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Today’s the last day of February, but the weather feels like we’re already well into March! These last couple days of sunshine and warmer temperatures have me sooo excited for the spring, especially with all the exciting things going on in the garden over the next few months :-) February was a big month at the garden - we had lots of fun things going on, and did lots of planning for the upcoming growing season! It’s been an awesome month of working as a team and supporting one another to get things done, and I’m feeling so grateful for this community for coming out to our events and workshops, participating in our silly little projects, and overall just being such a lovely group to be a part of. The month started off with some snow and freezing temperatures, which meant that we were mostly spending our time working indoors instead of in the garden (it’s hard to work in the frozen ground!). Our first workshop of the month was our microgreens workshop, which was originally going to be held on February 4th, but got moved to the 11th as UVic was closed because of the snow. This was an introductory workshop, hosted by our garden site staff member, Jack. We learned about what microgreens are, how to grow different kinds of microgreens, and even got to grow our own! Once the temperatures rose a bit we were back in the garden, and back to holding our Friday volunteer parties outdoors! We’ve had some awesome work parties this month, doing lots of weeding and cover cropping as we come to the end of the winter. Work parties have continued to be drop-in style on Friday afternoons from 2-4pm, no sign-ups or experience is needed to join! Just come by anytime between 2-4 to lend a hand and hang out in the garden. Keep an eye on our Instagram to stay up-to-date with work party tasks and times. Another exciting thing that happened this month is that the latest edition of Sundew came together! Some printing issues have delayed the official release, but keep an eye out for that this week!! We also finished putting together our silly little mixtape this month! The CCG winter mixtape has been one of the most fun projects I’ve had the pleasure of working on in my time with the garden - together with our star board member, Clare! The mixtape started as a random, silly what-if, and has turned into a beautiful documentation of the sounds of our community. It starts off with the sound of the gate to the garden opening and closing, and moves into a wide range of pieces, from stories to songs to a recipe, all coming together to represent the garden and the people who make it what it is. We launched the mixtape live on CFUV on Feb 25th, and the recording will be up on our website soon, but you can also get your hands on a real physical copy of the mixtape! We’re burning a limited number of CDs, we have cover art (2 versions!), and we’re selling them by donation!! 50% of proceeds will go to the garden, and 50% will go to our friends at Peers. You can find the mixtape at our table at FemExpo this week, or send us a message and we can figure out a time to drop by our office in the SUB to pick one up :) We also hosted a miso-making workshop this week, led by garden plot-renter James! Folks learned about the individual ingredients that go into making miso, the different kinds of miso, and worked together to make a big batch of miso which we split between the group so that everyone could take some home! Now, we leave our containers of miso in a cool, dark place for 3 months, and see how it’s doing at the end of May. This is definitely one that we want to do again, so if you missed it this time keep an eye out for another miso-making workshop in the fall! Coming up in March, we’ll be bringing back our pop-up giveaways, finishing up with some final touches for the new accessible bed, selling Sundew and the mixtape, and preparing for this year’s spring event in the garden! This year we’re changing things up a bit and hosting a Spring Market! Plan to come by the garden on the afternoon of March 28th (the last Friday in March), where there will be vendors (ranging from local farms and gardens to artists and makers), live music, and good vibes all around!! Keep an eye on our Instagram for more details :) I hope you all have a chance to enjoy the sunshine this weekend, and wishing you all the best for March!
