Nourishing Circles Food Collective

China or Canada?

I’m sure your answer is Canada.

But is it really?

Because this is what Canadian made looks like from where I’m standing.

It looks like short sleeps and very long days.
Thousands of kilometres on the road.
High fuel bills, market fees and production costs.

It looks like the kindness of strangers, the open doors of fellow farmers and wholehearted parents, and the incredible support of farmers’ markets across this province.

Canadian made costs more because it costs more to make.

We pay Canadian wages. We purchase from Canadian farmers. We travel from community to community, not just to sell a jar, but to tell you why what grows here matters.

Wild blueberries are one of Nova Scotia’s most important crops. Protecting our blueberry fields means creating real demand for the berries grown here, and that means paying farmers fairly, putting those berries into products with value, and then showing up across the province to help people understand why.

That is our version of fair trade.

It may feel more expensive at the checkout, but cheap food always sends the bill somewhere else: to the farmer, the worker, the land, or the future of the communities we say we want to protect.

If you haven’t heard our whole story yet, look back through our posts. Send us a message. Ask us why we pay dollars on the pound for our berries, or keep following along, because we have much more to share.

There is no better time than now to start looking beyond the front of the package and asking:

Where was this made?
Who was paid?
What landscape does this purchase protect?
And does what I place in my cart match what I say I support?

Canada or China?

Your answer isn’t just what you say.

It’s what you choose.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,

Tawny

There is something really special happening right now.

We are leaning in.

Into this province we call home.
Into its small towns and farm markets.
Into the back roads, the conversations, the handshakes, the stories and the people who care deeply about where their food comes from.

Today, you’ll find us at the New Germany Farmers Market.

Tomorrow, we’re headed to Wolfville.

And somewhere between loading the vehicle, driving the miles, setting up the table and pouring samples, I keep thinking about how lucky I am to get to do this.

To take the food, the stories and the heart of rural Nova Scotia out into the province and share it.

To talk about the farms behind the ingredients.

To talk about why local food matters.

To meet the people who are going to take these jars home and put them on their own tables.

This business has never just been about making products.

It is about strengthening the relationships between the people who grow food, the people who make food, and the people who eat it.

And right now, we are out there building those relationships one market, one conversation and one community at a time.

So if you’re near New Germany today, come find us.

If you’re in the Valley, we’ll see you in Wolfville tomorrow.

We’re showing up with full hearts, good food and a whole lot of passion for this beautiful farmland we get to call home.

Nova Scotia, we’re leaning all the way in.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,

Tawny

I used to have a very particular picture in my head of what being a “real farmer” was supposed to look like.

A big garden.
More livestock.
Everything grown here.
Everything raised here.
Everything passing through my own hands.

This year has been teaching me something different.

I didn’t grow the garden I imagined.
I raised fewer animals.
I downsized in places.
I bought food from other farmers.
I leaned harder into relationships, collaboration and figuring out what I can actually carry well.

And maybe that isn't doing less, maybe it is growing differently.

Because today, here we are.

Nourishing Circles is at our very first Halifax market at Alderney Landing, and I’m standing here looking around thinking about how much the dream has changed.

It isn’t just about what I can grow on my own piece of land anymore. It’s about connecting farms, food makers, communities and tables.

It’s about bringing a little more rural Nova Scotia into our urban centres, and I absolutely love that.

We’re here at Alderney Landing until 6pm today, so come find us, say hello, taste some good food and be part of this very first one with us. ❤️

And if you miss us today, don’t worry, we’ll be back.

In the meantime, you can find our products at Organic Earth Market and Arthur’s Urban Market.

There is a much bigger reflection behind all of this that I’ll share tomorrow.

But for today? I’m just really grateful to be here.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,
Tawny

I am very, very tired tonight. The kind of tired that comes after a sleepless night listening to thunderstorms roll over the farm, followed by a full day of pushing yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.

