A Country Boy in the Capital
Take a stroll past the stalls at the Ottawa Farmers' Market and you’ll smell an amazingly aromatic and warming bean soup. If you fancy making it yourself, Dain Burrell will sell you his dried beans in a returnable mason jar, along with fresh delicious vegetables, when in season.
However, his customers are sometimes disappointed that their efforts don't result in a soup quite as tasty as Burrell’s. He says that may well be because they are missing one crucial step in the process. “You definitely have to season up your pot, add your garlic, green pepper, your thyme and onions.”
Self-professed “country boy” Burrell grew up in St. Catherine, Jamaica, where he had a thriving farm, which although small at just four acres, supplied restaurants and hotels with fresh produce.
“Four acres in Jamaica is a lot because it's not like here. There, you can put in a crop and then six weeks later take it out and put something else in because it's all summer, all the time,” he says.
After moving to Canada in 2011, Burrell couldn’t shake the desire to have his hands in the dirt and started farming a 15- acre piece of land in Metcalfe. His beans, which are sold dried and must be soaked before eating, include dark red, cranberry, white navy, romano, pinto and black turtle varieties. Although they are the mainstay of his famous bean soup, his stall at the Ottawa Farmers' Market includes a bounty of vegetables and other products from Burrell Farm, including his jerk seasoning.
Burrell loves to mix the spices to jerk chicken in the traditional Jamaican style, but as a vegan, he doesn’t eat the results. It's a lifestyle he's followed for the past 10 years. Still, there are plenty of vegetables and pulses that can be jerked. He uses his seasoning to flavour his beans and callaloo, a Caribbean vegetable similar to spinach, which he has enjoyed bringing to Canadian plates.
Callaloo has proved to be so popular at the market that next season Burrell intends to buy a glass-doored freezer to sell it year- round.
“To be jerk, it has to have that flavour. All the ingredients are from my farm, except one thing in there, it's a spice, that I get from Jamaica. That's what gives it that authentic smoky flavour,” he says.
He has however been surprised at the small quantity of beans many Canadian consumers purchase. “In the Caribbean, we use a lot of beans, we eat a lot of soup, a lot of chilli, we do everything with beans, but here people buy a little mason jar and that lasts them three or four times,” he says.
Burrell educates his customers on how to wash, soak and cook the beans and finds many of them like using a pressure cooker to cut down on the cooking time, but for him low and slow wins every time.
“I love to go the old-school way, so I cook my soup naturally in a regular pot. I start chopping up my onion and garlic and thyme, and season up my pot. When it’s almost cooked, I put two Scotch Bonnet peppers on top of the soup and it’s seeping all its flavour into the soup.”
Burrell doesn’t chop the peppers into the soup, so it doesn’t become too spicy. Laying them on the top whole, just allows the pepper to deliciously infuse the soup with flavour.
Although Burrell knows exactly how to season his soup to perfection, he counters that the difference in taste is mostly down to the quality of the beans. “People say ‘Oh your spice is so nice’ but it's not the spice, it’s the beans. I grow organically so it's going to give you a better taste,” he says.
Burrell’s beans are certified organic, a process that was intensive and required a lot of paperwork and visits. “You can see all the grass growing up in the beans in the summertime. I don't use any herbicide. I don't use pesticides or fertilizer,” he says.
Burrell aspires to continue bringing fresh and natural food to Ottawans. “My dream is to open up a restaurant, a healthy restaurant, where I provide everything from the farm,” he says.Last year, when Burrell first started selling at the farm, he was working up to 110 hours a week, dividing his time between his job at a discount bulk store, the farm and the market.
This year, he has restructured his working hours, taking on private cleaning contracts and devoting more time to the farm.
“It doesn't make sense for me to go to work every day for someone else because I'm a joyful, joyful, joyful person. I never stress a day of my life in Jamaica, it doesn't make sense for me to come here and stress every day,” he says.
All of this in hopes of recreating for his own children that sense of providence that his father provided on their farm. “We always ate good food, we never ran out, he grew everything. We never went to bed hungry,” he remembers fondly.
Burrell says it’s important that people know what’s in their food and that buzz words such as “organic” should not be used without proof of exactly how the food was grown and produced.
He says people should expect to see some irregularity in the shape of their fruits and vegetables and maybe even the odd worm hole, if they have truly been grown without fertilizers and preservatives.
“If you see all these tomatoes, smooth and perfect, they are not organic. My stuff — you can definitely know it’s organic and I got a blessing and I have decided not to ruin my blessing. My blessing is to feed the nation with good food, so I won't spoil it,” he says.
Burrell sometimes gets homesick for Jamaica. especially when he thinks about all the fresh fruit.
“The bananas, oranges, pineapples and mangos, they're so different. Here you have to look in the store for them, in Jamaica you can smell them as soon as you enter the store,” he says.
Although he is far from Jamaica now, he’ll always be at home on the farm. “I'm a country boy, I grew up in the country and I keep my country lifestyle because I love that, and it helped me to become the man I am today,” he says.
Burrell Farm
Metcalfe, Ont.
ottawafarmersmarket.ca/vendors/burrell-farm
