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Educational Resources

Farmers Market

We are proud to support the Farmers' Market in Vanderhoof.

Resources and Links

Please browse through our library of food and health-related books, websites, magazines, and educational resources.

If you have something to add to this page, please contact us.

All items are listed in alphabetical order.

Books

100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating

By Smith and MacKinnon. An amusing book about a couple who decide to live one full year eating only foods that grow within 100 miles of their downtown Vancouver apartment. Available at the Vanderhoof Public Library.

A Good CatchA Good Catch: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from Canada's Top Chefs

By: Jill Lambert
Introduction by: Dr. David Suzuki

Winner of Best Fish & Seafood Cookbook in Canada at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards

Features:
-70+ seafood recipes from celebrity chefs across Canada

-a brief intro outlines what questions informed consumers should be asking about seafood and provides a quick reference guide to the recommended choices (based on SeaChoice, an initiative of Sustainable Seafood Canada)

“Many of us are eating more fish and seafood for its health benefits, but are we making good choices for healthy oceans? …A Good Catch: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from Canada’s Top Chefs provides insight and information. It begins with a discussion about fish - on making good fish decisions, choosing, preparing and storing fish and seafood; basic cooking directions and a quite extensive Species by Species Sustainability Guide.â€Â Metro News.ca, Jan 15, 2009

Use Canada's Seafood Guide to help make wise seafood choices at the supermarket.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

By Barbara Kingsolver. Available at the Vanderhoof Public Library.

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandon the industrial food pipeline to live a rural life vowing that for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it. This book will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to the old truth: you are what you eat.

“Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for a uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, the convenience of packing, and tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice, for actual flavour.â€Â Quote page 48

Photo by Lisa StreiglerA Seat At the Table: Resource Guide for Local Governments to Promote Food Secure Communities

Community Food Assessment Guide

Creating Your Backyard Farm

How to grow fruit and vegetables, and raise chickens and bees

By: Nicki Trench
Available at the Vanderhoof Public Library

A wonderful book to peruse . . .

 

-photos, diagrams, and tip boxes provide interest and easy to understand information!

“Everything you need to know about growing crops, keeping bees, and rearing hens. Here's how to make compost, grow vegetables and fruit, collect honey, rear chickens for fresh eggs, and make preserves and chutneys, along with natural remedies and cleaning products for a natural life inside and outside your home.”front cover of book.

Every Seed Tells a Tale

Did you ever wonder about the culture of Canada's garden plants or the history of your own garden?  Seeds of Diversity is proud to release their largest collection of stories of seed heritage.

This useful book is the ultimate source for seed heritage stories and information. Chapters include fascinating stories of heritage vegetables, fruits, grains, and flowers.

Stories are told of modern day seed savers who have rescued these precious garden treasures. Our indigenous peoples, pioneers, scientist-breeders, immigrants, and others in our past are brought to life in these pages.

Bridget Wayland, editor of Harrowsmith Magazine writes:
As far as I am concerned, Every Seed Tells a Tale:  Stories of Plants, People and Places That Have Contributed to Canadian Seed Heritage is the single best resources for Canadian gardeners interested in preserving a living part of our shared history. Their book is a fascinating read that I'll be keeping on my bookshelf for easy reference for years to come.

A book from Seeds of Diversity

From the Ground Up: A Horticultural Guide for North-Central B.C.

By David Douglas Botanical Society

 

From Seed to Bloom: How to Grow over 500 Annuals, Perennials, and Herbs

by Eileen Powell

Available in the Vanderhoof Public Library

 

Features:
- a comprehensive introduction to seed starting including a detailed discussion of the following topics:

-A Plant by Plant Guide to Growing from Seed (517 plants)

Gardening Between Frosts

By Dave Hibbard. A good guide on what you can grow in Vanderhoof, and when to start seeding-planting-harvest, etc.

The Joy of Gardening

Dick Raymond

The author of this book, Dick Raymond, has been a vegetable gardening specialist for 15 years and has been gardening for 40 years. The focus of this book is organic vegetable gardening.

His book suggests many different views on gardening, such as gardening with or without a tiller, and alternatives for pesticides. The book gives lessons for enriching the soil, bed building, seed growing, transplanting, spacing, weed killing, and insect controlling. It also suggests new techniques for green manure crops, seeding, and harvesting.

There are high-quality colored pictures illustrating every lesson.

Raising Better Rabbits and Calves

A publication of the American Rabbit Breeders Association

Contains articles, written by experienced breeders, that cover such matters as:

Not available in stores. (Included in initial membership package) or can be purchased separately for $15.00.

Simply in Season

Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert
This is a wonderful book to read for both its recipes and its stories, anecdotes, and brief articles about sustainable agriculture and food security. Truly inspiring and entertaining.

Square Foot Gardening

by Mel Bartholomew

The Garden That You Are

by Katherine Gordon, This is a beautiful hardcover book about gardeners in the Slocan Valley, BC. It features, with gorgeous photos, eight gardens, and their gardeners, telling stories about their lives in and around the valley. Recipes for preserving their vegetables and fruits, as well as healing tinctures, are included.

One of the gardeners, when asked what she grows in her garden, answered, “I grow beauty.â€Â May it be so, in your garden and in mine.

This book is available from The Mustard Seed Bookstore,
1-877-996-5751 or mustardseed@naramatacentre.net

The Home Creamery

by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley

The Inconparable HoneybeeThe Incomparable Honeybee & the Economics of Pollination

By: Dr. Reese Halter
Published by Rocky Mountain Books

A nice little book on the general ecology, economics, and environmental importance of the honeybee. Published in 2009, it provides current statistics from North America. Written for the layperson, the book is a great reference and invokes newfound respect for the tireless honeybee.

