What does “farm to table” actually mean — and why should people in Northern Ontario care?
In this episode of Love the North, Brianna from Radical Gardens in Timmins takes us deep into the realities of farming, food production, local sourcing, and what it takes to operate a truly farm-to-table restaurant in Northeastern Ontario.
Radical Gardens has been operating as a restaurant for more than a decade and was one of the early farm-to-table restaurants in Northeastern Ontario. Brianna explains that the business is Feast Ontario certified and audited to verify its use of local food. Depending on the season, she says roughly 80 to 95 percent of what they use is sourced locally.
But farm to table, in this case, goes far beyond buying a few ingredients from a nearby supplier.
Radical Gardens operates its own organic farm, raises some of its own livestock, performs whole-animal butchery, grows its own mushrooms, and works with other local farmers to fill the gaps that one farm cannot realistically supply on its own.
That local network is a major part of the farm-to-table model.
Rather than every farmer trying to grow the same products, Brianna explains how different farms can specialize. Radical Gardens, for example, grows some of the less common produce that works well in the restaurant, while more traditional items such as lettuce and carrots can be sourced from other growers in the region.
The conversation also explores just how challenging agriculture can be in Northern Ontario.
Northern farmers deal with short growing seasons, extreme temperatures, high heating and hydro costs, expensive diesel, transportation challenges, and long distances between producers and customers. Brianna explains that while Northern Ontario gets long summer daylight hours, year-round production can become extremely expensive once artificial lighting and heat are required.
Those challenges become even more important when the food supply chain is considered.
Brianna talks about how difficult it has become to move locally produced food around Northern Ontario and into larger markets. Products that once travelled south to restaurants and grocery stores can now be difficult or expensive to distribute, while some premium Northern Ontario products move directly toward Toronto instead of being readily available within the North itself.
That raises a larger question about food security:
If Northern Ontario can grow and produce high-quality food, why is it so difficult to move that food between Northern communities?
Farm-to-table helps shorten that supply chain.
Instead of food being harvested, shipped to a warehouse, transported hundreds or thousands of kilometres, stored again, and eventually arriving on a Northern grocery shelf, local food can often travel directly from the farmer to the restaurant, market, or consumer.
Brianna explains that while locally grown food can sometimes cost more at the point of purchase, price alone does not always tell the entire story.
Freshness and longevity matter.
She gives the example of produce such as onions and lettuce. Grocery-store produce may have already spent considerable time being transported and stored before it reaches the consumer. Locally grown produce is often harvested much closer to the time it is sold, meaning it can last significantly longer once it reaches the kitchen.
That can translate into less food being thrown away.
A head of lettuce that appears cheaper at a grocery store may lose a significant portion to damaged or wilted outer leaves and may only last a few days. A locally grown head of lettuce may cost more initially, but Brianna says consumers can often use nearly the entire product and keep it considerably longer.
In other words, the cheapest food at the checkout may not always be the cheapest food once waste is considered.
Then there is flavour.
Produce harvested locally can often be allowed to mature closer to its ideal ripeness instead of being selected primarily for its ability to survive transportation and storage.
For a farm-to-table restaurant, that difference matters.
Radical Gardens grows several varieties of mushrooms, including oyster, king oyster, shiitake, enoki, and lion's mane. Those mushrooms are used throughout the restaurant, including in ramen, seasonings, and other dishes. A portion of the crop is dehydrated and turned into powders so that the flavour of the summer harvest can continue to be used through the winter.
That is another important part of the farm-to-table philosophy:
Use what is available locally, preserve what you can, waste as little as possible, and build the menu around the food instead of forcing the food to fit the menu.
The discussion eventually turns toward the next generation.
How do we get young people interested in gardening, farming, and understanding where their food comes from?
Brianna says one of the most effective approaches is surprisingly simple: let kids experience how good fresh food can actually taste.
She recalls participating in a program called the Big Crunch, where carrots were grown for children across the Northeastern school district and students took a bite together. The goal was to introduce them to fresh, locally grown food and create a positive connection with agriculture.
