Ottawa’s Urban Food

Hidden Harvest Ottawa wouldn’t exist without our amazing and dedicated volunteers. So, we have created a new Featured Volunteer segment to showcase these fantastic folks! Learn about who volunteers with Hidden Harvest and what they get up to outside of rescuing fruit. Meet Maya.   “I first got involved with Hidden Harvest at a crabapple harvesting event in the summer of 2013. On that…

While winter may bring a (temporary) halt to the harvesting of fruit and nuts, we Canadians know that from approx. February – March our local maple trees start producing that liquid gold sap! Understandably, we are often contacted by members of the community regarding our involvement in and knowledge of tree tapping and syrup production. While we are happy to support local initiatives such as…

Even in the past five years since starting Hidden Harvest, we’ve noticed that food-bearing trees & forests in Ottawa are disappearing far faster than they are being planted. These Google Earth Timelapse videos show just how quickly our city spreads. Take a look at the changes between 1986 & 1996, then 1996 & 2006, then 2006 & 2016. What do you notice? Sure, building houses…

We’re collecting as many local black walnuts as we can! Walnuts are very expensive at the store, but they make an excellent, healthy brain food: Black walnuts contain lots of good fats, such as polyunsaturated omega 3s and monounsaturated fats. Nuts sometimes fall over a time period of a week or two, and they should be collected off of the ground, as they fall when they are ripe. This makes it…

Food waste is the litter of the 21st century. That is to say, people’s perception & understanding of food waste are changing today in much the same way that people’s perception & understanding of litter changed back in the 50’s & 60’s. Let me begin with a short story: These are apples under a tree in a City park. We raked up these 200lbs of apples into yardwaste…

Seeking: Nut Event Co-ordinator Talented and helpful ensemble seeks single dedicated organizer with shared interests and passions.  Long walks on the beach optional.   Canada Nutist and a few Hidden Harvest volunteers have developed the framework of a fabulous nut event planned for this spring and are looking for a reliable…

We’re headed out to Nepean for another workshop this year! Learn to harness the power of spring in your own backyard. In this mini-workshop the why, the how, and the when of tapping trees for sap will be explored. With your help, we will tap a few trees, look at the equipment required, and hear tips about syrup production at home. Our Nepean host is no stranger to trees – with a backyard…

Question:  “What can we do to help!?!” Answer: WANTED: More Trees to Harvest! Help us obtain permission to harvest more food-bearing trees. Currently we have permission to harvest about 20 trees, yet there  thousands of food bearing trees here in Ottawa hiding…

Yes, we do! Black Walnuts, Hazelnuts, Butternuts and Ginkgo Nuts, our city is littered with tasty local protein. What’s holding us back from coming to grips with this? 1. We’ve forgotten that they’re here. Even though many of the trees are native to this area, as we’ve moved away from living off the land towards an industrialized food system, many of us lost the ability to…

LocAle is a limited-brew local apple beer, combining Kichesippi blonde and our local apple syrup. It started with a few apples falling near Wellington Street. A team of six volunteers met up for a Harvest Event one evening and picked more than one hundred pounds of apples from a single tree! As with all Hidden Harvest events, the bounty was shared with the home owner, volunteer harvesters, a local…