Two great new Urban Weaver free workshops coming up

Don't miss the chance to make woven shelters from invasives and green park waste (April 15 to 18, evenings), and to be part of the first crew to weave your own English Ivy bike basket (June 1 & 2)!

Here's the link with the information  http://urbanweaverstudio.blogspot.ca/2013/02/workshop-and-event-schedule.html-- pre-registration necessary.

I've started the bike basket experiment using English ivy from our tiny backyard, but I wove it through my existing wire frame bike basket. Even better if you can weave your next basket completely from invasives!

- Susan

Susan's English ivy bike basket in process: two views

Remarkable Women poster from the City of Vancouver honours women working for local organic food!

It's great to see a group of remarkable women honoured for their work in advancing local food production and preparation in Vancouver! Here is a link to the site:  http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/remarkable-women.aspx. Follow the links to individual posters for each of the women here.

Some people we know quite well are here:

Ilana Labow  of Fresh Roots Urban Agriculture and Think&Eat Green@Schools,

Jeri Sparrow  of Musqueam,

Stephanie Lim of my own Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood food security project,

and I'm sure there are others.

Congratulation to those honoured and all the rest of the people working hard in this area! And kudos to the City of Vancouver for making this a priority for the city.

Research Symposium Event: Mar 1

Check out the Faculty of Education's Research Symposium this Friday, March 1st: International speaker Dr. Pramod Parajuli talks about food, sustainability & education, lots of folks from The Orchard Garden share our work/research (Julia, Susan, Chessa...), and the food is being catered by the Agora Cafe! Register now to ensure a spot & we'll see you there!

Research Symposium: Living All Our Relations: Ecologies, Technologies and Indigeneity

Fri, March 1, 2013 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM See description. FREE. FREE Symposium hosted by:
the Environmental Education Caucus in the Faculty of Education.
Sponsored by the Faculty of Education - Dean's office, EDCP and EDST.

VENUE:
Neville Scarfe Building - Room 310
2125 Main Mall

RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/eecaucus

HIGHLIGHTS:
Keynote address, Research Panel discussion, Faculty Initiatives, Film Screening and Field Trips

KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
Dr. Pramod Parajuli, Director, Program Development for Sustainability,
Prescott College, Arizona, USA
Title of Talk:
Soil to Supper Pedagogy: Deep and Delicious Pathways to Resilient Abundance

Bio:
Born and raised in the Nepalese Himalayan foothills, Professor Pramod Parajuli is an award-winning sustainability educator, visionary, and curricular and social innovator. Over the last 30 years, he has designed and developed various programs in critical literacy, sustainability studies, sustainable food systems, farm and garden-based ecological literacy, and “soil-to supper pedagogy” with schools in the the USA, Peru and Nepal. Dr. Parajuli has recently launched the global initiative, Annapurna Pluriversity: Collaborative for Abundance, Creativity, and Resilience in collaboration with Dr. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin (Sachamama Center, Peru).

RESEARCH PANEL:
Chessa Adsit-Morris, Julia Ostertag & Jeannie Kerr, and Nora Timmerman,
Dr. Eduardo Jovel, and Dr. Tracy Friedel

FACULTY INITIATIVES:
Dr. Susan Gerofsky, Dr. Peter Cole and Dr. Pat O'Riley

Schedule:

09:30 - 11:00 Keynote address
11:00 - 11:15 Break
11:15 - 12:45 Research Panel
12:45 - 1:15 Lunch
1:15 - 2:00 Faculty Initiatives
2:00 - 3:30 Film screening:
Schooling the World: The White Man's Burden, and discussion
3:30 Closing and field trips

Lunch will be served.

Questions?
CONTACT:
peter.cole@ubc.ca; pat.oriley@ubc.ca

Planning crop rotations for the Orchard Garden

The Production Team has put thought into planning a cycle of crop rotations that will alternate nutrient-fixing and nutrient using crop types. Here are some photos of the plans!

Workshop Series #5: Sustaining the Schoolyard Garden

Last Saturday, the Workshop Series group looked at the practical issues about sustaining a schoolyard garden. We looked at questions like, "What should happen to the garden in the summertime when school is out?", "How best to work with the groundskeepers?", "How can we work with the Vancouver School Board?"

These are important questions for any teacher working to sustain a garden space. The group was privileged to be joined by an elementary school teacher Natasha, who has worked for 4 years to sustain her school garden in Vancouver, and Dolores from Evergreen, a charity whose mandate is to support new and continued use of green spaces on school grounds. These two women are an invaluable resource for the group.

As always, there was an outdoor component to the workshop, and Dolores led us outside to give us an example of an activity easy to do with kids - with or without a school yard garden. Another fun workshop day!

Participants were asked to look for living and non-living things in the natural space. 

Can you guess what these living and non-living things might be in this photo? 

Rain? A problem? Nah. Not for Dolores.
She passed around cardboard clipboards with plastic bags pulled over them.