Fort Albany continues building healthy food network and garden

Fort Albany’s food initiatives continue to grow in popularity among the James Bay community members.
“It’s expanding all the time — we’ve been at it for a number of years now,” said Joan Metatawabin, Fort Albany’s nutrition coordinator. “We run different programs, the main one is the Farmer’s Market that we run every two weeks. And we also have our gardening program.”
Fruit and vegetables are brought in every two-to-three weeks to sell to community members at the Farmer’s Market. The food is first trucked to Cochrane from southern Ontario, then shipped by train to Moosonee and finally flown into Fort Albany.
“People just come in and do their regular shopping, whatever they want to buy,” Metatawabin said. “It’s always expanding with different kinds of vegetables and in-season (fruit), whatever we can get. We try to buy local, for southern Ontario, foods as much as possible.”
While potatoes, carrots and onions are usually on sale at the Farmer’s Market, community members have also been purchasing a variety of different vegetables as well.
“They like the butternut squashes and peppers — peppers are the favourite, red and green,” Metatawabin said. “And we bring in other things that maybe people have never tried, such as kale.”
Whenever any new vegetables are brought in, a sample meal is usually prepared for people to sample and recipes are handed out.
“People are asking for (the Farmer’s Market) more and more,” Metatawabin said. “I think we could do it almost once a week. We’ll probably start to think about doing a small one one week and a large one the next week.”
Metatawabin said the readily available fresh fruits and vegetables have been good for youth in the community.
“We’ve had a breakfast program going in our community for at least 20 years,” Metatawabin said. “Now they have access to more healthy foods in their home because of the market, so it certainly affects their attendance and teachers say their attentiveness and behavior, everything, improves when they have good food. It gives them the nutrients that they need to help their body, not only grow but feel good too.”
The community also has a gardening program that includes a greenhouse attached to the community school, which the students usually begin planting in the spring, as well as gardens in community member’s yards.
“We can grow pretty much anything; my own garden always has onions, lettuce, beans and even some broccoli and cucumbers,” Metatawabin said. “Our season is pretty warm, pretty long and we have great soil up here too.”