today is once again marjorie stewart good morning margery good morning so sam and you have a guest i would like to introduce a woman who needs no introduction to the food community anyway feed it to iraq who has quite a number of we meet at farmers markets we meet at events connected with coast has that we care about but we often don't get a chance to talk to each other about where we're coming from and how we got here so i really want to ask me to a few questions about herself starting with did you intend to be a photo of us when you grew up you know what did you think you were going to be i was going to be a teacher an accountant that was my goal fascinating all through grade eleven and twelve for pretty much up to grade ten anyway and i dropped out of school because i didn't fit into the school system anymore well it's a lot smarter than the young lady who said to laura sabia who was an early feminist in canadian politics that she wanted to get married when she grew up in laura said yes dear that takes ten minutes what do you intend to do with the rest of your life yes i like when i know i just because i grew up in a conventional i grew up in a typical family home and really just what you want to call not functional family home of the seventy's and so yes i want to make it on my own and figure it out so i want to grow up always been a learner and i didn't realize how much learning i needed but i didn't want to be once i got out on my own if they moved out when i was fifteen years old it was very easy for me to get out of the school system and not live a conformed lifestyle i had to make it on my own and survive at a very young age so you got an early daughter at fifteen or sixteen years old and i know there's a reality check a pretty much yes and she's twenty six years old now and my youngest when i had him when i was twenty and he's twenty one twenty two and so he's he was really the having having him and my twenty's is when i really started to wake up to things that were going around and start changing my lifestyle and changing who i was as a person and the paris thing because i had a much more  experience and my teaching qualification before i got married so i knew who i was and got settled down but then we come out equal because i had my first child to twenty six or so and then my second particularly feel that responsibility for getting good food into yes well i can't say that i was that quick on it then it was more years later to figure that out but it was because of my own health too you know my health was pretty bad i was a two pack a day smoker a high stress single mom not active didn't eat vegetables i was over two hundred pounds yes i did not had hard with me i was you know on the borderline of high cholesterol high blood pressure according to medical system and i kind of went you know i'm twenty six years old this is not happening i got to figure something out and i met a wonderful man and he helped guide me through the process he got me introduced into an active lifestyle and it started from there and then i just took i don't think he realized how far i would take it and i took it very far to the to where i am today well to set up a very lot of energy invested a lot of energy and this started back in the  learnt the most from working on joining a gym because that's all about the what you put in your body and then i start correlating the two together and it kind of transpired from that but i used to do that i used to do the whole i used to be one of those people that would look i would look at the ingredients so to speak i would just look at the label like oh it's low fat low sugar ok i'll buy that and then i can then i started then there was a little bit of a transition there and within a year or two because i really want to take my health because my health was doing amazing even just making that little bit of a transition to rot showing what i was eating lead to ok you know what these now we're dealing with ingredients raw and i started doing ingredient labeling a few years later i would say probably  thousand and three i started label reading i mean ingredient reading not just for in face of them are very very frustrating activities why spend a whole day and thrifty is going through every product i bought and reading every label and i took notes on everything so i took time out of my life i was investing in my health really is what i came down to to me it was like laundry labeling i'm not very good retaining the same information for a great length of time you know i can learn how the internal combustion engine works and it stays with me for about fifteen minutes and then it's gone again so for me with with all of those ingredients i often find it just self defeating trying  mean because they don't tell you the first ingredient has them that's what most stuff in the thing so if you're looking through the whole list to see something that you think is healthy and you find it near the end that's really not much use to you you have to be a sophisticated label or eat well we are in a day and age that as much as this overwhelming is that is we all have smartphones majority the majority the population of smartphones and we can actually google the ingredient right there in front of us at the grocery store and go ok you know why it's we have choices we just have to invest the time to to make those choices to change those to to make that decision like it's an investment in your health break and you have to do that so if you're unsure of something you look it up research it and then the next question becomes how do you find the right way to