Happy gardening, Jessi
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Welcome back to the blog! For this semester, we’ve decided to change things up a bit and move to monthly blogs instead of weekly! January has been a slower month at the CCG - with some staffing changes and the winter season, we’ve taken the time to ease back into things this semester. The main change is that our beloved Coordinator Lyndsay is away for a few months, doing some courses up island. We’ve missed her a lot, but are so excited about her new adventure! In the meantime, the rest of the team has taken on additional tasks :) We’ve also been focusing a lot of our work on planning and preparing for the coming growing season, and have just returned to working in the garden after our time away during the long moon. During this time, we give the land a break, and give all the living things in the garden the space to grow and thrive. We’re very excited to be back now though, and can’t wait to start seeing our plans in action! On the outreach side, we’ve had lots of things going on this month. Between tabling events and workshops, we’ve had so much fun introducing new people to the garden, and hanging out with some familiar faces! This month we had two Thursday afternoon events with the Society for Students with a Disability (SSD), one focused on tea making and the other on seed saving! We’ll be bringing these back again on February 13th and 27th, so check out our Instagram if you’re interested :)  We also worked with our friends (and office-mates!) at the UVic Sustainability Project (UVSP) to put on a container gardening & seed bomb workshop! It’s always so fun to put on events with our friends!!  We’ve continued to host our volunteer work parties on Friday afternoons this semester, and had our first outdoor one since last semester today! It was a rainy day, but it’s always a fun time to be in the garden with pals! We’ll be continuing to do these from 2-4pm for the next little while, and then might move to 3-5pm when the sun is up for longer :) We’ve got lots coming up in February too! We’ve been working hard to get the new edition of Sundew ready, which will come out this month. We hosted a couple of collaging sessions for this one, and it’s looking really awesome! We’ve also been working away at our mixtape, and are excited to launch it on CFUV on February 25th! Coming up next week, we have our Microgreens 101 workshop with Jack! This will be an introduction to growing microgreens indoors, which Jack does in our office in the SUB. Come down to SUB B028 at 2pm on Tuesday, Feb 4th if you’re interested in learning!  We’re also planning a miso-making workshop for the end of the month! On February 26th, our friend (and plot-renter!) James will be joining us in the SUB to teach us all about making miso! Keep an eye on our Instagram for more details closer to the event :)
We’re also hoping to bring back our pop-up giveaways soon, so lookout for that this month! Happy gardening, Jessi The first week of exams is already over, which means we’re that much closer to winter break! Here at the CCG, we’ve been busy continuing to get ready for the break by finishing up tasks and projects, and making sure that we’ve set ourselves up to come back ready to go in the new year. On Tuesday we had our Board of Directors’ Holiday Get-Together, where we shared food and held a gift exchange! It’s a busy time for our board members, and we appreciate everyone for taking the time out of their exam studying to join us! Our bi-weekly board meetings will start up again in the new year, so if you’re interested in being a part of the board keep an eye on our Instagram for information about our meetings :) On Wednesday, a little group of us spent some more time working on the accessible bed! We’re getting to the final stages of this project, and are really looking forward to seeing the end result! The building part should be done before the break, and then we’ll be testing it and putting the final touches on to get ready to unveil the bed later in the Spring.  Today we held our usual Friday afternoon work party! This week’s focus was on weeding, mulching, and other winter preparations! This was our last work party before the long moon, starting on Dec. 15. For about a month, we give the land time to rest and will be doing alternative tasks at the work parties that don’t involve disturbing the ground. Check out our Instagram to keep up to date with work parties :)  I’m keeping it short and sweet this week, so that’s all I’ve got! Good luck to everyone finishing up exams next week, I’m right there with you!
And as always, happy gardening! Jessi The end of the semester is very near! I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to a break over the holidays. This semester went by so quickly and has had so many things packed in, which has been wonderful but also very tiring! I think we all could use a rest! The last day of classes was on Wednesday, so we had our usual activities for the first part of the week! On Tuesday evening we had our last regular board meeting of the semester, where we chatted about what needs to be done before the holidays and worked on some projects that will be public next semester. To end off the year together, we’re having a little holiday celebration with the board next week!
This week we also announced our first themed issue of the garden journal, Sundew! For the winter issue, we’ve decided to go with the theme “Food for All”. We welcome all interpretations of the theme! Some suggestions/prompts might be thinking about food accessibility and barriers to access (like geographical, financial, etc.), food as part of culture and community, food as a human right, etc. but we really love different interpretations so please feel free to make it your own! The deadline to submit is December 31 :) And now we’re in exam time (womp womp). It definitely feels like everyone is hunkering down to get ready, and there’s a lot of end-of-year preparations and celebrations happening as well. Because of the busy time of year, we decided to cancel our work party this afternoon. We just don’t have anyone who was available to stay for the whole time, and figured it might be a good time to take a little break. Folks are still welcome to gather in the space, of course, and we’ll have gloves and whatnot available for anyone who wants to do some work! Next week, we’re planning to finish up the accessible bed, have our holiday celebration with the board, and continue with getting the garden ready for winter. Accepting submissions for both Sundew and the CCG Winter Mixtape will also be ongoing throughout the month!  That’s all from me for this week, wishing everyone good luck with your exams and final assignments! We’re almost there!!
