Do you know where — and who — your food comes from? While large grocery stores are convenient, farmers from across the province are growing ultra fresh and often unusual produce, often within a two-hour drive of the GTA. Many of them bring their weekly harvests downtown, to the 20-plus farmers’ markets across Toronto, where you can shake the hand that harvested your butter lettuce. That’s become especially significant since the pandemic, when appetites for local products surged in the face of supply chain disruptions and rising import costs.
Plenty of farmers’ markets run well into the fall, and a few year-round. Seasonality makes for serendipity, so allow what is best right now to dictate your shopping list. It’s how Toronto’s most creative chefs shop, combing the farm stands for ingredients and inspiration for their ever-changing menus.
While some farm stands offer market garden variety like carrots, tomatoes and onions, others carry more eclectic products like sweet Japanese water eggplants, tender donut peaches, technicolour atomic grape tomatoes, or tart sea buckthorn berries.
Here, meet five farmers growing the best produce the markets have to offer.
The power couple
Shea Wijeyeratne and Natalie Pignetti, Green and Bloom Farms
Shea Wijeyeratne is known for experimenting with rarer seeds at Green and Bloom Farms, growing products like chijimisai (leafy Japanese brassica), Tokyo bekana (a hybrid of lettuce and napa cabbage), and kajari melons (honeye orange and green Punjabi melon). The distinctive produce has caught the attention of some of Toronto’s most creative chefs: Hoon Ji and Min Yi of Mhel come “every week without fail for their produce,” said Wijeyeratne. “When chefs come around to buy our stuff, like Hoon and Min, it’s validating for our unusual products.”
This season is Wijeyeratne and his partner Natalie Pignetti’s first on their own land, in Amaranth, Ont. “Of the past five years of farming, this has been the sweetest,” said Wijeyeratne. The land they live on is now tethered to their livelihood, which is both humbling and daunting, and has renewed their sense of purpose. “It has forced us to take pride and not cut corners. We are more self-dependent now than ever.”
While Wijeyeratne focuses on produce, Pignetti specializes in growing Canadian varieties of cut flowers. She plants both annuals and perennials on their property, capturing the fleeting moments of Ontario’s growing season for market regulars in her floral arrangements of dahlias, snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias and cosmos. “Sharing the beauty and the joy and the smiles with everyone is a huge reason why I continue to do what I do,” said Pignetti. It’s a point of pride that flowers can be local, too. “More people want to know where their food is coming from; why not their flowers?”
Whatever they’re growing, freshness is paramount. “Locality is the best indicator of quality,” said Wijeyeratne. “Something that has travelled the least will have the most life in it.”
Where to eat it: At Mhel’s (276 Havelock St.), try Green and Bloom’s Tokyo bekana prepared Ohitashi style: blanched and marinated in dashi, sauced with sumiso (miso, vinegar and sugar).
The chef’s favourite
Paul Stewart, Footsteps Organics
Footstep Organics always has the longest line at The Stop Farmers’ Market at Wychwood Barns. And you might just recognize the faces browsing their large selection of nightshades, alliums and brassicas. Chefs Zach Kolomier of Dreyfus and Bernhardts, Diego Reyes of Chantecler and Susur Lee are just some of Stewart’s regulars, buying for both home and restaurant.
Twelve years ago, Paul Stewart leased a quarter acre of land and began working the fields, founding his own farm in Wooler, Ont., in 2017 with his growing family. Footstep has grown tremendously too: today, they utilize almost all 53 acres of their property.
The Toronto markets have shaped the size and scale of Footstep, Stewart said. “Watching the wholesalers at Wychwood made us realize you could have a real business doing farmers’ markets.” Stewart grew up across from Wychwood Barns and was introduced to farming through volunteering at The Stop Community Food Centre’s garden. After leaving the city, Stewart and his wife embraced rural life and never looked back.
Of course, there are challenges, this year’s biggest one being the amount of rain. “We’re trying to make the farm climate-resilient,” said Stewart, who has tried to offset the realities of harsher weather by implementing expensive tile drainage and crop diversification.
In 2019, Stewart started an apple orchard filled with French and British tannic varieties specifically cultivated for hard cider production. Daughters Cider was initially a fun side project but proved to balance the farm’s yearly workload and production between the exhausting spring-through-fall growing season and ensuing downtime in the winter. It’s also something of a passion project. “My brother and I were interested in it,” said Stewart, “and very quickly we got carried away.”
Where to eat it: Taverne Bernhardt’s (202 Dovercourt Rd.) constantly showcases seasonal ingredients from the markets; Footstep’s carrots and cauliflower have lately been featured in the weekly specials.
The livestock innovator
Nathan Klassen, Nith Valley Organics
At Nith Valley Organics, nothing goes to waste. The mixed livestock farm in Plattsville, Ont., raises laying hens, broiler chickens, turkeys and ducks along with market garden vegetables. “There’s always vegetables that didn’t make grade or were around too long that can become livestock food, reducing waste. The nutrients are recycled back into manure to become compost and back into the vegetables,” said farmer Nathan Klassen. “It’s just little things like that; when you add them up, you complete loops on your farm.”
