Welcome to Local Harvest
After years of planning and an entire winter spent toiling away on the website, I am happy to announce the official launch of the Local Harvest (localharvest.ca [5]) website. The website is now live and we are actively adding content in both directory listings and blog posts. Now that spring is here and the Ontario landscape is greening up, you will see a lot more photos of our local food adventures.
The launch of the website is a defining moment for our agency. I can honestly say that I couldn’t be more proud of what my amazing team at Rustic Creative (www.rusticcreative.com [6]) has put together. The team has spent countless hours, designing, programming, writing, researching and building the site. Marius, Jason, Dustin, Nicole, Lindsay and Leah, thank you for your amazing work and dedication on this project. You truly helped bring one of my dreams to life.
For those of you who are reading this post and wondering why I am perhaps a little sappy or emotional let me explain. Six years ago I opened a marketing agency in Waterloo, Ontario. It was my second attempt at agency life and during the first year it was a struggle to balance freelancers, clients and planting trees (my day job). That’s right, I had a day job working at a nursery where I spent many mornings with shovel and tree in hand. Cash flow was a constant struggle for us in the early years and I needed a way to cover my rent while building the business. During that first year my dirt-covered blackberry was my lifeline. I quite often wrote emails with one hand while spreading mulch with the other. After a year of balancing the two jobs I finally had enough money to solely focus on the agency and I had to give up my outdoor gig. It was a hard decision to make, as I truly love the outdoors, but I needed to focus on my core business.
Without going into too much detail about the growth of the business (and boring you), let me say the past six years have been amazing. We have moved to a great studio, we have amazing clients and an amazing team that inspires me everyday. The Local Harvest website is an example of the work we do at Rustic Creative. Like a great dish, it contains many key ingredients, marketing strategy, creative development, graphic design, web development, multimedia development and social media integration. With this project we had full creative freedom and for the first time in our history our entire team was able to contribute to the project. The project has helped to bring the team closer and has helped to foster greater communication and collaboration.
Again, thank you to my team!
Why Did We Build Local Harvest?
This is a question that many people have asked us. The simple answer is we love great food and even more importantly we love great local food. I personally have been around the food industry since I was a child. My summers were spent toiling in my grandmother’s garden in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Growing up my parents always had a vegetable garden in our backyard and since becoming a homeowner I have carried on the tradition. As a teenager my part-time job consisted of cooking behind the line and serving food at a variety of local restaurants. Anyone who knows me would call me a foodie. Saturday mornings you will find me at the farmers market and traveling around the Waterloo region visiting my favourite places. I am fortunate to work with a group of people who equally share in my passion for great local food. Before Local Harvest we found ourselves drawing maps on scraps of paper, sending friends emails and telling stories of the places we visited. Last fall we were sitting around talking about our food adventures when the idea formed to create something that was a bit more permanent and open to everyone, not just our friends and families. From that initial conversation the idea was born and as they say, the rest is history.
The site was born from our passion for food and now that it is built, it is fueled by our passion to create.
Our Goal For Local Harvest
Our goal is to become the ultimate source for finding local food across Ontario. We want to become local food storytellers and through those stories we hope to motivate consumers to explore their communities for great tasting food. During the next 12 months we will be visiting farms, markets and restaurants to capture a behind the scenes look of how our food is produced. Stayed tuned for Local Harvest TV!
Another important goal is to build a community centred around the celebration of great local food. We are fortunate to live in an amazing province that grows an abundant variety of food. There are many reasons to buy local, it helps support the local economy, is better for the environment and what we feel is one the greatest reasons, “it just tastes better”. Have you ever tried an Ontario strawberry, farm fresh asparagus, locally grown corn, a fall harvest apple? There is no comparison. The food in Ontario is amazing and we need to be celebrating and encouraging more shops and restaurants to source local products.
If you love great local food we encourage you to write to us, find us on Facebook, send us a tweet about your story.
Join the LocalHarvest.ca community and let’s celebrate Ontario!
Steve
