Vegan MoFo – Upping my Tillers Rep in Real Life – Fresh City Farms

This weekend JC and I got our hands dirty at the Fresh City Farms plots at Downsview Park. It takes around an hour to get out there by bus from our house, but it was genuinely rewarding (and not just in the quantity of beets we brought home with us afterwards.)

I picked eggplant, hot peppers, and shelled beans. It’s really quite meditative. I filled this basket up quite a bit after picking through a row.

I’ve waxed romantic about plants and plots and seeds and the immensely powerful feeling of growing your own vegetables before, but this was great too. While I wasn’t there for the beginning or the seeding, there is still something amazing about standing over a field filled with edible plants and roots. The smell, the way the soil feels, if you haven’t done it yet, check out your local community garden, offer to help out, book a plot for next season, get growing!

The aforementioned beets are currently sitting on my counter.

I’m trying to decide where to put them, in a soup (either my family’s traditional recipe or something like this Sweet Beet Soup from NutriDude), or in beet burgers as a friend suggested. Both would be great, and would also give me a reason to use the new food processor JC bought. I missed the Beet VeganMoFo IronChef, but this post on the VeganMoFo Blog links to a lot of other great uses for beets.

And now for something completely different….

What.. Who… are the Tillers? It’s back again to my favourite game – World of Warcraft. The Tillers are a farming community in the Valley of the Four Winds. One of the aspects of the game is that you “Farm.” So… here is mine: