From seed to pizza slice: Lawns to Loaves celebrates organic, sustainable food

Never has pizza tasted so good. But maybe I’m biased. After all, the flour that made the pizza dough came in part from wheat that my partner grew. Not only that, but I helped grind that wheat into flour by peddling away on a bicycle-powered flour mill. And I chopped the peppers that, along with cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms and pesto made up the pizza topping.

So good, that I could hardly wait for the next batch of pizzas to come out of the portable pizza oven (made from an old oil drum) so I could have seconds.

It was the culmination of the Environmental Youth Alliance’s Lawns to Loaves. The celebration of the successful project took place at EYA’s ecopavilion garden house at the Strathcona Community Garden on October 22. Dozens of enthusiastic participants, their families and supporters came out for the celebration. Everybody pitched in to help gather the wheat into sheaves, winnow it, husk it, grind it, make pizza dough or prepare pizza toppings. 

Chris Hergesheimer, aka the Flour Peddler, grinds wheat into flour using his own bicycle-powered mill.

Lawns to Loaves, despite what some politicians would have us believe, did not involve the digging up of front lawns so that Vancouverites could replace their grass with wheat, according to EYA’s Hartley Rosen. Instead, its goals were:

• To successfully cultivate a hundred pounds of organic spring wheat within the city of Vancouver;
• To engage the city in an experiment regarding what defines a farm and to symbolically challenge the dominant scale of food production;
• To teach project participants about the growing, processing, and baking of this staple food.

Twenty-five volunteers from across the city were given enough seeds to plant 100 square feet of wheat. Planting began in early May and the wheat was harvested in September. 

The project -- which was funded by a Greenest City Neighbourhood grant of $5,000 --- also involved collaborating with local schools so that Vancouver school kids could gain a better connection with where their food comes from. Four schools participated this year, mainly from the east side. Three more schools, including some west side ones, will join next year, says Matthew Kemshaw, coordinator of the program. 

Matthew Kemshaw

“Students haven’t been exposed to this very much,” Kemshaw says. “They haven’t been asked to critically think about where their food comes from or what kind of impact it has on social and ecological communities around the world.” Click here to see my full interview with Matthew.

Rosen says Lawns to Loaves was a success. “We’re definitely in for next year, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”