Welcome

Welcome to the website for Canada's “Bread & Wheat” Festival.

“Putting folk back into food and culture back into agriculture.”™

Canada's first 'Bread and Wheat' Festival™ was a huge success!! 8 bakers offered 'natural' breads made with 'Red Fife' flour. Over 900 people attended the event!

The event brought together local food security people; farmers and seed savers; millers; bakers; holistic nutritionists; artists; musicians and slow food and Slow Food people.

The Ukrainian Cultural community shared their breads; they will be joined this year by the Italian cultural community and hopefully a few others highlighting their traditions with bread and wheat.

Festival Coordinator : Sharon Rempel
Phone: (250) 298-1133 • Email: slrempel@shaw.ca
www.grassrootsolutions.com

What is “Red Fife” heritage wheat?

Red Fife heritage wheat is Canada’s oldest wheat, coming to Canada from the Ukraine in 1840.

Red Fife is a landrace grain, meaning it is genetically diverse and adapts quickly to a diversity of growing conditions. It is strong and grows easily without chemical fertilizers.

Red Fife fed Canada from 1860 to 1900. From one pound of seed Sharon Rempel planted in 1988 has grown a Canada wide interest in having farmer and variety identified wheat. Hundreds of tons of Red Fife will be harvested this season, coast to coast.

Related Events & Projects

• Heliotrust: Maritimes Heritage Wheat Project
• Slow Food Canada

Learn more about Red Fife Wheat (PDF, 44KB)

Why a Bread & Wheat Festival?

We all love an excuse to get together, eat and share stories with each other. We are celebrating Red Fife Wheat’s return to our bakeries and fields. The Bread & Wheat Festival is a day to celebrate the cycle of seed at harvest season and to bring together our community to celebrate wheat and bread. This seasonal festival is a part of the Greater Victoria Heritage Seed Alliance Society.

It’s a day to learn about the politics and financial challenges we face when deciding if we can afford to have wheat growing locally. It’s a day to meet people who grow heritage varieties of crops and meet local bakers who use these grains. And it’s a chance to hear stories and songs about the crop our Canadian economy has been built on — wheat!

Fortunately we are now seeing grain fields springing up in our region and a growing number of bakeries featuring artisan, levan, natural and organic breads. Fans of eating locally grown foods and the 100 mile diet are ecstatic!

Wheat, glorious wheat

The foundation of our western world is rooted in grain. Wheat is a vital part of our culture yet totally taken for granted. We should understand how deeply linked wheat is to our daily diet in Canada. Wheat is a component of many of the processed foods we feed ourselves and our pets. Yet wheat gluten and proteins are not fully understood in how they affect our health. We might think we are ‘allergic’ to wheat, yet it’s often the type of yeast in the bread or the variety of wheat used that’s the problem. With 100,000 varieties of bread wheat in the world there is enough diversity that should allow everyone to find a wheat to suit their needs.

Our Canadian society has commoditized wheat so that we’ve lost the ability to discern between various species of wheat (e.g., spelt, emmer, einkorn, durum, bread or T. aestivum), let alone the hundreds of varieties of each species.

Under the current marketing system, the link with the name of the farmer who grew the wheat is lost. Wheat is wheat in the marketplace; yet it is within the diversity of colors, shapes and tastes that we find answers to food for climate change, for beauty, and for inspiration for song and art.

Fortunately, at the local level we are beginning to put more value on knowing who grew the wheat, how the crop was grown (without chemicals, feedlot manures, ‘organically’, etc.), what the variety is called, and how it tastes.

How much are we willing to pay for a locally grown commodity like wheat as it rises in price on the global markets? Can we afford not to have local wheat fields and locally adapted varieties?

Food or fuel? The hand that holds the seed controls the food supply.

Wheat is a very critical political issue now. Should we grow wheat for fuel or food? Will global food supplies be enough as major droughts hit wheat-growing regions of the world? Will the modern hybrid varieties adapt to climate change, or do we need to start looking at landraces and tougher varieties and species of crops to produce food?

Old Varieties . . . Adaptable, Tasty & Nutritious

We have evidence that older varieties of crops are more nutritious and easier for us to digest. This year's Festival will feature Emmer, Einkorn, Spelt and Durum wheats as well as our old friend Red Fife. Landrace varieties don't require high inputs of chemicals to produce a crop. There are thousands of varieties of bread wheat in the world; we don't need more high input hybrids, but more respect for the old wheat relatives that fed communities for centuries.

Wheat in Art & Celebration

Often in our full, hurried lives, we take our ‘daily bread’ (a metaphor for substantial food on the table at the end of the day, as well as a beautiful loaf of bread) for granted.

As you can see from Larisa’s beautiful artwork “Our Daily Bread” there are many different ways to shape flour and water into bread. Bread is a food basic in all cultures. We might talk about ‘breaking bread together’ as a way of sharing our story with others and a symbol of finding peace between people. Bread is a powerful symbol — what does it mean to you?

In many cultures, wheat has been used as a fertility symbol. People have celebrated the cycle of the seed in planting and harvesting, and in times of rest and reflection through music, ritual, story, field preparations, seed selections and storage.

We’ll start the Festival with a traditional Lammas Bread blessing. We’ll enjoy various dancing groups and storytellers sharing stories about wheat and bread. And because of Red Fife’s own cultural roots in the Ukraine our local Ukrainian community will share their traditions of bread baking with us.

Artwork “Our Daily Bread” from the Flowers of the Bible Collection. Used with permission from the artist Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn.

Get Involved

An invitation is extended to cultural, musical and artistic communities to come forth and share their culture’s use of wheat in art, design, spiritual practice, food, song and music.

To book a table at the Festival contact Sharon Rempel (below)

Learn More

Want to visit a wheat field this summer?

Check back to this site in late July for a list of Field Days, where we visit wheat fields on Vancouver Island.

Want to learn how to grow wheat?

Professional speaker, workshop leader and Bread and Wheat Festival coordinator Sharon Rempel has worked with heritage wheat for 20 years. She runs the Heritage Wheat Project and is an agricultural story finder and researcher. She is the seed grower and instigator of the Red Fife wheat movement and founded the Seedy Saturday Spring Seed Festival in 1989; the event is now across Canada in over 60 communities. Visit www.seeds.ca for lists of the event.

Sharon’s book Demeter's Wheat is for sale on her website, www.grassrootsolutions.com.

Sponsors

You can be a sponsor for this unique event - contact Sharon Rempel (250) 298-1133.

We welcome community involvement in this event and sponsorship and donations are very welcome!

The event is hosted by the Greater Victoria Heritage Seed Alliance Society. Profits from the festival go to local wheat field days, on farm variety trials and other Heritage Wheat work. The Alliance will have charitable status by the end of May 2008.

Writing a cheque? If you need a tax receipt make cheques payable to Greater Victoria Heritage Seed Alliance Society and if you don't need a tax receipt, to the Bread and Wheat Festival. Mail to 3741 Metchosin Road, Victoria, B.C. V9C 4A8. All donations over $100 will be noted as sponsors here on the website.

Download our 2008 Sponsorship Information (PDF, 143 KB)