My hands look like a child's.

Stained purple from the bounty of mulberries that come with this time of year. Like I played with my food or gorged messily on the juicy purple berries that so easily make their mark on anyone who comes in contact with them.

It's a sure sign of June, a sure sign that another season of harvesting fruit has begun for The Garden of Eating - Niagara.

I must admit - and with a bit of guilt - I've had the easy job so far, not that harvesting mulberries is ever hard work. Lay down a tarp and let the tree rain down its harvest upon it. If need be, gently jostle the branches with a rake and get a monsoon of mulberries. Funnel the delicate royal purple fruit into a container and you're set.

But I haven't even had to do that. Normally, I love getting lost in my thoughts as I rifle through the dumping of mulberries. It's a job I usually do myself, saving all the volunteer credit the Garden of Eating racks up for harvesting pears in the fall. This time, though, the homeowners have scooped up the berries for me and as luck would have it, have brought them to work to give to me there. Easiest harvests ever.

That's where the guilt comes in but also the gratitude. I have a nasty bug kicking my butt - nothing is worse than being sick in the summer - and if it weren't for their kindness, there would be no Garden of Eating - Niagara mulberry harvest at all. They answered my call when I found out the usually reliable tree that had been harvested for the past three years had been hacked and they've helped out when I've been down for the count. The world needs more people like them, really.

So why the purple stained hands? The first haul of berries netted about five pounds of fruit; fruit that I have cleaned and frozen so the entire harvest can be delivered in one shot to Community House in Welland. That's where assistant director Carly Bowden said they will be used in cooking classes with children in one of the Rose City's poorest neighbourhoods. They can come to learn a new recipe and enjoy breakfast together.

My freezer is a paradise for mulberry fans right now, a bastion of future healthy meals for children who need them, and my dreams of being a hand model are dashed once again.

Nothing could make me happier.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 8:54 PM EDT

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It's usually about this time of year that I start planning which pair of shoes I will sacrifice for the start of the Garden of Eating - Niagara harvesting season. 

 That's because in a few short weeks, we should start harvesting mulberries. For the last three years, we've been offered a stately, generous tree on Geneva Street that drops the dark purple berries like a cloud drops rain. Each time, our visits have marked the unofficial kick-off to our season of picking unwanted fruit growing in people's yards and donating it to local shelters, soup kitchens and food banks on their behalf.

Without fail, no matter how careful I've been in my mulberry gathering process, my shoes and clothes come out looking like I've been attacked by an angry version of Grimace, Ronald McDonald's googly-eyed purple pal. With much scrubbing and elbow grease, the mauve marks sometimes come out. Mostly, they just become faded remnants of a good deed done clumsily.

But something much more irreparable has happened since I last accidentally smooshed and squished fallen mulberries that I tried so hard to tiptoe around. The tree, a decades old beast whose branches seemed to reach into the sky and yet dip low enough for me reach, has been chopped down. I can only surmise that others weren't as appreciative of all it had to give --  maybe even saw it as a messy nuisance instead of a provider of healthy, versatile, fresh food.

This lovely, fruit bearing beauty technically wasn't in the yard where we harvested. Instead, it was rooted next door with its branches spreading its goodwill over four backyards. The people who live where Garden of Eating volunteers set to work loved how many mulberries it gave every June, laying down bedsheets on the grass to soften the fall from great heights of berries that look like mini bunches of grapes.

They juiced them, baked with them and gave what they couldn't use themselves. And it was a lot.

Now, this ritual that signalled the start of another season of ruined shoes -- OK, drastically altered because I still wear them -- and with it that feeling of being well on our way to another successful year is no more. Add to that the late frost this spring, which I fear has knocked down our usual pear crops a few sizes and I can't help but feel a little concerned for this little group that recently spent the money to become a bona fide non-profit, with a board of directors willing to give their time to make the Garden of Eating truly great.

It kind of feels like kindness interruptus.

So, if you have a mulberry tree, or any fruit tree, that usually goes unfulfilled come harvest time, please let us know. Drop us a line at eatingniagara@gmail.com or visit us on Facebook. We'd be truly grateful as would the countless people in need who will benefit from your generosity.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 8:57 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 27 May 2012 9:00 PM EDT

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The white-blue glow of grow lights tucked into a corner of my kitchen casts a harsh and eerie glare that clashes with the yellow warmth thrown by fixtures hanging from the ceiling.

