A new program aims to teach children how to cultivate an abundance of crops while connecting to their culture and heritage during a time when grocery prices continue to rise.
The Newmarket African Caribbean Canadian Association (NACCA) has teamed up with Access Harvest to develop Deep Rooted: A Cultural Exploration of Food Security, a six-week program that will teach children innovative, hands-on skills for growing vegetables.
“I think it’s essential for the children to connect with their roots through their food,” said Jerisha Grant-Hall, chairperson and founder of NACCA. “It creates cultural conversations, not just among children, but within their families and connections around food and their heritage.”
Cultural recipes include Jamaican curry goat, which uses red and green onions, thyme, red and green peppers, and allspice berries, and oxtail stew, which requires celery stalks, carrots, onions, thyme and berries.
The program is part of the annual Kuumba Summer Camp, which Grant-Hall said it is a learning experience for children to see the diversity of other participants in attendance and how they use vegetables in their cultural dishes.
Each participant was provided a portable five-gallon grow bag garden with several seeds that have been culturally curated by the team of Access Harvest. Throughout the summer, children will care for their seeds at home, document their progress, and check in with each other.
“Our program intentionally emphasizes families having meaningful cultural discussions about what is being grown,” said Ashley Marshall, lead facilitator for Access Harvest. “A conversation about traditional uses of a tomato, for example, can lead to a vital exchange between a parent and child about practices back home. Of our many objectives with this program, strengthening cultural ties in the home is the most important one.”
Instructors showed them what each vegetable looks like, from seed to sprout, how to identify marks, differences, similarities, and whether or not some vegetables can be eaten raw.
“It’s about introducing them to the plants,” said Michelle Marshall, co-ordinator for Access Harvest. “What a green onion looks like and what a bean plant looks like. A lot of it was introduction and for them to be familiar.”
As the price of groceries continues to rise, more people are gardening. A recent study conducted by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University unveiled that one in every five Canadians has taken up the practice of growing their food at home within the past three years. Grant-Hill finds it important to grow food to combat high grocery prices.
“It’s going to be an important part of the solution for the community because it’s helping us to remember what it is that our ancestors knew and what is passed down to us,” said Grant-Hall. “We all have knowledge and this time we live in now, with inflation and the high prices, I think it’s important for us to remember what we know about food.”
Access Harvest will check in on the children throughout the weeks to see their progress and discuss challenges they may have encountered.
Access Harvest and NACCA have worked together on a variety of ventures, including a community garden and food security program.
