The students and staff of Peonan Point School have been fundraising for the last two years to build a greenhouse for the families who reside on the Point. The greenhouse is intended to operate all year round producing fresh foods for the community members and offer a diversity of learning opportunities to the local students. There are currently 8 students at the school. Fundraising efforts were quite labor intensive and included: making crafts to sell, baking for bake sales, and cleaning the local dump-site each spring. Parents, family and the craft sale attendees in nearby Ashern have generously supported the students. After the grant funds were applied to the balance due, they found the students had raised enough funds to make up the difference required.

As this greenhouse was meant to fill a gap in the community’s accessibility to fresh produce, it needed to be a structure that would work in Manitoba winters. After considerable research and many nay-sayers, they settled on working with a company called Growing Technologies. Located in Neepawa, Growing Technologies helped to determine the size and design of the greenhouse. The structure was tested through two Manitoba winters with users successfully growing produce and flowers.

They had a few setbacks in the timing of the project, but kept pushing forward. The greenhouse was erected on a miserable, cold day in the fall of 2016 which was later than planned. Then the rain came and did not stop for about six weeks. That weather made travel in and out of the Point difficult at best. This pushed back the electrician’s schedule, but hydro was finally hooked up in late October. The next challenge was getting the topsoil delivered. Many suppliers could not get to their stockpiles because of the wet, unfrozen ground. The grade 11 student who was taking a horticulture course tracked down a supplier in Hilbre and soil was delivered in early December. Everything was finally in place except the water.

The greenhouse has made a number of learning opportunities possible. For the first time at Peonan Point School, senior year students are able to take optional horticulture courses for high school credits. This opportunity is important, as most of the students have to take their high school courses by telephone or from the teacher in a tiny one room school. This has meant it has been difficult for students to get enough optional credits at the grade 11 and 12 levels. Currently a grade 11 student from the community is enrolled in two horticulture courses: greenhouse and landscaping. He monitors the temperature inside the greenhouse (in our 40 below weather) to determine what it should be set at. He has also searched out soil prices, researched plants that grow well in cooler temperatures, and cares for the plants that were salvaged from summer gardens. He is in the process of drawing up plans for a landscaped area to the south of the greenhouse. The creation of the raised beds and walkways have also put our Grade 11 students’ woodworking skills to use.

To find out more about the School Greenhouse please read here. 

To find out more about other community partners please read here.

The idea started in 2014, and in 2015 the Northern Association of Community Councils (NACC) started to provide support to develop two fish composting stations between three communities: Matheson Island, Pine Dock and Dawson Bay. Matheson Island and Pine Dock had planned to co-manage a fish station as they are only 15 kilometers apart. Dawson Bay was also very interested. Matheson Island has since decided not to participate in the project. Currently Dawson Bay is the furthest along with testing and implementing the Fish Composting Station.

The Community Council of Dawson Bay made the following statement about their reasons for wanting the Fish Composting Station. “Our council would like to see this project start by creating a reliable compost material supply for our community residents, increase the local fishermen's income, and create jobs for individuals in our community. We will utilize the local fishermen's raw fish waste that is generally dumped out on the lake or hauled to our local waste disposal site, and hopefully create some jobs to stimulate the economy in our community. Fishing is currently the only job opportunity in Dawson Bay. This Fish Composting Project is important to our community; fertilizer and compost materials are expensive to bring in.”

Each Fish Station is a designated area in the community that has a solid pad and secure fencing. A Manitoba company called Innovat designed and manufactured the compost drums, where the first stage of composting takes place. The waste fish is placed into the drum along with ‘browns’, a mulched wood base. The drum is turned each day. After a sufficient period of time the compost is taken out of the drums and laid out in wind rows that are 10-15 feet long and 6-8 feet wide. During this stage the final composting takes place. Technical support for this project has come from NACC, Manitoba Composting Association, and Manitoba Agriculture. Many government departments needed to be consulted including Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship, Aboriginal and Northern Affairs, and Manitoba Agriculture.

There have been challenges in getting the fish stations up and running. “Everything was going well until we started having issues with the composter drum itself,” said Dawson Bay Mayor, Darlene Parker. Adjustments had to be made to the drums because the frames were not adequately supporting the weight, causing the turning mechanism to be too difficult for the Public Works staff to use. One solution may be to motorize the turning mechanism. There has also been the recognition of need for a more powerful wood chipper to service the station. One Dawson Bay Community Councillor shared, “It is a pilot project so we needed to learn. There are lots of little things to consider!” The communities had initially worried about bears being attracted to the area, but so far this has not happened. There is very little smell associated with the Fish Composting Stations.

