The ‘Winter Market’ edition of Ottawa Farmers’ Market brings fresh, local food to Ottawans long after harvest season has ended
Erin Perry, Operations Manager of Ottawa Farmers’ Market
Taking place every Sunday inside the Aberdeen Pavillion at Landsdowne Park in Ottawa, the ‘Winter Market’ offers producers from the National Capital Region the opportunity to sell their harvest during the frozen heart of winter.
On-site are dozens of vendors selling everything from grassfed beef to made-in-house falafel to local honey producers, and fresh sourdough bread. Not to mention the local greenbelt producers such as Field Trip Farm selling their hearty root vegetables harvested late in November.
While it may seem like an eclectic mix of products on offer, the defining feature is that everything has been produced within a 100km radius of Ottawa, says Erin Perry, operations manager of Ottawa Farmers’ Market
She believes that cultivating a strong local food and agriculture market is important to the regions’ economy.
“One of the most critical things for local economies is that money is actually staying in the economy,” she said.
“Everybody you see here. They shop in Ottawa. They’re Ottawa residents. That means that the thousands of dollars that are spent here every day, stays here. It doesn’t go to the Loblaws headquarters in Toronto, or anything like that. It doesn’t go abroad. It stays right here and it goes right back into the businesses.”
Erin Perry in the Ottawa Farmers’ Market
Caitlin Stevens Heath, one of the three owners of Field Trip Farm, says that they’ve diversified their sales methods to reach as many customers as possible. Besides farmers markets, they also do home deliveries and have piloted an online farmers market during the pandemic years to get around the closure of public spaces, an idea which has stuck and is still used to sell product.
Heath also believes that Field Trip provides an important role in Ottawa’s food security.
“It’s important to have availability of high quality, nutritious food that’s been produced close to home, so it hasn’t lost all of its nutrients by the time you get it,” Heath said.
“It keeps in people’s fridges because it’s harvested only a few days before they get it. I mean, obviously not, at this time of year, when everything’s coming out of cold storage. But yeah, just the ability for people to get food as it should taste, and as healthy as it should be.”
Caitlin Stevens Heath of Field Trip Harm and her husband at their market stall
“Even a donation of fresh apples is so important in providing, say, fibre, which is often one of the things that food banks struggle to provide because most processed food is fairly devoid of insoluble fiber which helps you feel full and move things through your digestive system.”
Mathew Mason Philips of Heart City Farm says that they started as a hyper-local vegetable operation transforming urban yards into gardens.
“We went around Ottawa’s Urban West End and tore out people’s yards and tore up their lawns and put in organic vegetable Gardens,” said Philips.
“We would take that produce to market and in exchange, we would just leave vegetables for the homeowner. The goal was to graduate from that to something more recognizable as a farm.”
Mathew Mason Philips of Heart City Farm
Philips and his partners now farm a five-acres of land on the edge of the city selling their produce directly into Ottawa.
They’re now fully incorporated employ and employ a few people seasonally.
Philips says that as a local small-scale producer, they play a role in building resilience into the social fabric of the community.
He says he and his partners aren’t concerned with scaling up anymore and want to focus and nurturing their land and bringing more producers into the fold.
“It’s more about refining systems and leaning into the sustainability of it. Trying to make sure that we put back into the land as much as we take out of it.”