Their cool appearance is a bit of an irony, given the comfortable heat they throw on the dirt filled containers beneath them. The brightness that my two grow lamps radiate is a beacon for me, inviting me over to inspect what they're shining down upon, to watch nature forced into action.

But I should know, a watched seed never grows.

Still, those rays of light pouring into the heated indoor greenhouse beneath them are symbolic of the release I feel of energy pent up over the winter. It has waited impatiently to be expended on another season's promise in the garden, starting with seeding the plants that will become my company in the yard this summer, my meals in the fall.

This week, I broke out my early gardening season supplies — lights, pods, seeds, soils, and heated bed — and broke free of the cold weather season that was, not that it felt like much of a winter this year anyway, though the calendar deemed it so.

I set about seeding 60 red Wethersfield and yellow Borettana onions, 20 Spigiarelli broccoli seeds, Lacinato kale and Georgia southern collards. Ten Corno di Toro Giallo — sweet, mildly spicy yellow peppers  — joined them in a warm, moist earth bed, catching that fluorescent glow that will spur them along.

There are cucumbers at the ready, oh so sweet melons, scarlet Nantes carrots and Sutton's harbinger peas, too.  And, of course, there will be a long list of tomato plants that will eventually join them.

It's not as though my postage stamp-sized yard has grown over the winter — the one in which garlic, chard and bloody dock are the only edibles that seem to really thrive. Instead, I will be borrowing someone else's backyard to reap what I've just sown.

You can call this generous homeowner a YIMBY because she invited me to take over her unused sunny swath on Scott Street in St. Catharines after letting me scale her towering Kieffer pear tree last fall for The Garden of Eating - Niagara.

It's not a huge backyard by any stretch but one whose space has been maximized by her greenthumb parents who lived there before her, divvying the square lot into beds for vegetables and flowers that see the sun morning to night while basking in the added warmth of light bouncing off a white brick wall nearby.

Sorry if I seem like I'm waxing poetic about something as pragmatic as vegetable gardening but truth is, I can't wait to starting digging in the earth again, getting dirt under my nails.

My impatience is helped along by the knowledge that I'll have a garden where everything really does seem to be in the proverbial cards — space, sunlight and soil that has been nurtured through its years of use and protected in its dormancy of late.

My attempts at using what I have at my condo, where the sun's presence and room to grow is scant, have given me a complex about my gardening (in)abilities and this summer will be the true test, provided Mother Nature is in a good mood, of that green thumb of mine with its seemingly unshakable brown tinge.

I will be embarking upon my latest gardening adventure with my friend Rowan, a fellow proponent of local food security who is  working to bring a food store to downtown St. Catharines. 

All we have to do is clean up a tiny corner of the borrowed yard that has grown into a mish-mash of weeds and fuzzy lamb's ears in exchange for use of a swath brimming with what seems like guaranteed gardening glory.

Those remnants of landscaping gone wrong will be replaced with bee friendly flowers. Yes, I want my garden teeming with those hard-done-by pollinators or at least make whoever shows up feel welcome.

It's a small fee for a summer's access to land and water and the bounty at the end of it all.

Spring starts officially in less than a week. But in that corner of my kitchen where that acerbic grow-light glare and gentler luminosity spilling from frosted lampshades collide, it has already begun.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 11:16 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 15 March 2012 11:23 PM EDT

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On a rain slicker, it's a beauty.

But as the colour of a button on the Garden of Eating's website with the word 'Donate' emblazoned on it, it makes me feel a little awkward. I hate asking for favours.

The donate button exists because I am trying to raise money for The Garden of Eating - Niagara, the residential fruit picking program I started in 2009 to provide a source of fresh fruit to social organizations that would otherwise rarely see such donations. In that time and with the help of some kicking volunteers, we've diverted 3,600 pounds of tree fruit from compost bins, having that food go to people who can eat and enjoy it instead.

