Several trends in the pandemic – an obsession with food, an interest in supporting local businesses, worries about the hospitality industry, and a new appreciation for local travel – are leading to a surge in agrotourism initiatives across eastern Ontario.

“People are becoming increasingly interested in knowing where the food they eat comes from,” said Alison Migneault, director of marketing and communications at Tourism Kingston.

In 2019, their organization began developing Frontenac Farm into Kingston Table, a program designed to attract visitors by highlighting growers from the nearby chefs of Frontenac County and Kingston. Plans to start funding the program in March 2020 have been derailed by COVID-19.

The tourism authority knew that time is of the essence in helping their restaurateurs. In late March 2020, the Conference Board of Canada named Kingston one of five communities across Canada most at risk from COVID-19 due to the high concentration of housing and food jobs in the city.

So, in the fall of 2020, Tourism Kingston redesigned the farm-to-table promotion, focusing on encouraging locals to discover their region rather than attracting visitors from afar.

“We saw a great deal of feedback and interest,” says Migneault – so much so that the tourism authority ran the program again in late winter 2021 and received $ 15,000 in partnership funds from the regional tourism organization for southeastern Ontario.

Kingston isn’t the only community in eastern Ontario that uses food and farms to boost tourism (if we can all travel safely, of course). Further east, Cornwall’s Spark and SDG program has received 16 applications from entrepreneurs looking to take their tourism ideas to the next level. All of the winners, who each received a US $ 3,000 scholarship and tourism coaching at the end of 2020, had ideas with a food or agrotourism inclination.

Those winners included Vanessa Leduc and Moe Bellefeuille, who plan to offer food tours of Cornwall later this year. The couple, both avid travelers, have done food tours in locations from Charleston to Cancun. After each one, one said to the other, “Cornwall has such good food – we should do a tour like this in Cornwall,” says Leduc. So they started Cornwall Food Tours.

First up, they offer walking tours to sample dishes and drinks from local restaurants for bubbles of four to six people – slightly smaller than the usual food tour group of 10 to 12 people.

“People are looking for authentic experiences.”

Vanessa Leduc, Cornwall Food Tours

“None of this is what we originally hoped for,” admits Leduc, but she agrees. If you start small, you can refine the approach.

Despite the pandemic, Leduc is convinced that the time is right for this deal. “People are looking for authentic experiences,” she says, adding that small outdoor tours will help locals discover local food in a COVID-safe way.

The couple initially planned to hold a one-time fundraising event for Baldwin House, a local women’s shelter, in the summer of 2020. Over time, this turned into a plan to run a more extensive list of tours, with a portion of all proceeds going on to support Baldwin House.

Community focus

A desire to give back to the community also motivated Johnny Slack of Calabogie Family Farm – an organic cattle ranch in Renfrew County – to start a new business. He started Community Blossoms in early 2021. Every week throughout the growing season, subscribers will receive a bouquet of fresh flowers grown on the farm.

Johnny Slack, who holds his daughter Lena in his hand, owns the Calabogie Family Farm together with his wife Emma. (Courtesy Photo of Calabogie Family Farm)

Two weeks after the program opened in early January, Slack had sold half of the 50 shares at $ 150 for a full share or $ 75 for half a share. The program was fully subscribed to within six weeks.

Community Blossoms is not meant to be a money maker for the farm, Slack says. Instead, he wanted to raise people’s spirits and at the same time raise money for a good cause.

“It’s about … showing that we can also be together separately,” he says.

The family will only keep the money they need to buy seeds for the zinnias, baby’s breath, cosmos, and other flowers that they will grow. The rest of the proceeds go to Renfrew & District Food Bank.

There is also a strong community emphasis when North Grenville Mayor Nancy Peckford talks about the sugar bush on the Kemptville campus.

Frank Heerkens, a seasoned maple syrup producer from Chesterville, began restoring the abandoned network of around 1,000 maple faucets in 2016. The lines were once used to make syrup as part of the University of Guelph’s agroforestry program.

After purchasing the property from the university in 2018, the municipality decided to renovate the campus network of paths to complement the restored sugar bush. Not only would they offer local students and teachers a new place for COVID-safe outdoor educational activities, but the hiking trails would also be a valuable addition to the community’s recreational infrastructure.

Before COVID, “People were traveling outside of our community to visit a sugar bush, but we had one in the middle of Kemptville,” Peckford points out.

She adds that this isn’t the only new food and agrotourism initiative in Kemptville. In April 2020, a startup called My Local Markets set up a website where a wide range of local foods – like Winchester flour and Arnprior honey – can be sold and delivered directly to consumers. My Local Markets also hosted socially distant outdoor dining events on the Kemptville campus last summer.