Often Mandy is asked to lead a conversation about her farm and experience in food system building in Alberta. Food is a big topic, can be overwhelming and a bit confusing. Our conversations are about meaningful and create a bit of a vision on how incorporate small steps to building a strong relationship with your food! Mandy focuses on engaging conversations that are participatory and help plant seeds of hope! Together we have some laughs( Mandy will try not swear) Non judgmental, honest and hopeful !
Mandy conversation is adapted based on audience. Class room conversation is very participatory here is a bit of an idea of how some conversations go!
Class Room Focus!
- Decision to Start Farming: What factors influence the decision to start farming, particularly in organic agriculture?
- Decision to Stay: What challenges do Meadow Creek farmS face within the dominant corporate agriculture model, and how do they navigate these difficulties?
- Holding on: What support systems or organizations, such as the NFU, help farmers sustain their livelihoods and resist industry pressures?
Often, we break this into a three part visit, with each discussion leaving with some homework
- List your favorite food
- Design your fridge,
-Design your Menu
-Map your Menu
-List your grocery stores
-List your farmers
-Design your community food system!
- If you could would you be a farmer?
Group Discussions, community focus, this can be a group of individuals or organization focus!
- How to get closer to your food neighbor helping neighbor! This is a dive into meal planning and how to support collective cooking with raw ingredients and less processed food!
- Canning, Freezing , Preserving, why this matters!
- Myths about local food being a higher price and food budget discussion!
- Difference between food security and food sovereignty! Step by step discussion from start to finish about how food goes from farm to your house! Corporate concentration and political action
- Access, how to improve access ,Community Supported Agriculture and Markets, challenges and success!
- Commitment why it matters to the farmer and to consumer
- Bio Diversity in production and why it matters!
- Hope for the future, what we can do now together to ensure that there are diverse small farms in the future!
There are Three options of how we can have a Kitchen Table Conversation!
1. If the schedule works Mandy can come to your group or classroom( This needs to be booked early so that Mandy can arrange Farm Cover)
2. Your group can come to Mandy Farm for a visit and possible lunch ( pre arranged) This is usually the most fun can go from 6 -20 people.
3. Online, if a face to face isn't possible zoom works!
Mandy is pretty uncensored so view discretion might be applied ( Language issues Mandy tries really hard not to swear, but it happens some times!