Check out these cool links!

Urban Gardening in Halifax: http://www.localorganic.kingsjournalism.com

Annapilis Seed: http://www.annapolisseeds.com/

The New Farmers Gathering: http://thedandelion.ca/thegathering/

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september

Back to school… the city floods with folks… the tomatoes are beginning to topple…

So September. The Thursday evening garden parties continue.

• Tonight (the 6th) from 6-7, I will do a little workshop on saving seed, by request. I am passionate on this subject, believing it is a critical part of our relationship to the food web. For a great presentation on seed saving, check out the Vanpermaculture website: at the bottom is ‘Sarah’s Seed Presentation’, a downloadable powerpoint that I highly, highly recommend.

• Next week, Sept 13, is our harvest-fest, rad-frosh, Feast & Town Hall Meeting. ALL WELCOME! Food will be served at 5:45, catered by Terroir, all local-organic. A number of local food & garden groups will be in attendance; at 6:30 we will have introductions, followed by a group discussion and visioning opportunity. Then, we will have tea and cake! (Cake compliments of FoodNotBombs!) Once the sun goes down, we can cozy up on our blankets and watch the debut screening of the film made about Seymour-SeeMore Green’s last couple of years. There might even be some live music. Yup, exciting.  Here is the poster.  feast1.pdf

• The next two Thursdays will see gardenplay-workparties from 5:30-7pm. Clean up, harvesting, cover cropping… a little visioning for next year. If you have any interest in gardening, please come by.

• Saturday the 22nd, there will be a garden creation workparty at the Dal Women’s Centre. There is permission and whole back yard to turn into a garden; there will be construction, layout and sheet-mulching to do. All ages, abilities, genders, and interests welcome.

The really exciting projects we have got going on now too, is the wild-harvesting guerrilla-gardeners. We met last Sunday (9am at OneWorld), and rode around the north end checking out sites to guerilla garden. We found 4 spots that we all got super excited about. The crew is doing the research on the sites: there may even be a site that we can build some water-catchment and do some nursery work.

This Sunday, the 9th, we are going to harvest some roots, -dandelion, burdock, and hopefully some yellowdock, and then make some tincture at my place. Bring a jar with a lid, and some vodka, gin, or a few dollars. I will bring some shovels.

So, hope to see you soon. Everyone is always welcome – all ages, genders, abilities, interests…. whatever other variables you might use an excuse to not come by; you are welcome. The survival of our species depends on our ability to feed ourselves. Life skills, baby… life skills.

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this week: July 26 & 28

This week, Thursday gardenplay- workparty.  5:30-8:30pm. The fence still awaits its arting, and there are lots of fun little things to do, such as trellising the cucumbers and tomatoes.    All ages, abilities, genders, and levels of involvement welcome.  Come by and work, art, share, learn, or chill.

Saturday July 28.  Herbal Faire on McNabbs Island,  put on by the Herbalist Association of Nova Scotia.  If you have any interest in wild plants or herbal medicines do come out.  Check out (www. herbalns.org).  Or play in the garden if you wish.  It aches to love you.

The freebox is onsite now, awaiting drop-offs of garden goods and pickups from creative folk who need garden gear.

next week:  Thursday Aug 2, workshop on saving seed, 6pm:

why should I carefully save seed? you might ask.

Sarah Belanger, seed synopsis: 2006, VanPermaculture:

“The world seed supply is threatened.
All people depend upon agriculture,  and therefore upon seeds.
Modern Western society is largely disassociated from agriculture:
1-2% of the Canadian population are involved in farming (Stats Canada 2001)
It takes more than one growing season to learn  the skills of agriculture, and to become a capable  and effective seed saver.

I therefore propose  it is vital that individuals across the  spectrum of humanity have access to  agricultural knowledge, experience and  inspiration
and that both urban and rural dwelling individuals be empowered to take ownership for our seed supply by stewarding seeds”.

Dr. Vandana Shiva: When we plant a seed there’s a very simple prayer that every peasant in India says: “Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year.” Farmers have such pride in saying “this is the tenth generation seeds that I’m planting,” “this is the fifth generation seed that I’m planting.” Just the other day I had a seed exchange fair in my valley and a farmer brought Basmati aromatic rice seed and he said “this is five generations we’ve been planting this in our family”. So far human beings have treated it as their duty to save seed and ensure its continuity.

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