Sarah Ferber Interview 2

August 1, 2011 – Julie Pomeroy and Crystal Braye interview Sarah Ferber, an associate of the Food Security Network.  Sarah Ferber tells us what the “Root Cellars Rock” project aims to achieve, how it helps people, and how it links the past to the present day.

Sarah Ferber: Root Cellars Rock is the local food education project of the Food Security Network of Newfoundland and Labrador. So, the Food Security Network is a provincial network connecting community groups and individuals across the province who are trying to develop community based solutions to food security. And food security is a lot of different things.

It’s basically access to food that’s affordable, safe, accessible, culturally appropriate, and a list of other things, and making sure that everyone in the province has that kind of access. And we do a lot of different kinds of projects, Root Cellars Rock is one of them looking at local food. And it’s based around the four P’s of local food.

Planting, which is how to grow food. Picking, how to harvest food. Preparing, how to make healthy meals, and Preserving, how to store food and keep it throughout the year.

And so, we’re doing different workshops, we have a blog, and we do education presentations and things across the province to try and revive the skills that people across Newfoundland and Labrador traditionally had around the four P’s. Because this was a really strong self sustaining food system at one point up until pretty recently.

Compared to other provinces, we [Newfoundland] were self-sufficient a little bit later on because of joining confederation and things like that, than other places that joined into the more mainstream food systems earlier on.

So, it’s a really nice opportunity with Root Cellars Rock that the connection is still fairly close, you can talk to people who used these skills when they were growing up, and we are trying to bring these skills into a more modern context and connect them with a more healthy lifestyle and nutrition, and food safety, all those things as well, so that people can continue to use them.

And we partner with a lot of different groups across the province. Community gardens, community kitchens, bulk buying clubs, farmers markets, and we’re basically trying to showcase all the amazing things happening across Newfoundland and Labrador related to local food.