Years later, she says some of those children now shop at farmers' markets, grow gardens, and care about where their food comes from.
That may ultimately be one of the most important lessons of farm-to-table.
It is not simply about restaurants putting the name of a farm on a menu.
It is about rebuilding the relationship between the people who grow food and the people who eat it.
It is about keeping money circulating within Northern communities.
It is about supporting farmers who are willing to grow food in one of the most challenging agricultural environments in the province.
It is about reducing the distance between the field and the dinner plate.
And perhaps most importantly, it is about creating a more resilient Northern Ontario where communities have a greater understanding of — and connection to — their own food supply.
Farm to table means knowing where your food came from, knowing who grew it, and recognizing that supporting local agriculture helps strengthen the entire community.
#FarmToTable #RadicalGardens #Timmins #NorthernOntario #LocalFood #SupportLocalFarmers #FoodSecurity #NorthernAgriculture #FarmersMarket #EatLocal #SustainableFood #LoveTheNorth
Farm to Table in Northern Ontario: Why Local Food Matters More Than Ever
Description
Transcript ~3,387 words · ~17 min read
Hello everyone, it's Eric here from Love the North and today we're going to be talking about a little bit about food insecurity and we have from Timmons via Zoom Brianna from Radical Gardens. Brianna, nice of you to join us today. Oh, thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. Hey, no problem. So first of all, you guys have a restaurant slash catering business in Timmons. Can you tell me a little bit about that?(...) Yeah, we're a farm to table, Feast Ontario certified and leaf certified restaurant downtown
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Timmons and we have about six or we have about seven tables, sometimes eight depending on the day. We see a maximum of 20 people, but we also have a bakery and we do a large amount of catering. Okay, yeah, I see from your Instagram you've got a lot of food on there, whether it be the greens or the desserts and it all looks like it(...) can be devoured rather easily.(...) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been around for about,(...) as a restaurant for 11 years now(...) and we were one of the first ever farm to table restaurants in Northeastern Ontario and still are. There's like three other ones. So(...) it's really not hard to be one of the only ones right now. So when you're speaking about farm to table, what does that actually mean for the average person who has no idea what it would mean?
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For the average person, that probably means that I maybe call up a farmer and use maybe one or two of their items. It really depends on(...) the restaurant that claims farm to table. For me, I'm Feast Ontario certified, so I get audited once a year by Culinary Tourism Canada, the state that I am actually using local. Their bare minimum is 30 percent. We use about 80 to 95 percent local,(...) depending on the time of year. And for us, this means quite a few different things. We own and operate our own organic farm. We do raise a chunk of our own livestock. We do full nose detail butchery in our restaurant, which is also obviously local. And we grow all of our own mushrooms. So we have an organic mushroom farm. It produces about 200 pounds a week.(...) If we wanted to, we typically do not want that. But(...) we sell at the farmer's market as well. We are first in farm. Like firstly, we are farmers. Yeah. And secondly, we own a restaurant. OK, so as for the farming, you said you're like 80 to 90 percent, depending on the year.(...) You were able to source your own food from your farm itself?
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No, I like back when we first started, we were growing 100 percent of our own produce. But at this point, like we are a fairly busy restaurant. I would have to have acres and acres and acres. And I just have to I have to usable acres. So we deal with a lot of other farmers around town as well.(...) And I also like to not have farmers growing the same thing. So we like for our farm, we kind of have a niche that we grow in. We grow the stuff that other farmers that, you know, your typical market gardeners don't want to grow. You know, like everybody wants a red radish. We grow black wasabi starburst. You know, those don't sell as well at market because because consumers aren't really used to them. But for the restaurant, we want the weirder produce. So we focus on that stuff. And then your typical stuff like your lettuce and your regular guy carrots and that kind of stuff. We source from other farmers in town.(...) OK, OK. So are you at all into the vertical growing or are you just doing the traditional farming on the land? Advert by what I mean, you know, maybe indoor. Yeah, well, our mushrooms are grown indoors. They are technically vertical because they are on shelving.