Happy gardening, Jessi It’s almost December and I can’t believe it! November has been a super busy month at the CCG - it went by quickly but when I think about it, we were able to fit so many things in! From events, to special projects, to so much winter prep. in the garden and in the office. We’ve been working hard and working as a team, working together to make things happen and leaning on each other when we need support. I think that’s probably a big factor in how we’ve been able to do so many different things this month, so today I’m going to recap some of our team’s work from this month! One of my favourite things we started doing this month is our pop-up giveaways! If you haven’t seen, we’ve been doing once a week pop-ups around campus (mostly outside of the SUB), where we’ve been giving away free veggies, flowers, seeds, and stickers from the CCG. This has been such a great team effort, where every week staff and board members agree on a day where some folks are available to help with harvesting in the morning, and some are available to table during the day to give the harvest away. For last week’s blog, I spotlighted this project (in case you want to read more about it!). We haven’t decided on a day for this week yet, but check our Instagram to keep up to date :) We also released our newest edition of Sundew (the garden journal)! This is our third edition and we are so happy with how this project has been going. Sundew is a great example of how teamwork really does make things happen here; from the submissions to the collaging, Sundew is a collective effort (led by our lovely Assistant Coordinator, Juls!). The third edition is now available for a sliding scale price of $2-10, if you’d like to buy a copy you can send us a message on Instagram or email Juls at [email protected]. They’re also available for purchase at Subtext for $10! Then, of course, there’s the accessible bed building that’s been going on this month! This whole project would not be possible without the work of so many different folks, from the original decision to remove the old (in)accessible bed, to the creation of a new design (because we couldn’t find any design plans for what we were looking for!), and finally the actual building, it’s been such an incredible journey full of learning. If it weren’t for the effort of everyone involved, this project would be nowhere near where it is now, and it’s so awesome to see what we can do together<3 In the garden, this month has been focused on getting ready for winter! We’ve been harvesting as much as we can, mulching around the hardy plants (like leafy greens and leeks) that are overwintering (tucking them into their mulch beds, as Kate says :p), pruning, tidying, making little structures (like a cover for the sink by the composting toilet), and all the other things that need to be done! The in-garden things are less talked about on the blog (mostly because I’m not usually the one doing them!) but they’re, of course, a huge chunk of where our staff’s time goes! This month we also held our Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM), two tea-making workshops with the Society for Students with a Disability, a quick-pickling workshop, and five work parties! It’s been so awesome to see our community grow as we meet more folks who are interested in being part of the CCG, whether it’s volunteering with us, coming to our workshops, or coming by the pop-ups to get some free food! Looking forward, we’ve got some more exciting things coming up for December. We’ll be accepting submissions for Sundew Issue 4 (our first themed issue - keep an eye on our Instagram for the theme reveal!), as well as for a new project, the first-ever CCG winter mixtape! We’ll be continuing to hold work parties on Friday afternoons between 2-4pm, having a few more pop-ups (total number will depend on our capacity around exams), and finishing up with building the accessible bed! We’ll be taking a little break over the holidays, and then will be back in January with more workshops, events, and projects :)  That’s it from me for this week, I hope everyone has a wonderful start of December!
