Monday 23 September 2013

Harvest Swap Success



 
 

On Thursday, September 5th Sunnyside Shared hosted their first Garden Harvest Swap.Organized by Kate Stenson of Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Assoc., Jordan Brown of Tiny Plots and myself, the purpose of the event was to create a lively, non-monetized space where self-produced goods could be exchanged for other people's goods. Examples of the incredible goods that were exchanged at our Harvest Swap ranged from homeade ale


to homemade deodorant and lip-balm 

 



to homemade jams, pumpkins, kale, quilts...



Once all the swappers' goods were registered, the swappers had a chance to walk around a examine the other goods and place their offers. The process works similarly to a silent auction; however, instead of writing a cash amount down, the swapper writes what goods they'd like to swap for the desired good. For example, when I saw that really tasty, homemade, ice-cream Kate made, I knew I had to write down the salad dressing and micro-greens I'd brought in a attempt to acquire that delicious banana chocolate heaven.
While all the offers were happening, we also held a potluck so swappers wouldn't make irrational trades due to hungry stomachs. The food was amazing. We even rolled a BBQ so Jordan could roast a Boneless Shoulder Pork Roast from Prairie Gold Pastured Meats.



After all the offers had been made, the swapping began. Initially, the plan was to have the silent auction style offering permit a less chaotic exchange, but entropy took over, and people seemed more excited for  a free-for-all exchange. If anything, the papers where people had written their offers allowed the swappers an idea of how desirable their goods were, but perhaps, once the chaos took over, they were rendered extraneous. I did manage to get that ice-cream, some spiced apricot preserve and also, some diabolical coconut chocolate. Why did I end up with so much sugar? No matter. It went off amazingly. With 25 swappers in attendance, plus ten people who came for the pot-luck, Sunnyside Shared's first Harvest Swap Meet was certainly a success.

I think it is safe to say that such exchanges can be deemed necessary in our hyper-consumptive, monetized world. So many of us put hours of labour into goods which are valueless in the marketplace economy. Yet we know how much value they really hold, and it's isn't quantifiable with dollar bills or stocks, or at least, it doesn't need to be. Furthermore, those homemade goods often result in a surplus of one item, which you've mastered, but don't provide other goods which require different mastery. By hosting Harvest Swaps, those goods which you've too much of can be exchanged for goods you really want. And all the while you're exchanging, you're building relations with others and will likely be able to exchange on your own time. Suddenly, you're incredibly rich, and not because you've got a stack of dollar bills, but because you're connected to incredible people who are all producing desirable, satisfying, necessary goods. I hope we can have a lot more of these. I hope if you didn't make this one, that you'll make the next.  











Thursday 15 August 2013

2 Harvests for WINS: Yeah, We're Doing It.







More Photos, Our latest harvest

Here are a bunch more photos of our amazing garden. So, now we're harvesting for WINS, which is so fantastic and should all be really proud that we pulled this together and are achieving our aims of providing wholesome local food for others.




Monday 27 May 2013

Treasure Maps and Planting Beds

Here are the maps of the planting beds, finally. Sorry it took so long. Now, these are pretty difficult to read, since there was some rain the day I received them and consequently they are quite smudged. I will update them in a few days, but for now I thought I would post these and pretend we're pirates. The top image is for the small beds, the bottom image is for the longer beds. Not everything has been planted, but these are their assigned spots. 
Any questions, feel free to ask @ sunnysideshared@gmail.com


Monday 13 May 2013

Summer, Now?

When I think of Calgary, I do think pretty heavily on the weather. And while I love snow, I'm a little tired lately of the long winters and limited heat in summer. This year, however, summer arrived without any seasonal progression. We rushed direct from Winter to Summer and it's been gorgeous ever since. I can't help but wonder about this dramatic change, and how we've affected our climate enough so that it behaves in unpredictable ways. Certainly, the weather is nice, but with looming forest fire threats up North etc., I wonder if our environmental disconnect in the city permits us to enjoy the weather safely, while forgetting the havoc that it is causing. Furthermore, I wonder if the rapture of heat, blinds us from the reality that Calgary, historically, didn't experience weather so abruptly with regards to seasonal change. I imagine weather in Calgary has always been quite capricious.
 

But these posts are to celebrate our garden, not cynically address the errors of industrial society, so what am I getting at? Recently I learned that the energy required to provide us with our non-local food compared to the amount of energy gained by that food is a 10:1 ratio. All the irrigation, all the petroleum fertilizers, all the transit exhaust more energy than what we can get out of it. Obviously this system isn't sustainable. What makes local food so awesome then, is that it truly has a massively positive impact on the environment because for every bit of energy you get from local food, you've overcome that 10:1 ratio.


More and more I'm getting excited about the future design of the garden for this reason. I see the garden as a great opportunity to fill that space with fruit trees and vegetables that the whole sunnyside community could access. Part of the hard work though, for us living in Calgary, is less the growing than the shattering of the conviction that local Calgary is an impossibility. For those reading then, I encourage everyone to bring one new person to the garden, and better so if they are skeptical. Entice them with beer if you must, but let's work on breaking this sentiment. 