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We(...) we've we've we've been farming now for about 15 years in northeastern Ontario. So there's there isn't a thing that we haven't tried. I just for vertical growing for us with the price of hydro and everything is just not really our jam.(...) We do have a fully automated system to grow mushrooms, though. It doesn't require a lot of labor or energy or much really.
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And we grow our grow room is about 12 feet by 12 feet
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with 12 foot ceilings. It's basically a cube and that produces 200 pounds a week. There are pounds of mushrooms. Yes. A week.(...) Yes.
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That's a lot.(...) Yeah, we're aware. It's very is a lot. We we pre pandemic, we used to sell to Loblaws and we would sell our mushrooms went as far south as Toronto.(...) And we were selling to other restaurants. But since since then, our food supply chain has kind of basically shit the bed.(...) And it's really difficult to get our product out of Timmons. So we've kind of pivoted back to reducing the amount of mushrooms that we grow. Like in the at the beginning of the summer, as soon as the farmer's market starts, I always produce about 200 pounds a week because I know that our consumer is really chomping at the bit for that. You know, that summer deliciousness. And then usually typically around now, our consumer base drops it off. So we don't produce nearly as much at the end of the summer as we do at the beginning. We can grow 365 days a year,(...) but typically in the dead of winter when everything's frozen and we're laden with caterers because of Christmas.(...) Somebody gets pissed off and unplugs it. So we(...) we just like we just quit now after Thanksgiving because we've been like now we've been farming mushrooms for about,(...) I guess, eight years now. And yeah, just like the logistics of trying to deal with them in January, February, when it's like minus 40 here. Like, yeah.
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So what kind of mushrooms are these? Now I'm really curious, are these little ones or are these larger ones? And what are they used for?(...) We grow oyster, king oyster, shiitake, enoki,(...) in Lion's Mane. And sometimes you grow some other ones, but that's pretty much our mainstay. They're mostly used in our restaurant. They are the base of our ramen.
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So they're the base of a couple of other things we use. We dehydrate them continuously because they're used in seasonings.
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They're part of our winter pork chop seasoning for dinner menu.(...) And they're the base of a lot of stuff that we cook because, you know, they have a great depth of flavor. They're earthy. There's lots of umami in them. And it really, it(...) really kind of takes our dishes to a whole other flavor profile. So all the mushrooms that we produce, we always take 50% of them and they're dehydrated. And then we turn them into powder through the whole summer so we can last the winter. Okay. So you mentioned that the logistical part of things kind of shit the bed. What happened there?
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Um, well, during the pandemic, uh, Loblaws(...) now they used to buy quite a bit from local farmers. Now it's just bullshit. Like they say, like local farmers, like locally sourced. These are from giant farms. Like I can't, I can no longer go in and get, um, much movement on purchasing locally from, from us. Um, and this kind of goes with most Loblaws across Northern Ontario. So, and then on top of that, there's not, it's, um, I'll use this as a prime example. I really want beef from Sue St. Marie. What's(...) so special about their beef? Cause it's by far, uh, some of the best beef in the, in the province for sure. If you take a look at, um, most of the restaurants that I actually just received Michelin mentions and Michelin stars, see where their beef came from. And I can tell you it mostly came from Sue St. Marie. Okay. So, um, now that distribution solely heads to Toronto(...) and I am on the other side of that. So I cannot get the beef that I would prefer,(...) um, from the Sue because it only heads to Toronto. So much the same as here. Now there is nothing up here that's being produced that is heading to Toronto anymore.(...) In other than some cheese, like in Northern Ontario, we're like, like, yeah. It's an area. Yeah. No, like Northeastern Ontario, anywhere in the corridor, really, um, other than cheese. And they are, while it is heading South, it's not heading South in a way that I could also take mushrooms onto that.