Happy gardening, Jessi This week on the blog, I’ve decided to switch it up a bit! Rather than recap our week, I’ll be doing a spotlight on an ongoing project that we’ve been working on - our pop-up giveaways around campus! The giveaways are based on an initiative that the CCG used to do (pre-covid), where the farm stand would be set up somewhere on campus to give away free food! One of our board members, Liam, heard about this from one of our volunteers who’s been around the garden for a while, and brought the idea to a board meeting in the fall. As you may recall, our farm stand was broken in September, so at first we were trying to fix the stand before we started the giveaways. We realized that fixing the farm stand is a project that we’d have to come back to in the Spring, but we still wanted to do giveaways, so we decided to just start booking a table and doing pop-ups! The way it works is that we pick a day/time in the week that works for at least a couple of board members and staff, book a table and a few chairs, then schedule a harvest for the morning of the giveaway and someone to bike everything over from the garden to the table. At the table, we give everything away for free to anyone who comes by! That’s it! No catch, no sign-ups, and folks can choose to chat with us or just grab something quickly on their way by! We’re just thrilled to be able to give more food away and let more people know about the garden and all the things we offer - a space to garden (whether renting plots or volunteering with us), a space to enjoy (everyone is welcome to walk around when the gate’s unlocked, and groups can use the space for free for events and get-togethers), and a space that exists on the belief that food should be shared (as well as accessible, decolonized, and joyful). Staff operate plots specifically for the purpose of giving food for free, and we love to be able to do that through the UVSS Food Bank and the tabling events we attend around campus, but it’s also been so awesome to have the opportunity to connect more directly with the people we are growing food for.
And on that note, we want to hear from you! Is there something you think we should grow in the garden? Let us know! We’re starting to plan our garden for next season, and we’d love to look into different foods you want access to, especially if they’re not commonly found in grocery stores in Victoria! We’d love to work with you, if you’re interested in gardening yourself, or just think about how we can add new things to the plots that we run already. You can chat with us at the giveaway tables, come by the garden, send us a message on Instagram, or email me at [email protected]. We’ll be back out next week for another pop-up, but haven’t settled on a date quite yet. Keep an eye on our Instagram to stay updated on our giveaways and other work that we do! Happy gardening, Jessi This week was a bit of a weird one, because the first half of the week was reading break for UVic. Here at the garden we were off on Monday and then back to it for the rest of the week, but it always throws off my internal calendar when I don’t have classes! On Tuesday and Friday we were in the garden continuing work on the new accessible bed, which is coming along slowly but surely! We’ve been learning a lot, and making adjustments as we go to improve the structure and solve problems as we run into them. We’re just about done with the actual building, and are starting to focus on the ground (holding the structure in place, and making sure the ground is level and compacted/covered so that a wheelchair user will actually be able to access the bed!). We’ll be back in the garden this week to continue working, and hopefully will be able to finish with the big things so that we can move on to testing and making smaller adjustments! Classes returned after the break on Thursday, and we kicked off the 2-day week with another on-campus giveaway! This time, we set up a table outside of the McPherson Library, near the Petch Fountain, to give away veggies, berries, and edible flowers from the garden, as well as seeds! We did a harvest in the morning, and were set up at the table from 10am-noon. The giveaways have been going super well and it’s been so nice to connect more with the UVic community - we’ve been able to meet folks who’d never heard of the garden before, and remind others that we’re here and they have access to a garden space (even though we’re kind of hidden off Mackenzie Ave!). Keep an eye on our Instagram stories to find out about the next giveaway! On Friday, as well as working on the accessible bed, we introduced some new plot renters to their plots and held a volunteer work party in the afternoon! This week’s work party continued to focus on winterizing garden beds, as it really is that time of year - we had our first frost on Thursday night, and are expecting a couple more this week! Looking forward, we’ve got a busy week coming up. On Monday, our highly anticipated Quick Pickling workshop will be taking place from 11am-1pm in SUB B028! Don’t forget to bring a jar (clean it thoroughly first!!), and maybe some veggies and spices like garlic, dill, or pepper flakes, if you have some you prefer!  On Tuesday afternoon at 3pm in SUB B025 we’re also holding our Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM)!! This will take the shape of a community potluck and meeting, where we recap our year and discuss plans for the next year! This meeting is open to everyone in our community, to come and join garden staff and board members in sharing food, celebrating what we’ve accomplished over the past year, and planning for the next. We’re asking folks to please bring something to share for the potluck, as well as your own dishes/utensils for eating :)  We’ll also have our usual Friday volunteer work party from 2-4pm on Friday, November 22nd! Come by to help out with some garden tasks (probably more winterizing!), meet some awesome folks, and spend some time outdoors. We’ve been super lucky with the weather for the past few weeks, and hopefully this continues - but we’re out rain or shine, so dress for the weather and come hang out!!
