Market Report - OCT 9TH 2015

THANKSGIVING MESSAGE

Thanksgiving Day bears a different meaning from family to family.  For some, it’s a long weekend and a social event with family travelling to the grandparent’s house or kids coming home from university.  For others, the focus is a shopping mall spree.  But for most, it is a tradition with roots going back many, many generations, centuries actually, when we celebrated the end of the harvest. A turkey was traded over the fence for steaming apple pies, and the family dinner was a celebration solely centered around food, unlike any other holiday.  Parsley and celery left in the field and herbs from the kitchen garden went into the turkey.  Brussels sprouts, unaffected by -20c temperatures were nipped off stalks, leeks were dug out of frosty soil, and beets, carrots, cabbage, pears and parsnips were brought up from the root cellar.  Families celebrated their own hard work and that of their neighbours.Despite the massive move to urban culture, despite people having no link to our long history of Thanksgiving family celebrations and dinners, our society, coast to coast, is drawn to continue a tradition to the point that some vegetables, even if not popular, have become not just obligatory, but sacrosanct.  Well, that’s just awesome isn’t it?  We live in such a fast paced and ever-changing world – new technology, new demographics, new lifestyles, yet we know that nothing has really changed when we are selling 4 times as much celery and Brussels Sprouts and sage as a week ago.We find it remarkable that there has been a societal shift in the way people think about their food these days.  50 years ago, most people really did know where your food was coming from, but global agriculture and agri-business changed all that over the last few decades.  Yet today, the move to buy local, to want to go to farmers markets and meet the people with dirt under their fingernails, and to be messaged with signage and pictures above your racks about the farmers proves that the connection between field and table was really broken, but is now being fixed.While many people are saying grace before their weekend feast, no matter who their God is, many others are saying thanks directly to the hundreds of millions of farmers and farm-workers across the planet who grow and harvest our food, or perhaps to Mom for tending the kitchen garden for the last 6 months.  But we can’t imagine many people sitting down to a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner, around a kitchen table in Brandon, a huge dining table in Edmonton, or at a mission or shelter in Prince George, without finding someone in their heart to thank.There are many people at Discovery who have farmed, worked on a farm, grew up on a farm.  We all know that once you start producing food for people, it isn’t just for the money (or lack of money), or tapping the barometer first thing in the morning for a hint of the weather, or stopping to watch ravens playing in the wind,  it is really an expression of love.  When you are harvesting a long row of cilantro, often your imagination wanders and you imagine a group of friends eating guacamole at a party made with YOUR cilantro.  It makes you proud, and you harvest with love.  Really!So, our message is that after the rush is over and you have saved the day for those people who race in at 4:00 on Monday afternoon desperate for celery or a clamshell of poultry seasoning, we hope you are also sitting down with your boyfriend, or family, or group of friends.  And we hope that part of your celebration, as it certainly is with ours, is to give thanks that include the hundreds of farmers, and thousands of farm workers who have planted, weeded, watered, and harvested the fruit and vegetables that passed through their hands, and ours, and yours over the last year.