Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
daytripper Smitten to the Core Salt Spring Island's Apple Fest offers a juicy slice of sustainable farming "My husband and I . . ." says the Queen before laughter interrupts and her Highness assumes a look of dignified annoyance. "My husband and I," she says again, "would like to thank the bees and the crab trees for this occasion." Applause now: for the Queen's falsetto, for her ample, grapefruity bosom, for the rubberized duck shoes on her feet and for the bees and trees that made the occasion possible. She gestures toward the man with the shotgun and slouch hat, Henry Ruckle, dead for 98 years, and asks him to step forward. He kneels before the Queen, who – with the tap of a well-travelled floor mop – knights Ruckle amid more laughter. The Queen may be a hairy-legged imposter and the real Henry Ruckle deceased, but the occasion is a boisterous 2010 gathering of Salt Spring Islanders whose agricultural past was propelled by Ruckle's 1872 arrival here and his subsequent planting of 800 apple trees. Beyond the podium occupied by the faux Queen are tables lined with 295 different, alphabetically arranged types of Salt Spring apples – from tart, pink-fleshed Alkmenes to pineapple-quince-flavoured Zuccalmaglio's Reinettes. There are, as well, the local Women's Institute members, known affectionately as "The Pie Ladies," who are now serving, à la mode, wedges of the 181 pies they've baked for the island's annual one-day Apple Festival. And beyond them: vendors selling apple sushi and apple broaches, apple trees and apple shampoo, apple fudge and even good ol' apple sass. But it's a lot more than apples that get chewed when one goes poking into farm fields and orchards at harvest time on Salt Spring. The island is in the midst of a fascinating collective experiment that aims at exploring how 21st century communities might work, given the critical ecological and economic issues the decades ahead pose. How do small farms (or, in fact, urban gardeners) counter international agribusinesses? How do artisan food producers and local shops compete with big box malls? How does the health-conscious consumer respond when confronted with processed, fast foods? What's the role of cooperation, of bartering, of slow food in the future? Well, when a person uses, for example, the very real, entirely legal Salt Spring Dollars – available in all denominations, at many island banks and stores – to buy, say, a Women's Institute slice of homemade pie, the purchase has local consequences. Why? Because the money is negotiable at par only on Salt Spring. So, whether, in by Daniel W ood P H O T O G R A P H Y BY R O N WAT T S WESTWORLD p28-31_SaltSpring.indd 29 >> FA L L 2 0 1 1 29 8/17/11 12:18:46 PM