In the bigger picture, Klassen is working to strengthen the ecosystem of his land. “We’re growing vegetables, we’re raising livestock and trying to incorporate elements of both into our nutrient cycling,” he explained. “We’re really supercharging the biology, getting a lot of organic matter into the soil.”
This approach is reflected in the quality of Nith Valley’s supercharged produce, like their sweet red carrots, robust heirloom tomatoes and vibrant delicata squash. It has caught the eye of talented chefs such as Justin Cournoyer of Actinolite. “He picks stuff up from us or sends one of his guys over to us most weeks,” Klassen said. “I take it as a compliment that he likes our stuff. He knows where the good food is.”
Where to eat it: On Actinolite’s “neighbourhood menu,” offered only on weeknights, Nith Valley Organics produce stars in many of its ever-changing five courses.
The fruit whisperer
Milan Bizjak, Bizjak Farms
Bizjak Farms is a family enterprise dating back to 1973. Milan Bizjak bought his parents’ Niagara, Ont., fruit farm in 2002 and now runs it in a joint venture with his sister, Mimi Bizjak, and her husband, Ignacio Reyes.
After taking over, Bizjak overhauled things to implement an approach to tender fruit farming that’s as close to organic as possible. Steering away from pest control sprays and fertilizers makes for a standout product but opens the door to insects and disease. “You have to be thoughtful and careful, spending time trying different strategies and integrating as much of the natural environment as you can,” said Mimi Bizjak.
During the frantic peak of stone fruit season, the Bizjaks’ many farm stands throughout the city — at Sorauren, The Stop, East York Civic Center, the Junction and Leslieville farmers’ markets — are typically swarmed with customers. “The reason we do the farmers’ markets is the connection to the community, but also because we really believe in what we grow and a local food supply chain,” said Mimi. “We grew up with it in Europe: If you are importing all your food, you aren’t getting all the nutrients and minerals you need for a healthy body and mind.”
While peaches, nectarines and apricots are now on their way out, Bizjak Farms has plenty to offer through the fall: Burbank and valar plums, coronation grapes, anjou and bartlett pears and apples are coming into full, delicious swing.
Where to eat it: At Dreyfus (96 Harbord St.), chef and proprietor Zach Kolomier recently had brûléed Bizjak peaches with cream cheese semifreddo on the dessert menu.
The corn guy
JP Gural, Samsara Fields Organics
JP Gural operates Samsara Fields Organics on the land his family purchased in the 1930s after immigrating from Ukraine. He manages his 45 acres with the care and technology he inherited from generations before him — including his tractor, a Ford 8N that his grandfather bought in 1947. “The blessing of agriculture on a human scale is the unmatched health of the product,” Gural said.
He focuses on traditional methods of growing garlic and corn. This year, he has planted 10 acres of international organic garlic varieties, ranging in flavour profile, intensity and nutritional benefits. He also grows the organic corn for the totopos, masa and tortillas at Maizal Tortilleria on Ossington, using old world planting, harvesting and milling methods.
You can find Gural at the Sorauren Farmers’ Market every Monday, for which he makes the 90-minute drive from Waterford, Ont. “Markets are how farmers make their living,” he said. They’re also a place for connection. “I see the same people every week; markets are a foundation plate for what we call community.”
Alongside a wealth of market garden vegetables, Gural may offer you a head of black garlic or a few ears of corn affected by a mushroom-like mould known as huitlacoche, a delicacy in Mexico. It might not be what you imagined for dinner, but it could be an entirely new flavour experience.
Where to eat it: At Maizal Tortilleria (110 Ossington Ave.), try tortillas made with hand-cut nixtamal, which is limed kernels of corn ground into masa.
The mushroom specialist
Shannon Coleclough and Sean Declerc, Fresh and Tasty Mushrooms
When you walk up to the Fresh and Tasty Mushrooms stand, you are hit with a robust, forestlike scent, a pleasantly visceral reminder that your food comes from the earth. Boasting several varieties of mushrooms that can’t be found on supermarket shelves, including cinnamon caps, Pioppino, gold oyster and maitake, Fresh and Tasty produces 300 lbs. of mushrooms a week, year-round.
Sean Declerc started growing mushrooms in 2007 on his family cattle farm in Amaranth, Ont.; a couple years later his wife, Shannon Coleclough, joined him. Together, they built a small shiitake grow room into a six-acre diversified farm with multiple greenhouses. “You get out of it what you put into it,” said Coleclough. “Feeding your community, working with your hands and producing good food for people, that’s a really good feeling.”
Fresh and Tasty also carries produce from the neighbouring farms and local foragers at their stall. “Not every farmer can make it to market,” Coleclough said. “Through a spirit of collaboration, wild foragers find their way to us.”
Their customers delight in being able to find morels, lobster mushrooms, turkey tails and even rare Saskatoon chanterelles, which many chefs agree are the best size and flavour of all. “People want to know where their food comes from,” Coleclough said. “Regardless of whether they’re an individual, a family or restaurant, that’s who our customers are — people who just appreciate good food!”
Where to eat it: Jonathan Gushue’s new restaurant north of the city, The Gate (14 Sydenham St., Flesherton), features Fresh and Tasty’s farmed Lion’s Mane mushrooms, pan-roasted and dressed with brown butter and hazelnut crumble.
