Tag Archives: GETI FEST

5 days till GETI FEST!

I’ve got an exciting event anouncement to make: this coming Saturday, September 22nd, is the second annual GETI Festival! As some of you know, The Farm for Life Project is an active Action Group with GETI, the Golden Ears Transition Initiative. GETI is one of hundreds of Transition Towns around the world, an initiative that sees community members coming together, building relationships and making personal and city-wide changes with the intention of reducing oil dependence while becoming more resilient at a local level.

Last year, GETI hosted the first annual GETI FEST, a celebration of community and local initiatives that included an artisan fair, action group info booths, a parade, live music, dancing and food. This year, it’s happening again – but it’s going to be even bigger! GETI is partnering with the Girl Guides of Canada who are celebrating Year of the Girl and the two groups will be bringing an exciting mix of events, activities and information to Memorial Peace Park this Saturday.

GETI FEST will be taking place in the same park location and at the same time as the Haney Farmers Market so it’s going to be one, big, awesome Saturday in downtown Maple Ridge.

As usual, Farm for Life will have a produce booth in the market, but we’ll also have an info booth with photos, books and personal stories set up in the GETI FEST Action Group tent. Chris M, Julie and Kai will be manning our GETI booth while Chris K and I will be manning our produce booth. Come on by and meet the whole Farm for Life crew as well as the rest of the wonderful people and groups involved in GETI, Girl Guides and the market and find out how you can get involved locally in Maple Ridge!

Here’s a shot of Julie manning our GETI table last year:

We hope to see you there!

GETI FEST Review

Last weekend, we attended the first annual GETI FEST and participated by having an info booth set up about our Farm for a Year project. Sort of our first, official, face-to-face, public promotion of ourselves. It was a lot of fun!

GETI FEST was set up to promote the Golden Ears Transition Initiative, and I’d say the first-time event was a pretty great success. We were one of a handful of local ‘action groups’ who had info booths set up at the event, but in addition, there was an artisan craft fair (where I bought myself a sweet tie-dyed tank top benefiting orphans in Uganda), an organic food bbq, live music and a parade.

As is our style, we threw together a very last minute display board that ended up looking pretty colourful and fun. Our friend Chris K., who’s involved in another cool permaculture experiment in Maple Ridge, helped us set it up and kept Julie and I company manning it for the day – thanks Chris!

Our dear friend Kailey came by to show her support and Chantalle, Canaan, Chris and Kai came by to check things out after the boys had had their afternoon naps. Chris and Kai made their entrance by participating in the parade (which I forgot to photograph!) and later in the evening, Chris sat down at the live music stage’s piano to play some of his music.

All in all, a fun day with an encouraging number of local residents attending to learn more about GETI. Hopefully, more opportunities to education people about transition towns will continue to spread through Maple Ridge this year. Looking forward to seeing how the second annual event unfolds!

To see a lot more photos of the event, visit GETI’s photo page.

Visit us at GETI FEST!

This Saturday, the Farm for a Year crew will be participating in GETI FEST! ‘GETI’ stands for the Golden Ears Transition Initiative, a Maple Ridge community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction (decline). Transition Initiatives (or Transition Towns) are popping up all around the world in response to people’s desires to pursue happier and healthier communities. Growing local food using permaculture principles (something we’re trying to do on our farm) is a major focus of Transition Initiatives.

GETI FEST will be a celebration of community. From noon to 9:00pm, there will be information booths set up (manned by local action groups), an artisan fair, a People in Motion parade, a community bbq and a dance. Farm for a Year is a GETI action group and we’ll have a booth set up in Memorial Peace Park from noon – 4:00pm. We’ll have fresh veggies from our garden on display, as well as photos and information about our farming project. Please come by and say hi!

To find out more about the event, visit the GETI FEST event page on Facebook.