ottawa foodies

at the ottawa landsdowne farmer's market, there is one vendor outside of the 100km area. his fruit from niagara-on-the-lake is wonderful and i don't mind paying a big more for fresh picked. it reminds me of my childhood and how much i miss roadside fruit stalls selling stonefruit.

from ron eade's blog:

...this Sunday is cherry day at the Ottawa Farmers' Market, which welcomes back Torrie Warner from Warner's farm in Beamsville with the first of this year's sweet crop of Ontario cherries, picked and packed the day before, then driven overnight to Ottawa.

Ooohhh.... Yum, thanks for letting us know, that sounds excellent.

Warner's is a great vendor and I love that they bring all the fruit that doesn't grow up here. His commitment to the OFM is super and my belly and palate thank him for it!

Just outside OTTAWA (near kemptville) is a fruit grower that grows cherries, plums, currants, pears and much, much more. He cannot compete with a HUGE Niagaga outfit and therefore does not sell at lansdowne. I can get his name if anyone is interested. He should be selling at the Byward maybe later on this year or next year

Very much interested; I would be very pleasantly surprised if someone in the Kemptville area managed to grow that variety of fruit as I thought the climate was unsuitable.

Irishgal2 please share! I love that Niagara stand at Lansdowne but I love supporting local businesses even more... If you hear any news please keep us posted.

His name is Woody Larmour. I will try and find his phone number. Ottawa Byward is REALLY supporting local. He may have a booth there now. (613)244-4410 is the number for the Byward Manager. I had to supply farm receipts, proof of farm produce - produced entirely at my farm AND they sent an inspector to the farm for further verification. A few hoops to jump, but it makes you feel good to know that they are making sure you are who you say you are.

Jagash, we have a Montmorency cherry tree and have had cherries though the birds get all of them; we've grown red currants, and I used to live next door to a guy in Ottawa who had pear trees in his back yard - very yummy, good-sized pears. I don't know about any plums in the Ottawa area but there may be. It certainly would be interesting to find out if there's a grower selling such fruit nearby.

Hi Andy, Woody lives on Law road just off Oxford Station Road and he has LOTS of Plums. Ovens berry Farm in Osgoode also has fruit trees but i am not sure what varieties. I sell pears from a tree that is speculated at 100 years old - and NEVER been sprayed!!!

One of the reasons Torrie was invited by the Board of Directors was because he could supply a large amount of product. Its no use for the public and the market if a vendor runs out half way through the day or season.
He also sells walnuts, peaches, and aprocots.
Of course the Board would welcome ANY local fruit grower...none have applied. There are many agricultural vendors and they all do well, so I think there is room for more than one fruit vendor.
If any of you know Woody, convince him to apply. He could always come as a daily vendors for 4 weeks.

The grocery stores are supplying from Niagara. Why should a LOCAL producer have to compete with a Niagara producer...because (you say) he is too small?????

i am glad terry makes the drive to ottawa to deliver his wonderful fruit. irishgal you have been very clear how much you dislike the ottawa farmer's market. i am sorry you had a bad experience, but that is not how everyone has been treated. i love it and think it is a wonderful addition to the neighbourhood. it is easy to get to, lots of free parking and a great place for the family to hangout on a sunday morning. i know some of the vendors and they are very small scale.

i do not think spud guy is saying that your friend is too small. it sounds like your friend has not applied. why doesn't he?

also, there are lots of pear trees in ottawa. a very common thing! i love it. we also have a huge, wild apple orchard, so wonderful. ottawa can grow some great fruit.

I didn't say he was too small, spud guy says they don't want too small because they might run out of produce. I just don't like hypocrasy. OFM's biggest BRAG is 100% Local. Woody told me - he was insulted and would not sell there.

so woody is passing this information about his farm to us, through you? what you are saying is that he did apply and was turned down? i am confused? where does your friend sell in town?

it just sounds to me like you have something personal going on against this farmer's market? the other vendors that are on this site, i would like to know your experience? because i am just not hearing anyone else saying what you are saying.

*holding a big basket of bings* num num num num num

My husband and I both love cherries and they ar supposed to help with gout (uric acid build-up) in the blood???? i am going to stock up - guilt-free yummies!!

Reviving this topic to ask: if you tried the Niagara cherries from the farmer's market, what did you think? Overall, I thought they were pretty good, but compared with the California/Washington cherries being pushed by most of the grocery chains, the Niagara cherries were a little less firm, and a little less sweet... and a whole lot more expensive. I firmly believe in supporting our (semi-)local producers, but it's quite a stretch in this case.

I've always felt that the best sweet cherries come from BC, but like BC wines, you don't see them here very often anymore. However, I see Loblaw has some in their latest flyer, so I'll have to get some for comparison. All in the interests of foodie science, of course...

I bought some Ontario cherries at a local store on the week end and tried a few and didn't find them as tasty as the Washington state cherries earlier in the week; I roasted them to make cherry shortcakes and found them barely tasty so I added some sugar to draw out the juices and some Swiss kirsch for flavour, much improving them (well, maybe it was the kirsch!), drawing raves from the group that ate the shortcakes. I hope my local Independent has the BC cherries and hope there are some Rainier cherries soon. My flyers will likely be here tomorrow.
As an aside, I hear that SW ontario is very wet and cool like us, and that may have dampened their cherry quality. A friend (corn producer who ate my shortcakes) said that a SW Ontario corn producer he saw at a local crop demo told him that our local field corn (that hasn't even started tasseling yet) is quite a bit ahead of theirs. I used to say that my corn should be fencepost tall by July 1st; a lot of local corn is only getting to that point now that's not a good thing - yield and quality may be down.

Andy - Agree, all this wet weather is wrecking havoc with Eastern Canada's crops (although I suppose the uncanny heat wave in the West is also causing problems there). We saw it with Strawberries, and we'll continue to see it as the summer progresses. Have a sneaking feeling we'll be paying a lot more for produce thru the late Summer, Fall and Winter than we did last year.

I tried the Niagara cherries from Lansdowne as well. There were three varieties to choose from when we there: Bing, White, and "Sweet" which we were told was a mix of various sweet non-Bing types. We chose the "Sweet" because they were the least expensive (but still at least twice the cost of imported cherries at the grocery store). I agree with what bdm and Andy have said, the Niagara cherries were not as sweet,tasty or firm as the imported cherries we've been buying from the grocery store. I will not bother buying them again, it was too disapointing!:)

FYI- the best cherries I've bought so far this year were California cherries, $1.99/lb at Food Basics.