'Tis the Season....

Tis the season for generosity.... The other day a woman phoned up asking questions about our programs at the Women's Resource Centre because she was making her choices for her Christmas donations. We talked awhile and the garden came  into conversation. A few hours later the same woman walked into the Centre with a $100 donation for the Community Garden for seeds and starter plants for Spring 2011. This donation is greatly appreciated and will be put to use purchasing seeds for the garden. It definitely made my day and will keep many people happy and fed for the upcoming gardening season. Thanks so much!

Recycling your old christmas lights

Check out this article on how to recycle your old christmas lights.

http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/comment/article/697950--how-to-recycle-your-old-christmas-lights

Picnic Table

Our picnic table down by the garden has unfortunately come across some vandals and has been destroyed. Hopefully we will be able to find another one made out of concrete!!!

Meeting Minutes – Nov. 10th 2010

Present: Ellen B., Mary G., Colleen G., Sally H., Yvonne D., Jodi B.

1. Garden Plan:
Ellen has drawn a future garden plan. She has measured and mapped out the garden along with suggestions for plantings and future developments. There is a copy at the centre if people would like to take a look at it.
The group discussed the possibility of having individual beds but decided that we should keep with the communal nature of the garden. Ellen’s plan has included the creation of eight 10’ by 12’ "demonstration" beds as well, so the group decided that we should focus on education and community building.
The goal for 2011 would be to start at least three of these demonstration beds and could include the following ideas: No dig garden, 3-sisters garden, square foot garden.
The drawing also includes a location for a future sandbox and benches within the garden.
By the large gate container gardening was suggested so that the space wasn’t wasted but would allow large access entry to the garden by moving the containers to the side if needed.
Plan also includes the creation of an edible flower and ornamental border by the shed and the removal of the grassy area that was there. Also note that the picnic table has been destroyed by vandals at the garden.

2. Future needs:
Need better signage to put point across of how to help and how to harvest in order to prevent people exploiting food without helping. Need guidelines for the garden. Should it be locked with hours for the garden posted?
Need to acknowledge the garden’s sponsors. We need to make a sign to thank contributors of the garden before too much time passes. Yvonne has offered to make and decorate the sign and Jodi has a piece of plywood that we could use. Need some exterior paint – if anyone has some to donate please let Yvonne know.
Need to create a list of seeds, plants, and other materials needed for 2011 with a budget.

3. Fundraising:
Colleen has offered to donate aprons and cloth bags that she is making out of sheets to sell at the Farmers Market. Funding priorities include the fence as the main priority and then others include: signage, sand box and benches, micro irrigation, demo beds, seed and planting fund, picnic table.
Perhaps Northern Flowers could be approached for donations of seedlings in the spring as they are a supporter of the community and donate left over bedding plants to the Women’s Centre each year.
Could we do a fundraising initiative where local businesses sponsor a demonstration bed and then there logo and name is placed on the fence above the bed?
Angela has resubmitted the application for funds for the fence to the Quesnel Community Foundation as the CRD donated their funds for our previous application to the Quesnel Community Foundation.

4. Other:
The climate action committee will be setting up an information booth at the Christmas farmer’s market and has offered to put up a sign for the garden with our brochures available for people.

Next meeting: Late January/early February

Next Garden Meeting

The garden is now pretty much shut down for the winter, but we would like to have one last meeting  to decide on a vision for the garden for next year. How do we want to set up the garden next year?

The Meeting has been set for Wednesday, November 10, at 2:30pm.

Getting rid of the weeds in the corner

On Friday, October 22, Ellen and Colleen went down to the garden and layered some cardboard and compost over the big weeds in the corner by the dumpster. This lasagna composting is an environmentally friendly way to control the weeds which also saves a lot of work in the long run. Thank you ladies, it looks fabulaous!

Topsoil

Over the last couple of weeks, we have managed to get some topsoil donated. United Concrete was so generous as to doante 5 loads of topsoil and Cariboo Peat and Gravel donated 2 loads. 
We got someone with a backhoe in to come and spread the soil for us and right now almost the entire garden is covered with topsoil about 6 inches deep. It looks great!!