Borno GardenThe New Organic Gardener

by Elliot Coleman
From Library Journal
Coleman's personable work draws together the experience and wisdom of his 25 years as a vegetable gardener in Maine, communicating respect and feeling for "the land" and its processes. Every page is imbued with the wisdom and careful observations he and his associates have gathered; from soil structure to "mobile greenhouses" that expand the growing season, each method is thought through to its ultimate impact on the earth and on economic survival. Well-presented graphics illustrate methods and techniques. This new edition includes sidebar references and notes, new chapters on creating fertile soil (without importing items such as manure from sources that may not use organic methods), and use of existing information channels to learn of new information. Of interest for even the smallest veggie patch grower.

Sue Gardner, Albert Wisner Lib., Warwick, N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business  Information, Inc.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

By Michael Pollan

The Joy of Gardening

by Dick Raymond

 

The author of this book, Dick Raymond, has been a vegetable gardening specialist for 15 years and has been gardening for 40 years. The focus of this book is organic vegetable gardening.

His book suggests many different views on gardening, such as gardening with or without a tiller, and alternatives for pesticides. The book gives lessons for enriching the soil, bed building, seed growing, transplanting, spacing, weed killing, and insect controlling. It also suggests new techniques for green manure crops, seeding, and harvesting.

There are high-quality colored pictures illustrating every lesson.

 

Websites

» 100 Mile Diet PG http://pg100milediet.blogspot.com/

» Act Now BC www.actnowbc.ca

» American Rabbit Breeders Association

» BC Cattlemen's Association www.cattlemen.bc.ca

» BC Farmers Market www.bcfarmersmarket.org

» BC Food Systems Network www.fooddemocracy.org

» BC Wheat http://thetyee.ca/Life/2009/09/18/WheatKings/

» Bits & Bytes www.bitsandbytes.ca
The Building Community Food Security with Bits & Bytes Project, in collaboration with Food Secure Canada, has created an online food security resource database. It will be a living, ever-growing cornucopia of freely-accessible, community food security resources.

An intuitive user interface ensures that people with minimal computer skills or on slow-speed internet will still be able to navigate the site and locate the information they are seeking.

Fashioned after Wikipedia, the database will grow through the submissions and comments of the food security community who use it. In this way, it will continue to expand in richness and content, with a focus on credible, practical, accessible information that will be of use to community activists, academics, policymakers, farmers, and anyone interested in food security. Content covers a range, from community kitchen recipes to the use of comfrey in compost tea, from food miles to nutrition, from food charters to farmers' markets, from food sovereignty to hunger... 

The database hosts a range of media, from various document types to video and audio files. All database content will be searchable. Anyone can search the site but to post comments or upload your own material - which we encourage wholeheartedly! - you must register on the website.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Interior Health and the funders. This project is funded in part by the Community Food Action Initiative and the Government of Canada's Social Development Partnerships Program.

» Canadian Wildlife Federation www.wildaboutgardening.org

» David Douglas Botanical Garden Society www.dbotgarden.bc.ca

» Eartheasy www.eartheasy.com/grow_menu.htm

» Eat Real Eat Local www.eatrealeatlocal.ca Has an informative video on Canadian food import and export facts.

» Get Local BC www.getlocalbc.org

» Harvest to Home - Vanderhoof www.harvesttohome.bc.ca/EN/vanderhoof

» Heartland Quality Foods www.heartlandfoods.ca

» Local Harvest www.localharvest.org

» Kids Gardening www.kidsgardening.com
A fantastic resource with a 'parent's primer' for gardening with kids. Resources for teachers and classrooms as well. Detailed information about 'creative container' gardening and also establishing school greenhouse gardening programs.

» Master Gardener Certification Program - UNBC
www.unbc.ca/continuingstudies/certificates/mastergardener.html

» Nechako Agriculture www.hwy16.com/nechakoag

» Organic Raised Bed Gardening
www.organic-raised-bed-gardening.com

» Packaging and Food - a site about plastic food packaging.

» Red Worm Composting redwormcomposting.com

» Saltspring Seeds http://www.saltspringseeds.com/

» Sea Choice www.seachoice.org

» Seeds of Diversity: Canada's Heritage Seed Program for gardeners http://www.seeds.ca/en.php

» West Coast Seeds http://www.westcoastseeds.com/product/Vegetable-Seeds/

Magazines

Backwoods Home

Canadian Gardening

Gardens West

Small Farm

Nutrition Action: Healthletter

This is a great resource for learning how to eat well and be healthy. www.cspinet.org/canada

Educational Resources

BC Food Systems Network Conference

To read a summary of the 2009 BC Food Systems Network Conference, written by Susan Armstrong, one of the attendees representing the NVFN.

Canada's Seafood Guide

Download and print your own copy to use when you shop for fish.

Farm to School

These links are to Farm to School resources produced by the BC Healthy Living Alliance.

A Carrot Within Arms Reach

Farm to School Dig In!

Many Hands Sowing Seeds to Bring Local Produce to BC Schools

Kid's Container Gardens

Lots of fun for kids. Read more here, or visit www.kidsgardening.com

Local Food Informative Movie Ad

To view, the recent Hellman sponsored movie-clip advertisement about Canadian food, imported food, and how to support local agriculture. It is informative with interesting Canadian food and agriculture statistics.