Partiendo el pan—breaking bread

It’s late on a recent Wednesday afternoon when I climb the stone steps near a building appropriately known as the Ridge, a structure that is the heart of the Closson Chase Winery. On the lower level, the grape harvest is pressed and prepared to be aged for later savouring. The upper storey, my destination today, is devoted to the operation’s wine-making administration and for gatherings— wine tastings, community interactions, and the like.

Two lone bicycles leaning by the entrance add to the bucolic setting, yet the almost silence is a poignant reminder of the changes within our current days. Restrictions placed on public gatherings due to the coronavirus’s spread have robbed this place and countless others of the chance to host events and bring people together. But today, there is one hint of people gathering that catches my senses—the scent of home-style cooking, in this case, the aroma of roasted red peppers.

Inside, Claire Tallarico is in motion, busy within a small kitchen alongside Connor Mc- Donald, a young visual artist, who is also her son. During my visit, Claire and Connor are focused on preparing freshly made meals for suppertime delivery. The pair gently and quickly portion the food into individual containers. In turn, the containers are placed in separately addressed large brown paper bags onto which Connor has added original hand drawings reflecting the taste of the day. Attached to each bag is a printed note sending salutations to the recipient and describing the evening’s inspired menu, which includes entrees, sides, main meal and dessert. The message— written in English and Spanish—also names the farms where ingredients are from.

Claire, a visual artist and trained chef, is the founder of Alchemy Artists Residency, an international artist-run group founded in 2015. Claire joined forces early on with Tonia DiRisio, someone whose art practice complemented Claire’s—a focused interest in how simple everyday activities of art making and cooking, preserving, and sharing food can engage communities.

Beginning on the Toronto Islands in 2015, the group initially invited selected artists working in various mediums to live and work together over 12 days to share their work while also contributing to lively communal dinners. Guest talks from local artists, chefs, winemakers and community members formed a coming together of ideas. All of this had come to benefit the Hillier community during summer months since 2017, when the place became a match for Alchemy’s core ideals.

Like most everything in our coronavirus influenced lives, Alchemy was driven to re-focus upcoming plans for Hillier and invent anew when March of this year arrived. With Storehouse Foodbank as the charitable partner and community advisor, a creative undertaking called Table Settings was born in collaboration with Storehouse’s Linda Downey, key to the activity.

Closson Chase Winery and winemaker Keith Tyers offered to donate its Ridge Kitchen, and with financial support from The County Foundation, Claire and Linda reached out to Hillierbased vineyard owners, offering the twice-weekly meals at no cost in recognition of the hard work during a stressful growing season. Six vineyards and one farm signed on.

Alchemy leads the conception, planning and menu design. They, with a small brigade of volunteer artists and cooks working out of the donated Closson Chase Ridge kitchen, have so far made close to 600 suppers in this season of coronavirus. Each week two to three artists and cooks work behind the scenes to make Table Settings happen. Meal ingredients originate from and are purchased from the farms and fields that surround us. In turn, the suppers arrive at the now physically distanced tables of the loose-knit community of workers.

Many within the local labour force arrive from away each season to work the surrounding lands. Work permits and temporary visa papers confirm a window of time—from six weeks up to eight months—that non residents are permitted to work in Canada. Most labourers come from Mexico and the Caribbean, with some individuals returning to our area over decades. In particular, the meals are an acknowledgement to the many that leave their families for a large portion of the year to earn income not available to them in their homelands. Monies made here can mostly sustain families there for a large portion of the year. The workers’ combined efforts are a cornerstone of the rural economy of many parts of Canada and markedly here in Prince Edward County, where the labour underpins the success of our vineyard, hops, fruit and vegetable production.

In this particular season, workers were required to quarantine upon arrival before attending the fields. Most notably, as the normal work schedule comprises six and half days a week, evenings and Sunday afternoons have traditionally allowed camaraderie opportunities, the sharing of meals and socializing with fellow workers employed in a variety of local operations. The coronavirus has now restricted those freedoms of movement, thus inhibiting interaction with fellow workers and adding to the adversity of isolation.

It’s now 5 p.m., the time assigned for pickup of the meals—36 of them now packaged, waiting fresh and inviting on a long dinner table. As people arrive masked and in ones and twos to pick up the dinners for delivery to their respective wineries, among them, Jim and Kelly Reid, who as volunteers for Foodbank, have come to collect five dinners on behalf of workers at Lakeshore Farms.

Crisis can lead to encounters that allow for understandings in spontaneous and informal ways. Often it can be those very conditions of chaos that bring people together. Our current threat of a global pandemic has seen countries and communities unite in common cause with the pandemic as catalyst. Our place is one of those.

In this case, volunteers from away have combined forces with local organizations and residents to support another group from away, all to the well-being of industry and individuals all around. For me, the recent celebration of Thanksgiving drove this message further home.

Photos provided by Kirstn Mayers and Lee Baker.