Today on Island Artisans I featured Nick Versteeg of Glenora, just outside of Duncan and his independent production company, DV Cuisine. Nick and I have worked together on many projects in the past, but on this documentary he pretty much did everything from shooting and editing and being on camera himself. This documentary arose as a result of his last effort that I had a larger hand in, Island On The Edge. That looked at how we have been steadily losing the ability to feed ourselves by producing our food right here on Vancouver Island. Every time Nick showed Island on the Edge, he would have a discussion forum afterwards, and that spurred the creation of this latest effort. The two main questions he wants to answer in the film are, 'Can we feed the world the way we are doing it now?' and, 'How can we get more people into farming?' 
Nick traveled all the way to Malawi, Africa, to try to answer those questions, and throughout the documentary you see Nick follow the life of his farm, The Laughing Geese, through an entire year as that growth connects the other stories he presents, including that of the Tugwell Creek Honey operation in Sooke, one of the Island Artisans I’ve featured on this show in the past. 
It's true that Nick is more of a filmmaker than a gardener, but that’s changing. Actually, Nick was trained as a baker in his native Holland, following in his family’s tradition and he operated bakeries in Canada when he emigrated here, but the film bug caught him, he spent many years in Vancouver pursuing that venture, and then the Cowichan Valley caught him, along with gardening and the food security issue. So life has certainly changed for Nick and his wife Elly since moving here.
Nick’s garden makes me a little jealous, because he’s been at it in earnest a couple of more years than I’ve been, but in the documentary he shows you how easy it can be to grow things, and the satisfaction you can get during the harvest when you get to eat them. And this is what motivates him to make these documentaries, which are entirely self-financed and not what you would call money-makers.
So the ‘world premiere’ of the documentary is Saturday night at 7pm at the Odeon Theatre in Victoria, all part of the Victoria Film Festival. Go to Nick’s website, where you will also find out where Nick plans to show the documentary elsewhere around the province, always followed by discussion forums on the topics in the documentary.
My ‘sweet’ assignment earlier today involved judging over 30 samples of syrup for the Big Leaf Maple Syrup Festival. Me and my fellow judges Bill Jones and Mara Jernigan tasted 32 different maple syrups that were made from sap gathered from trees here on the West Coast, and the winners will be revealed at the Festival, which takes place at the BC Forest Discovery Centre just north of Duncan this Saturday. Lots of activities for the kids, and of course maple syrup tasting.