I hope everyone has had a great weekend, and I wish you all the best for the coming week! Happy gardening, Jessi Another week has come and gone! It’s been another busy one at the CCG, with winterizing in full swing, plot renewals and garden tours ongoing, and the new accessible bed being built! On Tuesday we started advertising for our SAGM (Semi-Annual General Meeting), which will take place on Tuesday, November 19th at 3pm! This will be a potluck and meeting, where garden staff come together with our board and our community to share food, recap our year at the CCG, and discuss some of our plans for the next year! If you are interested in learning more and/or getting involved with the CCG, please join us! We’re asking folks to bring something to share for the potluck, as well as their own dishes/containers and utensils for eating with. We would love to see you there!  We also held our biweekly board meeting on Tuesday this week, where we chatted about what’s gone on over the past two weeks, and discussed some upcoming projects and events. We also voted to adjust the time of our board meetings, from 3:30pm to 3pm, so that we can still have a little bit of sun when we’re leaving the meetings (now that it gets dark at 4:30pm!). On Wednesday afternoon our accessible bed building team met in the garden to start the process of building the bed! This project has been the biggest, longest project that I’ve ever taken on (we started working on it last spring!) and I’m really looking forward to seeing how all of our work turns out. Most of our team is volunteers, so it’s a longer process to build than it would be otherwise. We’re planning to finish with building next week, and then make adjustments and finishing touches as we prepare to plant in the Spring! Once the bed is complete, we’ll have a proper celebration - keep an eye on our Instagram for information about that :) Friday was another busy day in the garden. In the morning, a few of our staff and board members got together to harvest veggies and flowers to give away at our pop-up farm stand outside of the SUB, where board members gave away treats from the garden and chatted with folks about our work. We’ve had two of these pop-ups so far, and they’ve been going super well! We’re really excited to keep connecting with new folks and giving away food for free! Make sure to follow us on Instagram to keep updated about when we’re out next!  We’ve also been running garden tours over the past couple weeks for ES200 classes. Lyndsay ran a bunch on Friday morning, and then also ran the volunteer work party in the afternoon! This week’s work party was another winterizing-focused one, with mulching, sewing cover crops, and general bed prep going on! And we had some new faces come by, which was so wonderful!  The first half of this week is reading break at UVic, so we’ve mostly got garden-focused work going on - continuing with winterizing and building the accessible bed! On Thursday, we’re planning to do another pop-up giveaway outside of the McPherson library, and on Friday we’ll have our volunteer work party!
