We are truly fortunate in the Creston Valley to have so many producers of food! From dairy, chickens, peaches, cherries, veggies, wheat, oats and more we have a lot to explore. With Ms. Adam’s class at Canyon Lister we visited Kootenay Meadows which is a beautiful example of local sustainable agriculture. We toured the farm and got to see they take care of their land (rotational grazing- switching pastures every 12 hours, growing all their own feed on 600 acres, gathering manure to spread on the pastures and more. The students were also surprised at how much technology was involved in helping take care of the cows. They have two milking robots which allows the cows to come and go whenever they need milking. There are also automatic manure scrapers that constantly clean the barn and a the fly vacuum for the summer. The students also noticed the solar hot water on the cheese shop. The solar hot water that provides for 60% of their hot water needs. Erin Harris, owner and farmer of Kootenay Meadows, told us that they just changed to an electric tractor which reduced their diesel use by 1200 hours. Their choice of milk containers, glass bottles, keep the milk fresh and are refilled many, many times before they finally have to be recycled.
With Mr.Blick’s class from Adam Robertson Elementary, we visited the Kootenay Food Hub. This project by Fields Forward is a place where farmers and community members can go to transform food into various products. They have a commercial kitchen that allows people to make jams, baking, prepared meals to be able to sell. When we had our tour, there was someone making rhubarb juice to sell at the farmers market.
Tanya Wall, executive director of Fields Forward, led us on the tour and the students were enthusiastic about trying freeze-dried strawberries, rhubarb and apples. They learned that people book the freeze drier to make commercial dinners/lunches to bring in the back-country or for personal use. Sarah said “I had no idea that you could keep freeze dried fruit for ten years!”.
One of the first projects of Fields Forward was the mobile juice press which transforms not-so-perfect fruit into shelf-stable juice. At the time, 180,000 lbs of not-so-perfect cherries were going to the landfill because they were not saleable. For example, fruit that didn’t have a stem or had a small blemish couldn’t be sold at grocery stores. That not only contributed to methane gas and leachate in the landfill (the RDCK compost systems was not yet running), but was a waste of food. Today you can find Creston juice in many of the farm stand with different blends of fruit. The mash (or pulp) from the juicing goes towards feeding farm animals like cows and pigs.
They have also had a new project that they call ‘local lunches’ to help supply more local food to school breakfast and lunch programs. This will hopefully be in conjunction with a new community garden at the Kootenay Food Hub. The students were invited back in the future to help with the gardens. Thanks to Erin at Kootenay Meadows and Tanya of Fields Forward for taking us on these tours!