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And during the pandemic, uh, a lot of like little kind of like micro mushroom grow up started and, um, at that point, you know, like most of the restaurants that I were, was selling to, um, can now purchase them much, much closer. So they don't have to pay for the large delivery fee that I was previously having to download to them because obviously it is very expensive to get anything out of Northeastern Ontario. It's a reason why shipping, um, and we don't have a lot of manufacturing up here other than, uh, manufacturing for local needs, meaning we're a heavy mining industry. So our manufacturing is very much. Solely mining based. Yeah. Not as much food now,(...) not as much food and agriculture. Correct. Correct. And we're also like heavily into the boreal forest here. We're in the thick of the swamp part of it. Um, it doesn't, it's not exactly known for being a bountiful farming area. It has since kind of had a resurrection. Um, but like a hundred years ago, these, this land was cleared and offered up to farmers and they really discovered that the only thing that they were farming was black flies. Uh, and most of them gave up and went down south, uh, which is like fair news. It's very hard to farm up here. It is a very extreme climate. You do have a couple of bonuses. Like you do have 14 hours of sunlight in the dead of summer. Uh, but you also in the case of vertical growing, unless you're supplementing that with hydro, um, you only sometimes have two to three hours of sunlight in the winter. So you're reduced down to, and I used to do a lot of winter growing in my greenhouse previously, and we would grow like fuck choice mostly and toy choice. Cause those don't mind ambient light. Um, but anything beyond that, like our hydro and our heat up here, unless you're finding alternatives are exceedingly expensive.(...) So growing in the north is just,(...) you know, for, uh, for, uh, for growing year round, it's tough as, is that a fair case? Exceedingly, exceedingly. Unless, unless of course you've come up with alternatives, uh, energy situations and you have a good solar bank and, uh, you have like,(...) uh, maybe some alternatives to, to heating,(...) uh, yeah. If you're just using conventional kind of hydro and natural gas, um, you can't, like you physically cannot sell that produce for what it actually costs to grow. You're, you're underwater on it. Basically. Yeah. The market can only bear so much in its price of, of what the consumer is willing to pay for that locally sourced item. It's all well and good. You can produce wonderful locally sourced items, but if your, your consumer only has so much money. Yeah, correct. So that, um, that leads me to this question. What's the best way the average consumer can, um, get more mileage out of this.
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Given that today, the, you know, you go to the grocery, so in the olden days, uh, you can get, uh, probably four bags of groceries for, you know, one of these. Now you get one grocery bag for one of your lucky. If you're lucky. And it depends what's in there.
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Yeah. So that's, that is kind of the thing, right? Like, even if you purchase from a local supplier at this point, because our prices for, even if you're growing organic, our prices are fertilizer, our astronomical, our price of diesel. All of us are running tractors. Like, there's not too many of us that have horses and even still that a horse needs feed and that required a tractor that needed a diesel and like,(...) there's all these things that are jacking up the price of, of agriculture and, and, and farming for our farmers. Um, it is really hard to stretch that a hundred dollars the best you can. The best I can say is the better the farmer, the better the produce, the longer the longevity.
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Okay. So if you, if you go to the grocery store and you purchase your farm, fresh, whatever, you know, Loblaws put its food land sticker on it. And it's like, Oh,(...) picked in Ontario or grown here or whatever the hell it might be. Now that onion was picked probably not dried and cured as well as your local farmer did it, it then had to get on a truck and then got jostled around for who knows how long, if you live in Northern Ontario, uh, that onion already sat in a warehouse for a while. It, we get the leavings of what doesn't go to Southern Ontario. We do not get the best of the best. And then it ends up in your bag. Now that onion might be 40 cents cheaper than your local farmer.
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But if you go to your local farmer, that onion was picked, it was cured correctly.