look at top and find yourself so ok that's a whole other ballgame i guess you know i kind of i was fortunate enough to transition through that quite smoothly and make i maybe underestimate that most people surrey that probably wouldn't it would be a little bit more of a challenge for them and i was reminded of that scene with jamie oliver in west virginia and the school district he took on and tried to turn towards more healthful food and overweight young mother doctor i would like to back track a little bit because there was a segment of time my son had chronic ear infections and i was about five years old i was sick and tired dealing with the medical system over cause they kept pumping him full of antibiotics and i was starting to go whew no what no this is not healthy anymore like there's there's going to be a reason why he's getting chronic ear infections i was a smoker sadly around him so i know that that was a contributing factor to what i understood that and then i stop smoking in the house stop smoking inside the vehicle with him like i made some changes because i knew that i wasn't doing any good for him so i started to make some changes i didn't actually quit smoking till two thousand and three but i did start avoiding smoking around him and he ended up going to a natural path well that was my first actual introduction into the holistic aspect of it but they did all these allergy tests so he was allergic to it like tug according to test he was allergic to tons and tons and tons of stuff well i was a pocket food we had parker helper and and i was like i'm cool so i want to charlie brown's one afternoon and i'm like ok why do you cook but it doesn't have all these allergies about i got home i was so overwhelmed i ended up spending a hundred dollars on all these ingredients never did i tried making one thing drum and that was what was causing his ear infections that one tire time so i was able to get to the bottom of it but then because of the introductions it did really make me start to think about food more and the body and  turned out to be connected with my husband's hay fever that brought the whole brown kale partow if it came from there originally and we just had to be careful about hot and whipped were the two things they were known to get talked and went and tell them off every time we went swimming and they grew out of it and children should grow out of some of these because they're muse system and any information in the body and that low people don't know that i'm also holistic nutritionist and every any information in the body is an immune response the body's immune system working on overdrive and it's the body kind of dealing with that because if we get any infection that hits any major organ in our body or bought we'll die instantly it will happen that's  the body hey your muse this is on overdrive telling us yeah things like three month old firstborn started to get a rash and to occur off nursing and put her on farmy and and the rash went away it came back meal and it was connected with the oatmeal for some reason yeah and it could be there could be any reason to it or any reason to it could have been the way the oatmeal was procession of the spray or the fact that there was gluten like because  with gluten right now could be any reason all of these so you begin to get very very yet to the whole picture the picture of what makes everybody wear can you already had the activity  about stuff i get that you know that there's those groups of people that do that but the majority of people if it's a health reason why they're getting into it will make those transitions especially if they start to feel special they've had poor health i had poor health  started to feel better and my health started to improve and i would go back to see my physician to get regular blood work done and not that was just science right there i was doing everything correctly i've never had poor health i'm coasting on good i don't have a doctor any longer either i actually fired my dog servo a decade ago yeah yeah and once you start to realize that you already know what they're telling you it just seems a bit to go and sit and wait and b it all over again and yes i did have to go into a doctor i went through a friend's doctor and i got a major fungal infection in my body and it happened quite suddenly and so i had to go get blood work done and i was very having a g p you know and if attendee time my family needs emergency treatment because we're connected to a clinic if we go to the hospital one of those clinics doctors who's going to show up and help us a hoot but i think people spend a great deal too sweetened cranberry juice in mexico by the way it's all like the cranberry cocktail with the sugar and the people in it yeah so when i got back home and i went to the rock and clinic and dollars and i asked the farmers how much it would cost me if i got to ten days the plane what it cost me eighty dollars what a waste i like really i don't even need it and you know i haven't had a bladder infection since that's interesting that really isn't useful story to tell people i'm  but whether you love or hate james loney well i think he was already there was a very was very strong on the national product national product industry very supportive of it anyway i owned and i got into i had a lot of my customers were coming in that were diabetic for some people but anyway they just they're not good for the guy they actually they just they just make the got just it's just horrible fun to touch as to some of those sugars and so i thought well there's got to be other ways so