October 2020 – Grandview Woodland Food Connection

Fractal Farm is a local grower of sustainable vegetables based in East Vancouver and Richmond. They have partnered with Britannia and the GWFC the past two years where Britannia provided Fractal Farm space to set up their Community Supported Agriculture program. In return they have donated generously to our food programs.

When their CSA went on sale this year, they never realized how local food security would become top-of-mind this year. Many Fractal Farm customers donated generously towards their food voucher program, which this year supported the Grandview Woodlands Food Connection as well as the Little Mountain Riley Park Neighbourhood Food Network. Both of these programs supported families that could otherwise not have obtained groceries due to the pandemic. This year, Fractal Farm members raised $2,150 towards Fractal Veggies for these food programs. We set as a goal to match this in kind with another $2,150 worth of produce. In the end, we added another $1,238 worth of produce on top of our goal! This brings our total value of contributions to these programs to $5,538. Here’s some highlights: we provided almost 30 Kg of light salad greens, almost 300 cucumbers, almost 400 zucchinis, 140 heads of lettuce, 120 bunches of Pac Choi, over 120 lbs of beets, 80 lbs of squash, and much more!

A huge thank you to Fractal Farm for their support of our COVID Emergency Food Home Delivery Program, supporting over 500 households in East Vancouver.

I was very excited to learn about this project but also taken back that I had not heard about this sooner. What a wonderful example of an urban food justice/food sovereignty project in Toronto.

In the northwest corner of Toronto, hidden from view by a newly established food forest, is Black Creek Community Farm (BCCF). The farm, Toronto’s largest urban farm, is located in the Jane-Finch or Black Creek neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is one of Toronto’s most diverse communities and widely recognized as the most disadvantaged.

The farm’s vision is to be an Urban Agriculture centre that engages diverse communities through sustainable food. This vision connects to a thriving urban agriculture movement in Toronto that is linked through organizations such as the Toronto Food Policy Council and Toronto Urban Growers.

A core focus of Black Creek Community Farm is to increase access to healthy food in the community through programming and food distribution projects. Fresh, local and organic produce is available from June to November at accessible rates. Community programming focuses on food security, food literacy, and food skills. Thousands of children, youth, families and seniors participate each year.

Check out their website https://www.blackcreekfarm.ca