- Resources to Grow Local Food in your/community
- How to Buy Local Food
- How to Find Local Food Across Ontario
- Why $10 on local food can literally transform our city
1 – Resources to Grow Local Food in your yard/community
Grow Your Own!
Plant a bit of food this summer
It’s not too late to plant seedlings, particularly if they’re as big and healthy as those in Green’s Creek Organic Nursery. Ottawa’s only Certified Organic seedling production greenhouse, Green’s Creek is a new business that produces certified organic vegetable and herb seedlings in a greenhouse located on the Just Food Community Farm, to serve Ottawa’s home gardeners and local farmers. Post-pandemic the nursery will play an expanded role with in-person greenhouse training for new farmers in the region.
Reminder that for Fall harvests, seeds can be planted into July on many veggies, so take a look in the Community Gardening Network’s Garden Guides, available in 5 different languages.
Be part of building an edible landscape
Plant some edible trees (nut and sap trees, and berry bushes) in your yard and/or in your community. Ecology Ottawa’s Living City Project is distributing trees right now throughout Ottawa—including a selection of edible bushes and fruit trees. Sign up this weekend!
Seed and Soil
A big shout-out to Rochon Gardens, who donated thousands of their seedlings for community gardens across the city, and for Just Food’s Seed and Soil program. Thank yous also go to Greely Sand and Gravel and the City of Ottawa for their program support again in 2021. Agencies or groups across the region interested in helping to distribute Seed and Soil within their neighbourhoods, please contact info@justfood.ca
Start a Community Garden in Your neighbourhood
Find out more about starting a community garden here: justfood.ca/community-gardening-network/start-a-community-garden/ including information about the Community Garden Development Fund. Workshops are offered often throughout the year, and the Community Gardening Network website has excellent resources to help you prepare, including a recorded workshop series.
2 – How to Buy Local Food
Since the start of the pandemic, many more folks are interested in eating more food from our own region, from the farmers who grow food to the craft food and beverage processors and chefs who prioritize local food in their ingredients.
Share the Savour Ottawa Buy Local Food Guide (website and apps) with those in your life who crave fresh, nutritious food, or who want to know where their food came from, or who want to visit a farm—and didn’t know that there are over 1,000 inside the City of Ottawa boundary, hundreds more across the Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec local region, with hundreds of these farms directly feeding Ottawa and area residents!
You can support those in your community who face barriers AND support the local food economy;
- Drive folks to local farms (within covid rules) who do not have access to a vehicle,
- Share with those who do not have easy access to the internet,
- Help with purchasing someone’s favourite local food,
- Arrange to donate/deliver local, fresh food to community food sites,
- Introduce folks to Good Food on the Move, which is increasingly adding food from local farms (defined for Ottawa as food grown/raised within Ottawa, Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec), including Juniper Farm, Hall’s Apple Orchard and Social Harvest.
We will soon be updating the format of the Buy Local Food map and app, with new ways to find your favourite local foods!
Support your Community Farmers
Many of the farms on the Savour Ottawa Buy Local Food Guide now operate online, with curbside pickup, at farmers’ markets, or via Community Supported Agriculture programs. If you’re looking to take delivery of fresh vegetables and other food weekly, look for Online Shops, Farmers’ Markets and CSA Producers on the Buy Local Food Guide, and check this CSA information page!
3 – How to Find Local Food Across Ontario
Find Local Food across Ontario
Just Food has collaborated with Sustain Ontario to create a new website that allows folks in all regions of the province to find Buy Local initiatives: buylocalfoodacrossontario.ca
4 – Why $10 on local food can literally transform our city
Why Spending $10 on Local Food Matters
While too many of us in Ottawa do not have sufficient funds to meet our food needs, most of us do.
If you do, you can help to grow a healthy local food system by spending $10 per week, every week, on food from folks who grow, gather, raise or process local food in this region.
If HALF the families in Ottawa did that (which is do-able!), it would:
- add over $100 million dollars into local farms and food businesses;
- enable these folks to plan and invest with confidence;
- add over ¼ of a billion dollars into our regional economy via the economic multiplier effect;
- directly support regional resilience and food sovereignty;
- build and nurture an interconnected web of diverse food enterprises invested in their community