those that i was introduced the raw chocolate through exile  all shows and then my girlfriend who's the raw food at eight years raw food she was making raw chocolate and i kind of started experimenting a little bit of my why can't i make my own ice are doing is gifts and family and then just kind of progressed from there and now i've got a empires of course took it to west africa yeah so in the sixteen hundred the spanish brought it over to year and now it's been since felt the eighteen hundreds is actually been farmed over there in west africa the ivory coast people know it as but the problem with is not native there because they've brought non native beans to west africa from peru and ecuador so they're having issues now like over two hundred years later with the cow production there's less are becoming diseased there's a lot of issues so untaught on top of the farming at the crops by the other major issue is child slavery and abduction and people don't know that and that's why i'm idea and so it's a really bad there goes my teacher like i was was to be a teacher just in a different way not informed way and so i just educate people on that all the time where the ingredients come from why i use the ingredients they use for my kick how my bars and yeah just education and it really has opened a lot of people's eyes that the chocolate industry is a massive industry huge yeah and it's very important to have it from the place where it originated namely dan what that actual chocolate bar was nestle that made the actual tempered chocolate their prey and that's what i do is i do a tempered chocolate bar where the other chocolates that you see that are not tempered they can't stay out at room temperature they have to be kept can do what the big corporate businesses require massive machines to do in a smaller scale with an appropriate level of technology and produce simple and fresh my chocolates are usually fresh they're not fresh two days before a market there may be a couple bars that are only a week older than not other than not they're no longer than two weeks so i bet you have some very committed customers i do and i'm very grateful and  who they are where you're going to be and where they can find you and the chocolate and all that stuff so that that's quite exciting and that among other things that's what introduced you to the market  yes it did well i was supporting farmers market before i became a vendor or a as i was i owned the vitamin house i was a supporter of the farmer's market back then yeah so when i start to transition into my health and food and farmer's markets we're in existence other than the dunkin market i didn't know much about it because there wasn't any actual advertising down on it and the dead can market nearly killed themselves through underpricing their president yes they were and i say right they were all trying to undercut each other and then when people came along attempting to a reasonable price yeah approach it they failed because there were other people who for whatever reason were able to sell it but very low price stock claim my first actual introduction into local food though was looking for kale and and i got that's when i first and that was i believe and they will probably correct me if he remembers it was about two thousand and seven two thousand and eight no that's right wasn't that's right two thousand and two thousand and nine was my introduction know listen yeah he just wants you to succeed and to get the right stuff and he'll do anything to help you know i got my introduction to kill a reintroduction of course because i was raised in scotland  that tough stringy didn't make sense oh yeah yeah you know it was nice kale told it was really stringy i hated the stuff so i was quite happy to go for frozen spinach and stuff like that instead but it was craig evans who introduced me to purple russian kale and i've never looked back and of course once you put some seeds in your yard they will just continue forever every two years they'll go to seed and provide more seeds i want to be able to walk outside and pick a couple of green leaves so if a plant oh year round it's the year round part it's important isn't it oh yeah if it isn't as easy here on thank you for island where the prime spot of canada  of my favorite kale to grow and one of the best scales for kale chips for those that want to make hail chips is winter pour west coast seed sells that varieties are off west coast at the moment growing their own se that seems to be a really good potential for somebody that i can talk english to also further if such oh i think we should also get into the whole business of farmer's markets and how they are the kind of deal with heritage seeds and the ability to get people to foot so one of the things you're going to be doing is when you get to your announcement section quite soon you're going to be telling us all about the different markets in our region yes i looked up this morning so i hope my information is current on all of them well let's just start in to our conversation about farmers markets yes that's right because they exciting news is that peta has taken on the management of the first oh well so being a vendor even though i'm not a vegetable grower it's a really great way to connect with the community and to connect with like minded people and to educate people on what's happening so there's is a really  because a lot farmers there independently on their own like i work from home and i rent a commercial kitchen so i don't have a storefront and a lot of these farmers don't have farm gate three they just go they