FEAST OF FIELDS - ORGANIC FOOD,
ORGANIC WINE AND SUSTAINABLE LIVING

The 18th annual Feast of Fields looked like a garden party. At Everdale Organic Farm in Hillsburgh, northwest of Toronto, Ontario, open-sided tents shaded food and drink stands. Warm September breezes carried aromas of spit-roasted venison and classical, folk and jazz melodies from groups of musicians.

Feast of Fields sign. Everdale Organic Farm.

Feast of Fields is a part-educational, part-gourmet picnic, part-social celebration of organic foods, healthy sustainable living and environmentally friendly local foods.

With couples and families, we strolled from stand to stand, to admire, discuss and taste Ontario's culinary bounty. We enjoyed the delicious samples at picnic tables decorated with bouquets of daisies and zinnias.

Organic farm

A mentor for sustainable living, Everdale Organic Farm and Environmental Learning Centre grows organic vegetables, grains and other crops and uses renewable energy and alternative building methods. It offers farm apprenticeships, school programs and workshops on topics ranging from straw bale construction to making biodiesel fuels.

Everdale's picturesque property was the perfect setting for a festival that unites organic suppliers, chefs and consumers.

Feast of Fields. Everdale Organic Farm.

Free-range chickens clucked and foraged around straw bales supporting a Feast of Fields sign, squash and pumpkins, yellow, orange and purple flowers. Gardens, greenhouses, sunflower fields, grazing sheep, donkeys and horses bordered the lane to the festival site.

“I love this event, because it supports farmers,” noted Christopher Ennew, executive chef at Ste. Anne's Spa in Grafton. “We chefs can be as creative as we want, but we couldn’t do it without such incredible raw materials.”

Langdon Hall's garden heirloom gazpacho in bread bowls.

Healthy food

Foods are free of pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and preservatives at Feast of Fields. We found nothing genetically modified.

Nor were there any plastic plates and cutlery to pollute the environment. Instead, chefs served their dishes on fire-baked bannock bread, on potato pancakes, in vegetable cups and wrapped in lettuce. We happily slurped Langdon Hall's garden heirloom tomato gazpacho from bread bowls.

Executive Chef Jonathan Gushue, from Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa, served us organic steak tartar on sourdough crisp plates. He and assistant, Brendan Naven, spread organic cultured butter on fresh sourdough bread and topped it with sliced organic radishes from Langdon Hall's garden.

Sampling Langdon Hall's fresh sourdough bread with organic cultured butter and radishes.

At the Breadalbane Inn stand, Chef Dean Michielsen offered a delicious cassoulet of venison sausage, duck confit, lamb and beans topped with goat cheese in organic potato cups. “The venison sausage came from Guelph's Rowe Farm, the cheese from River's Edge Goat Dairy, in Arthur, and the potatoes from Lady Bug Acres Farm in Elora,” he explained. “We cooked the beans in dark beer from Guelph's F&M Brewery.”

It was a perfect example of how eating locally is not only delicious, but also environmentally friendly, saving fossil fuels used for transportation. According to the authors of The 110 Mile Diet, the average grocery item travels 2,400 kilometres between the farmer and the consumer's table.

Chef Dean Michielsen serves cassoulet in organic potato cups. Feast of Fields.

Organic olive oil

We dipped pieces of bread into certified organic first cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil at the Louianna Estates stand. The flavour was impressive. “It's made from olives grown on my grandparents' land in Molise, Italy,” explained Dominic Spedaliere.

Louianna Estates also makes Louianna Liquor d'Ulivi. The world's only organic liquor, made from olive leaves, the golden beverage is sweet and herb-scented.

Heike Koch and Jens Gemmrich, from Frogpond Farm, offered us samples of their best-selling Cabernet Merlot. “We use no synthetic fertilizers or chemicals in our organic wine,” said Heike.

A forest path led us to two tables shaded by tall trees. At one, we sampled Chateau des Charmes Niagara wines. At the other, we sipped summer vegetable gazpacho, served in heirloom tomato cups by Orangeville's Juniper Grill and Wine Bar proprietor, Nadya Swyrydenko.

Feast of Fields history

Feast of Fields unites people who eat and prepare organic foods and drinks with people who produce them. The organic food festival began in 1989, when Toronto chefs, Jamie Kennedy and Michael Stadtlander, formed a group called Knives & Forks – Advocates for Organic Agriculture, to link chefs with organic farmers.

