Tappers embrace great outdoors

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This article was published 24/03/2020 (2073 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While humanity deals with the intense blow that is the novel coronavirus, Dave Barnes reminds Brandonites that nature isn’t cancelled.

In fact, natural spaces can be the perfect antidote for anyone having a hard time adjusting to the collective’s altered reality. This past weekend saw families and friends observe outdoor social distancing with Barnes, the owner of Treesblood Farm and chairperson of the Assiniboine Food Forest, a 40-acre property owned by the City of Brandon which surrounds his on two sides.

“We are tapping maples,” Barnes said.

“We just finished tapping today. We’re ready for sap to flow. Sometime soon it will happen. I don’t believe we’ll get any today. Maybe a little bit tomorrow. I’ll start boiling maybe Thursday, maybe Friday. I’ll be busy in the sugar shack here.”

Barnes and his visitors have put out approximately 300 taps. According to the mathematics of the maple grove, he said, every tap, under ideal conditions, can yield one litre of finished syrup. That magic happens in the sugar shack, where Barnes boils the sap until the water evaporates and a sweet and heavenly syrup remains.

“It’s just pure, evaporated sap,” he said.

The results of the three-week season can be found at The Green Spot, Forbidden Flavours and online with Harvest Moon Local Food Marketplace.

“It’s artisanal work,” Barnes said. “It’s really fine syrup.”

He said he would normally expect 300 to 400 people participating in his maple syrup tours this coming weekend. That has been cancelled, in keeping with the province’s recommendations to refrain from gathering in groups.

“But it is a food forest and we maintain more than five kilometres of nature trails. We maintain them in the bush in all seasons. There are people out here all the time. We’ve seen lots of people today and yesterday,” Barnes said Monday.

“Small family groups are together out on the trails, and people stop by and say hi. That’s completely legit, as long as we all declare our intention to be safe.”

As Barnes points out, he can chat with people while maintaining that safe distance.

“We don’t have to embrace and breathe the same air, but we can still be outdoors. I think it’s OK to talk outdoors, as well,” he said. “I think people should take advantage. It’s very, very renewing, right? It’s a good thing to do. I see it as very helpful.”

Barnes describes witnessing people very happy to experience spring.

“I think they’re getting cabin fever. People are very effusive. I find myself very lucky to be living in this place in this time. Even inside the wonderful province of Manitoba, Brandon is almost like a stellar performer,” he said.

“We’re on our game here. People are looking after their own selves and their family, and then they’re finding time to get out and look out for others who may need help. I’m so inspired by what I see on Facebook. People are so, so committed to the messaging and the safety.”

The Assiniboine Food Forest, meanwhile, is a registered not for profit. Membership has risen to roughly 50, at $20 per year. Approximately 10 acres of the property is comprised of old oak groves — protected by the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation — while the remaining 30 acres is a former forest that was cut and grazed many, many years ago.

“So 30 of those 40 acres are pretty degraded, I would say, in an ecological sense. They are just open field and very full of weeds in terms of invasive weeds,” Barnes said.

“The food forest is a permaculture project. Myself and a bunch of friends, more or less, formed a board of governance in 2014, approached the city and were given access to the land so that we could regenerate habitat on that land.”

The basic idea is to create a biodiverse habitat, with perennial plants, that can feed humans and wildlife alike, without turning over the soil each season.

“The soil in a permaculture project is only disturbed once ever. If ever, only once,” Barnes said.

“It’s not an annual cropping where you expose the soil. You try and build the plants in that will produce nuts and fruits and seeds and whatever you can dream of as perennial human food.”

The habitat regeneration projects are taking place bit by bit, and Barnes and members of the food forest get first dibs on foraging, including the food crops in the one-acre orchard.

“It’s inspiring to make food locally. If this crisis is teaching us anything, me anyway, it’s to make our own food. We’ve given up the art and science of making our own food,” Barnes said.

“We need to make food locally. That’s healthy food. The land around here could be so productive, but it’s growing nothing but commodity crops and largely deteriorating the soil. Small, local and holistic, that’s the way to go.”

Check out assiniboinefoodforest.ca for information on programming and ways to participate.

 

» mletourneau@brandonsun.com

» Michele LeTourneau covers Indigenous matters for The Brandon Sun under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federally funded program that supports the creation of original civic journalism.