drove the food but they need an outlet to be able to sell their wares their produce what they grow or what they make and farmers markets is the best outlet to do it it's low overhead it's community oriented it's short time frames you don't have to be there from nine to five for a this stressful  there's some cons about it but there's a lot of pros to it for both the consumer and for both the vendor farmer and in our region seders been going for over fifteen years very gradually and only on this sunday morning and not have to but it can rush down south to have to attend a club was padlocked i went i was a tourist in my own town on sunday for mother's day and i went to go say hi to all my fellow vendors at the cedar markets that was their launching day this pot launching market this past sunday and it was in sane busy there was cars parked all the way down yellow point road past the market right up to the residence as you turning the corner of yellow point it was really really busy the energy was fabulous but to some extent a victim of their own success yeah so what happened was we got there about twelve thirty and there was produce vendors that were sold out they had nothing left to sell and customers were actually complained it was no produce and there was very little to choose from and that's all the produce vendors well not just one we're not we're talking almost every single produce vendor that was there and there's a lot i don't quote me on this that i didn't count how many but i i'm year because of the early spring so for them to have more than usual and be sold out long before the market is over is amazing so that's food for thought how long a several different downtown and imo and also heard around the world at c h l y dot ca we do have a bit of a community update including the farmers markets but we'll start with bike to work week registration is now open to bike to work week will be may twenty fifth to thirty first and there's a chance to win prizes including the grand prize a project to budapest cycling trip for two  quite fun you can check that out at triple w dot bike to work dot ca and speaking of grand prizes congratulations to the winners of the c h l why grand prize the announcement is on c h o y dot ca the draw was actually made yesterday so you can find out on the website who the winners are the renewable cities conference that we've mentioned a couple of times on the show starts tomorrow and runs through friday in vancouver it's about building on the leadership to support cities through the transition to one hundred percent renewable energy and energy efficiency and as we've mentioned this is already beginning to happen so it's no longer just a pie in the sky idea some of us are talking about flow and because energy cannot be renewed by definition i'll introduce that into my vocabulary that's excellent excellent any way you can i know more about this forum at forum dot renewable cities dot ca i guess we can say the cities are renewal but on us we don't do it in an unsustainable  the big event for and i know this week on saturday may sixteenth c h l why i present david barsamian on the founder of alternative radio who will speak on media and democracy at six thirty pm at the dorchester hotel seventy church street in downtown and imo it's a free event which is phenomenal all really considering what this is they do  for donations it's just a five dollars suggested donation but no one will be turned away for lack of funds david barsamian is the winner of the media education award the a c l u american civil liberties union's upton sinclair award for independent journalism and the cultural freedom fellowship from the lennon foundation the institute for alternative journalism named him one of its top ten media heroes and he's the recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the rocky mountain peace and justice center alternative radio airs on c h l wife thursdays at eleven am and there's a bit more information on this talk on our home page at c h s dot ca or of course you can check out alternative radio dot org and once again i'll mention that the nonprofit global village known imo is celebrating fairtrade month by having a store in the imo north town center until may thirtieth and it's a fantastic start i was there the other day i think joe only the manager has done herself with the way she has displayed everything it's just going to go it's just marvelous and of course it's all go ask around that particular store it's right kind of in the middle of the more very good scientists yeah where the two roots crossover each other if you come in from the the luggage store right yeah helen's boutique and that central part of the mall where events take place and it's right there and it just looks beautiful through all the glass that surrounds the store won't take anything off shore and of course a lot of the stuff that you do things with comes from offshore and he well that's what fairtrade we i probably would i would suggest to the board for last fall and funny to stop talking you let me know  percent social enterprise they refuse act lame that because we have to pay for everything that we do we don't do charity work we do social enterprise thank  ingram street honeymoon bay outdoor market saturdays ten am to two pm follow the signs from lake cowichan to honeymoon bay market cedars sundays ten am to two b m in the field at the turnoff where you go to the crow and gate those are all open now gabriel last saturday's starting may sixteenth this coming saturday ten am to one pm at the egg hall for sixty five south ro starting this