Northern Sask. communities using gardening to improve food sovereignty — and they're involving youth

Two northern Saskatchewan communities are using gardening to increase food sovereignty and teach youth valuable skills.

The Flying Dust Market Garden has been operational since 2009. It started on a much smaller scale, but with hard work and dedication it has expanded.

Now the garden, located on Flying Dust First Nation about 250 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, employs 20 people year-round and students during the summer months.

"We've just been growing slowly," said Jason Cardinal, the garden's manager.

"We grow about eight varieties of potatoes, and we have a huge list of vegetables that we grow. We have a fruit orchard with roughly about five different apple trees, plums, and haskaps and other berries."

Cardinal said it also offers meat such as chickens and bison.

Most recently, it added a bee operation that helps with pollination in the garden and the alfalfa hay fields that feed the bison. The First Nation is also nearing the end of construction on a butcher shop that will process the bison meat.

Cardinal said the market garden has been able to provide the community and surrounding areas with fresh produce, while also acting as a training opportunity for local youth.

"They're able to get hands-on experience in agriculture, operating farming equipment, learning how to tend to greenhouses and manage the fields."

He said they are also learning how to keep bees and create honey products.

"It also creates an opportunity where the elders can work with the youth and have that mentorship opportunity between the different generations," he said. "We think that's really important."

'They had to do something about it'

The cost of living has gone through the roof all across the province, but especially in northern Sask., where produce has become very expensive.

The high school in Île-à-la-Crosse, Sask., about 380 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, is trying to curb the issue by teaching its students to grow their own vegetables as a healthier, more cost-efficient food option.

The garden is in a greenhouse and operates year-round thanks to a propane furnace.

Clay Whitney, garden co-ordinator at the school, said the community came together years ago and recognized it needed to promote healthier eating and connection to nature.

"They had to do something about it," he said.

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Whitney said it has evolved over time. The first year, the students grew vegetables that are usually more expensive in the grocery stores.

"Over the years we kind of went through a couple of iterations and we've put in planter boxes and increased the variety of crops," he said. "So not only are we growing tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers, but we're growing things like Swiss Chard, kale, onions and parsley."

He said the greenhouse provides people with fresh produce outside the usual growing season, which the messages of health literacy and food being medicine.

"I kind of wanted to come at it from the angle of teaching the children, and teaching this next generation, about what real food is," Whitney said.

"It isn't something that comes from a box. It's something that you put a seed in the ground and you watch it grow and then you eat it later."

The community also has its own market garden, run by elders, that uses the produce the students grow.