Today I processed 4 🐏 5 🐇 for once, before I rush past that sentence and start thinking about everything I still don’t know, everything I could have done better, or all the things waiting for me tomorrow… I want to stop here. Because I am proud of myself.

Three years ago, I could not have done what I did today. Today, I still had help. I still asked questions. I still needed guidance. I nicked myself. I’m covered in the evidence of a very real day on a farm.

But I did almost all of it myself and that is a really big deal to me. There is something else I’ve learned through raising animals for food that can be difficult to explain to people who haven’t lived it.

Being able to do this does not mean I am unattached. It does not mean I care less. Quite the opposite. I am attached from the beginning. I remember births. I remember the ones I worried over. The ones who tested every fence I ever built. The personalities. The frustrations. The lessons. I care. Deeply.Maybe that’s exactly why this work requires so much courage.

Courage isn’t not feeling something. Courage is feeling the full weight of something and still being willing to take responsibility for it, to finish the job you began, to learn the skill, to honour the animal. To carry both gratitude and grief without pretending either one isn’t there.

I want my son to see that. I want him to grow up knowing that difficult things are not automatically bad things. That we can learn skills that scare us.

That we can be tender & capable at the same time. That someone else can make completely different choices from ours & neither one of us has to become the villain in the other person’s story.

I don’t expect everyone to understand the way I choose to live but I do know this: There is no absence of compassion here. There is a tremendous amount of love.
❤️ for the animals in my care, for feeding my family, for good food, for the farmers who still choose this difficult life....and love for my brave ❤

Yesterday I told you what I’m willing to let get messy for a while. Today, I want to tell you why.

I’ve spent a lot of years carrying big ideas quietly inside me. Seeing possibilities before I knew how they would take shape. Listening. Learning. Healing. Dreaming.

But something is changing now.
I’m not just holding the vision anymore.
I’m opening it up. I’m inviting people in as it grows. I’m listening to farmers, producers, retailers, community builders and people who care deeply about the future of food here. I’m hearing the bottlenecks, the frustrations, the places where good people keep getting stuck.

And together, something is beginning to take shape. A vision that helps protect food and farmland in Nova Scotia. A place for food, connection, storytelling, songwriting, ceremony, learning, making and gathering.

Something bigger than me, and something I was never meant to build alone.....that may be the part I’m most excited about.

I’m celebrating the messy middle right now. Every farmers market. Every new retail shelf. Every conversation. Every pitch. Every yes. Every no. Every person who adds another piece to what this might become...because what once existed mostly inside my imagination is beginning to become visible.

I’m at the Farrmers Market today, doing one more small piece of the work.....and there is so much more coming.

Stay close. We’re just getting started.
The growth is beginning to become public, and I can’t wait to show you what we’re building together.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,
Tawny

“When do you sleep?”

People ask me that sometimes, and I chuckle. Pretty much when everybody else sleeps, truthfully. In fact, I have no trouble falling asleep. Lately, I sleep better than I have in years.

But there is always a sacrifice somewhere.
For me, right now, it’s my house. I moved back into it in a bit of a hurry this spring, knee-deep in healing and already dreaming about a different way of being. Somewhere along the way, the dreaming turned into building.

Now I am fully immersed in working very hard toward a very big vision. Sometimes a big visionary can see something that doesn’t exist yet so clearly she can almost walk through it… while everybody else can see the boxes inside her front door. 😂

Am I proud of the state of my house right now? No. Do I enjoy tripping over things walking from one room to another? Also no. It looks a little like a raccoon has moved in and begun reorganizing.

My yoga practice has mostly disappeared. There are still boxes everywhere. Things that normally matter to me have gone onto the back burner. I don’t want to live this way forever.

But I’m surprisingly okay with it being this way for now. Because sometimes growth asks us to choose....and right now, I’m choosing the vision.

Continued tomorrow…...

Back to school looks a little different around here. 📚🚙

Coolers. Boxes. Deliveries. A trailer.

And tucked somewhere in the middle of all of it… school books.

