Demeter’s Wheat: A Fertile Heritage

Apparently the book, Demeter’s Wheats is hot off the press (see below). The author, Sharon Rempel has done urban and country agriculture. She also helped to found the original Seedy Saturday. She’s done a lot of work on ancient and heirloom grains which led to this book.

As a kid I was a great fan of the Greek myths. Demeter is the goddess of grain and fertility (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter).

Demeter is the “pure nourisher of the youth and the green earth, the health-giving cycle of life and death, and preserver of marriage and the sacred law?”

When the Romans adopted the goddess, they renamed her Ceres. The word “cereal” is derived from this.

Thank you Laura Berman and the Toronto Food Policy Council for this lovely send!
Laura Berman
GreenFuse Photos
416-785-4880

www.greenfusephotos.com
www.greenfusestock.com

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DEMETER’S WHEATS. Growing local food and community with traditional wisdom and heritage wheat. 2008. Published by: Grassroot Solutions, Victoria. $19.95 plus $1 GST and $6 shipping.
www.grassrootsolutions.com
Author and organic agronomist Sharon Rempel has worked with heritage wheat for twenty years. She’s convinced the old varieties have the ability to adapt quickly to a diversity of growing conditions and produce crops without chemical inputs. As founder of seasonal festivals to celebrate seed (’Seedy Saturday’ and the ‘Bread and Wheat’ Festival) she recognizes that ‘culture’ is missing from today’s agricultural system.
Her book offers practical growing information, seed saving basics and a list of Canada’s heritage wheat varieties. The book also offers insights into today’s ‘green’, ‘local food’, ‘100 mile diet’, ‘food shortages’ and ‘carbon credits’. Sharon uses wheat and bread as metaphors to discuss deep issues that haunt society. She shares hope and inspiration that is rooted in the Mystery School cycle of ’seed’ from Neolithic times inGreece.
The cover shows a handful of ancestral heritage wheat that tops three photos from Syria. In May 2008 Sharon visited Tell Halula, a Neolithic site of agriculture (one of the first human communities where grains were cultivated 8000 B.C. and where there are no weapons found in the ruins). She was inspired by the courage of a young woman farmer to take over ‘on farm’ variety development on her family farm and by the typical ‘Syrian flat bread’ baked in tandoor ovens.
Sharon is holding a handful of Red Fife wheat on the back cover photo. It links with a photo of a hand holding seed with a quote “The hand that holds the seed controls the food supply”.
‘Demeter’s Wheats’ is a unique book that will stimulate thought, questions and provide a few answers in times when people are thinking about ‘growing community’. Sharon says ‘community starts with a seed bank’ and intentions of finding ways to work together cooperatively and collaboratively. The wisdom of local people, plants and place provide a dynamic growing energy that will provide answers for food today and in the future’.
Sharon Rempel can be reached in Victoria at (250) 298-1133 and via email at slrempel@shaw.ca Books can be ordered with a cheque or money order payable to Sharon; address 3741 Metchosin Road, Victoria, B.C. V9C 4A8, Canada.
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Sharon L. Rempel
www.grassrootsolutions.com
email: slrempel@shaw.ca

Sharon’s book is released! ‘DEMETER’S WHEATS. Growing local food
and community with traditional wisdom and heritage wheat.’
$19.95 plus $1 GST and $6 shipping to address below.
www.grassrootsolutions.com

3741 Metchosin Road
Victoria, B.C. V9C 4A8 Canada
tel: (250) 298-1133 fax upon request

Creating connections between “heritage wheat”
(including ‘Red Fife’), artisan bakers and breadaholics!

The 2008 Bread and Wheat Festival is Sunday November 2, 2008
at the Leonardo Da Vinci Center, 195 Bay Street Victoria B.C.
10 am – 4 pm. www.breadandwheat.com