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I love meat!

It’s fine and swell and goes well with everything we eat.

But this frame of mind has grown obsolete!

An education of agrology has not made it easy for me to buy meat ethically.

Let’s begin in 1st year agro eco-systems with the exposition to conventional production systems.

To the grocery store we were sent, on an assignment, to comment on the marketing intent of the food conglomerate.

Oh Lord!

How come in Superstore’s galore there’s no beef from next door?

Sourcing from Canada’s Western shore has made our farmer’s poor.

This I can’t be for.

In food chemistry we saw the fatty identity of grain fed beef....

It’s the sort of thing which haunts you in your sleep.

For these saturated fats are no easy task to ask our bodies to crack.

Alas! It is grass for which these cows should have.

But in order to get viable gains and stay in the game we must call upon grain.

What a shame.

In production economics we saw the logistics of big-time factory farms.

Their overcrowded barns made them loose all their charm.

Who’s to harm?

When all your expenditures are reduced to pure figures you see the dawn of confinement feeding procedures...

but how else can you ensure a $1.99 chunk of chicken fingers?

So with all I know, out to dinner I go. “Who reared this lamb?” I demand.

“I don’t know man”. The server reprimands. So this is where I stand:

“Far more easy, has it been to go veggie, than to buy meat ethically.”

By Kevin Morin, Farmer at Stewart's Organic Farm Kevin told us that he wrote this poem while on the train from Québec to Nova Scotia in 2009.

We’re on a quest to find recipes made with ingredients grown in Canada.

Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) Farms using HarvestHand CSA Platform tell us that recipes are the most shared and visited content on their blogs, yet it is a constant struggle to find good quality recipes made with Canadian grown ingredients.

When we asked food leaders in Atlantic Canada where they find recipes made with ingredients grown in Atlantic Canada and here’s what they shared:

• Select Nova Scotia Recipes (Nova Scotia Farms and Food Purveyor Directory)
• Taste of Nova Scotia (Association of Nova Scotian Food Purveyors)
• Adventures in Local Food-Seasonal Eating (Food Action Committee of the Ecology Action Centre)
• Kitchen Vignettes (Aube Giroux- film maker and food blogger)
• Halifax Food Bloggers (30+ Nova Scotia based bloggers)

Where do you find recipes made with seasonal ingredients? Help us build the list: Canadian Recipe Quest

Big thanks to Award Winning Halifax Foodblogger Kathy Jollimore for this gorgeous Holiday Squash Casserole. We love Kathy's blog Eat Halifax!

Here the slide deck from our HarvestHand presentation for the 14th Annual ACORN Conference and Trade Show

We are very excited to announce that HarvestHand was chosen as the winner of the first annual Agriculture Innovation Accelerator Award. The Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce created the award as a way to recognize and support the innovative spirit of the agriculture and agri-food sector in the Valley,

Even though the HarvestHand CSA software product has been under development for the past four year, this happened to be our first major undertaking as a new partnership - Duncan, Patricia and Michael. The award helped us gel our vision for the company, and really solidified us as a work group. Winning is huge for us, but the process was incredibly valuable too.

Practically speaking, the package offered by this award offers tremendous resources to help us in the early phase of our business. Incorporation, maturing our business plan, accessing support on business development in general, and capital to allow us to hire our first employee are all items that this award will help us achieve in short order. We have big hopes to go after the Atlantic Canadian and Eastern USA CSA markets this year -- hopes that are that much more realistic with the resources offered by this award.

This is also a wonderful community event. Even though we can't speak for the other participants, it really felt like we and the other applicants were hitting a significant milestone in the evolution of our various products and businesses by participating in, and being recognized by, this award.

• rewrite/refresh the text
• reorder the flow of the information into appropriate pages
• introduce new graphics/images/videos
• possibly embed Facebook and twitter feed and calendar functions
• possibly have a searchable database
• create an attractive, easy to use, vibrant, positive and inviting space where people want to linger. Also create a space where people get relevant useful information that is helpful in choosing to use the CSA Platform and/or connecting to the 'HH food community'

• samples of your work
• explanation of your experience or educational qualifications
• explanation of your preferred method of working with clients
• brief outline or example of ideas you have for our site based on what already exists (harvesthand.com) and what we have explained.
• a quote for our consideration with an expression of whether an exchange of services/goods would be of interest to you for exploration.