So that was fine
The gardening project was a mentor/beginner based project. People were interested in gardening in the community, but they didn’t really know where to start.
And so, that’s what we done raised bed gardening. And once we started talking about the gardening project in Rigolet it was like, a lot of people were interested, which was great.
So, I never gardened before and during the project we were hearing from the ladies in Hopedale who had said that at their Inuit Community Government they had grown some tomatoes, and I was kind of inspired by that. And at the office I was too at the time had real big windows and we were saying like, ok, maybe we could do the same sort of thing to get some tomatoes in to try to grow in the big window.
So that was fine.
We had that ordered and the tomatoes were growing, and they were ripening, and there were tiny tomatoes, Tumbling Toms they were called, and they started falling off. So I didn’t know if you had to pick em, or fall off, or what, so I just picked them up and decided that I would take them around the community for people to try.
So I went from my office, I went to Northern, I went to the post office, and when I was going there there were some Torngat housing workers at the, around the dock at the time, picking up freight, so I asked them if they were interested in trying some tomatoes.
<Laughter>
And they tried it and one said um, “Can we have some more?” So, they really enjoyed them I think. Yeah.
They were amazed that they were actually grown here in the community.Like, people said that they can’t believe, they taste so different than what you would buy at the store. And they were so fresh, like from off the plant, that I guess people were just used to having something that travelled for days and days to get here.
And um they really enjoyed it.
And, like, there was this lady with her grandchildren there so I went over and asked, “Would you want to try a tomato?” And he was really enthusiastic to try it and as soon as he popped it in his mouth his face went...he made all different faces and he just spit it out!
<Laughter>
But I had to laugh because it was just too funny.
