'How To' Locally Fed

Hello all, 

I am so pleased you have found us! Let me introduce myself, my name is Severin Rolland-Berge, and I am the owner and operator of Locally Fed. I've worked in organic produce since 2012, and is still continues to fascinate me, challenge me, and give me hope for our planets future.

Outlined below will be the steps on how to use Locally Fed, and then further below will be a bit more about my background and this little veg business.

How To:

• Browse our offerings & make your selections
• Submit your order every Sunday night by 9pm
• Pick up every Tuesday between 4-7pm in North Vancouver 
• Enjoy a wonderful week of locally sourced & thoughtfully grown produce & products 
  
  

It's really as easy as that! 

 

A bit about me:

I was born and raised in North Vancouver, as was my husband, and now we have started our own family on the North Shore, and are adjusting & embracing life with our son & Italian water dog. 

I have always been passionate about good quality food, and I attribute that mostly to my upbringing. My parents always had whole foods on out table, and very rarely did any 'treats' come into our house. My sister and I were raised vegetarian, as my parents were both veggies, and continue to be pescatarian to this day. My sister, well, she ventured into the world of meat, but we don't hold it against her! 

Another contributor to my love of food, was attending the Vancouver Waldorf School from Kindergarten till Grade 8. Any food we had at school was organic, and what we affectionately called 'boring healthy food'. Oh, if only I could go back and tell that Grade 3 Sev to appreciate the delicious soups & homemade bread we had! I did appreciate it, but not to the extent I should have. 

One I graduated from High School (I attended Saint Thomas Aquinas in North Van), I got my first job, and it was a warehouse/retail job in organic produce. That quickly morphed into Sprout Organic Market in the Queensbury neighbourhood of North Van. I worked there from 2012-2018, worked two small jobs at The Juicery and with Parks Canada & BC Ferries, and then landed in 2018 at Discovery Organics in Vancouver. There I joined the Quality Control team and continued my love of working with produce and also being in a cooler all day. 

Between 2020 and 2021, I was accepted to a masters program in Italy at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, or the Slow Food University. I convinced my husband that going to Northern Italy at the height of the covid pandemic was a good idea, and we had a wonderful, albeit strange, experience. For my thesis and thesis research, I reached out to Laughing Crow Organics in Pemberton, BC, as we had carried some of their product at Discovery. They agreed quickly to have me come and work on their farm for a few months, and base my thesis on their CSA members and the benefits of bioregional short-food-supply chains. 

In the summer of 2021, I worked at Laughing Crow, got a puppy, and wrote my thesis. In September, I flew back to Italy and received my Masters Degree in Agroecology & Food Sovereignty. 

I went back to Discovery Organics from 2021-2023, headed up the Quality Control team, dabbled in the Compliance department with audits & certifications, and wrote a weekly blog about the new products in the warehouse. In October of 2023, I gave birth to my sweet angel baby boy, and my life has never been the same since. 

And now, here we are. I want to spend as much time with my son as humanely possible, especially during these first years of his life. I also want to contribute to our family, and want to foster and grow community in North Van. In September of 2024, nervous but excited, having no idea what this would turn into, I drove out to the Fraser Valley on my first farm and picked up veg, fruit, bread and eggs at Local Harvest & Windberry Farms. Since then, it has been a few months of growing, learning, pivoting and expanding. 

My mission with Locally Fed is to give North Shore residents access to the abundant Fraser Valley and all that it has to offer. We live so close to so many farms and artisans, but somehow, it feels like North Van is a dead zone when it comes to locally produced, organically grown, good quality food. I want to combat that, bring access to these local products, and support our wonderful BC farmers. 

So far, the producers we are partnered with are:

Local Harvest - family run regenerative & beyond organic farm and bakery in Chilliwack, BC. 
Windberry Farm - family run farm with free-range rainbow eggs & certified organic and free-range chickens in Abbotsford, BC.
Healing Bees - family run apiary that offers raw, local, organic and unpasteurized honey from Burnaby, BC.
Valley Tallow - a local mom producing grass-fed pasture-raised whipped tallow from Chilliwack, BC. 

Who knows where Locally Fed will go from here, but I am so happy you are here on this journey with me. 


Big Love, 

Sev & Locally Fed