Farm Friday: Dufferin Grove

Name: Dufferin Grove Organic Farmers’ Market
Location: Dufferin Grove Park @ Dufferin & Bloor
Date & Time: Every Thursday 3pm-7pm, year round
Number of booths: Ranges from 10 in the winter to 26 in the middle of summer
Contact Info: 416-392-0913

Maybe the most unique thing about the Dufferin Grove Organic Farmers’ Market is the obvious existence of community surrounding the park. Every week, community bakers raise money by selling bread, cookies, and cinnamon buns all baked in the fire bake oven fund park events such as the Friday dinner serving food from the Thursday market.

The outdoor wood ovens are lit the night before in anticipation of a busy baking day on Thursday, friends meet up and lounge on the grass with children playing around them while farmers set up their tables and tents to get ready to sell what they’ve brought.

The Dufferin Grove Organic Farmers’ Market is a popular place for west-enders to get their share of quality produce year-round, but market manager, Anne Freeman doesn’t do much to promote beyond her monthly newsletter, the website and word-of-mouth.

Freeman says that having grown up in the country she would always get excited about the first batch of strawberries, and hopes that farmers’ markets help to connect urban dwellers to this same feeling. Market regulars are generally more in tune to what’s in season, she says, and they come every week, even if it’s pouring rain, because they say they have to.

Freeman mentioned that someone once counted the varieties of product the market carried, and came up with 92. While that was just one day in the early fall last year, Dufferin Grove prides itself on having a vast amount of things to choose from.

Popular at the market this Thursday were strawberries from Sosnicki’s, who are in their second week of berry season, as well as the gem of sea asparagus. Forbes Wild Foods prides itself on sourcing individuals who are trained in properly identifying and picking wild food such as sea asparagus, sea mushrooms, and preserves made from wild blueberries, as well as maple syrup and sweet candies.

Vendors to the market have a few rules to contend to: first, their produce must be organic, vendors have to have at least 70 per cent of their own product on the table, and throughout the market there is a grower priority. For example, Sosnicki’s Organic Farmers brought a truck of their own strawberries, while another farmer brought his cousin’s strawberries. The other farmer cannot sell a single berry until the grower, Sosnicki’s, has first sold out.

Cheap isn’t the name of the game at the market, it’s about getting value for your money, says Freeman. “We’ve been trained with this mentality of cheap food being a good thing,” she says, but adds that local farmers who have to deal with Canadian climate simply cannot compete. “We’re losing farmers at a horrendous rate, Canadians spend less on food that any developed nation,” adding that what people will pay for food is one of the biggest issues facing local farmers, following the cost of labour.

Plan B farms has found a way to stay afloat despite the economic downturn and to ensure that they produce enough for their customer base. They’re part of Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) which allows people to purchase a “share” in the farm, providing the farmers in the CSA with start-up costs such as seed purchasing and supplies.

Then every week, “shareholders” can pick up a basket of their share of organic, farm fresh produce at a depot near them. A half share, enough for two adults, runs for $382.50,  but at $22.50 a week is enough vegetables to feed the couple from May to September. Other options include a fruit share, regular share and full share. It’s a concept that has been very popular in Japan and Western Europe and is a way to not only support the farmers, but to truly be in tune with what’s available in the harvest season.

According to intern Michaela Kennedy, who was at the market yesterday selling apples and asparagus, CSA is a collection of 12 farms in Southern Ontario that work together to provide shareholders with a well-rounded basket of weekly fruit and produce.

What all the farmers at Dufferin Grove bring to the market is not only fruit and produce, but awareness and an eagerness to teach what they do. Each farmer brings a unique element to the market. Whether its honey, venison meat, edible flowers, wild food or tofu made from organic soybeans that they sell, they all have a tale to tell about how it gets to the table. It’s obvious by the number of regulars who come with backpacks and plenty of reusable bags that the appreciation for the food of the season that Freeman had hoped for since the market opened in 2002 is finally being actualized.