Scrambled or Sunny Side

"There will be no thieving until you sign the petition" - this from Lorenz as I stood in front of a beautifully displayed pile of produce in the red barn. While he's no mind reader, Lorenz got it right on: I was intent on thieving (it's not that he's that extraordinarily perceptive, you know, it's that I indulge in a bit of thieving quite frequently. What? Sometimes I thieve produce, and cook him dinner. It's a big step up from my usual pattern, which is to conveniently show up at dinnertime when the produce is already turned to a meal!)

So... since there was to be no thieving until signing, and since I had volunteered to make dinner and didn't actually have any vegetables, there was a petition to sign. I don't know about you, but I am no fan of petitions - often, people sign them to get whoever wants them to sign out of their faces. I've rarely seen a petition-pusher who could discuss the issues as well as I would have liked, and I tend to treat people with petitions much the same as I respond to people trying to give me magazines on streetcorners - a quick no thanks and scurry on. And now, Lorenz wanted a petition signed! Sheesh.

This particular petition is pretty straight-forward. It originated with Frey's hatchery (the source of the Greenfields chickens, by the way), and it asks, quite succinctly, that the Government of Ontario establishes a public enquiry into marketing boards to reconsider the rights of citizens who don't hold quota. If you were to bother to read the background materials, you probably wouldn't have much of a problem with this. I read a fair bit on the egg and broiler issue last spring, when I got fascinated with the cute baby chicks and the rules surrounding them. I'm not going to re-hash the story, you can read it for yourself on the Frey's website. Go ahead, I'll wait.

The analogy used in the documents supplied is that letting the marketing boards make the regulations that become law on the commodities which are their mandate, then use those laws to charge and have prosecuted someone who is not part of their club is like letting Ontario Hydro make a law against solar and wind power. It's not that far off: we have a monopoly on chickens and eggs beyond a very low "hobby" or "family farm" scale, and the people defining the rules of that monopoly, including the scale definition of hobby and family farm, are those controlling the monopoly - which are, by definition, large producers. I've done the math before. So... I signed the petition, and not because I just wanted it out of the way so Lorenz wouldn't bug me about it. But really, petitions don't mean enough in the grand scheme of things, writing a letter would be much more effective. The petition fact sheet even encourages you to do so...

End of public service announcment. Beginning of new staff announcement:

Greenfields has a new retail manager, to replace Tarrah. His name is Mark, and, apparently, he can cook. I'm told he's going to start developing sunchoke recipes on the side. I don't exactly have history of loving sunchokes, though I gave them a fair shot last spring and was pretty favourably impressed - but I still don't know a lot of things to do with them. So this will be good! Mark worked his first Greenfields market, the one at home in the red barn, yesterday. Today will be the big day, since he's heading to Dufferin Grove, which is much much busier than the red barn.

The red barn market is remarkably low stress, because you don't have hundreds of people. Which is, in its own way, surprising: because it's the best market of them all! Think about it: you get first pick of the produce. It is displayed in the red barn, which is at a pretty low temperature, so there is no chance of it being exposed to too much warmth and not looking beautiful anymore. You never get the response of "sold out" when you ask for something, since the market is at home and the first one of the week - so everything is available in good quantities and fresh! And you get the chance to buy farm-fresh eggs. Which, in many cases, were still in or under a chicken eight hours earlier (they do get cleaned. You don't soak eggs, because that's bad for them, but you quickly wash them. By hand. It would be fun to dump them in the root washer, but I suspect if I came up with that idea, I'd also be eating the world's biggest, messiest omelet right after that!). Best of all, if you come to the Wednesday market, you get to come here.

But no thieving! Even if you sign the petition! You have to live here to do that!

Posted by Johanna at March 10, 2005 09:45 AM