 pound bag or a 55 pound bag. We also have
back in here our organic and fair traded coffees and teas, cocoa, hot
chocolate, we have peanut butter - crunchy and smooth - an almond butter,
cashew butter, toothpaste line, we carry both Tom's of Maine and Green Beaver.
We have our maple syrup, maple butter and maple sugar. Jon Steinman: Now the diversity of products that
Speerville Flour Mill distributes might for some seem to be straying from their
focus - organically grown local grains, but according to Tony Grant,
diversifying their product line and distributing more than just the local
grains they process provides greater convenience to their customers. As a
result, Speerville has placed itself into a position of maintaining greater
distribution and bargaining power. Tony Grant: We try to be the kind of place that a
family could source 90 percent of their groceries from - dried goods, at least.
You can see here we have a line of environmentally friendly and phosphate free
cleaning supplies; liquid dish, liquid laundry, and all purpose cleaners. I
guess we just try to make it easy for our customers to place an order with us.
And if customer demand says we should carry Green Beaver Company out of
Markham, Ontario because Tom's of Maine just got purchased by
Colgate-Palmolive, and is no longer a family owned and operated company, we had
to bring on Green Beaver Company to compete with Tom's of Maine products. In
here, this is heated storage as well, or cold storage in the summer. We carry
our blueberry juice and organic apple cider vinegar in there from Annapolis
Valley. These two products are both from Nova Scotia. Blueberry juice isn't
certified organic, but it is a wild blueberry juice made in Caledonia, Nova
Scotia. And Boates Apple Cider Vinegar,
wonderful product, there is no other like it in my opinion, and beautiful,
beautiful product, I drink it straight with water - it is delicious - we
brought this production on for our health food stores, but we did eventually
get this product into Sobey's as well. Superstore hasn't been interested in
taking it as of yet, but we still hope that they will someday and support
another great family farm in Atlantic Canada. Jon Steinman: So you had a role in doing that? In
getting it into another store because, I guess, of your purchasing power here and
your distribution power? Tony Grant: Yah, absolutely. For Boates to be
dealing with Sobey's or Superstore just would not happen. They are starting to
come back to it a little bit, but as a rule they don't deal with single product
suppliers, I guess. Jon Steinman: Perhaps the greatest example of the
importance of this business and really any small independent local food
processor and distributor is found in Speerville's ability to determine how
their product arrives at the major grocery retailers set up in the Maritime
Provinces. With only three major retailers controlling virtually all of the grocery sales throughout
the provinces, getting products produced on a small-scale onto their shelves is
a difficult task. Even those businesses who are able to are required by some of these retailers to
ship to a distribution centre first
before the product then arrives at the individual stores. This never sat well
with Speerville as it's important to them to ensure that anyone purchasing
their product receives it as fresh as possible. Tony Grant: We only deliver direct to the store to
help control the product rotation rather than ask the grocery retailers to
warehouse our product and rotate it properly, if we're shipping direct to the
store we can somewhat control how fresh that product is going into that store.
Well, not somewhat, we can control it. Jon Steinman: And so, they're okay with that, these
stores, that you do do that? Tony Grant: No, no I wouldn't say they're okay with
it, but that's the only way that we would do business with them. We don't want
to - the worst case scenario would be if they warehoused our product, didn't
rotate it properly and put it out on the shelf for sale at, you know, ten
months old or a year old and, as you know, an organic food with no additives,
no preservatives should be consumed fresh. So I guess that was - when we went
into Superstore and Sobey's that was criteria that we had is we are going to
ship directly to your stores or else we don't ship at all. That
stuff right there is kinda bad. They don't really - they don't really like that
part of the scenario. That, you know, that we have that control. They don't
like that a bit. That's the great advantage that we have had in negotiating
with the grocery retailers is that our product is in consumer demand -
consumers will demand our product. If they're looking for Speerville Flour Mill
Oatmeal, they won't go buy one of the competitor's brands. They'll go to
another store in their city and see if they have it - or another store - or
another store. Once they've tried our oatmeal and they understand what they're
supporting they won't buy anybody else's oatmeal. So, that gives us tremendous
bargaining power when it comes to working with these folks because they know
that the consumer wants our product - tremendous power. Jon Steinman: That's Tony Grant of Speerville Flour
Mill located in Speerville, New Brunswick. Deconstructing Dinner visited
Speerville in September 2009. Now we'll return to Speerville later on today's episode, but first
let's meet another important component of this organic grain economy operating
throughout Canada's Maritime Provinces - the farmers. Speerville has played an
integral role for dozens of farmers throughout New Brunswick, Prince Edward
Island and Nova Scotia. It was there in Nova Scotia en route to Speerville
where I first met farmer Andrew Kernohan. Andrew farms in the community of
Parrsboro not too farm from the New Brunswick border. There was quite a lot to
learn from Andrew, whether it was the incredible challenges of growing grain in
a Maritime climate, or his perspectives on the local food movement in the area.
