Small Scale Farms

THIS IS DEB NANSON. This exact photo was taken on my birthday, (which is the day after hers) 2018. Together we handed out some of Small Scale’s prepared meals at Start Me Up Niagara.

Deb was one of the original advocates in Niagara who taught me something that changed the way I look at people. She taught me that people deserve second chances. But more importantly, she taught me that if I really believe that, sometimes I have to be the person willing to give one.

That sounds so simple right - until you actually live it.

This isn’t metaphorical for me. It isn’t a nice story about helping people. It is learning that an ordinary human being can look at the tools, resources and opportunities they have access to and decide to use some of them to make somebody else’s life better.

And something happens when you do that. You become better too.

You go to bed differently at night when you know you did something useful with the day you were given. When you know you showed up for another person. When you know you were a decent steward of whatever happened to be in your hands.

Deb taught me a lot about that.

I think about her a lot. She has since passed away, but she’s on my mind as we watch what’s happening with addiction in our community.

Because somewhere along the way we have taken a deeply human problem and turned it into a conversation about how inconvenient addicted people have become for the rest of us.

What are we going to do with them? Where are they going to go? How do we get them off our streets? How do we stop having to look at this?

But those are very different questions than: how did we get here?

Go far enough down the rabbit hole and you start coming across fentanyl and xylazine.

Fentanyl did not begin as a street drug. It was developed as a powerful pharmaceutical opioid and is still legitimately used in medicine. What is flooding the illicit drug supply today is largely illegally manufactured fentanyl. Xylazine, often called “tranq,” is a veterinary sedative that was developed for legitimate animal use and is now being mixed into street drugs.

That distinction matters because I don’t think we can tell the story of today’s addiction crisis as though it simply began with a person making terrible decisions on a sidewalk.

There is a much longer story here.

The prescription opioid crisis involved manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies, prescribers, regulators and, eventually, an enormous illicit market. Pharmaceutical companies and others in that supply chain have faced criminal cases, civil cases and billions of dollars in settlements over their roles in the opioid epidemic.

And yet when we talk about accountability at the street level, somehow almost all of the moral weight lands on the sickest person in the chain.

The person bent over on the sidewalk. The person living in a tent. The person stealing. The person whose family doesn’t recognize them anymore.

I’m not saying people have no responsibility for their actions. Of course they do. I’m saying responsibility doesn’t suddenly begin at the bottom.

If we actually want accountability, then we should be willing to follow the entire chain.

Who developed these drugs? Who marketed addictive opioids? Who prescribed them irresponsibly? Who distributed them despite warning signs? Who’s actually failing to intervene? Who is manufacturing the supply now? Who is profiting? And what conditions keep feeding people into addiction faster than communities can pull them back out?

Those are harder questions.

But maybe that’s the real debate.

Not simply what we are going to do about “all these drug addicts.”

What are we going to do about the system that keeps producing them?

And once a broken human being is standing in front of us, what are we going to do with the part that belongs to us?

Deb helped me with my answer to that one a long time ago.

Sometimes you simply give somebody another chance. But you also go after the system that’s producing the problem in the first place…

You can keep complaining about the system, or you can help build something better. Your choice ♥️

MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S COMING

I’m starting to think a little bit of knowledge is more dangerous than none at all. Those are the people who are usually the loudest ones in the comments too… the ones we all see - as though there’s nothing else they have to do?

For a long time, I thought I had a duty to defend myself and/or explain what I was seeing. To educate people about food security, poverty, government funding, nonprofits, policy, and the systems being built around all of it.

After all, I’ve had a strange front-row seat to a lot of this. I’ve lived poverty. I’ve been a single mom trying to figure out how to feed a family. I started a nonprofit in food security. I learned how the grant system works. I watched how nonprofits operate, where the money goes, what gets funded, what doesn’t, and how decisions made far away eventually show up on the ground in people’s lives.

Plus I grow food. I buy and sell food. I deliver food.

So for years, I thought my job was to make people understand.

But guess what. I don’t anymore. If you don’t already know, and aren’t taking strides to help yourself through this coming winter - I actually don’t even know what to say any more.

Of course I’ll still share what I know. But there are already so many other, incredible people in our community who need to be heard. Farmers. Families. Community organizations. People working on the ground who understand exactly where the cracks are because they live inside them every day.

Those are the people I want to help be heard. Because now that I truly understand that attention itself is controlled by algorithms, platforms and systems that decide what gets seen and what disappears, i think it’s time to start playing a very different game.

I’m done trying to win every argument. Instead, I’ll build a place where the people who know what’s coming can finally be heard. Stay tuned…

A trucker strike? Wait what? That would be catastrophic. Interestingly enough, as a small business, we're still able to rock FREE DELIVERY... Check out this week's sale - and some thoughts on the strike talk, all here: https://nhr.soundestlink.com/ce/v/0/6ab067795d1a710686cec1b6

WE NEED TO DO BETTER.

A couple of years ago, multiple trucks dropped off more peppers than most people would know what to do with.

Bad peppers? Nope, just peppers that didn't sell. Mounds of them.

And standing there looking at all that food, I remember thinking the same thing I think far too often now:

How did we become this bad at what seems like EVERYTHING these days...

We grow too much, ship too far, reject food because it is the wrong size, lose buyers, miss timing, miscommunicate, overcomplicate everything, and then somehow act surprised when perfectly good food becomes waste.

And this is not just about the peppers.

It is the same frustration I feel everywhere right now.

Too many systems are being run by people who seem completely disconnected from the actual outcome. Too many decisions are made by people who never have to deal with the mess they create. Too many obvious problems stay obvious because everyone is busy passing responsibility to the next person.

Meanwhile, farmers are working. Truckers are moving food. Small businesses are trying to keep up. Families are paying more. And food is still being wasted.

At some point, “that’s just how the system works” stops being an explanation.

It becomes an excuse.

We do not need another committee, or non profit for that matter, to tell us wasted food is a problem. We do not need another study to tell us local food matters. We do not need more complicated language around things that are actually very simple.

If food is edible, the expectation should be that we find a way to move it.

If there is too much, create another market for it.

If it cannot be sold fresh, preserve it.

If the current system keeps failing, build a better one.

That is the part that frustrates me most.

A lot of what needs fixing is not complicated. It just requires people to pay attention, take responsibility, and actually solve the problem in front of them.

That seems to be in very short supply lately.

So yes, this picture is about wasted peppers.

But it is also about something bigger.

It is about how much nonsense we have learned to tolerate.

And at some point, we need to stop tolerating it.

Sweet, juicy, full of flavour, and yes, you have to spit a few seeds out. Entirely worth it. Who else would rather seeded over seedless?

Are you guys sick of politics yet? 😂 We’re over here campaigning for more local fruits and veggies. Who’s with us???

Huge load just delivered! Folks this is the last of our raspberries… Plus it may be the last of our beautiful Simcoe berries so if you have not already filled your freezer now is the time… Last of the seeded watermelon too, and it’s huge!

Grapes are in! And so are apples, squash, pears, flat cabbage, more berries and so much more! This is hands down my favourite time of the year. Check out what's happening around the farm all here: https://nhr.soundestlink.com/ce/v/0/6aae8166d43b269f57c6cd5f

Davidson Environmental did it again.

Huge shoutout to the owners for buying healthy, local food for their employees. I just think this is such a great way to take care of the people who work for you while supporting local at the same time.

We need more of this. Lots and lots more ♥️