First CSA pick-up

We had our first CSA food pick-up here on Tuesday!  CSA (community supported agriculture) is a great way to support organic farmers - members buy shares in advance of the season and make a commitment to pick up an allotment of produce each week.  They get to live along with the life of the farm, eating what's fresh, abundant and in season.  Learn more about CSA farms here. We are so pleased to be hosting our friend Angie's city member pick-up.  Her farm Fertile Ground CSA is a popular local organic farm, and her produce is outstanding!  The pick-up day becomes a social gathering for the neighbourhood, and also a chance for us to offer our wholegrain baked goods to members.  Our daughter decided to set up a drink stand too, testing out her customer service skills and sharing icy homemade maple-lemonade on our hot and sweltering first pick-up day.  What fun!

The great neighbourhood pumpkin patch

The first ever "great neighbourhood pumpkin patch" was held on our street tonight.  Inspired by the great  "pumpkin patches" that spring up in neighbourhoods in Toronto and Montreal (and last year uptown Waterloo), we spent a little time organizing for this same kind of event to take place in a nearby park.  The idea is simple: people bring their carved pumpkins to display in one large communal patch on the evening after Halloween, offering an opportunity to share creativity and simply give neighbours a chance to meet each other in an informal setting.  In Toronto many of the pumpkins on display have been grown in a community garden within the neighbourhood, which adds another layer of community involvement that we love.  On fairly short notice, and as a first time event, we think it was a grand success - there were nearly 50 pumpkins gathered and an estimated 75-80 adults and children mingling in the park.  We plan to do this again next year, and hope it can become an annual event that brings people from this neighbourhood together.

Food Swap!

On Sunday we held our first Food Swap here at Little City Farm!  I had been reading about food swaps taking place in cities all across North America, bringing people together to share their harvests, preserves, and love of local food.  Food swaps are opportunities for local food entrepreneurs to showcase their new food products; for local homesteaders and urban gardeners to meet others; for food lovers to share extra preserves in exchange for new varieties; and communities to gather in a unique setting to practice the ancient art of bartering.  Food swaps are part marketplace, part food festival, part community potluck, part gathering.  Very fun indeed!  For our first swap we had 11 participants (plus a gaggle of kids), sharing 32 varieties of food items: everything from kimchi to wood-fired bread; zucchini muffins to strawberry jam; plum wine to freshly harvested honeycomb; herbs to handmade curry paste; granola to freshly squeezed juice; rendered duck fat to pickled diakon radish; yam cranberry loaves to jarred peaches; gorgeous bunches of kale, chard, beets, herbs and lavender bundles to dandelion jelly, etc. 

We estimate that aproximately 150 items were bartered in the span of about 2 hours (no money changes hands at a food swap), everyone going home with boxes and baskets of newly aquired items, fully bellies, and happy smiles on their faces.  Thanks to everyone who came and made this event the success it was!  We'll definitely host this event again - look for it in the spring.

Thank you for the watermelon

On our doorstep this morning, a huge head of lettuce, a gorgeous bag of dark green spinach, and the most beautiful round watermelon.  Where they came from, we don't know.  Thank you to the anonymous giver, whoever you are!  Our own watermelon are still flowering, though not yet showing signs of growing fruits.  This was certainly a sweet and unexpected breakfast treat.

Seedfolks & inspiring urban gardeneres

 I read a great little story in the news yesterday about a 72 year old senior who is growing rice in an empty lot near his apartment building in Windsor.  He has grown the rice as a test plot to see if it can thrive in Canada, using seed rice sent from his sister in China.  Apparently the rice has had ideal conditions this year, enough heat and humidity, but water he needs to supplement by carrying down 6 plastic bottles of water from his apartment each day.  He is going to harvest about 2 kg of rice this year, and will save it all as seed for a larger crop next year.  He tidies up the garbage in the lot in exchange for being able to use the growing space.

This inspirational story reminded me of an amazing tiny 34 page book called Seedfolks.  This book, written for children, tells the multiple stories of isolated individuals living in a large urban city (Cleveland, Ohio), who eventually forge relationships through a "guerilla" type community garden started by a young girl in a vacant overgrown lot.  I have given many many copies of this book away to visitors and friends, as this is a wonderful story of hope and how to enact change by taking many small steps to build something large and powerful.

The rice growing story in Windsor also made me think of various important truths related to urban agriculture:

1) gardens don't have to be large to have a great impact
2) you are never too old (or young) to start gardening
3) starting a garden does not need a lot of money or capital, just ideas and commitment
4) there are abundant growing spaces in our cities, even if they might be unlikely ones, that should be utilized
5) sometimes it just takes some creativity, initiative and bravery to get a worthwhile project going
6)  there is much to be learned from the diverse community members in our cities, taking the example of gardening many newcomers have often been farming/gardening in their home countries and have vast knowledge to share

The Power of Community - Film at Princess Cinema

The "transition town" movement is growing - Guelph and Peterborough are two designated transition towns in Ontario, and a new group has recently formed in K-W to work toward this goal as well. Transition towns look at aspects of life that a community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change). The transition town communities also recognise two crucial points:

• that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
• if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

This coming week, Transition KW is presenting a film screening at the Princess Cinema. We believe this is going to be a very exciting and inspiring evening, so please pass this on to anyone you think would be interested.

