Book Review – Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs and Hope on the Urban Frontier by Michael Ableman (2016). Chelsea Green Publishing. I found this book on BC Ferries before the COVID 19 pandemic and I just finally got around to reading it. It was the perfect feel-good read for lockdown times. Street Farm is a heartwarming tale […]
Archive | BC agriculture
What’s Making Food History – April 29, 2020
By Mary Leah de Zwart on April 29, 2020 in BC agriculture, Ethical food choices, What’s Making Food History
Supply management and the food supply chain cannot be taken lightly: history happens as we sit in self-isolation. The Conversation.com Why-farmers-are-dumping-milk-down-the-drain-and-letting-produce-rot-in-fields
Garlic Harvest Update
Garlic Harvest Update A 2016 garlic blog post on the BCFH blog came to my mind today when I heard about Northlands Urban Farm‘s garlic harvest night on Wed. August 14, one of a series of urban farm events this summer. (Don’t be jealous, rest of Canada. It’s a calming oasis of greenery right in […]
Cariboo Potatoes
Cariboo Potatoes The Cariboo Potato is not a BC Heritage potato but it’s applicable to BC Food History for its name and its history of being grown in seed potato programs in BC. The ’50s were a time of rapid plant development by both the Federal Department of Agriculture and plant […]
What’s making food history 3/29/19 – Celery Fad
Celery juice is the latest food fad to hit the news. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/celery-price-cost-juice-health-trend-1.5076439?fbclid=IwAR3Urs3XtQfzJH-E_Q91RURZsR2UlER62pLPUBZftkmXtdvhOiioe8FC4vE A BC Food History post on celery describes its past growing history, and also its known allergen qualities. Armstrong BC – Celery City No More All food fads need to be examined critically.
Tilly Rolston and Coloured Margarine
Tilly Rolston and Coloured Margarine I noticed the comment “Mrs. Tilly J. Rolston, “The Champion of Coloured Margarine” on the back of an archived pamphlet describing BC Social Credit election candidates from the early 1950’s and I was immediately intrigued[i]. Who was this woman? For International Women’s Day, I decided to see what I could […]
Apple Packing in BC
Apple Packing in BC How d’you like them apples? When you are doing food history research it is so easy to get distracted. I was looking for information on another topic when I happened to come across the above heading in the History of Metropolitan Vancouver website.[i] It was part of an excerpt from the […]
Women and Okanagan-Shuswap Dairies
Women and Okanagan-Shuswap Dairies Laura Rose, author and dairy instructor at Ontario Agricultural College in the early 1900s believed that the operation of dairies should be women’s work. Marjorie Cohen (1984) reviewed the decline of women’s participation in the dairy industry primarily in Eastern Canada and concluded that: “While women remained in dairying in the […]
Okanagan Dairy
Okanagan Dairy Searching for information on the North Okanagan Creamery Association (N.O.C.A.) led to finding a huge collection of information[i] and many online resources about the Dairy Industry in British Columbia. In 1925, NOCA was a dairy operating near Armstrong BC and struggling to find its way forward. It could either fall into supervision and […]
Post-War marketing of BC apples
Post-War Marketing of BC Apples Marketing of British Columbia apples in the 1950s and 1960s took a new turn. Gone were the messages about patriotism and the dominant image became healthy, happy, rosy-cheeked children. The B.C. Apple Recipe Book (circa 1960) was edited by Dorothy Britton, home economist at the Canada Experimental Farm in Summerland […]