Of monks and melons: preserving Quebec’s delicious agricultural heritage
SAINT-JEAN-DE-MATHA, Que. — In the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal, a group of Cistercian monks living in a contemporary-style abbey have relearned how to grow a juicy heirloom melon created by one of their forefathers 100 years ago.
The Oka melon’s rebirth in the abbey’s garden was made possible by an organic seed farmer, Jean-Francois Leveque, who is on a mission to rekindle lost parts of Quebec’s agricultural heritage.
“I can’t preserve this history alone,” Leveque said at his Les Jardins de l’ecoumene farm in Saint-Damien, about 100 kilometres north of Montreal, and a few minutes drive from the monks’ abbey.
Heirloom foods are rare because most of the produce in grocery stores comes from large-scale agriculture farms. The industrial farms grow a narrow variety of food bred to be uniform and to have higher yields in order to feed bustling cities.