Here are a few notes and pictures from and about some of our Farmer's Market vendors.
- Apicola Bee Products and Beekeeping
- Beretta Organics
- Taste & Health Organics Inc.
- Country Meadows Gardens
- Greenfields Farms
- (Melvin) Laidlaw
- Plan B Organics
- Sosnicki Farms
- Stonehenge Farms
- Thorpe's Organic Produce
Vendor Notebook
Puiu Ilisei
Apicola Bee Products and Beekeeping (Puiu Ilisei)
Puiu Ilisei went to Beekeeping High School and then to university in Romania, where he got an MSc in Animal Science. He started beekeeping in Canada 4 years ago, when he arrived. He also teaches beekeeping.
Beretta Organics at our
summer market
Beretta Organics
Beretta Organic Farms is a family-operated farm using no chemicals, genetically modified organisms, or artificial fertilizers in its cropping. No antibiotics or growth promoters are used in raising their livestock. They do all their own cutting and wrapping, smoking, sausage making etc.
Join them for a winter sleigh ride, the spring barn dance and more; if keen to get involved, and have two weeks to spare, volunteer; three months or more: apprentice!
Country Meadows Gardens
Angelo gave us some recent photos:
A note and some pictures from Angelos:
The farm in Queensville
Chickens in Queensville
Olive groves in Greece
Olives prepared for pressing
We have a small certified organic market garden farm in Queensville specializing in heirloom vegetables, heritage chickens (dual purpose birds very highly prized for both exquisite tasting meat and eggs), organic goats for meat and milk for cheese making, as well as pure handmade goatmilk soaps and skin care products, all natural insecticidal soaps for plants and all natural mosquito sprays. We also sell a range of certified organic herbs and seeds. Also we have in Greece our ancestral home with organic vineyards and olive groves. Each year our olives are handpicked. Some are pressed to make our wonderful cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, while other olives are cured to be used as table olives for snacking and salads. I sell both the olive oil and olives at the market.
- potted plants at market. Photo by Wallie Seto, 2005
Greenfields Farms
Greenfields Farms at our summer market
(Melvin) Laidlaw
Melvin Laidlaw at Market
Plan B Organics
Plan B Organics, April 15, 2004
...at our summer market
Sosnicki Farms
Ben and Jessie Sosnicki work a 70-acre farm that was bought by Ben's grandfather in 1954. Jessie comes from six generations of farmers just down the road. They were farming conventionally when their organic dairy farmer neighbour persuaded them to switch. This is their last year of transition: as of September 2004, the farm will be certified organic. But for now Ben and Jessie rent land from their neighbour to grow certified organic wheat, cabbages, corn, potatoes, and tomatoes. They have three large greenhouses and are now ready to branch out into growing other vegetables. Ben is also keen to grow apples, in future.
See the picture gallery from June>>
See the picture gallery from September>>
See a fantastic salad dressing recipe from Teresa Snively (Jessie Sosnicki's mother) on our Recipe page. Look for the Low Calorie Caesar Salad Dressing With Shrimp. Read more >>
From the weekly market notes for September 2, 2004:
During August there were three farm visits. The last one was on August 29, to Jessie and Ben Sosnicki's, about 2 hours west of here, near the town of Simcoe. Jessie invited the park/ market staff to a barbecue, and she and Ben also set up a tour of their neighbours' organic dairy farm. The neighbours are Karl and Anita Schibli. They're Swiss, also from a long farming background (Jesse and Ben are fourth and fifth generation farmers), and a strong source of inspiration and sound organic advice for Ben and Jessie. There are photos from all the farms we visited recently, in the market pages.
Karl showed us his herd of forty Swiss cows with hides that looked like gray velvet, and his huge bales of hay stacked up so high they were like a hay cathedral. He also grows rye and spelt and soft wheat, and we're scheming how we might get his grain cleaned before it's pooled with all the other grains (from all over Canada, that go to the Tavistock mill) -- so that our park bread could have truly local grain in it.
Ben Sosnicki took us all through the fields, riding on the back of his tractor wagon. We got to hop off and pick what we fancied -- hot peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, eggplants -- and then scrape the deep mud off our shoes and hop back on again. Afterwards Jesse showed us the horses, the giant cold room (like a fridge, only six times the size of our rink house) and the apparatus that cleans the vegetables before market. Jessie's sister Amber Snively, who works with them to harvest, and her mother Teresa Snively, had helped to make an ample, delicious barbecue (with Jessie's cabbage rolls as a side), and we (nine of us from the park) felt like we had ended up at the best party.
Stonehenge Farms
Goats at Stonehenge Farms
Mother and baby goat
Taste & Health Organics Inc.
Mojdeh uses only certified organic ingredients in her cooking (mainly bought from the farmers at our market), and she also uses Celtic sea salt and filtered water (reverse osmosis). The only oil she uses to cook heated food is coconut oil; olive oil and sunflower oil are used as well, but never heated. The spicing is Persian. Mojdeh also sells at the Village Market at the Waldorf School on Saturday mornings.
Thorpe's Organic Produce