As the third full harvest season looms, I have some expenses coming my way as I work toward turning this from an after-work hobby to an organization with even greater impact. To do that, I need liability insurance and harvesting and canning supplies for my helpers, who have, for the most part, been supplying their own, generous bunch that they are. But mostly, my priority is getting that insurance for the coming year.

Until now, I have covered any expenses that have come up with my own funds but it's becoming increasingly difficult to do. That's why I've resorted to putting a donate button on this site and the GOEN's official website.

I'm in the process of incorporating the Garden of Eating - Niagara as a non-profit organization. That will make accessing grants easier, provided my applications get the stamp of approval. It should also enable the GOEN to apply for a group insurance rate, which would lessen costs.

There will be a board to oversee and help direct where the program goes. In time, applying for charitable status will be in the cards but for now, this is the most appropriate route to take.

That means that anyone who donates won't be able to get a tax receipt in return but you will have my gratitude and my word that anything donated will be used only for goods and services required to carry out this program. Two years ago, I raised $50 holding a raffle and only spent it this year on labels for pears that were jarred for Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold. That wasn't because there were no other expenses for the program until now -I've purchased ladders and baskets in the meantime. I was just fiercely protective of how that money should be spent.

No one involved with the GOEN is or will be paid for their time. That is all volunteered so no money will be used as any kind of salary.

If you do decide to give, thank you so very much. If not, that's OK, too. This doesn't mean the program is in jeopardy. It just needs a little help.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 11:17 PM EST

Updated: Monday, 20 February 2012 11:19 PM EST

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There's a good chance Mike Gretzinger's students will never look at a pear the same way again.

After spending a good part of their fall canning 800 pounds of them, there's an even better chance these tourism and hospitality specialist high skills major protegees have a serious hate-on for the humble fruit.

And I fear, it's all my fault, since the pears, and the life lesson in canning they provided, came compliments of The Garden of Eating — Niagara and a team of volunteers who spared these pears from going to waste in the orchard so they could be eaten by people who wanted and needed them.

"It was exhausting. It was just the same," lamented Lindsay Nardangeli , a Grade 12 Denis Morris Catholic High School student.

Their kitchen classroom routine with the bell-shaped fruit consisted of peeling, coring, cutting, poaching.

Repeat.

For weeks.

"It's really messy and sticky," added classmate Katelyn Trudel. "You'd only do it 15 minutes and it felt like three hours."

For much of the fall, the small class of senior students has toiled away in a kitchen at the Holiday Inn and Suites Parkway Convention Centre in St. Catharines, canning a ton of food.

Think 70 bushels of tomatoes, 15 bushels of peaches, 20 of beans, 10 of Roma beans and hundreds more pounds of beets, onions and hot peppers.

"I just say yes when a farmer asks if we want them," Gretzinger said.

In addition to teaching his students the art of preserving, Gretzinger is giving them a lesson in philanthropy, too.

Everything the class cans, including the pears for the Garden of Eating — Niagara, is donated to local food banks and other social organizations, including the Salvation Army.

That made the repetitive, labour intensive classes bearable for Denis Morris student Josh Wallace.

"Your conscience feels better," he said.

"You feel great because you're helping someone eat," interjected classmate Shallyne Coelho.

That's something they'll do again next month when the class tackles its next major culinary assignment: preparing a turkey dinner and all the fixings for 800 people at the Salvation Army's annual Christmas dinner on Dec. 14.

Still, despite being grateful there's nothing left to seal in jars this semester, the students did admit their foray into food preserving gave them new perspective on eating well. Some of them said they would even can again for pleasure instead of grades.

"It tastes cleaner, fresher," Wallace said.

The students aren't the only ones learning, either. A chef by trade, Gretzinger said he hadn't done much canning until moving to the head of the classroom six years ago. The experience has inspired even more lesson ideas for his students.

"The last few years, we've done more and more," he said. "Even myself, I'm learning more as we do it. Now I want to get out to a farm and work .. so they can see where (the food) comes from."

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 9:30 PM EST

Updated: Thursday, 24 November 2011 9:33 PM EST

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It was the makings of a Steve Miller song.

Standing under the sagging branches of a kieffer pear tree in the Cherry Lane orchard in Vineland, my mind's ear couldn't help but hear the classic rocker croon 'Really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.'

