From Consumer to Producer: A Metamorphosis

All change is difficult but changing our spending and eating habits can sometimes feel impossible. It’s not easy to transform from a fortunate consumer who has a world of choice at the grocery store, to a city dweller who grows their own food and eats with the seasons. But it can be done, and it doesn’t have to be done alone. Growing your own food at home, school and even the workplace is becoming a game-changing movement and urban farmers and home gardeners can lead the way.

Climate Change Sparks Personal Change

Many of you know that Marc and I started BUFCO because of a seismic shift in our values sparked by our growing awareness of climate change and our need to find a meaningful solution. Operating this company is not what we have always done, we started in the film business. BUFCO is our mid-life crisis.

Marc started as a sound recordist and boom operator and transitioned to a location scout and manager in TV commercials. I started in the camera department and worked my way through film and TV production to become a television writer and director. Like many transformations, our career shift out of moving pictures and into BUFCO wasn’t easy, but there were many joys along the way, one of which was a newfound obsession with collecting swallowtail butterfly caterpillars and raising them in a flight cage in our kitchen.

Metamorphosis

The life cycle of an Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly is fascinating and something that can be easily observed in vegetable gardens in southern Ontario. That’s because their host plants, carrot, parsley, dill and fennel are prolific self-seeders and grow in abundance. 

It all starts with a beautiful butterfly laying hundreds of eggs, at a rate of 30-50 per day.

The eggs develop into caterpillars that go through 5 instar, or larval stages.

The first instar is spiny and mostly black. The 2nd and 3rd instars are an orange/red colour.

Older larvae (4th and 5th instars) are green and black bands with yellow spots.

They are voracious eaters and can completely decimate it’s host plant.

Fun Fact: A full-grown caterpillar has an orange, horn-like gland on its head called an osmeterium. It releases a sickly-sweet smell from this gland when the caterpillar senses danger. 

Somehow, the full-grown larvae knows when it’s time to form a unique chrysalis and slings a silky thread around its midsection to hold it in place, like an arborist slung to a tree. In this phase they are essentially digesting themselves from the inside out. The same juices it used to digest food as a larvae it now uses to break down its own body!  At this point they are neither caterpillar or nor butterfly. 

Between ten and twenty days later, metamorphosis is complete and the butterfly ecloses, or emerges. Once its wings are dry, it flies off into the great unknown, led by instinct, in search of sweet nutrition in the form of nectar. As you can well imagine, transformation is difficult for swallowtails. They face predators, weather extremes, food insecurity, everything nature has to throw at them. But if successful, they will find the right location to host the next generation.

From Filming to Farming

Without really realizing it, Marc and I were undertaking a similar process. We, like the transforming swallowtail, were shedding our old skin, feeling our way through the dark, not sure where we were headed, or where we would end up. By following our instincts, we went from filming to farming.

We literally got into the weeds learning how to turn a fantasy job of inspiring urbanites to grow their own food, into a business that could make money enough to sustain our little family while also sustaining employees and their families. 

There was so much to learn and we started from the ground up. Thankfully I discovered Gaia College an amazing institution in British Columbia that provides asynchronous courses like Organic Master Gardener Program, Ecological Landscape Design, Organic Horticulture Specialist, Rainwater Harvesting and Management and so much more, all taught from a wholistic, organic, regenerative perspective. It took me five winter breaks to earn my Organic Landcare Diploma. Two of our staff have also earned their diplomas and many of our other team members have taken at least one Gaia College course. I cannot recommend this institution more highly. 

Learn by Doing

Having an urban farm business meant we were able to apply and practice everything we were learning. We explored the fascinating and complex world of the soil food web. We hot composted, vermicomposted, boskashi composted. We raised chickens and ate lots and lots of eggs. We volunteered at our local community garden and exchanged knowledge with fellow gardeners who had a wealth of experience gardening in their home countries. They introduced us to their culturally specific crops like callaloo, bitter melon and Malabar spinach. 

We became professional greenhouse-hoppers, always in search of a place to grow our seedlings. Urban Farming starts with plants, and plants need a greenhouse, which is difficult to find affordably in the city. We started growing seedlings in our basement, but as the business grew so did our need for more space. So we then bartered with our neighbour who provided the space to set up our first hoophouse. In exchange, we installed and tended three raised garden beds for her. We did the gardening, and divided the ample bounty equally between our two families. This arrangement worked well for several years, but still, we dreamt of moving away from home and having greenhouse of our own. 

We learned how to grow well into winter by extending the season using cold frames and hoop tunnels (which we now sell as DIY Kits). We learned all about seed saving and how to cure garlic; how to preserve, dehydrate, pickle, can, store and share our harvest with our neighbours, all of whom were incredibly supportive of our venture. We really couldn’t have gotten off the ground without their involvement. And now many of them now have vegetable gardens of their own. 

At that point, like the chrysalis, we were neither caterpillar nor butterfly, kind of digesting ourselves and our life savings from the inside out, building an idea that wasn’t fully formed.

Our relationship to and with nature was changing and with it a recognition of our great privilege. We faced the truth of the history of the land on which we were growing, and grew our recognition of the important work that needs to be done to reconcile with Indigenous Communities. I am personally grateful for their incredible generosity in sharing with us their ways of caring for the earth and each other, and for reminding us how plants and nature have so much to teach us.

Urban Ag is a Thing

Our metamorphosis was not happening in a vacuum. The City of Toronto was undergoing similar changes, as were many cities around the world. Food growers, food producers, policy makers, schools and universities, not for profits, social enterprises were and still are dedicated to changing the way we think, talk, and go about feeding people in cities, all while keeping equity, accessibility and food sovereignty as major priorities. 

Laying Down Roots

Growing food is not a lifestyle for everyone. That’s why we’re in business! Now, sixteen years after we started, we emerge, mostly fully formed having laid down roots with our landscape yard in a parking lot in south Etobicoke.  

We built a 60’ hoop house where we grow thousands of seedlings for our service clients and DIY customers who shop online and pick up orders at the yard. We harvest rainwater and continue to compost and built an outdoor showroom so people can come and see our various styles of raised garden beds in action. These are our staff gardens, a kind of perk for our team who can plant what they want and harvest at will. And there is always a share for communities in need. 

This has truly become a way of life – growing, harvesting, sharing, eating with our friends, coworkers, family, and neighbours. As tough as it was and continues to be, we are working together, through forces of nature, predators, food insecurity and extreme weather. 

Despite it all, we emerge, consuming a little less, producing a little more – maybe with battered wings and crooked antennae – but we are flying!