Quadra ICAN: The Nut Tree Project
Cortes Currents
English - February 01, 2023 17:56 - 13 minutes - 31 MBNews cortes island discovery islands quadra food security energy indigenous nations Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents: On Saturday, 14 volunteers turned out to plant the first batch of hazel-nut trees for the Quadra ICAN Nut Tree Project.
The organizer, Jennifer Banks-Doll, explained, “For a few years now on Quadra, we've been working towards increasing food security. There's been lots of different ideas about how to do that. From perhaps the more obvious, perhaps not more obvious ideas about gardening workshops and learning how to preserve food — different types of gardening, things like that.”
“Then we thought, one of the gaps here is really plant protein and oils. How do we address that gap? You can't really produce a lot of oils in this climate or on a small island because they require expensive equipment. Actually it was my husband, Mark Doll, who came up with the idea of planting nut trees.”
“There are some nut trees that grow quite well in our climate on Quadra. So we applied for a grant and we weren't initially successful, but eventually we were. So we were given some money to plant 100 nut trees in publicly accessible areas on Quadra.”