Sunnyside Pallet and Garden Party March 29

Come to the containR in Sunnyside location on Saturday March 29, 2-5 to get involved in both the containR in Sunnyside and the Sunnyside Shared Garden!

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/638449926232635/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

2014 Starts with Ideas!

If you'd like to get involved in the Sunnyside Shared Garden, email us at sunnysideshared@gmail.com.

There are opportunities to learn about gardening and grow food. Should we expand the garden again this year? Let us know your thoughts and ideas!

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.  

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.

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

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.