Optimism is high as the fishing stations should start producing large amounts of compost in 2017. “When we [the council] get talking about it, we get very excited about. I just think there are endless possibilities for this! We need some money to get going on the marketing end of things down the road,” said Mayor, Darlene Parker. Some greenhouses in the region have started to inquire about the product and one of the next steps for the community is to prepare samples for distribution this coming season. Another important action for 2017 is to repeat and strengthen the training for local people who are running the fish composting stations. “This is a learning experience for all of us who are involved,” believes Alana Parker, Dawson Bay resident.

To find out more about the NACC Fish Composing Stations please read here. 

To find out more about other community partners please read here.

 The Bayline Food Buying Co-op was first thought of in 2012. Most communities along the Bayline (rail line) do not have year-round road access or local grocery stores. They have to travel by train, boat, or winter road to do their grocery shopping and this is very expensive. A food buying co-op will provide a regular shipment of pre-ordered foods to community members in partnership with Via Rail. It will reduce the time and money involved in grocery shopping and accessing good foods.

Since the project started there has been lots of work done, including a pre-feasibility study and many meetings. The project is spearheaded by Carol Sanoffsky as part of her role as Administrator for the Bayline Regional Round Table, but many other community leaders and members are helping with the work.

We started out in 2016 with community surveys to find out which types of food people would want to get, to learn about people’s interest and understanding of the food buying program and to get suggestions on how to run the program. The community champions in Thicket Portage and Pikwitonei, Marie Brightnose and Pauline Cordell, led the survey work and we learned a lot to help guide the program planning.

We have made partnerships with many organizations that are helping us to get the program off the ground. Just a few are the community councils of Thicket Portage, Pikwitonei and Iford, War Lake First Nation Chief and Council, VIA Rail, Frontier School Division and Dwyer’s Store in Wabowden.

We talked to people from the Fort Albany Food Security Committee who help run a fresh food market in Fort Albany on the James Bay coast. They have worked through challenges and are making the market work. For a while they had to ship food by truck, to a train and to a plane to get the food from Toronto to Fort Albany, but now they source their food from Thunder Bay which cuts down the transit time considerably. They had a lot of good insights to share with us about the logistics of running a food buying group and potential challenges we might face.

We also visited a group of Manitoba farmers who sell and package their meat or produce to sell directly to consumers. On the trip we got some good ideas about how to organize the orders and package the food for each ‘customer’. With all the work going into getting the co-op up and running we brought on Donna Sanoffsky as the Wabowden-based coordinator to help support community champions and to coordinate the start of the program. Donna has done loads of work organizing even more meetings, visiting the communities to share information, getting all the paperwork sorted out for starting the program and purchasing equipment we will need when we start.

We took huge steps forward in 2016 and are almost ready to start our first shipment. Our final step before we kick-off the program is holding a training session for all the community champions in Thompson, so they can get more familiar with the ordering and order checking processes.

To find out more about the Bayline Food Buying Co-op please read here. 

To find out more about other community partners please read here.
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In God's Lake First Nation, Bobby Ogemow, the ADI & NNC Coordinator at the God's Lake First Nation Health Center, have been working to increase local production of healthy foods in the community. The Bayline Regional Roundtable Coordinator, Carol Sanoffsky provides technical and planning support to this work as requested. Interested community members have been able to sign-up and receive help starting a garden or raising chickens and turkeys. In 2016 we also started increasing support for hunters and fishermen who share their meat and fish with the community.

We have helped start about 20 gardens in the community and we are working on getting a big community garden at our new health centre location. The Elders are involved and have lots of good gardening experience. In 2016, we produced potatoes, onions, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins and peas. We even have some peas growing in the wild here too, remnants of an old garden by a previous father. The gardeners share their veggies with Elders and chicken harvesters are sharing the chickens too. Last year we had one chicken raiser. He has lots of experience raising birds such as: chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, peacocks and even ostriches. He only lost 2 chicks last year. When he figured a weasel was responsible, he was able to stop it from getting into the coop. He also had a hawk that was perched outside the coop for a while, so he had to put netting over the top to protect the chickens. In other years we have had up to 8 people raising chickens in the community.

We helped hunters get out duck hunting and moose hunting in the spring and fall in 2016. There is a good moose hunting area about halfway to Shamattawa from God’s Lake. It’s about 100 km away so the hunters have to go out on float planes to get there. A few others went hunting at the different trapline areas that can be reached by boat. A couple of youths go with each hunting party; we try to mix up different families a bit. The hunters share the meat with Elders and the community at feasts. The Christmas Elder’s feast this year had fish caught with our support. We harvested enough fish throughout the summer and fall for community events and feasts. I think we have helped get more people going out hunting and fishing. When you look out on the lake, you always see lots of boats out there.

To address the food insecurity, we could do more work on increasing food literacy but right now we don’t have a place to do workshops about cooking, preserving or smoking. We want to build a smoker but need to get some supplies first. We have also been thinking about starting a beekeeping program in the community.

To find out more about the Local Healthy Foods Project please read here. 

To find out more about other community partners please read here.