Lunch on Galiano Island
JULY 2, 2007 - It's an irony, of course, that we're not home much anymore. But our last stop - for a few weeks at least - was at least within our 100-mile circle: Galiano Island, a long finger of rock in what is increasingly known as the Salish Sea, a Pacific basin between Vancouver Island and the mainland of North America.
We were guests of the Galiano Conservancy Association, one of British Columbia's most venerable local environmental organizations - a group that helped to pioneer the sense that every landscape, however small, has remarkable characteristics that deserve to be celebrated and conserved. In doing so, the conservancy has helped to create a local culture that has resisted the ugly and unnatural division of the human and the wild. For this, they've earned more than their share of detractors, including some who - with absolutely ludicrous overstatement - brand them "the green Taliban."
Well, we arrived on Galiano with a few hours before our talk, so we had a chance to meet conservancy legend Ken Millard and scan the association office for terrorist paraphernalia. We found nothing but an incredible public library of books to help people understand and truly dwell in the landscape they live in. Then we moved on to Greenfrog Farm to meet another association veteran, farmer and grandmother ("I'm in that phase of life where I'm addicted to grandkids") Rose Longini. No weapons of mass destruction there, either - though we did have a lovely 100-mile lunch.
"It's a wild garden," said Rose as she took us out to see where some of our lunch ingredients came from. Her plants grow straight up among the wild grasses and other "weeds" that fill the clearing in front of her home; it's a system that works with her energy levels (she works in the garden about two hours a day - not enough to keep the land clear) and, she says, gives pests enough other options that she doesn't lose much of her crop.
Rose's land is one of the older farms in B.C., settled by a colonist named Charles Groth and his Salish wife Betty. The "new" orchard (cherries and apples) is 80 years old, while Groth's original fruit trees (apples and pears) date from 1886. In her 17 years at Greenfrog, Rose has made her own contributions: a hazelnut grove and 19 walnut trees planted in memory of her brother. I find myself plunging my head into the walnut boughs - the leaves' odour has an almost hormonal appeal, with whispers of green apple and wintergreen. "Don't they just smell so sexy?" said Rose, breaking off a leaf and, like me, holding it to her nose like a faraway lover's shirt.
Our lunch, then, was a taste of the Salish Sea islands with summer just coming on - the flavours of both new and past harvests. In the center of the table, mixed beans from the famous Salt Spring Island seed saver Dan Jason, along with Galiano squash and barley. On the side, new beets and rapini; goat cheese and kamut bread; red lettuce dressed with chevre, walnuts, and apple-cider vinegar; and sprigs of mint in spring water. Even the mat the plates were served on was made of woven cedar from the island.
Rose opened the meal with a Hebrew blessing which was nothing more than a thanks for good food from the earth. We could have sat there all afternoon, topping up our bellies on good food, but Ken would be waiting for us at 2 p.m., and Rose hustled us out of our chairs - there was work to do, a meeting to attend, and a future world to consider for the grandchildren.-JBM
