SOUND OFF: That’s a wrap, GAP — thank-you for a successful season
-
Share on Facebook
-
Share on Bluesky
-
Share on X
- Copy Link
SITTING UNDER A MARKET TENT in June with Naya Macaulay, my friend and fellow team member at the Kamloops Food Policy Council, a woman strolling up to our booth at the Yew Street Block Party told us, “If you live in Kamloops and have to buy apricots, then you clearly don’t have enough good friends.”
We laughed and resolved to put that quote on a sticker to bring to future markets, but I confess I had felt a twinge of doubt about that statement at the time. Before becoming the community engagement coordinator at the KFPC, I lived in Victoria for three years, completing my undergrad at UVic, where I grew disconnected from the landscape and ecosystems of my own hometown. I had forgotten about the apricots falling like rain onto sidewalks during the summer months, creating fetid piles of fermentation — all that good food going to waste.
I knew I was signing up for a summer surrounded by fruit trees when I took on the responsibility of running the Gleaning Abundance program (GAP), but I admit I hardly knew the first thing about them. My knowledge of homegrown produce came from the sprawling vegetable and flower gardens I grew up surrounded by at Shuswap Lake, belonging to my parents and my grandparents. Patches of garlic, onions, and carrots, flanked by towering smoke bushes and hydrangeas. I like eating fruit as much as the next person, but I still had a lot to learn.
For example, something I learned quickly was, from the early 1900s until the late ‘50s, the North Shore, Brock and Westsyde were home to massive orchards and farms, but once the land was developed, becoming vastly residential, many of those remaining orchard trees ended up in people’s backyards, which is why a large majority of our harvests take place in North Kamloops. I found it fascinating to learn this tidbit of my hometown’s history — highlighting just how necessary the GAP really is here.
