Monthly Archives : November 2017

Getting Down to Business


The legalities behind starting a food business After all the fun of idea development and logo invention it was time for some serious business: getting the paperwork in place to legally sell our marzipan. Luckily Mike has a background in finance and, as an experienced entrepreneur, a lot of expertise with respect to legal business requirements. For us, it all…

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Whatever Floats Your Goat


Em Zember is living her dream of operating a goat dairy “I started with two in 2000,” says Em Zember, as we watch eight attention-seeking goats waiting to be milked. We’re standing in an airy barn situated on the property best known by Islanders as the headquarters of the Great Canadian Soap Company. Zember is hopeful that in time it’ll…

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Spirited Endeavours


“It was just by chance,” Mike Beamish says of how he discovered he could use the ground apples from his u-pick orchard if he fermented and distilled the juice. Having stumbled upon an article that outlined how he could transform what had once been destined for the compost into a saleable product, Beamish set out to establish a distillery. Four…

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Grandma Phoebe’s Mustard Pickles


With any good preserve, the devil is in the details. And as usual, a recipe that’s been followed for this many years comes written with fewer directions than actually needed to accomplish the task ahead. In family kitchens, there was an expectation that you had done this project many times under the supervision of someone who already knew the ropes,…

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Flour Power


Local farm mills heritage wheat The room is sparkling clean and seems to be hermetically sealed from the outside world. This is Crystal Green Farms’ milling room. It holds the only flour operation in PEI growing and milling heritage Red Fife wheat. Brian and Kathy MacKay are proud of what they’ve accomplished. Their interest in organic farming was the inspiration…

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A Pig in a Puncheon


Recalling the preserving of a past generation Need something to eat in the middle of winter? A simple trip to the fridge or even to the grocery store is all we do today, but just one or two generations ago, it wasn’t that easy for many Islanders. Rural PEI in the 1940s and 50s was still a place where many…

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A Win-Win


Fermentation parties offer value for all involved On the Monday in early October when I visit Heart Beet Organics in Darlington, it’s a drab, overcast day complete with a biting cold wind. The weather, however, has done nothing to dampen the spirits of Heart Beet’s friendly farming duo, Amy Smith and Verena Varga, or the six women and one man…

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Cultivating a Forest of Food


Borden family growing East Asian mushrooms in PEI Julie and Dale Hamilton of Borden are eagerly awaiting their first crop of shiitake mushrooms. They are one step closer to their dream of creating a permaculture forest on their Augustine Cove woodlot by cultivating this Asian mushroom. Shiitake mushrooms, or Lentinula edodes, are brown, meaty mushrooms grown in eastern Asia, particularly…

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Under Pressure


Modern pressure-canning extends shelf life of meats Raising a multitude of animals for food at Hope River Farm can mean an abundance of frozen meats for owner Nancy Sanderson. Despite a thriving CSA program, sometimes the freezers need to be cleared of excess meat. “I’ve got ten deep freezers that are mostly customer meat, however, anything that doesn’t sell over…

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