friday may fifteenth two to six pm that's different that's they've changed it yeah yeah that which is interesting so do do note that it's now two to six p have here bowen road farmer's market starts tomorrow may thirteenth continues on wednesdays four pm to six thirty pm at bevan park on the v i x fairgrounds will farmer's market starts this coming sunday may seventeenth and goes every sunday till october from one thirty to four pm that is correct i understand there's been some confusion about yeah that's the right of may i those of you that get the new news letter mid island who leah was the market manager for island routes there is a correction to the newsletter the last the market is not eleven three to four or ten to two it is one thirty to four i've been getting bombarded with e mails and messages on facebook regarding that time issue right and is that thing at oh good good so thank you we've got that sorted out no i hope for everybody and i understand that island routes is now phasing out because the road farmer's market is opening in the same guy and that layout so it's one or the other depending on the season i'll just mention as well arrington farmers market saturdays ten am to one pm not absolutely sure of the starting saturday for that but it's already started it has started i think you and that's at the arrington community duncan farmer's market but i also want to plug short plug for another farmer's market that people may not be aware of this is their second year as the parksville museum market starts may twenty second as fridays from five to eight pm at the craig heritage museum way just off memorial drive memorials the main drag yes as you come down into or up otoh quite a community and it's near the bottom and it pretty nice so we can see that the demand is growing and that spoke with a pro and a con for the people managing the market and for the farmers selling there's a huge opportunity here but you really have to be ready for it because you definitely don't want disappointed customers maybe was last week so did you finish the announcement so yes i just was going to mention that for anyone who's just  to this is changes on c h o y one o one point seven f m and marjorie stuart is talking with peter to iraq about farmers markets and we're going to get really into the farmer's market issue topic right now and then we're going to go into g m because that speed is other major point of activist interest and i'm looking forward to getting a bit of an update because you get stale and some of these they ship so we're quite excited to we can get some information but back to the farmers markets and you've participated in many markets you know the people who go to the markets you have retail experience  and what fickle creatures we are so i'm a customers yes i'm very fickle we are fickle creatures so there has to be a great deal of planning that goes around this so let's just concentrate on the dance film market because it's a sort of junior issue with urban firming with the let's look firmer market house and then of course up until and recently hasn't had great press there's been a lot of controversy with the political side of it and the firming in the market and all that stuff so ye there's been some issues with that and a lot of people are a little bit we don't want to get involved with that but one thing with a lot of the farmer's market is nothing to do with politics is so please keep that in mind despite everything that's going on right now with the city council please keep in mind there is for thirty years now i moved here when i was twelve years old and i just gave my age away but i just last fall it's always been the farming community with the horses and you know it's quaint it's small it's community and  it's ninety three percent above fortunately the market does now interfere with the to no because everybody loves the idea of having a market even the people who are opposed to having food grown in los yes we do have a lot of support from the local residents yes so wherever i'm grateful for that but to get back to just despite all that stuff right there last the market is on its own right and there's no correlation with the politics there it's a very clear so where you can expect from  summer it's very community oriented is very welcoming it's very relaxing its people when they come to the market they come to just hang out and enjoy and socialize it's a great time to get to know your vendors because when you go to these bigger markets and i am at bigger markets you as a vendor can only provide so much time because you this is our livelihood right we're making money and they have i know and there's line ups you can't give that full attention to every customer and there's customers i know i'm one of opportunity to actually get to know the people that are producing making and growing your food and that is one thing that i love about that market and that's why i keep going back as a vendor and i've been a vendor there from day one from from the fourth from the very first year and it's four have the market as the thing philips church anglican church and it is a beautiful park and it's a actually a very beautiful church they have a park like setting in the back of the church lots the grassy area lots of big trees to hang out under the shade if you want to sit you can come you can go get your wares at the market house sit set up by listen to the music and bring a blanket if you want to picnic there and hang out and just enjoy the afternoon and then a lot of people will do the come to the mark and then they'll take off to sebastian beach