I hope everyone has a good long weekend, and enjoys the reading break! Happy gardening, Jessi It’s November! Halloween has come and gone, and I’ve already seen my first Christmas decorations of the season. The last week of October was a busy one at the CCG, with multiple fun things planned for Halloween, and working to make sure everything is in order for the building of our new accessible garden bed, which finally starts on Wednesday! It’s taken some time, but we managed to track down all the materials we need (and for less than budgeted!). The past week has been a whirlwind of ordering and picking up materials, locating things in our staff shed, and working together to reach out to our networks to track down harder to find and/or expensive materials. Scheduling the build has also been tough, because everyone’s schedules are so different and the bulk of the work is being done by volunteers! But we’ve decided to plan for a 3-day build, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoon. This way we’ll have some flexibility and everyone who’s been involved with the planning can hopefully make it out for at least part of the building :) We had a couple of things happening on Thursday, for Halloween! First, we had our candle making workshop, led by our board member Elyse, from 11am-12:30pm. This was such an awesome workshop - we had such a sweet time hanging out and chatting with everyone, and the attendance was way more than we’d expected! Luckily, we last-minute bought some extra wax as a just-in-case, which we definitely needed! Thanks to everyone who came out, it’s always great to learn more about what kinds of workshops our community wants to see from us - if you ever have an idea for a workshop that you want to see happen, please feel free to send me an email at [email protected]!!   Also on Halloween, we were around campus doing some giveaways! We had trick-or-treating going on in our office, where we gave away treats to folks who came by. We also had a table set up outside the SUB to give away veggies and flowers! This is based on an initiative that the CCG used to do (before covid), where we would have little pop-up giveaways, which some of our board members have been spearheading bringing back! Keep an eye out for the CCG table setup around campus, we’ll be giving away produce and flowers as long as we have things to give<3  On Friday afternoon we were in the garden for our weekly volunteer work party. It was great to see some new faces, and the grey day managed to get a bit sunny while we were together! This week we were getting ready for winter with weeding, pruning, and emptying hoses. We got a lot done and had a lovely time with everyone! Coming up, we’ll be starting to advertise for our Semi Annual General Meeting (SAGM) this week. The SAGM is going to take place on the afternoon of November 19th, and we’d love to see you there! Keep an eye on our Instagram and/or our website for more details. We’ve also got a board meeting this week! On Tuesday afternoon at 3:30pm we’ll be meeting with our board in SUB B025 to discuss everything that’s going on with the garden. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join the meeting to learn more about the garden, about being a board member, and just to chat with some rad folks! On Wednesday afternoon we start building the new accessible garden bed, so it may be a bit loud in the garden on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon! We’re planning to put the finishing touches in on Friday, and have the new bed ready before reading week starts. We’ll definitely be having a celebration of sorts once it’s all done, so keep an eye out for information on that! And, of course, on Friday we’ll have our usual volunteer work party from 2-4pm! Come join us in the garden to learn some new skills, ask any questions you might have, meet some fun people, and spend time in the lovely garden space! No experience is ever necessary, and we love having new folks joining our community :) That’s all from me for this week, I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend and that you have a great new week!
Happy gardening, Jessi Happy Friday! October has almost come to an end, which means winter is on its way! In the garden, the end of the season means there’s lots to be done in terms of preparing the garden beds for winter and getting any final in-garden tasks done before we shift our time to be more in the office and preparing for spring. One of those tasks, which happened this week, was cleaning out the greenhouses! They’ve now been hosed down to clear out any buildup, and are ready for winter. If you see Kate or Lyndsay around, say thanks to them for getting this big job done! Another exciting thing going on is that our two new work-studies are now hired! You may have already seen them helping out around the garden, they are Lucy and Henry and they’re both super lovely :-) We were also out in the garden this week to do some harvesting and continuing to work on disassembling pallets to reuse the wood in future projects! We had our biweekly board meeting on Tuesday, where we chatted about what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up! We always have lots of administrative tasks and whatnot going on in the background of the garden, and it’s so great to have such a dedicated team this year to work on these things with! This week we also worked on the 3rd edition of Sundew, the garden journal! We spent Wednesday afternoon collaging to put this one together, and I’m soooo excited to see how it turned out! This one’s supposed to be out on Friday, November 1st (but might even be printed a bit sooner, in time to come out on Halloween!). Keep an eye on our Instagram to see confirmed dates. This afternoon we had our Friday work party, a dedicated afternoon every week where we invite volunteers to come help staff with various tasks depending on the week! This week we focused on cleaning up and winterizing garden beds. The weather was chilly but it didn’t rain, so we’ll take that as a positive! We had a couple mini working groups doing some weeding, raking, and trimming. Thanks to everyone who joined us, the garden always feels a lot warmer with pals around<3 Coming up next week, we’ve got our Candle Making workshop (+ trick or treating) happening on October 31st! Join our board member Elyse on Halloween at 11am-12:30pm in SUB B028 to learn to make your own candles, and/or stop by our office anytime during the day until 4pm to grab a piece of candy! We can’t wait to see your costumes!   That’s it from me for this week, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
Happy gardening, Jessi |
