Halifax | North and Agricola

Posts Tagged 'Halifax'

Five more farms to use Grainery as drop zone

Grainery supporter Oscar Jarsky, 9, helps his mom Lorrie prepare for the 5 p.m. rush of CSA customers.

Andre Bellefeuille almost drops the eggs as he picks up his vegetables on Tuesday. It's his first year in this community supported agriculture program.

HALIFAX — One farm used the Grainery Food Co-op last spring as a place to deliver family-sized boxes of vegetables directly to customers. This summer there could be as many as six farms doing the same thing.

The Agricola Street store is busy from the new popularity of community supported agriculture, or CSAs, where farmers bypass selling to wholesalers and instead deliver regularly to people who pre-order “shares” in the season’s crop.

Grainery volunteer Janet King says by helping farmers deliver their food boxes, the co-op is seeing new people come in the door. That is helping the co-op sell more of the grains, beans and eggs it carries on its own shelves.

“We probably have 30 or 40 more people coming into the store on a weekly basis,” King says. “And it means we have more regular hours because we’re always open, because of (TapRoot Farms on Tuesday), and Wednesday because of Moonfire Farm.”

In addition to TapRoot and Moonfire, farms in Cumberland, Hants, and Annapolis counties have set up the Grainery as their CSA pickup spot. They include meat farmer Danny Bruce, who is offering subscriptions to a monthly all-beef box.

“It’s a quarter of a beef, but I’d sell it to you over six months,” he says.

Bruce, who has sold through the Farmer’s Market, said he first discussed the idea of a CSA a few years ago with Grainery members, but “when I approached them they were all vegetarian.”

This year, the Grainery agreed to help distribute the organic meat Bruce produces. He said people are slowly getting used to the idea of a CSA that doesn’t involve vegetables. Halifax members pay $60 for a monthly delivery of 10 pounds of beef, cut into smaller packages like steaks, roasts and ground beef. Bruce hopes to sign up 20 members this summer.

TapRoot owner Patricia Bishop, the farmer who first agreed to deliver to the Grainery last year, now drops off nearly 50 boxes of vegetables each week. She also delivers to locations in Dartmouth and Hammonds Plains.

Charlie, 4, and Sian McKenna take their box from the pile during TapRoot Farms' weekly pickup.

“People who are signing on to this need to understand that what they are doing is making a tremendous impact to the face of agriculture in this province,” said Bishop. She said if CSAs continue to grow at this pace more farmers will benefit.

“We will see a huge change in the age and the face of agriculture in Nova Scotia: younger, smaller, sustainable, profitable farm operations.”

Brenna Koneczny, of Vista Bella Farm in Malagash, Cumberland Co., is one of those young farmers. Vista Bella’s CSA will do its pickup Mondays starting June 21. When she and her husband were brainstorming for a possible drop location in Halifax she remembered the co-op from when she recently lived in the city.

“I didn’t even realize they were in connection with a whole bunch of others CSAs,” said the former Grainery volunteer. “I just thought of it and contacted them and they had told me they already had CSAs on the go. So there must have been a few people thinking alike.”

Whippletree Farm, of Hants County, and a farmer intending to specialize in root vegetables are other CSAs intending to use the Grainery this season.

Directions: The Grainery Food Co-operative is at 2385 Agricola Street. A meeting for new co-op members is scheduled April 27. To join a farm CSA contact the farmer directly.

Birney Route Map (1928)

Published April 9, 2010 Agricola Street , Barrington Street , Gottingen Street , Halifax , Windsor Street 2 Comments
Tags: Birney, Halifax, tram

This 1928 route map shows a tram line leading into Point Pleasant Park. Used with permission of authors of The Halifax Street Railway (Nimbus).

HALIFAX — The fabled Birney tram cars ran these routes until just after the Second World War. The 1928 route map updates the diagram from a year before. The updated version shows new tracks serving Point Pleasant Park, and connecting the Armdale route to the now-demolished Simpsons store at the bottom of Chebucto Road. Also of note is the cheerful electrically-charged running man.

Thanks again to Don Artz and Don Cunningham, authors of The Halifax Street Railway (Nimbus), for this image.

Detail from the 1928 map.

Bloomfield egg hunt attracts families

Published April 4, 2010 Agricola Street , Almon Street , Belle Aire Terrace , Bloomfield Street , Fuller Terrace , Halifax , Robie Street 1 Comment
Tags: Easter, egg, family, Halifax

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HALIFAX — Dozens of toddlers swarmed over the site of the former Bloomfield School on Sunday morning. They had to move quick to scrounge up all the chocolate Easter eggs planted there by community-minded parents. Hot sun and 22 degree temperatures brought out more families than expected, plus threatened to melt the treats. “I’m just glad we had enough eggs,” said one mom, who lives on Bloomfield Street. The hunt ended at the playground on the Robie Street side of the property, where parking for strollers was at a premium.

Diagram of Halifax Tram Routes (1927)

Published March 31, 2010 Agricola Street , Barrington Street , Gottingen Street , Halifax , Windsor Street 1 Comment
Tags: Birney, Halifax, tram

The Birneys travelled 16 kilometres on the Richmond-Gottingen line (Route 3). (Used with permission of authors of The Halifax Street Railway.)

HALIFAX — The Birney tram cars that first rode the North End Loop 90 years ago this month gave passengers a thrill at every corner.

“You could feel yourself, like, swinging, because they were quick little things,” says Don Cunningham, who used to ride the rail cars as a child until they were pulled off Halifax streets in 1949. “They always said they were like a teeter-totter. Because they had a single truck in the middle with four wheels and a lot of overhang.”

The above map shows the route the Birneys took up Agricola, Windsor, Gottingen and Barrington streets. The 1927 diagram was not to scale. An updated route map in 1928 shows a more accurate outline of the peninsula and new spur lines serving Point Pleasant Park and the Simpsons store on Chebucto Road.

Birney Safety Cars were introduced in Halifax in March 1920, replacing older electric trams that had been

A Birney in the late 1940s in front of the now-demolished Bloomfield School building. (Used with permission of authors of The Halifax Street Railway.)

around since 1896. Passengers in the Depression and during the Second World War flocked onto the Birneys. At times more than 100,000 passengers a day used the trams. They served the Halifax Forum, Naval dockyards, shipyards, what was then the Exhibition Grounds (where the post office now stands), and the newly-built Hydrostones.

Cunningham, who with Don Artz co-authored The Halifax Street Railway (Nimbus), last rode a Birney when he was seven. He mostly remembers the sounds.

“You had the air compressors, you had the sound of the steel wheels, and when you stopped you could hear the air brakes and then you hear that funny little chugging sounds that was the compressor.”

North and Agricola

Posts Tagged 'Halifax'

Five more farms to use Grainery as drop zone

Birney Route Map (1928)

Bloomfield egg hunt attracts families

Diagram of Halifax Tram Routes (1927)

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