But first, Andrew shared the history of Parrsboro and the role of agriculture
around the community. Both the story of Parrsboro and Andrew's farm are similar
ones to many rural areas throughout North America. Andrew Kernohan: The background to Parrsboro
is it exists here because it was once a ferry connexion across to Wolfville and
Windsor on the other side. So Parrsboro was on the most direct route between
Halifax and Fredericton - or, you know, New Brunswick. And, so instead of going
around via Truro, if you drove, people would make their way via horse and
carriage to Wolfville, get on a boat, come across to Parrsboro, and then go on
from Parrsboro. That's why Parrsboro exists in the place it exists. So, in
fact, for a lot of its lifetime, this part of Parrsboro was not part of the
Cumberland County, which is the County we're in on this side, but part of
King's County, which is the County on the other side around Wolfville.
Parsborro has always - it was quite a wealth town one time, there was a lot of
good wood for making ships. And
back in the 19th century when Nova Scotia had the world's 4th largest merchant
marine it was built with wood from along the Parsborro shore. And if you were
in Parsborro you'd have seen a lot of lovely old houses that date from that
time from really quite wealthy people - Parsborro had a opera house, a hotel,
shows came here before, you know, on their way to New York. But things have
been downhill since the demise of wooden chips. So,
there was agricultural land to feed Parsborro, growing probably oats and I
believe buckwheat, possibly some wheat, and, of course, hay and dairy cattle,
butter, and probably self sufficient, would have been a lot more land cleared
then than now. And all this land, it's not good land around here. It's mostly
class 4 land - barely useable for grain - grain growing. But it turned out to
be really good for berries. So,
an awful lot of this old, cleared farm land that would otherwise have gone back
into scrub has gone into blueberry land - low bush blueberries, wild -
so-called wild blueberries, which - they created a problem for me, farming
organically because I have to maintain these huge buffer zones between my land
and the - how much spray that is put on these blueberries. But they have been
extremely - up until this year - the market seems to have fallen drastically -
but they have been very, very profitable for people who own blueberry land. All
this old scrub land that they inherited from people who had left the land in
the 50's and has been turned into land worth - it's as valuable agricultural
land as there is anywhere in Canada, I would think, sells between 3, 5 thousand
dollars an acre this land, like, sort of, prime Ontario corn land - that's
worked fairly well. There's
a couple people like myself who've been keeping cattle and still do and growing
a bit of grain. But that's dying out - there's less and less of that. Some of
the older folks are retiring and I don't think there's going to be any farming
done there. Jon Steinman: While the Parrsboro area is not ideal
for farming, Andrew Kernohan's father was nevertheless one of many small-scale
farmers in the area. Andrew shared the history of the farm from the days when
small-scale farming was a viable business up until today, where Andrew has now
become a supplier to the Speerville Flour Mill. Andrew Kernohan: We're on a back road, I
guess, behind Parrsboro, I sometimes call it the Parrsboro bypass because it
goes between the Truro Road and the Amherst Road, up the old Route 2, which
used to be the Trans Canada once upon a time. At that time, of course,
Parrsboro was right on the route of everybody going across the country but no
longer. They built a big highway through the mountains behind us here. My
father came here from Ireland in the early '50s just before I was born, and he
is actually a doctor, and that was how he really made a living, but he grew up
on a farm and wanted to farm again. His father was a farmer, there was a time
when farmers sent their sons off to be doctors, if there wasn't enough land to
divide it between the sons, then some of them were sent off to college, and the
lucky or unlucky ones got to stay behind. And so my father bought a farm and
then he decided he'd get into it in a bigger way and he had an opportunity to
buy some farms in the early '50s. And this area was filled with small dairy
farms. They were people who would have about six or eight cows and they would
put the cream out by the road for the dairy truck to pick up, which was taken
somewhere and turned into butter. I think they mostly kept the skimmed milk and
raised pigs on it or raised calves on it or something. So, a person could make
a living at the time with half a dozen dairy cows and maybe twenty or thirty
acres of land. And
this piece that you're sitting in which goes for about 2 miles on this road, it
