Keepers of the land

Dave Rogalsky

Eastern Canada Correspondent

Baden, Ont.

Deb Cripps and Carl Hiebert, seated, creators of Keepers of the Land: A Celebration of Canadian Farmers, their 2007 self-published book, chat with Mark Erb at a recent event at Steinmann Mennonite Church, Baden, Ont., to support local farm families and promote food localism.

More than 200 people gathered together in Steinmann Mennonite Church’s new multipurpose auditorium recently to hear music by the Greenwood Hill Bluegrass gospel band and eat apple crisp and homemade ice cream.

They also came out to hear much-published photographer and author Carl Hiebert, together with his partner Deb Cripps, present an overview of their 2006 trek across Canada. Cripps made the trip in their motor home while Hiebert drove a 1949 McCormick tractor, modified with hand controls. (Hiebert has limited use of his legs after a 1981 hang gliding accident.)

Together they told the story of their trip, focusing on each of the 39 families who are portrayed in the photographs in Keepers of the Land: A Celebration of Canadian Farmers, their 2007 self-published book. Stopping approximately every 160 kilometres from White Rock, B.C., to Newfoundland-Labrador—while driving through pouring rain, blistering sun and miles of Canadian forest—Hiebert and Cripps came to treasure their subjects. What most impressed the couple were the Canadian farmers’ entrepreneurship and their tenacity in changing economic times, as well as the importance of farm “value-added” components to food production, and the economic and ecological sense of food localism, most commonly portrayed in Mennonite circles by the 100 Mile Diet and Mennonite Central Committee’s Simply in Season cookbook.

The event was sponsored by “Hope for the Family Farm,” a group of pastors and lay people from the New Hamburg (Ont.) area that has planned a variety of events to both equip and encourage farm families. Promoting food localism and generosity, everything about the evening—from the speakers and musicians to the food—was donated.

Money raised from the evening was given to House of Friendship (HoF), a Kitchener-Waterloo aid agency supported by Mennonites over the years. In accepting the donation, HoF’s Tony Bender used the opportunity to advertise the most recent publication of Foodlink, a non-profit organization in the Region of Waterloo promoting food localism.