There is also a meeting coming up for the garden to decide on how we can improve the garden for next year. We would like as many people to be able to come as possible.

New Cedar Beds

On October 19, the garden received a couple of beautiful cedar beds. Ellen, Jodi, Yvonne, and Angela went down to the garden and built them. After a little bit of brain storming, we figured out how we wanted them done and got right to work.
The beds are 8 feet long by 4 feet wide, and one of them is 4 feet deep and the other one is 2 feet deep. This will make it easier for anyone with back problems to garden. We are also hoping to put up more of these beds and we do still have enough lumber at the garden to build more.

Harvest BBQ

On September 25, we held a harvest BBQ, a garlic workshop and a work bee down at the garden. They were both a great success. Most of the garden was taken out to prepare for the winter.
The work bee was followed by a very informative workshop on how to grow your own garlic. Where Rob Bersato explained the ins and outs of growing garlic successfully.
To end the day, we had a BBQ to feed our hardworking volunteers. The delicious menu consisted of curried squash soup, Alaskan baked salmon, burgers, smokies, baked potatoes and all the fixings, potato salad, coleslaw, biscuits and buns of every size and content, beets, pickle tray, zucchini chocolate cake, carrot cake, hot apple spice drink, coffee and water.

Thanks to all the volunteers, you did a great job.

Shaw 10 interview

We had a Shaw 10 interview at the Garden today at 11 am. Stephen Bernard came down to interview Yvonne and me. All in all, I think it went rather well. For anyone who wants to see it, it will be on on Thursday and Friday evening. Whoho!!

Take Back The Night

On September 17, the Quesnel Women's Resource Centre is hosting "Take Back The Night". It will be a great event where the Women's Memorial Monument will be unveiled. There will be a ceremony to honour all th missing and murdered women held down at the Monument, which is located along the River Front Walk at the end of Bowron Avenue in North Quesnel. Following the ceremony is a walk to the Women's Centre, where there will be snacks. The ceremony will start at 6:30 pm. Everyone is welcome!

Harvest BBQ

On September 25, we are planning a harvest BBQ and a garlic workshop. It is time to get the garden ready for the winter, so come on down and volunteer some time and have a little BBQ treat.

Fall is coming

It's that time of year again where gardening is slowly coming to an end. The garden has produced a great variety of many things this year. We are planning on soon having a little harvest get-together.

On September 8th morning Elizabeth and her 12 students will go to the community garden and do a few tests, soil sample, air flow and sun placement.
In the afternoon workshop/meeting with CNC instructors and the horticultural students; we will start out with a brainstorming session from 12-1 pm
1-3:00 we will break into small groups a have a group discussions our visions of the community garden space. This will be put down on paper.
3-3:30 each group will do a presentation on their results of their discussions.
At the end of the day we will have a combination of all groups input and end up with one vision.
The room number for the meeting will be posted at the entrance of the CNC campus.


Anyone interested is welcome to join us.

Community Garden Meeting Minutes

Community Garden Meeting Agenda
August 26th, 2010

1. Updates on old business:

a. Shed and Picnic Table

b. Fire Pit

c. Fencing

d. Llama Manure

e. Tool shed inventory

f. Workshops

g. CNC

h. Compost



2. New Business:

a. Blog

b. New members


Meeting Minutes – August 26th

1a. The shed has one coat of paint on it and we are waiting for the weather to clear and dry out so that we can stain the picnic table. Maureen suggested asking Mark Josephy to replace the one rotten board in the table before we stain it. If there is leftover stain we will add one more coat of stain to the shed.

1b. Fire Pit: Jodi contacted Brenda Bonin, a First Nations Support Worker at QJS regarding the fire pit. She was excited to make contact with a member from the garden and will meet with us when school goes back in September. She has applied to the school district for a small space for future education projects and plans to hold an event like they had in the spring again in late fall. The lava rocks around our flower bed are actually for the fire pit so she will take those back in the fall. Any concerns regarding this should be directed to her or Cyril Tobin at QJS.

1c. Fencing: With the additional use of the garden by QJS, fencing the area from the end of the current fence to the cement brick wall may not be the best approach as it will close off the area and may not be big enough for their gatherings. Perhaps, we should wait to proceed with this until we meet with Brenda Bonin. Maybe the school district could help us with the labour part of the fencing project as well as donate the materials?

