Calum Macphee “I’m just a normal Joe”
Over the past few months, we’ve been seeing a lot more people posting content of their Nutritowers and the food they make with their hyper-local produce!
“From Tower to the table” is one of our mottos so it always makes us really happy to see these kinds of posts.
A few weeks into the pandemic we started seeing more and more Nutritowers on our social media feeds. One of the people posting was Calum Macphee. He was posting these delicious looking meals. So we started talking to him. We find out that he recently moved his family to a farm to be more self-sufficient, and that his wife Angela is a food photographer.
He offered to help any way he could. We asked if we could do a profile on him for our first Nutritower community profile. He agreed, so here we are!
Until not too long ago Calum Macphee was a consultant in the Oil and Gas industry. He’d been moving his family between Texas and Canada Nova Scotia! But after Hurricane Harvey had passed trough, the Macphee’s had seen enough of “that kind of weather” and moved for good to the Canadian East Coast.
This past March, when COVID19 hit, work stopped. At that point, the Macphee's decided that they would move to a farm in Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia.
One day, while scrolling through Facebook, Calum saw the Nutritower pass by in his feed and decided to look us up. He bought one because it would allow his family to have freshly picked produce at a seconds notice, which is great when you are a food photographer! But the chain of events that followed significantly boosted his self-sufficiency.
This is what he had to say about it.
“ Step one was learning how to grow things, I don't have a green thumb I don't know much about farming or growing vegetables, but I started to seed things in the soil, transferred them to the Nutritower a couples weeks later and then all of a sudden your harvesting lettuce
“It showed me that I could grow vegetables! And since I have access to a large amount of land, I decided to go all-in and create a garden! I’ve put in 500 feet of rows where I can plant.
That was the switch for me, It gave me the confidence to take on a much bigger garden project to better support my family. All of this was initiated by being in a vulnerable spot because of the pandemic.”
COVID has made millions of people around the planet feel vulnerable. Food security is fragile when stretched too thin, that's why growing your own food at any size of production is a great move. Knowing that we played a part in Calum’s decision to start growing his own food on a larger scale, feels amazing!
The Macphee’s Nutritower is now a permanent kitchen appliance just like the fridge or the stove, but his two daughters call it the spaceship!
Instagram: Calum Macphee /Angela Macphee /Nutritower