was four different farms once upon a time, and each of them probably smaller
than what's here now because my father bought these farms as people - people
were leaving the land in the early '50s, because six dairy cows was no longer a
viable existence and I think people wanted to go to the city and buy a pickup
truck or something, and so they were leaving the land. It
was also at the time when, I suppose, when horses were being replaced by
tractors and farmers could do more. So it was no longer necessary to, you know,
have one guy with a sizer and a horse. So dad bought these farms some time in
the '50s and cleared quite a bit more of the land, mostly, he thought mostly of
cattle, so this is all pasture land here except grain land up there on the flat
and then there's more grain land down there. That is oats and that's oats for the
Speerville hulless oats for their porridge. Jon Steinman: Farmer Andrew Kernohan was like many
farmers the child of a farming family who chose to seek a career off the farm - which in
Andrew's case, was in the field of philosophy. When that path didn't work out
entirely as planned, Andrew returned to the farm and he later chose a path of
organic production as his focus. Andrew Kernohan: I came back to the farm in
the '80s, 1983 I moved back. I hadn't previously done - I'd worked on the farm
as a kid, in the summer, you know, lifting bails of hay and stuff and that, but
I didn't usually want to be a farmer back then, I wanted to be a scientist. And
I went away to college and did various things, got a PhD in Philosophy, and
then decided I didn't really want to do what was necessary to be a philosophy
professor. I was partly influenced by the back to the land movement because a
lot of people did - where interested in going - and I also - I didn't like the
price you had to pay to be a philosophy professor at the time, which was going,
working probably in the States, because there weren't a lot of jobs for the
profession I'd chosen. So, I
thought this would be more interesting, which it has been really, except, not
as lucrative as I would like, but it's certainly been more interesting. I still
do philosophy in the winters, like I teach at the agriculture college, I write
stuff, you know, I've written scholarly articles and a scholarly book, and that
sort of stuff, but this has been the source of my meager living. How I
got into the organics was back in the '90s, I was asked to teach this course on
environmental ethics at the agriculture college. And I taught it, to some
extent, as, you know, as the ethical considerations between conventional and
organic agriculture. And after I'd done it for a couple of years, I sort of
convinced myself that perhaps I should take our farm in the organic direction.
But it couldn't be done immediately because it was a beef farm and we had
housing for beef cattle that wouldn't really work out with an organic
situation, though. We were doing a lot of things, like we weren't using sprays,
and we were doing a lot of things semi-organically. So in order to make it
organic, I had to take the farm eventually out of beef cattle. Jon Steinman: This is Deconstructing Dinner - a
syndicate weekly radio show produced in Nelson, British Columbia at Kootenay
Co-op Radio CJLY. I'm Jon Steinman. If you enjoy this show, our weekly content
and the wealth of additional resources that we post to our website each week,
we encourage you to help support this show by donating through our website at
deconstructingdinner.ca On
today's episode we are learning of the regional organic grain movement that
surprisingly is alive and well throughout the Maritime Provinces of Canada. As
an important backbone to the movement, we have already now visited with the
Speerville Flour Mill which since 1982 has and continues to be an important
piece of the local food system. We've since travelled to Parrsboro, Nova Scotia
where we're now hearing from farmer Andrew Kernohan - one of the dozens of
farmers supplying Speerville with organically grown grains. While growing
grains in the climate of the region is not without its challenges Andrew has
successfully harvested a number of crops from his land. In this next clip he
uses the term “rotation" which refers to the annual cycle of crops planted on a
specific piece of land. A good rotation is critical to ensure that a healthy
balance of nutrients are extracted and returned from the soil each year. Andrew Kernohan: I've tried a lot of things. I
don't have either really good land or really good climate, we're just not warm
enough in this part - we're on the north shore of the Minas Basin and we get
the wind coming up the Bay of Fundy. The south side, which is the kind of
Annapolis Valley, which is quite famous for apples and it's got a great little
microclimate there that's probably - starts warm two weeks warmer than here.