- Maureen suggested looking into installing 6’ orange mesh fencing to keep the deer out in the meantime. The WRC staff will look into pricing for this to see how much it will cost before proceeding.

1d. Llama Manure: We need a truck to haul some llama manure. Perhaps Jean Birch may be able to help us with this. The WRC staff is very busy right now with the workshops and planning for Take Back the Night, and other projects so perhaps this could wait until mid-October or next spring?

1e. Tool Shed Inventory: Yvonne has taken an inventory of all the tools in the shed and will take pictures of the items in the shed for our records.

1f. Workshops: The next workshop at the Centre is low-cost canning on the 1st of September at 10:00 am. A workshop schedule is attached. The schedule has been sent to various organizations in town, is posted at the garden, on bulletin boards around town, on the blog, and in the bargain hunter.

1g. CNC: WRC staff will contact the CNC horticulture instructors to see when they plan to come to the garden and will let the garden members know when they will visit so they can attend. As well, staff will contact Howard Berlin to discuss whether the carpentry/framing program will build us composting bins and how much the costs will be for this as well as a time frame.

1h. Composting:
- Ellen will look into who runs the city’s composting program to see if they may be able to offer a workshop on composting for us. She will look into this after the labour dispute is settled.

- Staff will look into REAPS for more information on what they would discuss at the workshop – perhaps this could be a large community event and perhaps we could build one at or after the workshop.

- If we get plans for a composter could we hire someone to build us one?


2a. Blog: Angela has created a blog for the community garden and is working on creating a scrapbook on the blog page with pictures from the garden. It can be accessed by visiting www.qwrc.ca clicking on projects and then the community garden blog link. The link is: http://quesnelcommunitygarden.blogspot.com/

2b. New members: Need to start making contact with new volunteers and establishing a larger member base so that next year the garden can continue – especially if the WRC does not get another JCP grant for staff to help out with this. Staff will look into doing radio ads and doing an interview with ShawTV to increase community knowledge about the garden.

Other:
When Rob Borsato hosts the garlic workshop we will ask him which tomatoes are the heritage ones and perhaps we could save some seeds from them.

Garden Shed

Come on down and check out the garden shed. It has recently gotten a face lift. New stain, a little white paint, and a few funfilled hours of swinging the ol' paint brush have given it an absolutely fabulous new look. And as soon as it is dry enough again, our lovely picnic table will have the same fate.

Upcoming workshops

We are getting ready for our canning workshop next week. The garden has produced a beautiful assortment of vegetables, some of which we will be canning in this work shop. Thanks to all the volunteers who are helping, you are doing a wonderful job.
If there is anyone who has some extra vegetables in their garden, we would gladly take them.
Come join us for our workshop next week.

Herbs All Year Round

On Thursday, August 19, Pawla Moore held a very informative workshop for us at the QWRC on “Herbs All Year Round”. She explained that we should keep our garden close to the kitchen, because the less you have to walk to get there the more likely you are going to use your herbs. She helped us understand how to pick the best spot for herbs to grow and who they make great companions too. There are different ways to fertilize, Pawla recommended using manure tea (very economical) or fish fertilizer once a week. Herbs benefit greatly from being cut back every 2 weeks, it encourages their growth. To store your herbs for the winter, and best keep their flavour, any herb with a big leaf, i.e. parsley, sage, basil; should be frozen. And anything with a small leaf or that is just stems, i.e. chives, thyme, rosemary; is best dried. To dry herbs, put them in a dark warm place (approx. 80F if possible). Put them in a jar once they are dry, but don’t crush them (it makes them loose some of their flavour). To freeze herbs, cut them into an ice cube tray, add a little water to the “herb cube” and freeze. Once they are frozen, store them in a bag in the freezer for up to 6 months.


Pawla also explained how herbs are used to flavour food in everyday cooking. Different herbs complement different dishes, i.e. basil in tomato dishes, rosemary in pork dishes. One can also use herbs as an alternative to salt.

It was a great workshop with tons of excellent information on herbs.