Sinéad and Joanne
Yesterday we had a table at the Kitsilano farmers market. We do one date each year at each of the markets around town (Main, Kitsilano, Trout Lake, and the West End).
While the day was not the best – it was a bit grey and cold – we still had a very nice time.
Our volunteers were overwhelmed by how positive the reception was. In an email, Layne wrote that “I think it was the best tabling experience I have had. A number of people wanted to be on the mailing list and/or were interested in the veg recipes or nutritional advice.”
Over the past few years we’ve definitely observed a shift in how people react to animal rights and veganism.
Both Layne and Sinéad recounted the same story about a mother and her little boy:
A 2-year-old boy in a stroller, with a toy cow in his hand, grinned eagerly upon seeing our booth and proceeded to exclaim, “COOOOWWWS!!!!!”
(His mother promptly whispering to us not to tell him anything about hamburgers or he won’t be able to sleep at night, that he loves tofu, and is “all about the cows”)”
At first when the mother told us not to tell him anything about meat or dairy, we worried that she was feeding him meat and just sheltering him from the facts, but then she told us that he doesn’t really get much exposure to meat and they’re going to wait a couple years before they tell him about where it comes from (makes sense, he was just 2 and a half!). He wanted to take the “Dairy: A Mother’s Suffering” pamphlet because it had pictures of cows on the front…but we managed to distract him with some of the cow stickers and the colouring book.
To top it all off, just two booths down from us was Edible Flours, a new vegan baking company! We, of course, sampled some of their muffins and cupcakes.
Goodies from Edible Flours
Keep an eye out for us at the Trout Lake market on July 24 (Veganmania will also be there) and the West End market on August 7 (Edible Flours will be there too). If you are a paid Liberation BC member, Christa from Veganmania has generously offered a 10% discount on your purchases of her delicious vegan goodies.
