Chris, Jules, Kai and I spent some time hanging out in the garlic patch this week. We weeded a bit, checked out the progress of our peas and beans and pulled up some garlic bulbs to see how they were doing. We’re going to leave the rest of the garlic in for a bit longer, in the hopes that the bulbs will get bigger, but things are looking great and we’re excited to start eating some of our own food. I’m thinking it’s time for some roasted garlic and pesto made from the scapes!
All photos by the lovely and talented TraceyJ.
This past weekend, I hosted an outdoor feast and bonfire at the farm to raise funds and awareness for Opportunity International Canada, a fantastic non-profit organization that provides microcredit loans, savings accounts, insurance and training to poor entrepreneurs around the world. As someone with an academic background in international development, I’ve been aware of microcredit development projects for a long time and always been a big fan of the model they follow (very community-oriented, providing empowerment instead of charity). I actually work part time for Opportunity, managing some of their website and social networking projects, but it was fun to do something a little different by volunteering my time (and the farm!) to participate in their Dine for Dignity campaign.
A great crew of adults, children and pets came out to enjoy good company and locally-grown, organic food, while chipping in to help me raise my fundraising goal (we did it!). The sun was out, the farm animals loved the attention and a variety of mini-farm adventures took place, including pulling a guest’s car out of the ditch with the tractor, electric shocks from the pig fence, bunny cuddling, and enjoying a gift of home-brewed beer.
Huge thank you to everyone who came out to help make the event a success and a VERY BIG thank you to my friend Tracey who took some absolutely beautiful photos of the farm. She’s captured some very special images for us.
If you’re interested in learning more about Opportunity International Canada, I encourage you to check out their website. Although I’ve reached my own personal fundraising goal, the overall campaign is still very much in swing and my fundraising page would happily accept additional donations that continue to come in :)
To see more (informal) photos of the event, visit my album on flickr.
My dear friend Faye wrote a lovely blog post about me and our Farm for a Year project on her Raw Lawyer blog last week.
Faye is one of the strongest and most amazing women I know. Passionate about human rights and totally devoted to her husband and chihuahua, Faye is also a big promoter of raw, vegan diets. The path that led her to her new eating habits is both heartbreaking and inspring. I won’t try to retell it myself, but you can read about it in her own words in her post, ‘Scepticism: An Opportunity To Share’. It might make you cry but in the end, it’s a story of hope and happily includes some very tempting recipes (like the Chia Chocolate Pudding for the Exhausted – yes please!).
Faye has completely changed her home/ kitchen/ backyard lifestyle to accomodate her life-changing raw vegan diet and I love reading about and hearing about her progress and her new gardening adventures. She writes about how small experiments with home-grown sprouts has developed into raised garden beds and just yesterday she posted about enjoying the first fruits of her gardening labours.
As a result of her diet changes and new interest in food and nutrition, Faye and her husband now find themselves dreaming about getting themselves a little piece of land somewhere so that they can mess around in more than just suburban deep beds. She’s been a big supporter and encourager of my move to this farm and I can’t wait for the day when she and her family will be writing about their own adventures with composting toilets and black bears :)
You can follow Faye’s story at www.rawlawyer.com. Screenshot of her website above, as well as photos of her personal gardening projects.