Van’t Foort Memorial Golf to tee off

Food Lovers’ Field Days at Upper Canada Village is Eastern Ontario’s newest culinary event.

Set for August 17 and 18 at Upper Canada Village, the new event is reminiscent of food lovers weekend events from the past, but it is much expanded.

In the past Upper Canada Village has offered a Food Lovers Weekend that mostly consisted of garden tours, with some sampling of period foods. 

“This year, food lovers will have a field day,” said Jancis Sommerville, a key organizer of the revamped and much-expanded event.

The fair ground, inside Upper Canada Village, will be set with over 30 food vendors offering their products for sample and for sale. Sweets, health foods, fresh produce, comfort foods, wine, beer, and even international cuisine will have a place, set against the backdrop of Upper Canada Village.

Foodie fun will be found throughout the fairgrounds and run over into Village establishments like Cooks Tavern, which will be offering up heritage drinks. 

A 19th century beehive oven will be used by a present day chef to cook up pizzas made specially for the occasion. Heritage Wheel Pizzas will make use of Village flour, cheese and heirloom vegetables. 

Smoking technique demonstrations, of present and past can be seen, along with the regular heritage cheese-making and bakery demonstrations. 

Special cooking demonstrations will take place on the fair grounds some featuring South Dundas resident and Raw Gourmet Food Chef Dwight Saunders.

Some of the latest trends in food are very reminiscent of the 19th century, such as the 100 mile diet, clean eating of whole, unrefined foods, and the return to the concept of the family meal. 

“So many trends are looking back to tradition, so that makes this event really relevant,” said Susan Le Clair of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.   

Sommerville explained that, through organizing the event she did a tremendous amount of research and learned so much not only about the food, but about what is offered throughout the whole Eastern Ontario, Western Quebec region.

“A lot of people will be surprised to see what there is to offer and all that is available locally and throughout the region,” said Sommerville. “I’ve lived in this area my whole life and I couldn’t believe that we had so much, right in our own backyard.”

Access to the farmer’s market in the fairgrounds, souvenir Bellamy’s Grist Mill bags (one per party), presentations and activities are all included with admission to Upper Canada Village.

[…]

Homestead Organics of Berwick is moving to Morrisburg. 

Homestead Organics took over ownership of the former Chinook building along Allison Avenue in Morrisburg, Friday, December 6.

The new site for the Berwick organic processing operation, is the focus of a $2.4 million project that will eventually see all of Homestead’s operations moved from the former feed mill site in Berwick to this Morrisburg location.

The 27,000 square foot building, is more than triple the size of the Berwick operation, which has only 8,000 square feet of space, including trailers and a tent.

“It’s unfortunate we couldn’t stay in Berwick,” said president Tom Manley who did point out that the company will be staying in SDG and that all of the company’s 14 employees will eventually make the move with them to the Morrisburg site.

The two part move will be phased in over time.

This week, Homestead already started to make use of the building’s warehousing space.

 The bulk of the first phase will involve moving the soybean cleaning operations of the business. 

The cost of moving that part of the business is about $900,000 including the purchase of the building and the necessary site upgrades. 

The cost of phase one is being covered by about 30 private investors.

By March, that part of the project should be operating from the Morrisburg site, with about two employees.

Manley says that Homestead will be a two site operation, over the next couple of years, but eventually they plan to move all of their 12 staff, processing and administration to Morrisburg, and maybe even add a retail area.

Manley is extremely pleased with this new location, which offers ample warehousing  and processing space for Homestead, but also has enough extra room to offer leasing to other small organic processors. Manley has a vision of the site becoming “organics central”. 

“Morrisburg could be a hub of organic food activity in the near future,” he said.

For three years, Manley has been in search of an appropriate new location for Homestead Organics, which is growing incrementally, year after year. 

Just 16 years ago, Homestead was processing about 500 tonnes annually, and now, in their 25th year, they annually process over 7,000 tonnes of organic whole grains. 

“Organic is becoming very mainstream, just walk down the aisles of your grocery store and you will see it,” said Manley, estimating that the organics sector is growing at a rate of 10-15 per cent annually.

During the search for an appropriate facility to house their growing business, Manley looked at a number of options including large facilities in Chesterville, Long Sault, and two buildings in Morrisburg before purchasing this Allison Avenue facility. 

“We had a number of false starts over the years,” said Manley, adding that capital is often difficult for a business to access.  

Homestead Organics was founded by Tom Manley’s father Murray. Tom, the current president, returned to the family business 16 years ago. Three years ago, Tom’s son Yannik, joined them. 

All three were at the press conference hosted at the new facility last week. Joining them were project supporters, local dignitaries and media.

“We are very pleased that you found the right fit for your business here in Morrisburg and we are happy to have a new business in our municipality,” said Chuck Barkley, president of the South Dundas Chamber of Commerce.

“I will be glad to see this facility up and running,” said South Dundas mayor Steven Byvelds, adding that this new venture for this community fits nicely with the community’s backbone, which is its agricultural base. 

[…]

“We were excited about our ‘Southern Service’ in Williamsburg the first of April,” reported Pastor Bruce North of Harmony Community Church in Winchester.

He was referring to his church’s spring ‘satellite’ services at the Timothy Christian School in Williamsburg, an effort to bring ‘Harmony’ closer to his congregants from South Dundas as well as to those others who might be interested in experiencing Sunday worship with Harmony Community Church.

In an April 17th email to The Leader, North reported that “we had 45 people in Williamsburg and 80 at our home site. We accomplished what we set out to do in this and thus justifying continuing with the project.”

Going forward, North has two more confirmed spring “Southern Services” planned for Timothy Christian School. “The facilities at Timothy Christian School are well suited for our needs. It was a good introduction for many of our people to the ministry of Christian education,” said North.

The next two services in Williamsburg will take place beginning at 10:30 a.m. on the first Sunday in May and on the first Sunday in June. 

According to North, “we look forward to our May ‘split service,’ split meaning split between North and South services. Next time we will have the musical talent of Bonnie Wallace as our worship leader and special music.”

“In our June service we will have the music talent of the Gallagher Family singers,” added North.

In invitation, he offered the following: “We look forward to our next services and hope that some folk who are not actively part of a church in the community will feel comfortable enough to come and ‘check us out’.”

[…]