As part of the Creston Valley Home and Garden Show on April 12 and 13, the Creston Valley Food Action Coalition has organized a speaker series that will run both days.
“One of the mandates of the food action coalition is education and community outreach, particularly around food and growing issues,” said Nadine Ben-Rabha, the FAC member who organized the lineup. “That’s the part I’m most passionate about.”
The 10- or 20-minute presentations will be held in the Creston Curling Centre, where the Creston Valley Quilters Guild will also be presenting its 30th anniversary show. All of them are food and growing related, with the exception of a segment by the curling centre on Saturday afternoon, which will be followed by Footlighters Theatre Society presenting songs from the musical Annie, which plays its final performance that night at Prince Charles Theatre.
Cassandra Viers will start the series on Friday at 3 p.m. by talking about seed saving, and repeat her presentation on Saturday. Food action coalition president Len Parkin will follow, speaking about food security, and answering questions from the audience. At 5, Creston Valley Farmers’ Market manager Martha Boland will explain the benefits of the markets for both vendors and customers. Ben-Rabha, whose family runs Kootenay Meadows Farm (formerly Kootenay Alpine Cheese) in Lister, will discuss cheese making and on-farm milk bottling at 6, followed at 7 by Roy Lawrence speaking about the community supported agriculture grain project.
On Saturday, the lineup begins at 11 a.m. with Tamara Movold discussing Red Circle Catering, a new vegan catering company. Carolne Martin will follow at noon with a presentation about the Cherrybrook Farms family tree membership program, and Jen Comer of King Creek Farm will make a presentation on beekeeping at 1 p.m. The curling centre and Footlighters will be onstage between 2 and 3, when Cassandra Viers will repeat her discussion on seed saving.
Ben-Rabha is most looking forward to the Friday night presentation by College of the Rockies greenhouse co-ordinator Nigel Francis about the Dan McMurray Community Seed Bank, a collection of heirloom tomato seeds named for its creator and donor.
“He had an absolutely unparalleled tomato collection — thousands of varieties of heritage tomatoes,” said Ben-Rabha. “Several of them are endangered, and quite a number are considered extremely rare, so they’re trying to generate interest and awareness, because you need people to grow them.”