Tuesday 30 April 2013

Planting Day May 2nd

Hello Gardeners,

First off, a big thanks to all who came out and ruffled up the beds, nicely turning the mulch into the soil and generally preparing the beds for future seeds. We also managed to build new beds, and erect the sign, as mentioned in the previous post. Again, thanks to the Arusha center for providing us with funds to do so, and to the city for providing us with soil. We had a little set-back last week because we didn't have water, thus we couldn't actually plop the little seeds into the dirt, but the city will have turned on the plumbing now, and so planting should be a go for this Thursday, 7pm. Hope to see you there.

As we're about to seed, I've been considering a lot about it means to garden. Often, because our season is so short, I run headlong into gardening without considering valuable aspects which are external to the planting itself. The seeds and the vegetables that come from them are certainly a massive part of gardening, but it's also about community and environment. As Sunnyside aims to move towards a more permaculture approach to gardening, our tactics for growing food will change drastically. Ultimately, the goal is not simply to provide food for the community, but to strike concord with the environment. As the natural environment becomes a sanctuary, hopefully the community, too, will grow into a supportive and self-managing ecology.  Already we have an incredible group of people helping out with the garden, and so I'm truly excited to see what will develop from this. To try to complement my thoughts, I've added Mark Lakeman's video "The Chronology of City Repair" 1/14. To watch the whole lecture is about an hour, but that is the best spent hour of video watching I can imagine. As we come together to make Calgary a food sustainable city, let's keep the non-food aspects in mind because they are as central to our survival. 

See ya soon,
kye


Friday 26 April 2013

Two Beds and a Sign!

Thanks to the Arusha Centre's Take Action Grants and Timbertown, funding and materials were received to hire Patrick Sweet (top left in green) to paint a custom garden sign from a repurposed headboard and to add two new beds to the four built last year.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Thursday, 18th CANCELLED

Hey all,

Posting to inform that this Thursday, the 18th will be CANCELLED due to the weather. With all this snow on the ground, it just doesn't seem that sensible. The plan is now for next week, Thursday, April 25th. On the 25th we will put together the new beds and then plant some seeds.

New planting day
When: April 25th @ 7pm.
Where: Sunnyside Shared Garden
Bring: Friends, gloves, planting tools, warm drink

See ya out there,

kye 

Wednesday 10 April 2013

First Planting Day April 18th 2012

Weather! What can I say, we live in the most capricious of environments where it can snow every month, and gardening is always ridiculed as some impossibility. But we know that isn't true. Sure, we can't have peach trees outdoors, but we certainly can grow a massive variety of produce from lettuces to tomatoes. Sunnyside Shared will begin this season with a planting day on April 18th, at 7pm. Because there are still several weeks which could potentially dip down to freezing, we are only going to be planting hearty tough plants like Kale and Spinach. The whole planting shouldn't take too long, but we'd love to see you out, and get a chance to meet some of the faces for Sunnyside's 2013 season. You've likely got some brilliant ideas that would benefit our season, so come throw down some little Kale seeds on April 18th and tell your community about them. And besides, afterwards, there's a good chance we'll go to The Royal Oak Tavern where there's delicious local beer and food.
Don't know where we are? Check the map below.

Monday 1 April 2013

First Planting Day April 18th

Here's a video that I'm sure everyone in the food community has seen: basically it stands for everything we're trying to do, get food to people and grow it local. I want to post this video as a reminder of the power an individual has within their community. It's so easy to be discouraged by the poor political choices that inundate our lives by those in power; however, as Ron shows, we can all make change, massive change, but we need to commit to working together.

SunnySide Shared Garden hopes to bring our community tighter and open our communities eyes to the reality that we can control our own existence. Fortunately for us, Gardening is already cool as hell, everyone wants to do it, we just need to help provide awesome spaces for it to happen. That said, come meet us in the Garden Thursday, April 18th. Grab your shovel and get gangsta with some dirt. We'll be there from 7:00pm till it's done. And we'll likely go to Royal Oak tavern after, because you need to support local bars too.

Hope to see you there, 

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Garden Meeting This Thursday (Mar. 21) @ 6pm

Well, Winter is almost about to wrap up. Likely we'll have a few more intense snow days, but we know that soon every cliche that comes with Spring (birds chirping, flowers popping) will be fast upon us. Obviously, for all of us gardeners, this is a highly energized time, and one that, retrospectively, always goes too quickly. Since Sunnyside Shared's last year, we've been quietly working on ways to expand our garden and provide more ways for more individuals to benefit from local produce. Aiming for punctuality, Sunnyside Shared will be hosting a potluck this Thursday to discuss our plans and expansions before Spring and Summer are completely upon us.

We invite anyone to join us, whether they be a constant gardener or a bumbling new one. Please come to 2102 5th Ave NW @6pm for a potluck and share in our garden planning. We'd like to discuss our aims for 2013, plans for expansion, what to plant and who will organize it, as well as a good method of communication for our fellow gardeners.  

Hope to see you there,

Sunnyside Shared



Saturday 26 January 2013

Ready to Garden in 2013!



Do you want to help expand the Sunnyside Shared Community Garden in 2013?

Help plan the year by emailing
sunnysideshared@gmail.com
or find out more about this and other Hillhurst-Sunnyside food sustainability from hscacommunityfood@gmail.com