Fiona and Clyde

Clyde and Fiona King are the founders of the Nimii Wemtigwaaki Tigaan food forest. Clyde (Mississaugi Anishinaabe) and Fiona (ally settler of Scottish-German descent) are enthusiastic native plant and organic/heirloom/Indigenous seed people.

Fiona: We started our food forest for our son and our community. Because of his special needs, our son will probably need to supplement his income. We started with what was a soy field, and you wouldn’t recognize it now. Observation is your best teacher. We saw what native plants grew and added more of those, and learned from teachers like Terrylynn Brant. So, where we had wild plums along the property line, we added more. We made some mistakes, too, but just like we guided the land towards our plan…

Clyde: …the land guided us.  

We wanted people to be able to access organic food.  People saw what happened to the grocery shelves during COVID.  Now, our son will be able to eat and sell organic food, and we’ve inspired at least 10 to 15 people in our community to join a community garden or start their own garden.  Along the way, we were helped by Carolinian Canada. Establishing a relationship with the David Suzuki Foundation was also really important, because we were able to add so many trees through their grant. But we also built a relationship between the foundation and our Band Council, which led to a community garden. And we’ve been leading workshops.

We can also just make really good food out of what we grow. I used to be a chef’s apprentice. We have chickens now, and in the summer when they’re really pushing out eggs, I go for a walk in the mornings, gather eggs and berries, and make a killer omelette. I can’t wait to get goats. The omelettes will be even better with goat cheese. 

For about $150,000, people can do what we’ve done and be off the grid, and have time. That’s a lot better than a million-dollar mortgage.

Fiona: We’d love to be involved in a community energy sovereignty project. When we build a rocket mass heater greenhouse, we may lead workshops on it, and have work bees, like Terrylynn Brant did when she built an earthship community centre. 

Clyde: We might invite people coming to the Three Fires Homecoming Powwow and Traditional Gathering to camp on our land, in exchange for joining the work bee.

Fiona: We’ll label the plants, too.  Taking the time to learn the Anishnaabe names of plants is important, and it takes a lot of time. There’s not just one book you can look up for all of the names. You can find some in books, and different communities will have different names for some of the plants.  Those names have so much scientific information in them: who uses the plant, who eats it, what it looks like - sometimes all of those pieces of information at once. 

So, you can learn from people in Indigenous communities who have the knowledge, from observing the land, and from people online, like the Black Forager, Joseph Pitawanakwat, Linda Black Elk, and Doug Tallamy.

Clyde: Plants come to you, too.  Look around in the 200 yards around where you live. The medicines you need will be there.