Urban Chickens; Composting Workshop

There are two items of business today. The first is an article that appeared in Ffwd this week titled "Chicks in the City." You can read the article here. It's a piece about the movement to repeal the law against owning chickens in Calgary. Woo!

Also, check out The City Chicken.

I also recieved this general invite on Facebook from Lindsay of Calgary Social Change, and thought I would pass it along to you folks. For more details, or to register, drop her a line @ (403) 230-1443 ext 225 or by email at lindsay@cleancalgary.org.

Master Composter Course: 20 Hour Certification Course

Learn home composting techniques from trained Clean Calgary Association Master Composters and become one yourself! No experience necessary; just a willingness to learn. After completing the course, you will receive certification as a Master Composter.

Cost: $200 or $75 plus a 25 hour time commitment to volunteer, some subsidies available. Next start date: Tuesday, Sept 23rd, 2008 at 6:30pm. (6 consecutive Tuesday nights, except for Tues. Oct 7th. 2.5 hours per night. Includes two optional field trips.)

End date: Tuesday Nov. 4th. Saturday Nov. 8th, 2008 is an optional field trip and graduation lunch.

Location: Westwinds Superstore community room (Upstairs at the Superstore). The address is 3633 Westwinds Dr. NE. Registration Please register by Friday September 19th, 2008. Refunds will be provided to those who withdraw before 5pm Sept. 19th, 2008.

Last minute, but...

Sorry for the slow moves on my part everyone, I've been busy dropping off the map this week. Gael posted this message on my last blog, and I thought I should get it up and publicized, because some may not read the comments. So here it is:

There's a new community garden at a Calgary Housing location that needs help finishing up the garden planting for this season. The work to be done is to plant shrubs and native plants around the community garden, plant a small medicine wheel garden and make trellises for beans to climb up in the vegetable garden. We are looking to do the work July 7 to 12 sometime between 9 am and 4 pm.

If you can help please email Gael at communitygardens@calhort.org
Thanks big time!
Gael
Community Garden Resource Network

June 23rd Meetup: News

Another successful Meetup completed- thanks to everyone who made it out! We're happy to have such continued interest. It will allow us to keep doing what we've intended with these meetups: to inform people about projects going on in their city (and especially their own communities) and encourage them to get involved in order to support urban agriculture in Calgary.

A great idea came out of this week's meeting- we're hoping to hold future meetings at local community gardens, so that we can have a short work period afterwards. This will allow us to support projects, get people directly involved, and get our hands dirty. Woo!

If you're involved in a community garden that would like to host one of our meetings, please feel free to contact me or Grant, by posting a comment here or on our facebook group.

Next Meetup: June 23rd

We've finally managed to book space for the second Calgary Urban Agriculture Meetup! It will be held on Monday June 23rd, at the Eau Claire Market Community Meeting Space from 7 till 9 pm. If you have trouble finding us, please ask at the info desk in the middle of the mall.

Information and updates will be presented about ongoing projects, and there will be an opportunity to present project ideas. This meetup is essentially an opportunity for Calgarians interested in urban agriculture to link up for information sharing and collaborations.

Projects this may include:
• Community Gardens
• Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
• Food Not Lawns
• Food Security
• Guerrilla Gardening
• 100 Mile Diet
• 100 Meter Diet
• Permaculture
• Pesticide-free
• Rooftop Gardens
• Urban Livestock
• Urban Wetlands
• etc.

For more information, we can be found on facebook.

Please bring information about projects, your enthusiasm, and a few friends!

To those of you lurking in the shadows of the internet:

So, here I am, sitting in front of a computer and trying to write something for a blog. Worse, the only thing I can think of doing is pulling that age old trick of writing about myself writing...

As such, I'm going to do something oh-so-novel and write about you reading this blog. Ha!

What are you doing here? I'll start by assuming that you are here because you're interested in making Calgary a better place through learning everything you can about urban agriculture and then going out and growing vegetables on every surface that you can find. Unfortunately, you don't really know how to go about planting and caring for a lasting garden, and so by silently stalking the internet you're hoping to learn enough to make a bountiful and lasting garden the first time you try. I mean, what's the point of planting things if they aren't going to grow into something right away?

I know what it's like, I still feel the same way myself, but perhaps the internet isn't the best place to learn how to garden... I'm going to step up and suggest that each one of you go out and volunteer with the next work party you have a chance to participate in. Just go and spend time in a garden with a bunch of gardeners and pick up what you can from them. If you can make yourself helpful at the same time then great! But even if you only show your face and meet some people with similar interests you'll have benefited.
You know what? I'll make you a deal, I'll do the same thing. As soon as I get back to Calgary next week, I'll put the same expectation on myself, and then I'll report back to you with what I learnt. Just remember, I expect the same from you. :)

Although... now that I think about it... I'm not sure where I'll go to find out about upcoming work parties...
Maybe if there's a blog somewhere on the internet that's keeping track of Urban Agriculture events in Calgary I can follow a link or two and find something...
Tell me if you find a site like that ok? You can just leave a comment with the link.

Thanks,
Scott

Further reading…

I just read a interesting short article by Dave Steele: Beyond the Backyard Garden: Urban Agriculture in Milwaukee.

What is this if it’s not an organization?

There seems to be some thinking that this “Calgary Urban Agriculture” might form into a new organization. To be clear, the intent that Rachel and I had in calling the first meetup was to avoid that — there are already plenty of groups and organizations in the city.

From a recent discussion about this:

We are here as a space to link and network people and projects. We are focused on supporting projects, education and dialogue to foster the broad range of things that can make up urban agriculture.

If we have a ‘mandate’ it’s to get people connected on these issues. There is no formal membership, no central hub, no rules for participation, no one is ‘in’ or ‘out’. We just want to get the work done so that there can be a much healthier urban environment and greater food security for everyone.