Phew...January is over!
There has been a whirl-wind of events here at Cowichan Green Community in the past few weeks!
The food charter is now complete and has been receiving a lot of praise (and signatures) from organizations and citizens of our community. The City of Duncan, Town of Lake Cowichan, CVRD Economic Development Commission, CVRD Environment Commission, Cowichan Agricultural Society, Transition Cowichan, O.U.R. Ecovillage, Malahat First Nation, and Cittaslow Cowichan Bay are a few of the organizations and groups that have signed on so far. We would like to thank everyone for their input and support through the final drafts of the charter.
CGC staff members have been busy gearing up for Percy Schmeiser's talk on Feb. 5th and the Seeds for Change event on Feb. 6th. We are all excited for this event. What could be better? Get reved up by Friday night's talk, and learn proactive permaculture solutions during Saturday's event.
The greenhouse at the Warmland House is built and is ready for planting! Thanks to CGC's resident gardening guru Jason, and help from multiple volunteers, there is now a place to get seedlings started, and room to grow multiple veggies. Mmmm, I can almost taste them already.
Also at the Warmland House, CGC's staff and hardworking volunteers created a medicine wheel on Febuary 2nd to celebrate Imbolc. Imbolc is an ancient Celtic festival that celebrates Spring's impending replacement of Winter. A big thank-you goes out to everyone who helped with this. Your hard work was greatly appreciated and the Warmland House will be rewarded with bountiful supply of medicinal herbs.
CGC is hosting our second annual Valentine's Day party at the Brigantine Pub in Maple Bay. Come join staff and friends for an evening out to raise funds to help support the Warmland House Community Gardens.
What else have we been up to in the last month?
Cowichan Green Communtiy has recently launched a beautiful new website. It uses state of the art software (Drupal), which allows us to have a dynamic webpage that is easier for staff to update and maintain (even Judy can do it!). Hopefully, the new site will allow us to keep on top of informing everyone about all of our upcoming events and workshops.
The food security mapping team at CGC recently co-hosted a forum with Social Planning Cowichan to gather information from local service providers on how our food security map could support their organizations. The event was a great success. There was a great turnout, a lot of valuable information was collected, and who knew the CGC staff members were such great chefs? (Maybe we need to start a recipe book to sell in our storefront.) We are currently in the process of planning a follow up event, so your invite should be coming soon if you attended the original event.
We have also been planning our annual Seedy Saturday event, being held at the Mercury Theatre on March 27th. There will be vendors selling seeds, a workshop, and lots of gardening gossip. We hope you can all join us!