A creative evening with Robin Wheeler (Edible Landscapes) for apartment dwellers on Vancouver’s downtown peninsula

WHEN

7 to 8:45 pm, September 28, 2009

WHERE

Gordon Neighborhood House, 1019 Broughton Street

(Between Nelson and Comox. Venue tel. 604-683-2554)

WHO

Robin Wheeler teaches traditional skills, sustenance gardening and medicinals at Edible Landscapes (www.ediblelandscapes.ca), a nursery and teaching garden in Roberts Creek, British Columbia. She is the author of “Food Security for the Faint of Heart” and “Gardening for the Faint of Heart.”

WHAT

Think about the 100-mile diet, farmers’ markets, community gardens, high food prices, sustainability, food safety, emergency preparedness…and you will understand why more and more people are interested in having healthy food grown close to home. Now there’s a buzz about the “100-meter diet.” But how much food can we grow for ourselves here in the West End of Vancouver?

In the first half, Robin Wheeler will cover various concepts from her book and experience—edible landscapes; food growing on apartment balconies and patios; ideas for sharing land, food, space, and time; food preservation/storage in apartments; and so on. In the second half, an open discussion will share information about issues in the West End. What’s already being done and who’s doing it? How can apartment dwellers get more space to grow food? What frameworks and support systems exist? Can these ideas somehow help low-income families? What problems and opportunities exist? Entrance by donation ($5 recommended). A report will be prepared afterwards, so please contact us if you can’t attend but would like to know the outcomes.

REGISTER:

FoodWestEnd@gmail.com

SPONSORS

Green Millennium Foundation (www.greenmillennium.org)

West End Residents Association (www.wera.bc.ca)

Robin will be in town teaching edible landscape workshops, organized by the fine folk at Village Vancouver, and a Design the Garibaldi School Garden learning party, organized by the Sustainable Living Arts School and the fine folk of the Garibaldi PAC. But you can still learn from Robin:

Food Security for the Faint of Heart

Saturday, March 14, 2009
2:00 – 4:00 pm

Robin will discuss issues around food security, such as stockpiling, gleaning, cooking with few resources, triage for a thawing freezer, and more. Robin has been experimenting with and writing about sustainability issues for many years. She runs the Sustainable Living Arts School in Roberts Creek, BC, with her permaculture plant nursery (Edible Landscapes) and medicinal herb gardens as part of the design. She is also the author of Food Security for the Faint of Heart as well as Gardening for the Faint of Heart.

Suggested donation $2 - $5
Location: This event will be held at SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation), located at 2150 Maple Street in Kitsilano. This event is sponsored by Light House Sustainable Building Centre and SPEC.

Our hosts for the upcoming root cellar learning party on November 1st (email:mcollATcommonroutes.com) chose this plan for us to work from.

Although I dream of a root cellar big enough to accommodate crocks of sauerkraut as well as crisp apples and crunchy carrots, this looks doable for the city. I’ll be coming with my questions about what to store where- don’t apples release some kind of gas? How tightly can you pack stuff?

Apparently my grandparents use to store vegetables in a pit lined with straw through the winter and the snow acted as insulator. I’m guessing that the challenging element for Vancouver will be site selection and that all important drainage ditch.