Plan C: The Power of Community

Lecture, Film, Q&A - with author, film makers and directors Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan

Thursday November 12th

Princess Twin Cinema, 46 King Street North, Waterloo www.princesscinemas.com

Doors Open at 6:45 Talk at 7:15, Film at 7:45 followed by Q&A session.

Admission $2 (Barterworks and OUR Community Dollar will be accepted)

Pat Murphy is executive director of the Institute for Community Solutions in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a nonprofit organization devoted to small community living. Author of Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change, he lectures widely across North America on energy, Peak Oil, geopolitics and lifestyle solutions. Focusing on community resilience and long-term sustainability, his main interest is on the techniques and strategies for a steady reduction in the per capita use of fossil fuels.

Faith Morgan is the director and co-writer of "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil".

They will be in Hamilton to address city council and to present the 2009 Spirit of Red Hill Creek Lecture, and they have graciously agreed to speak in several other local communities as part of their Southern Ontario visit.

Co-sponsored by:

For more information call Stephen at 519.888.6917 or email: info@transitionkw.ca

How to build a neighbourhood (or how to disappear) - a story...

We had a visit last weekend from two interns with the CRAFT program (Collaborative Regional Alliance Farmer Training), who are currently doing their placement for the spring-fall growing season at a CSA near Durham. CRAFT is an excellent example of a mentorship model that offers young would-be farmers the chance to live with and learn from experienced farmers - everything from draft-horse farming, to CSA's, to biodynamic dairy farms, environmental learning centres, and more. The interns help out with the entire season in the various aspects of farm life and many start farm-based ventures of their own after this intensive internship. The interns also meet as a group once a month for workshops and workbees, and set up tours like this visit to Little City Farm to learn about our urban homesteading approach. Last year we had visits from two other farm groups, coming to our permaculture workshop and to learn more about approaches to sustainable city living and small-scale niche farming practices.

We really appreciated talking with Allison and Adrian, and were impressed with their knowledge and vision. Adrian followed up the visit by sending us this link to a great little zine, that tells the story of how easily, step by step, a real neighbourhood community can form. The drawings are whimsical, the words flow freely and beautifully, and the story brings inspiration. It's written by a fellow who is involved with the Riverbank Neighbours, a community group that acts as stewards of their neighbourhood river in Chicago. It's worth taking the time to read! (click on link below, and to read the zine simply click on each page to move to the next page). This is how the story begins:

Live somewhere. A house or apartment. And say hello to your neighbors. and borrow things. Here's how the saying goes: Always a borrower and a lender be. Lending and borrowin' makes good neighbors. Go to your neighbor when you need sugar. The next time they need bread they will come to you. Borrow onions. Lend popcorn. Borrow a leaf rake. Lend a baby buggy. Borrow some shoes. Everybody needs to owe. Everybody needs to be owed to.

http://www.riverbankneighbors.org/howtodisappear/index.htm

Transition Towns - guest lecture this week

There is an international movement called "Transition Towns", which aims at bringing communities together to seriously look at Peak Oil and Climate Change and answer the question
"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

Here locally, on Friday May 29 at the University of Waterloo, we have a guest speaker coming to address this topic. Here are the details:

Guest lecture: Jane Buchan from Hardwick Area Transition Towns
Friday, May 29th, 3:00-4:30pm
Environment 2, room 2002, University of Waterloo

You may have heard the buzz around local food, but what do some of the broader lifestyle changes we could be making look like?

There is a global movement of relocalization and sustainability transitions known as the ‘transition town’ movement. First envisioned in Ireland in 2004 and fully realized through citizen efforts in Totnes, England, in 2006, ‘transition towns’ provides an accessible and easily adaptable model for rural and urban relocalization. It involves building resilience into local communities by ‘powering down’ and ’skilling up’.

Transition-town culture fosters the assessment of local and regional vulnerabilities and suggests initiatives that will lessen the impact of climate extremes, fossil-fuel energy adversity, and global economic instability.

Sound intriguing? On May 29, the University of Waterloo will host a talk by Jane Buchan on her involvement with the Hardwick Area Transition Towns (HATTs)...

Read more of this entry at: http://envblogs.uwaterloo.ca/blogs/

Resources: www.transitionstowns.org

Central ArtWalk Success!

Yesterday we participated in the first annual Central ArtWalk - a walking studio tour of artisans and crafters in our neighbourhood, ranging from pottery, handmade chocolates, music, painting, knitted goods, handbound journals, woodwork, and much more. It was inspiring to see the variety of talents that have been hidden throughout our neighbourhood - more than 30 artists participated - and we hope this will become an annual event that draws more people out each year. We estimated that about 70-80 visitors come by our house, and the five artists who were set up here thought the day was worthwhile. It's so important to have these kinds of events to build community cohesion. Our neighbourhood is one that seems to just be coming "into it's own" and needs exactly this kind of opportunity for people to meet each other and to help develop the unique character of our neighbourhood. Thanks to everyone who dropped by and helped make this day a success. Here are a few photos of the vendors set up at Little City Farm - wooden games made from reclaimed wood; reconstructed clothing made from wool sweaters; silkscreen patches & handmade cards; herbal soaps, teas and salves...