Ottawa


This guest post comes from Molly who moved to Ottawa from Calgary a few years ago and writes that she “is always pleased whenever she finds a small local business who shares her worldview that she can support.”

I’m a new mum and I have a dirty little secret. When our daughter was a few months old, my husband and I looked around the house and realized the dust bunnies were getting as big as our beloved mud-tracking, hair-shedding hounds. Once I accepted the fact that I am no June Clever (and my hubby is no Mr. Clean), it was easy to pick up the phone and ask for help. Being a baking soda, vinegar, and elbow grease kind of household, my only concern was that I needed to find someone who used cleaning products that were compatible with our green ethic. The Cleaning Crew came to our rescue and has been helping out every couple of weeks since. This young and energetic husband and wife team has been so successful with their eco-friendly cleaning service that they now have a small army of conscientious cleaners working for them. The Cleaning Crew uses Nature Clean products on our bathroom and kitchen surfaces and Murphy’s Oil soap on our hardwood floors. I’ve been so impressed with both their customer service and the quality of their work that I feel the need to spread the word. I think their rates are slightly higher than conventional cleaners but well worth the peace of mind as I watch my daughter, now eight months old, learning to crawl across my sparkling floor. More information is available on their website at: www.cleaningcrew.ca.

The Minto Suite Hotel is hosting a free showing of The 11th Hour this Saturday (June 21st) at dusk (which they’re estimating at 8:50 pm)  in the parking lot at Slater and Lyon.  The movie will be projected against the wall of a building.  Refreshments will be available for a donation.  All proceeds will go to The David Suzuki Foundation.  Bring a lawnchair.  (This event is weather permitting.)

At the end of April Ottawa’s own La Siembra Co-operative won one of WorldBlu’s “Worldwide Awards for the Most Democratic Workplaces.”  I just wanted to post a quick bit of blogging to congratulate them on their award.

La Siembra, a worker-owned workplace, is the biggest producer in Canada of fair trade certified organic chocolate products.  To quote Co-Executive Director Martin Van Den Borre,  “We believe in fair, democratic employment for all–both our worker-owners at La Siembra and the producer co-operatives we source our ingredients from.”

La Siembra makes the popular Cocoa Camino line of products: chocolate bars, hot chocolate powder,  chocolate chips and chocolate syrup.  These products are available at most health food stores and many grocery stores across Ottawa, for more details check out their interactive map.

Just a quick note to let all the localvores out there know that Ottawa’s Main Street Farmer’s Market will be opening their season this coming Saturday, May 17th.  The market will run every Saturday for the summer from 9 am to 2 pm in the parking lot of St. Paul’s University on Main Street.  Only local producers selling their own locally produced goods are permitted to sell at this market.  See you there!

We got home from work on the latish side of the evening, but we fired up the barbeque anyway.  When it had heated up, Mike threw on a T-bone steak from the sampler pack I recently ordered from L.J. Helferty who raises cattle on a farm near Douglas Ontario (120 km from Ottawa).

The farm has been in the Helferty family for 100 years.  While the farm is not certified by any organic certifying body, L.J. assures me that no pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers are used on any of their land.  In the warmer seasons the cattle roam the pastures, eating to their hearts content.  In the winter they are fed hay grown on Helferty land. But the naturalness of these cows doesn’t end with their diet.  They are also free of growth hormones (except for the ones their bodies produce!) and antibiotics.

Besides all this naturalness, pasture-fed beef is supposed to be healthier to eat than grain-fed, something to do with the balance of fats.  I’m not a nutritionist so I can’t vouch for the biochemistry of the product, but I can say that the steak was delicious, certainly amongst the tastiest meat I’ve eaten.  I would highly recommend it to discerning carnivores and localvores.

Now here’s the most amazing part.  L.J. charges just over $100 for a sampler pack of 20 lbs of this tasty, healthy meat, delivered to your door.   The photo above shows the sampler pack taking up one of the drawers in our freezer.  20 lbs of meat is a lot of meat.

It might take a few days until someone from the family comes into Ottawa to run errands and can drop off your meat, but it’s well worth the wait.  (If you’re going to be in the Douglas area you can pick up the meat yourself.)

L.J. Helferty, www.totallynaturalbeef.ca, 613-649-2482

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