It s no use to me, it s been there for generations.
Nick Secord is telling me about the reaction he got from the previous owner of his land when approached about selling it. It wasn t a surprise, really, because the Port Colborne, Ont. property is a swamp.
Then Secord chuckles as he recalls the snickering that went up and down the gravel roads when his plans to farm the property began to make the circuit.
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Even at the time, though, Secord was quick to forgive the doubters. After all, growing ostrich ferns for fiddleheads was new to the area. It was new to the province in fact, and new to Canada. But it wasn t a hobby. In fact, with a cost of $1 per plant, and 1,000 plants per acre, and 30 acres under cultivation, a hobby is exactly what it s not.
Secord s NorCliff Farms Inc. has been selling fiddleheads, a spring vegetable, since 1974, supplying fresh, frozen, and marinated fiddleheads to a distribution network spanning Canada, the U. S., Europe and Asia. (The curled fronds, resembling the head of a fiddle, are immature fern leaves that have yet to unfurl.)
While it s not a new vegetable fiddleheads have been a rite of spring for generations in the Maritimes it s certainly not on the agricultural census. That s because it s usually collected in the wild. You might even say, it has been its own kind of forage crop, a crop that you had to go out and forage for.