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And it was, you're probably looking at a much shorter time span between when it was picked and when it's ended up in your bag. So therefore it's longevity is your, is your cost savings.(...) Like for us, we could purchase conventional lettuce, even though I fucking, that's besides the point that I hate conventional, like large agriculture lettuce, because it's garbage. Um, it(...) now that lettuce, by the time you peel away all the garbage on the outside of it, and it goes into your compost, you only have a quarter to a half of the head. Now, if you went and purchased the more expensive lettuce at the farmer's market, which is usually double the price. Um, but you retain almost 95% of that lettuce, if not a hundred, because the farmer's already cleaned away the garbage, because that typically isn't brought to market(...) and on top of that, that lettuce was typically picked at the latest, the day before the farmer's market, if you're purchasing from a local farmer,(...) which means it's longevity is about two weeks.(...) And now the lettuce you get at the grocery store is like two days if you're lucky.(...) Okay. So yeah, so from what I'm hearing, if you, if you're buying local, um, yes, you might pay more, but you're going to have a better quality, uh, better quality food, and(...) especially in the onion case where the onion got picked at the, the possible, uh, time and then brought to market, you're probably going to have better flavor out of it. Oh yeah. Disregarding the fact that all of this stuff is going to taste better, uh, because it was correctly ripened. It was correctly, it was picked at the correct time. There's care involved and it's not just a bottom line, right? Typically your local farmer doesn't have, uh, like farm workers that they fly in Jamaica and bus around, you know, like that's, that's not pretty typical of your farmer that goes to the farmer's market. That is quite typical of your farmer that sells to law, blah, blah. Yeah. The big box farmers, if you will. Yeah. Um, last question. How can we get kids more into growing little gardens in their own places? How can we get them going?
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This was something that, uh, actually the red cross up here, uh, tried to combat about 15 years ago. And, uh, we did a program called the big crunch and I grew, uh, a carrot for every single child in the Northeastern school district, which by the way, is a lot of frigging carrots. Um, and, uh, the goal was to show them how delicious that was. Cause my, my farm specifically produces really, really, really sweet candy like carrots(...) and, um, like right now my farm hands, honestly, digging up like about five to 600 pounds of them. And, um,(...) and, and the goal was to get them excited about the idea that, cause like the carrots you buy at the grocery store, they're not as delicious. Uh, it's like, it's like an apple. A lot of it is just empty. There's no flavor. When you take a bite into it, you don't get that same, um, you know, how your kind of get that little stinging of the burst. Yeah. And, uh, I noticed that between, uh, different apple types, depending on where you get them. Yeah, no, exactly. And like the, the, the goal really, and the only way you're going to get a kid to do anything, get them jacked up about it. So, and especially if it's a snack.(...) Uh, so we went at this and the, in the case of, and we've got all these kids to take a bite out of their carrot at the same time across the Northeastern district school board, uh, which was really cool. So it was called the big crunch event. And, uh, you know, people got like these kids now are teenagers(...) and, uh, some of them are, you know, nearing 20 years old. This is a while ago, you know, it's 14 years ago.(...) And, uh, um, and some of those kids that I, that I, I know that had those carrots now, uh, they, they shop at the farmer's market. They care where their food came from. Some of them have gardens, but the only way to get them excited about it is to get them excited about food.
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Yeah. It's not always easy because it's, it's, it's just all too easy for something to come in a wrapper and they're told it's healthy and they eat it. Even though you know, it's made in a factory and that's agriculture had the same advertising budget as McDonald's. This wouldn't be a conversation. But because agriculture has no budget, um, and we're up against things that are laden with sugar to make it, um, addictive. Um, and(...) like, how do, how do we win against that? But the only way we do is just to make sure that we're producing great food and we're producing, we're supporting farmers that, that do do this so that our, our kids and our younger generations understand why it's important and, uh, have a, have an appreciation for, for the sweetness and the flavor of that carrot. They don't like, you can bring a kid all day to a farm and make them weed, but that's not going to make them enjoy agriculture. You can tell them about them. They can pet a pig. They can hold a chicken.(...) It doesn't matter, but a kid will always get jacked up about a snack.
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And that's about the only option that we have. It's, it's all in how you label it.
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Brianna, I want to thank you for joining us here today and, uh, Brianna from Radical Gardens in Timmins. Uh, we're going to post your, uh, your links so people can check you out. Uh, I know I've, I came across your Instagram. Uh, are you on Facebook as well? Oh yeah. Okay. I'll find that. We'll add that in there. And, um, you know what, maybe we'll circle back around at some point in the future and continue the conversation. Sounds good. Okay. Awesome. No
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