In this case, though, the song could have easily been sung about pears as volunteer Rowan Shirkie ingeniously shook the arthritic limbs of pear trees to quickly weed out all the ones ripe for the picking — without having to pick them.

With a plastic tarp laid on the ground below, all that needed to be done was a simple scoop and dump into a basket. Really, I don't know where I'd be without the resourceful crew of people who have helped with Garden of Eating — Niagara picks this year. Well, I could wager a guess: perhaps stuck up a pear tree somewhere still trying to fill a basket with fruit.

Our efforts today netted us nearly 700 pounds of pears that will be canned by Niagara Catholic District School Board students and delivered to Community Care.

By far, it was the largest harvest in the Garden of Eating's history. And the only reason we stopped was because our baskets and trunks were full. We barely made a dent in all the fruit that eventually will fall to the ground and rot.

Still, a big victory — huge, in fact — and one that comes compliments of Cherry Lane in Vineland, who donated the fruit.

But it's the small victories that have kept the Garden of Eating going for much of this year and for which, I'm equally as grateful.

Take the phone call that came Thursday night from a woman with five extra butternut squash from her garden. Too much squash, not enough people in her family to eat it. They are five of the most beautiful squash I've seen. Nearly flawless and almost all perfectly bell-shaped.

They will be delivered Tuesday to the Ozanam Centre in St. Catharines where the soup kitchen feeds as many as 70 to 100 people a day.

Next year, the woman who gave the squash plans to grow an extra row of vegetables for the Garden of Eating — Niagara to deliver to social agencies in need.

No, it won't come near a record harvest but this is still, by far, a huge gesture and one for which I am immeasurably grateful. The woman who made the offer is elderly, could easily decide to pare down her garden instead, work less and relax more, but no. She plans to break ground for people she doesn't know, only knows that she wants to help.

At a pear pick last Wednesday, I was also offered up some beautiful land in a sun-filled St. Catharines backyard. The people who live there are no longer able to tend to the gardens that have been carved out of the yard so the offer was made. "Do you know anyone who could use it?" the daughter of the homeowner asked.

I already have visions of what can grow there. So does one of the volunteers from the pick who lamented his shade-filled yard and saw the promise of the growing season ahead thanks to this offer of yard sharing.

And there's room for more. I see a jungle of tomato plants, hunched over with heavy bulbous fruit, perkier pepper plants proffering up their goodness and more. Maybe lettuce. Or squash. Beans. Chard. Let me know if you'd like to share in the plot for your own use or to donate the harvest.

The possibilities seem endless. Much like the stomachs in need of filling.

Small victories but they all add up.

And for that, I am thankful.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 6:20 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 27 May 2012 9:16 PM EDT

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I returned to the giving tree tonight and couldn't help but think that's what this old kieffer pear tree was feeling.

Last year, I picked more 400 pounds of  fruit from its tireless, heavy limbs and still didn't get it all.

This year, with the help of four volunteers and one four-legged mascot dubbed Peary, we picked the tree pretty clean, save for the upper branches.

 Its limbs were scaled, batted at and scoured wherever our ladders would allow us to go.  

What we got was about 150 pounds. But with a cool, wet spring putting bees off their pollinating duties, which the clearly kicked butt at last year, and a drought-stricken July, this was all the giving tree had in it this year. 

Still, it's 150 more pounds of fruit than had we not had the opportunity to enjoy its bounty at all. 

The fruit is destined for the kitchen of the culinary high skills major students from the Niagara Catholic District School Board, who will jar them for Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold.

The next harvest happens Saturday on Scott Street in St. Catharines. If you can make it, drop me a line at eatingniagara@gmail.com. 

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 9:28 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 27 May 2012 9:54 PM EDT

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Kieffer pears are weighing them down. But if you've ever bitten into a kieffer pear, you know they kind of taste like pear flavoured sand. They're downright gritty.

But what this fruit, which is about to start falling onto a city boulevard near you and begin to rot, can't do fresh, it more than makes up for when canned. Kieffer pears are beautiful preserved.

