Month: May 2018

The Grandview Woodland Food Connection along with Britannia Community Services Centre were pleased to host this year’s Farm to School Vancouver Region Year End Celebration at Britannia School which brought together 120 teachers, students, parents, and community organizations to share in workshops, networking, a great dinner, and awards.

Workshops including Pollinators & Beneficial Insects with Nikoo, from Society Promoting Enviornmental Conservation (SPEC), to discussing the various beneficial insects and pollinators one can expect to see in their school garden, plants that will draw in more to school gardens, and activities to engage students in learning about them. Rescued Pizzas with Rosalind Sadowski from Fresh Roots and David Schein from Foodstash Foundation reclaiming local, organic, seasonal produce destined for the bin, and make everyone’s favourite dish with them. Salve-making with Lori Snyder, a descendant of the T’suu tina (Sarcee), Nakota (Assiboine), Cree, Nipissing & Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) people, is an Indigenous Herbalist who brought forth her First Nations perspective and knowledge of wild, edible and medical plants to demonstrate how to make beeswax healing salves with plants are grow abundantly around us.

In addition, a number of discussions on a variety of Farm to School themes including Connecting with Farmers Markets, Using the Garden as a Classroom, and Safe, Healthy School Food, and Landed Learning and Edible Garden Projects.

Finally, schools were awarded pollinator awards, to celebrate and recognize school teams and programs that do outstanding school food and garden work in our community!

Our new Britannia School Garden bees have arrived and will provide tremendous new learning opportunities as well as ecological benefits to the garden.  With the help of English teacher and professional bee keeper, Ashley McLeod, our new honey bees have become a reality. Most exciting is that Ashley has developed an interesting 3 semester English curriculum titled Focused Literary Studies: Environmental Studies and Beekeeping This focused literary study will generate opportunities in place based and experiential learning while fulfilling the learning learning outcomes for her students in Communications 12. The approaches to learning include the study and production of a variety of environmental texts (novels, poetry, research papers, journalism, folklore and instructional texts) as well as a field study of bees, beekeeping, the culture of the apiary and sustainable systems in our community. Through hands on experience working with bees, students will deepen their understanding of themselves and others in relation to the environment, locally and globally. Furthermore, students will study traditional Indigenous texts that emphasize the importance of connection to the land and the environment from a First People’s perspective and participate in a variety of workshops lead by Aboriginal educators and community members. The goals of the course are geared towards increasing environmental stewardship amongst youth while increasing literacy, communication skills and fostering a deepened understanding of themselves and others locally and globally. The course also provides a plethora of opportunities for cross curricular integration in subjects such as: biology, woodworking, foods, earth sciences and business.

Another great Stone Soup Festival with glorious weather to top it off. This is our 23rd year of bringing community together in celebration of community, food, and the environment. More than ever, people are aware of the issues of food security, food justice, the benefits of sharing resources and eating sustainably. As always, Stone Soup celebrates our love of heathy food and its importance to the ‘culture’ and well-being of our community.

A big thanks to Wil D. Salmon: Jay Peachy and Amy Lubik, V’ni Dansi Metis dancers, Earthhand Gleaners, the Carnival Band, Rio Samaya, Environmental Youth Alliance, Wild Salmon Caravan, and many others for making it another successful festival.