Its growing degree days are much higher and probably a slightly better fall,
just because they're sheltered between the north and south mountains, and the
weather system of the Bay of Fundy can't get at them. Probably if I was
designing a farm, I probably wouldn't pick to do it here, there's other places
in Nova Scotia which would be a little better. But,
I'm farming with what I've got, trying to make it but I'm having trouble
actually, with rotation design. I'm finding that I - for organic farming you
have to have a pretty reasonable rotation, and I would like to have - I grow
red clover as my legume to power the rotation. And I can grow grains, I can't
grow winter cereals. I can grow winter rye, which is the heartiest of them, but
winter wheat doesn't live here. I'm having trouble finding a fourth; you really
don't want to grow grain more than maybe twice in a rotation, and I can
certainly grow red clover, I keep trying all these things, fava beans, I've got
a field of those that aren't doing that well, I think I may have to give up on
that. And I probably will have to grow maybe two grains and red clover, it's a
little bit tight, the rotation, but, if I grow, say, wheat and oats, and the
red clover - trying to learn to grow the red clover for seed, since I don't
have cattle, it's normally fed to cattle, made hay - you make hay for cattle.
So, I'm trying to learn to thrash the red clover. We
have good crops of red clover, we have lots of red clover flowers, humboldts I
think they're called, these round flowers and we have lots of bumblebees who
pollinate them and there's lots of seed in the field, but I'm just having a
little difficulty learning how to thrash the seed out of the red clover. Jon Steinman: Andrew Kernohan sharing some of the
challenges of farming that those of us in cities might never hear about. Of the
wheats Andrew grows, are spelt and red fife among others. Red Fife is a
heritage variety that has been featured here on the show before. Andrew Kernohan: Yah, three years ago I grew a
fair sized field for Speerville. Speerville's interested in promoting it
because it gives them something that, you know, other mills don't have - Red
Fife flour. And, so I grew 40 acres for them and it worked out alright. Then I
grew 100 acres for them last year, and didn't do well, we had really bad
fusarium - we had a really wet summer. We've
actually had grain grow and the climate's changed. I think it's an oscillation,
not necessarily a climate change thing. But, we've had very, very wet summers
for the last four years, before that we had quite dry summers. Grains, of
course, grow better in dry summers then they do in wet ones and anyway, I had a
bad attack of fusarium in the red fife last year. They were able to use some of
it but this year I tried another 100 acres of the Red Fife. It grew a lot
better, there was a lot less fusarium problems. Jon Steinman: In closing out my conversation with
farmer Andrew Kernohan, he did share the fears that he as a farmer has for the
future viability of regional food systems, but as we'll hear in this last
segment from my conversation with him, it's a business like Speerville and the
increasing interest among eaters to support local product that gives Andrew a
glimmer of hope. Andrew Kernohan: Speerville is extremely
supportive of this idea, I mean they're not just, as far as I understand, a
business. Hopefully, they're a business, too, and hopefully, they're doing
well, but they're also committed to providing a way of getting grain grown in
the Atlantic Provinces. That I know of, there are three grain mills that can produce
wheat flour in the Atlantic Provinces. One's a huge Dover Mill factory in
Halifax, which brings in bread wheat from Saskatchewan, turns them into flour
and sends them around. There's that little grist mill, a little tiny one
somewhere in the middle of Nova Scotia, Balmoral Mill, and there's Speerville,
and Speerville is in New Brunswick, half way up New Brunswick and the interest
in local food, is certainly making a difference for quite a few farmers and
possibly indirectly for me, because shipping to Speerville and Speerville being
as local as you can get in an, you know, an area like this, it's not within 100
miles, but it's also not from Saskatchewan, either, the products that they
sell. And they are expanding. So, in that sense, for organic grain there is
room for expansion but it depends on Speerville's ability to find markets for
their grain. Jon Steinman: That was Andrew Kernohan - an organic
farmer in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. Andrew is also the Board President of ACORN -
the Atlatnic Canadian Organic Regional Network. soundbite From
Parrsboro Deconstructing Dinner made its way to Speerville New Brunswick where
we were visiting just earlier on today's broadcast. In coming back to the Speerville Flour Mill
where farmers like Andrew Kernohan sells to, we hear the thoughts from
Speerville's Todd and Tony Grant. It was during our conversation that I asked
the Grants their perspectives on what size farm is ideal for an organic grain
farmer in the Maritime Provinces to make an adequate living growing grain.