and go swimming in the ocean afterwards get back onto the parkway trail up at where roads and yes it's very bike oriented very bike friendly as well so some of the challenges that the lunsford market faces are similar to the challenges that other markets face is that a market that has found the perfect venue no parking is usually the biggest parking it can make dangerous yet frustrating and it is teaching to local residents and local businesses and businesses shifts so there's the whole parking issue and there's instability of never being sure that you'll always have the available ability of the space because i magine every year you have to reaffirm and renegotiate even the bone road market which is very well established and has to answer to the people who read that if uncovered island exhibition i think for the and i'm a parks and recreation commission so really where we're falling down as communities is in providing permanent market space think about those wonderful trips to europe and those beautiful open market places where there sheltered from rain and sun but open to stable market space i had the pleasure of going to italy with my girlfriend a few years back and we were in rome and we went in rome is a city re it's doesn't have a legislator culture on the yeah and but we were we were staying in rome n p hind this way to go down this really dark alley we walked down this really narrow dark alley kind of we were new there i'd never been to italy before i didn't know what to expect well wow it just opened up into had that it was all designed on concrete for pegs for their tents so they do is bring their stuff and put their stuff up like it was really well thought out and it was her as a permanent market spot it's permanently there and i would guess that that's a fairly new awakening for them too because they fell together and recognized that they each had their individual story their individual product and their individual business but they were tired of undercutting each other and trying to do each other down in the pric managed to get their act together and they formed whole cooperative offenders which didn't take away from any of their independence in their particular specialty of what they were selling and they brought in  together and recognizing that they don't half to undercut each other's prices and order to make a decent living at it because they each have their own individual story to tell yes and he has their own independent business that they can promote ye better i would like to see some civic leadership and some regional district leadership too because they have tax money they have ways to yank their money into the community and exactly and they know where the place is yes so coast to coast and f m and and i was listening to coast to coast and jeffrey smith who's the founder of the institute of biotechnology responsible biotechnology and he's also the author and you've seen it on many documentaries of  well every fast food every processed food as comes in a pretty much in a package even restaurants i'm sorry there's a lot of it and even at farmers markets vendors are using genetically modified ingredients to get away from genetically modified corn is pretty hard you have to be very very diligent and strict and disciplined by thai and i am those that know me know i am a non she more i do not eat chia most i am like i am like a force to be reckoned with when it comes and i challenge people i challenge restaurants i challenge vendors i challenge the food industry all the time so in one sentence what is the most important action we can be taking to protect ourselves from having the genetically modified organisms foisted upon us we need to her the companies that are producing these g m most that are actually behind the technology that the government to start labeling because we need to hit them in the pocketbook because once people start seeing that in the labels people are going to start to make conscious choices and the average person will not like there's actually been surveys done that over seventy five percent of consumers in north america alone and that want labeling and if there was plus i'm also one of the organizers for the march against monsanto the glow well march that is on saturday may twenty third there will be a march here in the ny mo and it's that one pm the location right now because of all of us that are doing this my coorg and i is there amanda or ambush many of you know her and that she's been working on the cannabis side activism i've got my other activists stuff in the farmers markets and my business so right now we're just trying to work with exactly location so it will be downtown the ny mon one pm saturday may twenty  get back from my other protests and victoria will be swinging about three and i'm about to hand out a lot of people know about it ok so get involved start demanding labeling where yeah and learn more about it if you're kind of on the fence and want to learn more about why we're doing this scientist or anything like that i am a concerned consumer so all the information i provide you is from a consumer point of view good and that's what we need yes isn't it over to you we're just we're nearly out time we have another so there are a couple of things that he had to say that kind of like to leave people with and i think this one once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm which therefore neither produced demonstrated here they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems wonderful thanks so much that's our show on behalf of our production team thank you so much for joining us