Chef Michael Stadtlander, from Eigensinn Farm, roasted an organic pig on a spit at the 2006 Feast of Fields. “We hand-turned and roasted it for five hours over maple wood, and basted it with lovage, caraway, paprika, peppercorns, olive oil, garlic and other spices,” he said. Just before serving it, he brushed the crispy-skinned pork with apple butter and toasted fermented hemp seed.

More than a year later, our mouths still water, just thinking about its exquisite flavour.

Feast of Fields location

First held at a farm near Rob Roy, Ontario, the location of Feast of Fields has changed frequently over its 18-year history. Previous locations included Vineland Estates Winery, Vineland (1990), Cave Spring Estates Winery, Beamsville (1991), Boker Organic Farm, Elmvale (1992), Ignatius Community Farm, Guelph (1993), Kortright Conservation Area, Bolton (1995), Maple Lawn Organic Farm, Schomberg (1998) and Albion Hills Conservation Area (2006).

Feast of Fields will be held on September 7, 2008, at Everdale Organic Farm in Hillsburgh.

Organic vegetables at Greenfields Organic Farm stand.

Organic produce

The 2007 Feast of Fields featured several organic farm stands. Mark Skinner and Monika Kastelic, from Greenfields Organic Farm, in Campbellville, offered us samples of sweet yellow sun sugar tomatoes and large juicy marbled yellow and red Striped German heirloom tomatoes. Their best selling vegetable? Organic kale.

Peter Vanderpost, from Kestrel Farms Organic Produce in Thornton, Ontario, displayed a painter's palette of red and yellow tomatoes, orange squash, green peppers, purple eggplant and leafy greens on his table.

At other stands, we learned about farmers' markets and door-to-door delivery of boxes of fresh organic foods.

Organic bread

“Organic bread sales are increasing, as people become aware of the health benefits,” explained Phil Gaudet, from ACE Bakery, as he arranged some appetizing loaves.

We didn't need convincing, as we munched on ACE Bakery's organic ficelle (a thin crusty baguette), topped with shaved Parmigiano Reggiano, tomatoes and tapenade. The samples were not only healthy, but they were also delicious.

Stephanie Migchelsen serves Kensington Market Organic Ice Cream. Feast of Fields.

Organic ice cream

Our favourite item at this year's Feast of Fields was the cinnamon cardamom coffee ice cream served in cones at the Kensington Market Organic Ice Cream stand. Other innovative creamy flavours beckoned: mo' fig, lavender blueberry and green tea raspberry.

When Stephanie Migchelsen offered us scoops of strawberry and the devil (strawberry ice cream accented with anise and black pepper), we succumbed and enjoyed the yummy tastebud-tingling flavours.

Other memorable organic dairy products included Harmony Organic Dairy's chocolate milk, Mapleton Organic Dairy's ginger and maple chunk ice creams and Saugeen Country Dairy's delicious yogurt parfaits, topped with peach purée. Samples of Glencolton Farm's ice-cold milk brought back memories of the healthy milk that we, and generations of our families enjoyed, as we grew up on our southwestern Ontario farms.

Fair trade coffee

The diversity of Feast of Fields participants amazed us. We met organic farmers, butchers, bakers, chefs and restaurant-owners, winemakers, craft beer brewers, fair trade green coffee, tea and chocolate merchants, heirloom seed distributors, herbalists, organic sprout growers and suppliers of worm composters. Each person gave us valuable, practical information.

All-samples-included afternoon tickets, which cost $100, made it easy to meet them, to learn about environmentally friendly healthy products and to enjoy the lip-smacking foods and drinks made with them.

Organic Advocates, the non-profit organization that hosts Feast of Fields, donates a portion of ticket sales to promote organic agriculture and education. Recipients have included FoodShare Toronto, The Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, Organic Crop Improvement Association and Canadian Organic Growers.

Organic tomatoes. Feast of Fields.

Organic cookbook

With each ticket, we received a wine glass for sampling, a linen napkin and an informative organic cookbook in an eco-friendly cloth bag. (Participants returned glasses and napkins after the event.)

The cookbook contained contact information for nearly 100 restaurants, bakeries, caterers, wineries, micro-breweries, organic farms, meat suppliers, dairies, organic partners and non-profit organizations that exhibit at Feast of Fields.

Best of all, it included recipes for many of the delicious foods and drinks that we sampled during the event.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

Feast of Fields: www.feastoffields.org

FEAST OF FIELDS - ORGANIC FOOD, ORGANIC WINE AND SUSTAINABLE LIVING