While the Speerville Flour Mill has proven to be a key piece to the answer,
there are many more pieces involved. Todd Grant: I don't know much about farming, I'm a
miller not a farmer. I would probably believe that there is no size a farm that
is viable. Our farming community is in desperate, desperate shape. I don't know
that I'm the complete answer for a viable farm. I'm not sure that the market is
ready for that yet. We're being subsidized with cheap, cheap food. For a long
time, we've been taught that cheap food is what we want to eat for some reason
I guess. In Atlantic Canada we've never had any huge amount of money here, so
everybody's always trying to watch their dollars and pennies and cheap food is
one of those areas that they can save a few cents. We're in desperate shape and
I don't know what it's going to take to have a viable farm. Tony Grant: If I could jump in there on that one.
One of the reasons that they aren't concerned or appreciate the idea of cheap
food is because they don't understand the true cost of that cheap food. They
don't understand that we're building super highways to have a third of the
trucks on the road carrying their food back and forth. They don't understand
that we're subsidizing the businesses they're building the trucks and building
the brake pads and building the tires and building the super highways and
plowing the super highways and maintaining them. The whole food delivery system
that we have right now is so subsidized, well, we can buy California carrots for
$1.99 and its $3 to buy the Atlantic Canadian grown and the farmer really can't
survive selling them at that price because it is so subsidized. And people just
don't realize the true cost when you send those dollars away from your
community, your neighbours don't have the money to be able to afford to buy
other things as well. So our biggest challenge is to educate the public and try
to drive the public will to want to support a community and want to create,
want to understand that they are supporting their neighbours and their
community, and want to eat good food. Jon Steinman: This is Deconstructing Dinner. Despite
the somewhat grim outlook on the future viability of farmers in the Maritime
Provinces, Todd and Tony Grant of Speerville Flour Mill remain optimistic and
as we stood beside their portable wood-fired oven, it was clear that the Grants
are still happy to celebrate food and the unique flavour of their products. As
mentioned at the top of the hour, much of our conversation took place beside an
oven which rested atop a flatbed trailer. The oven was being heated up just
moments before Todd was to then travel to Prince Edward Island to participate
in an organic food festival taking place there. The oven was a great reminder
of what all the challenges and opportunities discussed on today's broadcast are
really all about; enjoying fresh, healthy and tasty food grown close to home. Tony Grant: This is a masonry - wood fired, masonry
oven. It's a Le Panyol kit from France. The metal work, the copper dome, and
the steel tray and the trailer were all built in Skowhegan, Maine, by Maine
Wood Heat Company. We were intrigued by the oven as a promotional tool for us.
When Maine Wood Heat brought their oven up to cook some pizzas with our flour,
some local cheeses from the Annapolis Valley and vegetables from the Annapolis
Valley as well, organically grown, a group there that was called - a
cooperative that was trying to operate in the Annapolis Valley - they supplied
the vegetables and the cheese, we brought the dough and the oven, and cooked
pizza at Agrifest in Canning, Nova Scotia in 2005 I think it was. So we
were intrigued by the oven and its - the possibilities that it would bring with
it to be able to market products like we are selling, so we've purchased one of
our own and, as well, I guess, in that endeavor, in purchasing one, and
understanding what they are and where they're from, how perfect a baking devise
they are, we also decided it would be great if we could sell the kits to some
folks here in Atlantic Canada and have them, as well, showcase our products by
baking in the best possible baking devise that they could get. They definitely
are a mark above anything else that I've worked with as far as baking goes, the
flavour of anything we've baked in there is unbelievable, from breads and
baguettes, and cakes and pies and even just flat breads and potato wedges,
chicken, smoked ham, just anything that you would bake in an oven comes out of
this oven tasting beautiful. Jon Steinman: So this is going to be on the highway
for quite a ways. Is the idea right now to get it hot before you arrive? Tony Grant: Yup. To have the heat driven
clear through the stones will make it much easier to fire tomorrow morning.
