Rebecca LeHeup, Arlene Stein, me and the crew from the Stop includ­ing Chris Brown, Ashley Shortall & Bertrand Alepee

The wind and rain did lit­tle to dampen the resolve of upwards of 28,000 peo­ple who made the trek yes­ter­day to the tiny ham­let of Melancthon, just out­side of Orangeville to gather at Foodstock. Close to 100 chefs from across Canada were on hand, donat­ing their time and tal­ent to protest the Melancthon Quarry with the best weapons at their dis­posal; a rich and diverse offer­ing of food reflect­ing the gifts that our land produces.

Area chefs Jamie Kennedy of Gilead Cafe, Matty Matheson of Parts & Labour, Albert Ponzo of Le Select, Alexandra Feswick of Brockton General, Graham Pratt of the Gabardine and Rodney Bowers of Hey Meatball were among the many chefs on hand cook­ing, serv­ing and actively show­ing sup­port for local food and demon­strat­ing against the mas­sive dig.

Buddha Dog’s Andrew Mackenzie & Jillian Stein

“It really shows that we are not just by our­selves think­ing about this quarry,” says Stadtländer, who started the Foodstock ball rolling and is the man behind the event. “The deci­sion mak­ers must see there is a lot of resis­tance and peo­ple care about land and water. We are stand­ing united and sup­port our farm­ers,” he said. “When we stand up we can actu­ally do something.”

Held directly across the road from the pro­posed quarry, the event took place on Adam Black’s prop­erty. Black’s fam­ily has been farm­ing the land next to the site for three gen­er­a­tions and refused to sell to the quarry devel­op­ers, an American com­pany called Highland which is plan­ning to exca­vate the lime­stone under the water table.

In order to access the bil­lion tonnes of rock they’ll have to pump an esti­mated 600 mil­lion litres of water from the area every day.

The quarry lands are to stretch five kilo­me­tre across and plunge 200 feet down and will become the largest quarry in Canada. A “mega quarry” is defined as hav­ing a rock reserve of at least 150 mil­lion tones; the Highland reserve has one bil­lion tonnes, part of a six-billion-tonne deposit. The “mega quarry” is slated to irre­versibly destroy this prime farm­land north of Orangeville, 1/3 the size of down­town Toronto, trans­form­ing gen­tly rolling hills and pas­tures into a huge rock pit, and drain­ing the water table for the sur­round­ing area.

The Green Party’s Mike Schreiner and Buddha Dog’s Andrew Mackenzie, photo cour­tesy of Rebecca LeHeup

The chilly fall weather made the scene all the more authen­tic, remind­ing those who attended of the rela­tion­ship between the land, it’s peo­ple and the ele­ments. A rainy autumn sky, windswept fields and the smell of the earth’s bounty being cooked on fields that feed, nur­ture and served to remind us; this land is your land, this land is my land. Although the over­all mood was fes­tive, with musi­cians rang­ing from Jim Cuddy to Sarah Harmer, an under­cur­rent of alarm was tan­gi­ble, as many were unsure whether the gath­er­ing was a protest, a cel­e­bra­tion or an Irish wake-up call, per­haps too late. The col­lid­ing clouds and lime­stone sky seemed to warn one and all, a storm is coming.

Watch this site for a video from the event that we’ll be post­ing on Wednesday. To see more pic­tures from the event go here or search the Foodstock hash­tag (#food­stock) on twitter.