One of the questions I get asked fairly often is how I manage homeschooling while building Nourishing Circles.

The answer is probably: not very conventionally. 😂

We don't have a perfectly divided life where work happens over here, school happens over there, and everything fits neatly into its assigned hours.

A lot of our learning happens on the road.

Audiobooks between deliveries. Activity books tucked beside product. Conversations about geography while we figure out where we're going. Math while we're counting cases, weighing things and working through orders. Lessons in communication, responsibility, farming, food systems and entrepreneurship that I could never have planned into a workbook.

And sometimes school is simply finding ten quiet minutes in the Subaru while Mom finishes the next thing.

I'm still figuring out how to make our travelling classroom work better for both of us. What comes with us, what stays home, what works in the car and what absolutely does not.

But maybe that's part of the lesson too.

Our life doesn't have to look like anybody else's to be full of learning.

So while lots of families are packing backpacks this week, apparently we're packing activity books between coolers and cases of food.

Back to school, Nourishing Circles style, because it's ok to be different.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,
Tawny

What do you think this is?

Redemption.

Under all that plastic is a wood stove.

Last winter was one of the hardest winters of our lives.

We found ourselves in an agreement where what had been promised did not come to fruition. Firewood we were depending on never arrived. We couldn't financially secure enough to replace it, and trying to keep our home warm with baseboard heat left us staring at an electricity bill of nearly $4,000.

There were days when keeping our little home warm became genuinely frightening.

And then a beautiful human quietly started slipping us boxes of wood and kindling.

Enough to keep a fire going.
Enough to get us through.
Enough to remind me that sometimes abundance doesn't arrive as abundance at all.

Sometimes it arrives one box of wood at a time.

I made myself a promise last winter that we would never be that vulnerable again.

And this?

This is that promise becoming real.

It is Grandpa and me finding the stove. It is a very special contractor helping us build the proper pad for it. It is another contractor coming to make sure everything is installed, certified, insured and safe.

Many hands.

Which feels particularly meaningful after talking yesterday about being a one woman show.

I carry a lot by myself.

But I am learning that independence and isolation are not the same thing.

One of the choices we get to make after hard things happen is what we allow those experiences to make of us.

Hard things can make us hard.

Or they can teach us where we need stronger foundations while we fight like hell to keep our hearts soft.

I choose soft.

I choose asking for help.

I choose giving myself grace for the time recovery takes.

I choose receiving the hands that reach toward us and making sure, when I have the capacity, that my own hands reach back.

And I choose redemption.

Not pretending the hard thing didn't happen.

Building something better because it did.

One stove.
Many hands.
A warmer winter ahead.

And another little piece of the life we are building around abundance, relationship and taking care of one another.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,
Tawny

I lied to you yesterday.

I told you Nourishing Circles was a one-woman show.

That's not entirely true. 😉

I actually have a very committed 10-year-old sidekick.

A lot of people ask me how I do all of this while homeschooling Caden.

The truth?

We make it work as we go.

Distribution days come with audiobooks. Long drives become learning time. We're working on finding one of those super-cool car setups that will make writing and schoolwork a little easier on the road.

And if you've figured out brilliant ways to make learning work in a vehicle, we're all ears. 😉

Part of the reason I've built Nourishing Circles this way is because I wanted work and family to be able to exist together — even when that looks a little unconventional.

So no, our distribution is not always perfect.

Our social media isn't always perfect.

We're not always perfectly on time.

Sometimes there's a kid in the passenger seat, an audiobook playing, a car full of boxes and about seventeen things happening at once.

But there is a whole lot of heart in this little business.

Nourishing Circles is run by a family.

It exists to support families.

And we're fiercely committed to building something that helps more farming and food-producing families thrive alongside ours.

So, correction from yesterday:

Not quite a one-woman show.

More like a woman, a kid, a whole lot of kilometres and a pretty big dream.

Weaving a collaborative tapestry,
Tawny