Late in July, a crowd of almost 100 well-dressed food lovers picked their way through greenhouse dirt to pull up a seat at one long dinner table.
The Land & Sea Harvest Dinner - the closing event of Taste: Victoria's Festival of Food and Wine - saw carand busloads of diners make their way from Victoria to Vantreight Farms on the Saanich Peninsula. The payoff? A meal made with produce from the farm's fields and greenhouses, by local chefs Matt Rissling, Dwane MacIsaac, and Steve Walker-Duncan.
"It has a lot of moving parts," says Kathy McAree, festival organizer. "The logistics of bringing all those people to the farm are intense. It's very costly bringing everything in; creating a kitchen and a restaurant when there's absolutely nothing there."
To the casual observer, it might seem more sensible to bring the chefs and the ingredients back to the elegant Hotel Grand Pacific, which hosted many of the fest's other events. There, guests could sit comfortably in an air-conditioned ballroom, where tables, chairs and linens - not to mention the hotel kitchen - are already in place.
That misses the point though, says McAree.
"You need to go to the source. The big thing is having your toes in the dirt - there's so much to be said for seeing things at that level. It's so great for the farmers, they feel like people are really seeing what they do."
There's nothing quite like strolling past the flats of leafy greens and beans from which our salad was made: torn lettuce topped with cold smoked albacore tuna, pickled beets, beans and lemon cucumber, all tossed in a basil chevre vinaigrette.
Or to know that the kale wrapped around the local ling cod and the golden beets in the purée alongside were harvested just steps away from where you're eating your dinner.
It's lovely, too, to have snacked on just-picked organic strawberries before dinner began, and to see those same berries show up in a sweet coconut "sushi" that arrives as dessert.
As McAree points out, that's the big picture payoff.
FRESH SHEET
Opportunities to go to the source and eat on a farm have not entirely passed you by this year.
? Metro Vancouver Feast of Fields, a wandering harvest festival, takes place Sunday, Sept. 9, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Golden Ears Cheesecrafters in Maple Ridge; feastoffields.com.
? Vancouver Island Feast of Fields takes place Sunday, Sept. 16, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Alderlea Farm & Café in Duncan; feastoffields.com.
? The Fall Apple Festival takes place Oct. 13-14, at the UBC Botanical Garden, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $4; botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/apple-festival.