They're baking in this on PEI tomorrow morning. Todd will probably fire it once
he gets to PEI tonight again, just to have it good and warm overnight. And then
when he starts his fire tomorrow, it'll just be a half hour fire and it'll be
right up to baking temperature. Jon Steinman: Tony Grant of New Brunswick's Speerville
Flour Mill. A reminder that today's episode is archived on-line at
deconstructingdinner.ca and posted under the January 21st 2010
broadcast. On the page you'll find more resources about today's topic including
photos and unheard audio from our Speerville Flour Mill visit and of Andrew
Kernohan. And another quick reminder to mark your calendars for the upcoming
National Democratic Dialogue on the Future of Canada's Prison Farms. The live
webcast from Steinbach Manitoba will be on February 1st at 1:30pm
CST. Tune in to hear Members of Parliament discuss the controversial closures
of the Prison Farm program that we first featured on the show back in July
2009. Deconstructing Dinner is a media partner in the upcoming February 1st
event, and you can stay posted to our website and Facebook page for more
information and updates. In
closing out today's show, here once again are Todd and Tony Grant speaking of
the future of Speerville and the future of small-scale milling in Canada. Tony Grant:
I think
that's another thing that people don't understand and that's one of the reasons
why we still keep sowed bag - our closure on the bag is a stitch. I think it
gives the consumer confidence that this product was looked over by a human
being. This wasn't a machine, form fill sealed at chicka-bonk, chicka-bonk,
chicka-bonk, chicka-, you know, a thousand bags an hour, that it's, you know,
they dump product in from a bulk truck in the front end of it, and out the
other end its - it comes cased and palletized. When they see our produces,
sewed with a stitcher, they know that there was a human that traced this number
checked out this company to make sure that it was certified organic, followed
the process through. When they were bagging my product they were inspecting it
and looking it over, and then it was sewed by hand and put in this case, and,
as well not only should that give you some food security, that it was looked
over by a human being, but as well, it was a human being who now has money to be
able to send their kid to college and to be able to buy food and to contribute
in their community. So it was a job, not a machine, it was a job that sewed
that bag for you, a person in your community. So that's something that we
really like about the way - the scale that we're on right now, so that we can
control it that way. Todd Grant: I see us growing somewhat, but I don't
ever desire to have 30 or 50 employees. I believe there's room for many smaller
mills like me out and around there, but we've lost all of the knowledge base,
and farmer base, so it's going to be a long road to get something like
Speerville, we've been in the business for 26 years, and they haven't been easy
years. The food production system is the next best thing to farming. Tony Grant: I guess as far as where Speerville is
going, we have a number of times just to be prudent, and on behalf of our
farmer base here as we've seen it grow, have been concerned they may outgrow
our production needs. We have looked at other markets, like the New England
market, we'll throw that one out there. We don't feel that it is really our
place to be in the New England market, even though Atlantica, via region in
Eastern Canada, would include New England, if we didn't have the border in
between us. We should be able to supply food for New England, however with the
FDA and customs border services, US Customs Border Services and all the things
that they can - all the wrenches they can throw into the gears - we've decided
that we probably should stay out of that market and try to grow our business
here in Atlantic Canada by trying to find local support by taking an oven like
this out on the road and trying to show people that yes, you can bake with
whole grains and yes, it does taste better especially when it's fresh and local
and there is going to be an economic benefit in your community because you are
making these choices. So, we have decided to invest here in Atlantic Canada and
to try to make our efforts of growth here in Atlantic Canada. We're
still less than one percent of the cereal grain products that are consumed in
Atlantic Canada, we're still less than one percent of the market. We do have a
nice, steady growth rate, and that's the way we like to keep it slow and
controlled. We have been approached a number of times by a number of different
groups about taking our model somewhere else, say to New England or in Ontario
or other areas. However in the past, I guess we have felt that we should leave
them to develop on their own, in their own way, and we've provided a little bit
of advice to them but keep it at more than arm's length. There have been a
number of them who have wanted us to franchise or satellite an operation in
another area and we've decided that we want to keep our roots right here in
Atlantic Canada at this point. ending theme Jon Steinman: And that was this week's edition of
Deconstructing Dinner, produced and recorded at Nelson, British Columbia's
Kootenay Co-op Radio. I've been your host Jon Steinman. I thank my technical
assistant John Ryan. The
theme music for Deconstructing Dinner is courtesy of Nelson-area resident Adham
Shaikh. This radio program is provided free of charge to
campus/community radio stations across the country and relies on the financial
support from you, the listener. Support for the program can be donated through our website at
deconstructingdinner.ca or by dialing 250-352-9600.
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