Organic Islands

This last was a spectacularly warm weekend in Victoria, perfect for the fifth Organic Islands festival. On Saturday the Terralicious team talked us through a sneaky way to ply your family with vegetables.



Tina and Dayle concocted a couple of lovely pizza combinations, with fennel and potato as the main stars.

Then there was a talk on the topic of Reviving the Vancouver Island Diet. Food security by any other name, it featured a crew of familiar faces and voices. Local farmer and writer Tom Henry



spoke about the need for Canadians to pay a fair price for their food - to allow local farmers to produce it; to encourage politicians to help small local meat producers raise and humanely/ locally slaughter food animals; and he stressed the importance of staying on top of local politics where these might impinge on food security - citing a potential loophole in Metchosin's secondary suite provisions that could allow the unscrupulous to subdivide farmland.

He appeared with Carolyn Herriot, talking about food security, the power of the land to provide a living, and her irritation with corruption in local politics; she has a long-standing mistrust of the nutritional value of foods reared hydroponically and so felt affirmed, if shocked, to read recently that greenhouses block the UV light needed to form antioxidants in vegetables.

Bill Code talked about the power of food to heal, and the community value of the Island Farmers Alliance; and Jen Fisher Bradley championed food collectives, debt forgiveness (student loan debts/young farmers) and the Vancouver Island Diet.



After too much sun, an organic hot dog and a dribbly cornetto di gelato, it was time to crowd beneath the tent to hear Jeremy Fisher play some old and some things from his new cd Goodbye Blue Monday.