Tag Archives: transition town

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!

Announcement: New Blog Name!

Since we’re 16 months into what I originally called the ‘Farm for a Year’ project, I figure it’s about time I graduate this blog (and project) to a new title: Farm For Life.

I chose this name for a few reasons:

It seems like a natural and easy transition to move from ‘Farm for a Year’ to ‘Farm for Life’.
The experiences of the past 16 months have made me realize that I (and I think the others on the farm feel the same for themselves too) want to continue incorporating the skills, values and ideologies learned and adopted here into my future, no matter where I live or how much land I have.
Farming for life doesn’t just represent a timeline – it represents the kind of farming that infuses LIFE into our environment, our bodies and our community. We are trying to farm in a way that puts life back into the soil that industrial farming has abused, that enhances ecosystems and sees the return of increased biodiversity, that grows healthy, organic, pesticide & GMO-free food to feed ourselves and our community members, that takes away food ownership from profit-driven corporations and puts it back into our own hands, and that renews our own spirits, connecting us spiritually with the earth and all living things on it.

I’ve registered a new domain name for this website. The new address is www.thefarmforlifeproject.com, but for the ease of regular visitors, the original www.farmforayear.com will continue to bring you here as well.

Get regular photos & updates at The Farm for Life Project Facebook page and follow farm and other food justice news on my twitter feed.

PS – I’m exploring ideas for a different website design that will be better suited to hold more of the information I want to make available here. Hope you’re not too attached to this look. Stay tuned!

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.