I can appreciate an exceptional loaf of bread. After tasting what bread should taste like in Germany as a teenager, the Dempster’s my mom favoured just tasted like sawdust. Roddy’s mom, Shona, has a talent for crafting tasty, simple breads from scratch – breads which put our yeasty bread-maker numbers to shame.

Our bread-maker didn’t make it out west with us, so as Roddy tries to master his homemade loaves, I recently stumbled upon a wee gem: Transilvania Peasant Bread artisan baking on West Broadway. It was the fantastic wood-burning brick oven that caught my eye (or maybe it was the word ‘Transilvania’… what? Vampires in Kits?!). My friend Asha and I prospected the shop and were lucky enough to witness Florin, the bread maker, taking fresh loaves of his rye bread out of the oven.

These babies, as Florin tenderly refers to them, are yeast-free and contain a sourdough starter (or “mother culture”) which takes 3 days to mature. I’m not surprised that Florin was inspired to learn the art of breadmaking when he emigrated from Romania and couldn’t find any palatable bread.

Transilvania Peasant Bread is not completely local yet but he hopes to be someday (his flour comes from Rogers, a BC company, and Saskatchewan). Still, after leaving his basic but endearing shop, I felt more connected to my little corner of Vancouver. On my walk home I cradled my warm loaf of rye and caught wafts of the sweet bread, which tasted absolutely incredible.

40 Ways to Encourage More Local Food Production (from 100 Mile Diet)

This comprehensive list has some fantastic suggestions — so many that I found it painful to cut the list down:

For Local Food Growing Champions

3. Hold regular Sustainable Food Forums for networking, education and planning.
4. Organize organic year-round food growing courses and workshops, including for youth, people on low incomes, and ethnic minorities.
5. Encourage micro-market gardening in the city, and Spin Farming.
7. Establish a Farmers Cooperative to share skills, materials, and marketing.
8. Establish a Young Farmers Institute for the next generation of farmers.
9. Encourage more Brown Box and Community Supported Agriculture programs.
10. Celebrate local food through festivals, community events, and by showcasing public food-growing gardens.
11. Encourage more seed saving by organizing an annual Seedy Saturday community show.
12. Encourage Community Fruit Tree Projects to harvest unwanted fruit, and have it juiced for sale and for fundraisers.
13. Create a “Buy Local” label for use in retail food stores.

For Municipal Councils

15. Make an inventory of all available land, both city-owned and otherwise.
16. Pass a resolution stating the importance of local food cultivation, listing the many benefits of greater food self-sufficiency, and including a goal that most food consumed locally should be grown within a few hundred miles. (e.g. Berkeley Climate Action Plan). Integrate food cultivation into all municipal planning documents. The American Planning Association’s Policy Guide on Regional and Community Food Planning (May 2007) contains 26 recommendations.
17. Support the development of Farmers’ Markets and neighbourhood food stands.
18. Prioritize the use of local organic food at all city-owned events and facilities.
19. Set a goal to develop new Community Allotment Gardens every year, supported by municipal staff. (Seattle has 5.5 municipal staff who support 65 gardens). Create a Matching Grant Fund to support the development of new Gardens, and offer small grants to help with soil-building, water systems, tool sheds, deer-fencing, and improvements.
24. Permit the long-term use of temporary dwellings on farmland for agricultural workers.
25. Integrate ornamentals with edibles, bio-remediation, fiber and medicinal plants in city landscape planning.
26. Establish a community-wide composting program (as in Ladysmith, BC; Halifax, NS; San Francisco, CA).

For the Provincial Government

29. Provide financial support for apprenticeship and internship programs created by organic growers.
30. Provide grants and low interest loans to help new farmers buy land, including for the cooperative purchase of land by groups and Land Trusts.
31. Prohibit the removal of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve without replacement with equivalent quality farmland.
34. Create legislation requiring municipal councils to provide at least 15 allotments for every 1,000 households and no more than six people waiting for a plot at any one time (as in Britain).

A major component of locavore culture for Roddy and I is the social – who doesn’t love a good party? Apparently the City of Vancouver has an enshrined system in place for block parties. My strip is almost exclusively low-rise apartments and huge century homes with 6+ suites… our 100 Mile diet party could be off the hook.

What’s seasonal in June around here?

Food and farming are big ticket items in the news these days. The world is facing huge price hikes for basic commoditites and inflation is rife, only Canada seems to be bucking the trend. Wal-Mart has driven down food prices in its new supermarkets, pressuring others to follow suit. So, for now, Canadians are still wandering the aisles of unrepresentative prices. According to this article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, we’ll start feel the price crunch in 2009.

In the meantime, is the western world going to finally realize that the current food system it supports is fatally flawed? Is it really going to take price hikes at the supermarket for consumers to admit that cheap food is unsustainable?

Viva la locavore revolucion!

For the past four months I’ve been hiding a dirty secret. I concealed it cunningly in elastics, clips, hats, and scarves. My secret made rare appearances, and observers likely sniggered under their breath.

For four months I rocked the mullet. Yes, it’s true – I naively put my head in the hands of a hack hairstylist who interpreted my request for “a fun, light, funky hair cut” as a fem-mullet. Now, just to add a little history here, I’m ashamed to say this isn’t the first time I’ve had a mullet. From about age 5-11 my mom’s hairdresser (who specialized in perms and must have liked the taste of hairspray) cut my blonde locks into a shorty-long-back. In my whimsical youth I must have thought that this hair cut was fantastic – I could sport long pony tails with bobbles while never getting a sun-burned forehead…?

This time around, the mullet had lost its appeal. On a recommendation, I finally got to sit in my local hair savior’s chair yesterday. James was fabulous. He didn’t hold back his disgust for the beast, and being in the experienced care of his sharp scissors I felt like my four months of shame were finally being redeemed.

It didn’t take any fancy machinery to exorcize the demon, but I wish I could show you a before and after. My personal weed wacker, while no proponent of local organic food, is a local hero.

It’s time I read this book. I’ve been on Alisa Smith and J.B MacKinnon’s 100-Mile Diet email list for about a year now and finally broke down and bought myself a copy of the book. I just started it and am extra inspired to be reading a couple of Vancouverite’s account of their one year challenge - nothing like local knowledge.

So who wants to join the first installment of the Locavore book club?