The Edible Landscape of a Newfoundland Outport

Abstract

This paper presents the remarkably edible landscape of Tilting, Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Tilting is a Cultural Landscape District (Historic Sites and Monuments Board) and a Registered Heritage District (Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador). Tilting has outstanding extant examples of vernacular architecture relating to Newfoundland's inshore fishery, but Tilting was also a farming community despite its challenging sub-arctic climate and exposed North Atlantic coastal location. There was a delicate sustainable balance in all aspects of life and work in Tilting, as demonstrated through a resource-conserving inshore fishery and through finely tuned agricultural and animal husbandry practices. Tilting's landscape was “literally” edible in a way that is unusual for most rural North American communities today. Animals like cows, horses, sheep, goats, and chickens were free to roam and forage for food and fences were used to keep animals out of gardens and hay meadows. This paper documents this dynamic arrangement and situates local agricultural and animal husbandry practices in the context of other communities and regions in outport Newfoundland. It also describes the recent rural Newfoundland transition from a working landscape to a pleasure landscape.