Vancouver Underground Market

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jordan B on January 27, 2011 at 5:38pm

This is a good idea! In Alberta some communities skirt the regulations around farmers' markets (food needing to be prepared in a commercial kitchen etc) by changing the name to "firemans' markets". Naming them "underground markets" could be even more appealing because it would give them some serious cachet. Perhaps we could be even more subversive by introducing a sort of "underground currency" to be used at these markets as well!

Permalink Reply by Hella Dee on January 28, 2011 at 3:41pm

Nice! I like the name fireman's markets too, love the underground currency idea!

Permalink Reply by Randy Chatterjee on January 27, 2011 at 11:32pm

Hella,

 

I floated the idea among the hardcore farmers of Main Street Village.  They are enthusiastic about the "club concept" as a means of escaping unnecessary and unsophisticated oversight.  I thought they might blog on your original post.  

 

Right now I am considering ways this site or another web-based system could help us all to coordinate our VV food production such that we could all find barter or buyer relationships for everything and exactly when it was ripest.  Alternately, canning/jarring could happen as a group effort, where preservation made sense.  

 

The best of course is the Two Block Diet model, where you just yell over to your neighbour that you have extra Kale and need a few eggs.  Maybe someday we'll get there, but meanwhile the density of real urban farmers is too low for that sort of thing.  

 

I'd love your thoughts on what VV might do to make Underground Markets, or some kind of high- or low-tech clearing house, work well for everyone.

 

Randy

Permalink Reply by Hella Dee on January 28, 2011 at 3:46pm

Wow two block diet sounds ideal, but I have to confess I would miss my spices, especially turmeric! But the barter / underground currency, preservation is exciting. I love lactic-acid fermenting and just recently made olives this way, they are fantastic (not so local though, I believe the olives came from California)

Permalink Reply by Hella Dee on January 28, 2011 at 3:43pm

I am getting good response on this and it seems Vancouver is ready for this proposition, although it might be easiest for us to start such a thing in the summer time when it isn't so rainy...

 

We should maybe start thinking about arranging a brainstorming meeting at a coffee shop sometime and see where we go from there.

Permalink Reply by Janine Brossard on March 7, 2011 at 8:48pm

I just joined VV and would be very interested in this.  I'm trying to be a zero waste kitchen and moving towards a preserving/canning economy using reusable mason jars seems to be one of the ways of achieving this.  I'm also just discovering the importance of preserving our local farmland and reducing the carbon footprint of my food.  Please keep me in mind if you have any meetings to brainstorm.  Organic or 'not sprayed' is my preferred food. 

Permalink Reply by Hella Dee on March 8, 2011 at 2:42pm

Hey thanks so much for your interest. I am really excited about this as well. We are going to meet in another lady's home next week for the first meeting but we have had to cap the number of people coming to this first meeting. I feel really bad--we'd love to have your ideas too, so please stay tuned for our next meeting--we will figure out where and how to do it so that more folks can get involved. Your zero waste kitchen sounds like a really brilliant concept and a very helpful thing to be working towards. Do you use a worm bin or anything like that for composting?