Garden Events!

Hello volunteers (and soon to be volunteers when you see how beautifully the garden is growing!)
There are some events and workshops coming up for the garden that we would like to make you aware of, some really cool stuff including Yoga in the Garden, Eat Your Whole Garden, Fall Festival, and more (see calendar attached) and info below.....

In addition to these events I would like to call out once more for volunteers.

Harvesting: We need help harvesting for charity. It is the BEST time!
On harvest days you can help gather 50lbs of Fresh Produce to donate to:
The Sheriff King Home, Salvation Army, The Alex, and Brown Bagging for Calgary Kids.
Harvest times:
Every Wednesday 5pm-dusk
Every Sunday 9:30am-2pm
email to let us know when you will be coming to help: Linda- lindarisa@hotmail.com


Autumn Garden Gnomes Needed:
No experience necessary. Great way to learn about edible plants, harvesting, planting seeds for winter crops etc.
The Garden takes extra care and preparation in the fall, ensuring an early frost doesn't damage the crops we've taken such good care of.
As well there is the focus on getting ready for a new season, saving seeds, cleaning up plants that are finished producing, composting.
We can use your help:
Every Tuesday 4pm-7pm
Every Thursday 10am-1pm
email to let us know when you will be coming to help: Linda- lindarisa@hotmail.com


With an Exciting Fall Festival planned for Sept. 13th we are asking your help in preparing for it.
We can use your help on the Pre Festival Crew
Sunday, September 7, 12-2pm and/or
Tuesday, September 9, 6-8pm
Location: Garden (or Blackfoot Diner if it is raining)
Tasks: Making signs for Fall Festival, Garden Cleanup, and more.
Please email Linda: lindarisa@hotmail.com

More soon about the Fall Festival. Stay tuned

More news and Events:

All of the plants are thanking all of you who helped for taking care of them this summer. When harvest time comes they will be ready to nourish many people with all of the nutrients they need, vitamins,minerals, friendly bacteria. If you would like to share in this bounty, harvest shares are nearly bought up, but we may be able to squeak a few more members in.

YOGA IN THE GARDEN
with Jasmyn Steinke
Thursday Sept 4, 6:30-7:30pm (see calendar attached)
Limit 15 people. RSVP Please. lindarisa@hotmail.com
By Donation
BYOYG: Bring your own yoga gear :)

There are so many new foods we can experience by having access to fresh food from a local garden.
Nothing beats cutting up fresh basil for a homemade pasta, sprinkling edible flowers on a potato salad,
picking a bean off its beanstalk and popping it into your mouth. The FRESHEST OF FRESH! Many people
don't realize there are more edible foods in the garden, including some of our weeds, flowers,
and the plant stalks or leaves of some of our standard vegetables.

Learn more about how to.....................
EAT YOUR WHOLE GARDEN!
Workshop Sept. 7, 3-5pm. (see calendar attached)
By donation. RSVP and questions:
email Linda- lindarisa@hotmail.com

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.