Like any good garden, the Prairie Sun Seed Festival is growing. The event, hosted by the Assiniboine Food Security Alliance (AFSA), is now in its second year and has seen more booths and people coming to the event and learning about local foods.
Heather Torrie, chairperson for the festival, says that it's all about getting people to learn more about local food.
"The goal is to celebrate the diversity of seed and the culture of growing food locally," Torrie says.
The event saw more local growers bringing their products to the event, along with a large display from the community garden in the city. Torrie says that this year the focus was on getting people more aware of local producers and what can be done at home.
"If we always rely on other countries or other places to bring us food, if something happens what do we do? Food that's grown locally is always readily available and we really want to support our local producers," Torrie says.
The most important part of the festival is helping people grow in their own life, whether it's a few small plants or a larger garden.
"Everyone can grow food, even if you have a very small garden you can grow food in containers, you can grow small backyard plots. Many people here, that is what their expertise is in and that's what they can teach people to do," Torrie says.
Another focus of the event was heritage seeds. Several booths were selling seeds, as well as a new addition to the event which was a seed swap table. Tricia Reed, who was in charge of the table, says it was about getting people to save and share seeds from their gardens.
Reed says there are many advantages to swapping seeds and keeping seeds from the garden. The seeds are free, it preserves genetic diversity which helps make seeds more resistant to disease, and it's also part of the AFSA mandate of food security, as harvesting seeds keeps one less dependent on other sources.
"If you keep the best plants every year, you're going to have seeds that are perfect for the micro-climate where you are," Reed notes.
People have been enthusiastic about the new part of the festival, and Reed says that she hopes it grows with the festival. She also hopes that it fosters conversations between local gardeners.
"Gardeners want to connect with other gardeners. There's a strong connection between them, they're usually passionate," Reed says.
