Great food and entertainment in Berwick

Jenny Osburn of the Union St. Café in Berwick has a great new blog, Kitchen Witch – the secret ingredient is love.  She’s interesting, funny, and has a great recipe in every post.

Don’t just visit her blog, though.  Go eat!  The restaurant which she started with her mother, sister and aunt a decade ago is still going strong with Jenny at the helm.  She comes from a family of great cooks. More than that however; the food is far from your ordinary fare. It is healthy and local, made from scratch, creative and delicious.

The Wick Pub next door, part of the same establishment, is home to an open mic Kitchen Party on Friday nights, hosted by Jenny’s dad, singer-songwriter and soundman Don Osburn. It is also a concert venue. All this information can be found on the Union St. Café website.

Click to go to Oxfam Canada or to donate.

I was the “Dessert Queen” in Mahone Bay on Saturday night, receiving desserts people brought to the Mahone Bay Centre, sticking their names on the bottoms of the pie plates so they’d get them back later, sometimes tasting the desserts to find out what they were and if they contained nuts, slicing up cheesecake, apple strudel and blueberry pie….Nice work if you can get it?

It was a benefit for Haiti, to collect money for Oxfam’s Earthquake Emergency Relief Fund.  Oxfam has a team in Haiti permanently, so they are well positioned to get aid to people quickly.  As we have seen, speed is all important in saving lives and preventing chaos.

The little town of Mahone Bay raised $13,600 for Haiti that night.  There were soups, chili, wonderful breads, coffee, cider and desserts, all donated by individuals and businesses in the community.  There were musicians donating their talents on 2 stages, and craft tables for kids to make things to sell and to send to children in Haiti.  300 people were fed.  We wished we could have sent all that food to Haiti, but money travels lighter.

It was a terrific community building event, spearheaded and MC’d by Camelia Frieberg of Pollination Project with Valerie Hearder and Bonnie Isabelle (who did a wonderful job coordinating a busy kitchen with at least a dozen volunteers, as I can attest) the South Shore Waldorf School, Indian Point Marine Farms, Boulangerie La Vendéenne, LaHave Bakery, CafeHaus, Rumtopf Farm and many, many local folks who brought in crock pots and stock pots full of delicious chili and hearty soups and stews.

Musicians included Shalan Joudrey, Mary Knickle and HodgePodge, Paul Buchanan and Eilidh Campbell, Slow Cooking Cover, Tim Merry, Jamie Junger and friends, the Rhodenizer Family, Tom Haddal and friends, Reid Campbell, The Trips and Russ Winham and Kirk Comstock.

You can still donate to Oxfam and have it counted in the tally for the South Shore for Haiti event until Jan. 28. Here’s how: Go to www.oxfam.ca, choose “Haiti Earthquake 2010″ and in the Comments section enter “Event: South Shore for Haiti”. Or phone 1-800-466-9326 and ask them to note that it is for “Event: South Shore for Haiti”.

BALLE Nova Scotia's logo

Here is an organization I’m proud and happy to have  joined – the Nova Scotia chapter of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

Which makes me wonder, as a web designer, what is my contribution to a local, sustainable green economy?

Hmm… well, there’s the commute. Most of the time, I just head downstairs to my home office. No greenhouse gasses are generated. As the downstairs is heated with a radiant floor, it’s the warmest part of the house in winter.   So that’s very efficient, but doesn’t quite qualify me as a green business – at least not until we get the planned solar panels up on the roof!

More to the point, however, my clients tend to be folks who operate independent, small (often micro) Nova Scotian businesses.  They live and work here by choice, as do many Nova Scotians.  It’s not always an easy choice.  By running a successful business, however, they are helping others to live and work here as well.  I’m happy to be part of that, and strive to contribute to their success.   Some are in tourism, some are artists and craftspeople, some are lawyers and some are builders of log and timber frame homes.

Arlington Frame Company raising a timber frame in Cape Breton

The timber framers in particular are quite aware that they add value to the forest simply by using wood for something more enduring than pulp fibre.  Hardwoods such as oak and elm are prized by builders and their clients, as are large softwood trees such as pine.  The companies that drive the clearcutting of the forests would rather eliminate the hardwoods with herbicides and harvest the faster-growing softwood trees for pulp.

Timber frame homes are built to last a long time.  Their interiors are a celebration of the beauty of wood and craftsmanship.  They are usually enclosed with energy-efficient materials.  So they provide enduring value on many levels and make a solid contribution to the local living economy.

A visit to the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry in Stellarton made me realize how self-sufficient Nova Scotia used to be, from the growing of food to the manufacture of automobiles!  It is a direction we need to move towards again.  The reasons are both environmental and economic.  A secure, local food supply and lower greenhouse gas emissions are part of it.  And by supporting local businesses, we keep more money circulating in the local economy, and we all benefit.

So kudos to the people who started up BALLE-Nova Scotia for getting the balle rolling!