Culinary Tour of Stratford

Yesterday the Stratford Tourism Alliance hosted a group of web writers who are interested in food (an excursion arranged through the omnipresent Suresh Doss of Spotlight Toronto) in a day spent exploring the considerable culinary attractions of Stratford and the surrounding rural area. It was a full, exhilarating, exhausting, delightful day for us, and for me in particular it offered a lot of food for thought. I've just finished reading Margaret Webb's Apples to Oysters and am well into Lorraine Johnsons's City Farmer, so ideas about the possibilities and challenges of local and sustainable food production are really on my mind. Here are some things that stood out for me.

We had a chance to tour the vegetable farm of Antony John, AKA The Manic Organic (pictured). The proprietor of the cheekily named Soiled Reputation spoke passionately about the continuity of life and land, from fungi in the soil to bird life, crops, "weeds", pets, farm animals and human staff. "If this was a wine region, this would be Bordeaux," he said proudly. "The myth that there's not enough land to feed everyone organically is a big fat lie." That's one of his lively chickens pictured above.

At Fred de Martines' Perth Pork Products, we saw how a small operation can raise pastured animals in a mixed landscape of fields and treed areas, growing non-GMO crops to feed them, breeding without artificial insemination and using the lake of resulting pig manure to fertilize crops. You can see from his operation how smaller-scale production is easier on the land than a huge pig factory would be.

However, de Martines and his sons can only do all this because they specialize in wild boar (pictured at left), as well as Berkshire and Tamworth pigs, which are considered premium meat that costs quite a bit more at the butcher. Chefs love it, and I must say that Berkshire pork fat is unlike any other animal fat I know for its silky and appealing texture. However, Perth Pork Products depends for its survival on clientele who are able and willing to spend more for this lovingly raised meat. "The only reasons we're still on the farm is because of the Berks and the Tams," de Martines says. "Otherwise, we'd have sold the farm."

Perth County and the Stratford area offer numerous ways for people to find out about local food.

• The Perth County Welcome Centre and Artisan Marketplace (2146 Line 34 at Highway 7 & 8) has lots of information to help plan spontaneous, self-guided, culinary explorations.
• Until the end of June, 15 Stratford restaurants are offering three-course prix-fixe dinners (lunch for $15 to $30 and dinner for $30 to $45) in a program called Spring Delicious.
• For the first time this year, the annual culinary celebration known as Savour Stratford (September 18 to 26) will merge with the Stratford Garlic Festival (September 18) to create a full week of food-related special events in the area.
• There's also a series of six culinary packages that include cheesmaking at Monforte Dairy (where you'd see the pictured sheep sculpture), candymaking at Chocolate Barr's Candies, cooking at Stratford Chef School, foraging at Soiled Reputation, tea tasting at Tea Leaves Tea Tasting Bar or gluten-free baking at Humble Roots Bakery. I had a chance to try the foraging, the candymaking andf the tea tasting, so I can confidently declare that they're all a good combination of fun and information.

At the end of City Farmer, Lorraine Johnson proposes ten "adventures in possibility", or ways of involving yourself more in the process of your own food production. "Shake hands with a farmer," she suggests. "Talk with them about why they farm and what they grow and how they manage. Ask them how you can support what they do. (Hint: buy their food)". Toronto residents, unlike many urbanites, have lots of opportunity to do this, and a visit to Stratford is one of them. So if you visit the Stratford area, bring a cooler to bring food home. And if you don't have one, you can get one at the Best Little Pork Shoppe.