Last year, kieffer pears made up the bulk of the 1,400 pounds of fruit the Garden of Eating — Niagara harvested. Those were taken to soup kitchens and shelters where cooks could work their magic with them, turning them into crisp and using them to accompany pork.

This year, there will still be plenty of kieffers for local kitchens in need of fresh food but I've received an incredibly generous offer to have the culinary high skills specialist major students from the Niagara Catholic District School Board jar pears from Garden of Eating harvests to donate to the food bank.

Problem is, while I have hundreds of pounds of fruit just about ready to be picked, I don't have the mason jars.

So, this is where I start begging. If anyone has any old jars that they no longer use — I'm looking for anything that is 500 millilitres and up — let me know. I will gladly take them off your hands. They will be put to good use, which is providing people in need with healthy, delicious local fruit that they can eat long after pear season passes.

I've already had some kind folks offer up a couple dozen jars but more than that will be needed. I figure there are at least 700 pounds of pears in my future.

If you have a closet overflowing with mason jars unfulfilled, please drop me a line at eatingniagara@gmail.com. I will drive for jars, too. My tiny Toyota has a big trunk and can selflessly carry my frame and a heavy load if need be.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 9:20 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 12 September 2011 9:25 PM EDT

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Anyone wanting to fill up on talk of food security and farmland protection, ideas will be served up Thursday at Market Square in St. Catharines.

Climate Action Niagara is hosting a speaker and film series about sustainability and kicking it off with a talk about food security, focusing on farmland protection and the greenbelt.

The event kicks off at 6:30 p.m. with music by Vox Violins and food from local restaurateurs before Shiloh Bouvette of Environmental Defence and Gracia Janes, a member of the Region's agricultural task force, take the podium at 7 p.m.

Here's a description of what both women bring to the food security table from Climate Action Niagara's news release:  

Shiloh Bouvette, Program Manager for Environmental Defence: The Ontario greenbelt has much to offer Ontarians, from the Niagara grape growing and tender fruit area to Holland Marsh, the Oak Ridges Moraine and more. Environmental Defence and the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance are bringing a virtual tour of the greenbelt to Niagara. Using a gigantic greenbelt map, we'll show you all of what there is to explore in the greenbelt.

Gracia Janes, OMC (Ontario Medal for Citizenship): Niagara’s own founding member of the Preservation of Agricultural Lands in 1976 and member of the Niagara Regional Agricultural Task Force. Her Ontario Medal for Citizenship is for her work protecting the very unique Niagara fruit lands with the late Dr. Robert Hoover and the late Mel Swart MPP. Gracia will speak to possible options for farmland perpetuity that also provides for farmers.

Here are some of the issues the duo will address when it comes to Niagara's farmland: How do we protect it? What does the Greenbelt achieve? What is the soil capacity? How much land is needed to keep us food secure? Which land should be protected?

There will be a discussion period so bring your questions, too.

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 5:45 PM EDT

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I love grapes.

Love to eat them.

Tonight, I discovered I also love to harvest them.

A group of us urban fruit foragers converged on a Niagara Falls home with one very prolific vine, and snipped and nibbled our way through the easiest Garden of Eating harvest to date. And our first grape harvest, to boot.

No climbing towering and wobbly ladders. No bending into knee-cracking contortions. No stretching our arms farther than we thought possible to reach that one elusive piece of fruit.

Just snip, snip, snip, feet planted firmly on the ground, hands mostly at eye level. It was all so ergonomically correct. 

The fruit was beautiful and the help was great company. Thank you @gretz1963 for joining us. I love meeting tweeps in real life.

This is a harvest that never would have happened if I didn't create a Facebook page for The Garden of Eating. (This is where I beg you to "like" us). I wasn't convinced it do much good, but within hours of turning to Mark Zuckerberg for help spreading the word about The Garden of Eating this week, a homeowner, Jeanette, posted that she was happy to share her bounty.

And in the end, we harvested more than 100 pounds of fruit. About 80 pounds of that is destined for Project Share, the food bank in Niagara Falls.

A mother-daughter team joining the effort got a haul of at least 40 pounds that they're delivering to Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold.

All in all, it was a grape — I mean, great — night.  

Posted by thegardenofeating-niagara at 10:13 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 25 August 2011 10:51 PM EDT

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