Seed Saving Collective

• < Previous Event
• Next Event >

Comment

Comment by Amy Tran on January 12, 2011 at 9:56pm

Hello everyone! Thanks, Robin, for such an extensive message. As agreed, I've set up a blog specifically for the "Cedar Cottage Seed Savers" : http://ccseedsavers.wordpress.com/

 

As you can see, it's still looking pretty infantile and as the first post, I've simply copied/pasted in our first meeting's minutes. If there are any links you'd like to add to the right sidebar, please let me know! I've listed just a few I thought would be pertinent.

 

Adding additional "authors" is as simple as me sending you an email invite, and then having you register a Wordpress username. I can do this in the interim if people are comfortable, but of course I'll do a tutorial when we next meet.

 

A month from our last meeting sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I guess if it were to be a Saturday, February 5th would make the most sense? I'd be keen on meeting the weekend before (January 29) if that works any better for everyone though I realize the Strathcona Seed Savers Collective is meeting that day and it looks like you're attending, Robin? I was thinking I might attend it as well, come to think of it.

 

As for a meeting spot, I'll remind everyone that I'd be happy to have you all over as long as you don't mind the company of 4 cats and a chinchilla. I'm near Windsor and E28th.

 

And, finally, I may be able to offer up an underused cool and dry cabinet in my kitchen as our "seed hub." It measures approximately 11 inches in depth and under 3 ft in width; it has a shelf which divides up the cabinet into two parts - the top half being about 1 foot tall and the bottom half about 1 ft 5 inches tall. Because the space is fairly narrow (11 inches), it may have to be a multiple-boxes sort of situation.

Comment by Cylia on January 12, 2011 at 6:47pm

Everyone:  I have offered to provide the binders as I should be able to come up with some without anyone incurring costs.  cylia

Comment by Robin S. on January 12, 2011 at 2:27pm

Hi guys,

hope you all had a good weekend. Here is the follow-up email to our first collective meeting. It's a long one because this was our first opportunity to flesh out a lot of the details of how we want to organise ourselves.

First of all, thanks to Amy, Ross and Tara for attending, and many thanks to Cylia and Peter for hosting our first meeting at their home!

I don't have experience with 'proper' minute taking, so here is a summary of what was said in the meeting (if anyone has some tips for minute taking, please do share!)

It turns out that our group has a good amount of gardening/ food growing experience. Tara has taken a Master Gardener course at Gaia College, Cylia has taken an Urban Farming course at the same college and plans to do a Master Gardener course there as well. She and Peter work in several gardening plots in the city. Ross has 3 years of experience gardening now, and Amy has been at it for four years. I have been apprenticing on an organic farm for two years and have done a Permaculture Design course.

This is a great starting point; everyone is welcome to join our seed saving collective, but since growing out our seed collection to keep each variety healthy and viable is one of our main tasks, gardening is a critical skill to cultivate within the group. We talked about organising small gardening workshops in the future to help any new non-gardening members learn more about growing food. We also agreed that we should try to attend as many seed saving workshops as possible leading up to this year's growing season and share those experiences in future meetings, and organise our own mini seed saving workshops in the spring and summer.

Our collective is concerned about the loss of agricultural biodiversity, and what this means for our global and local food security. Especially with more extreme weather in recent years, very wet springs, very cold winters, very dry summers, earlier and later seasonal changes, having a greater diversity of fruit and vegetable varieties to feed ourselves is crucial.
We are also concerned with the control of the world's commercial seed supply by an increasingly small number of players in the biotech industry.
There are still thousands of fruit and vegetable varieties out there, but thousands have already been lost, and the simple fact is that seeds have a limited lifespan and if no one is growing them out to replace them, the variety will die out. Like species of wild animals, once extinct, the unique genetic material of a fruit or vegetable variety cannot be recreated.

Our principle aim then is to increase our community's food security. As a seed saving collective we will do our part by collecting, preserving and growing heirloom and locally-adapted varieties of fruits, vegetables and flowers; learning good seed saving habits and techniques, and passing on these skills to others; and by maintaining a living community seed bank, accessible to all gardeners in our neighbourhood and beyond.

To do this we set out some important tasks.

I have volunteered to be the collective's record keeper, so I will be responsible for attending all meetings, taking minutes, following up with group emails, and maintaining our database of members and their seeds. If you ever need an update on what was discussed and decided at a meeting, let me know! If you ever want to know what seeds we have in our seedbank, just ask me.

By our next meeting I will get some binders together to create the 2 copies of our grower and seed databases, and create a digital copy of each as well.

I have also volunteered to keep track of our collective's educational materials and resources, so by next meeting I will put together a list of any books, publications, documentaries, or online resources that could benefit our group's knowledge and skill base

Amy has volunteered to be the

Comment by Robin S. on January 12, 2011 at 2:27pm

group's technology go-to gal. She will be responsible for maintaining a second copy of our digital database, and an online presence for the collective. By our next meeting she has agreed to create a blog for us, and she has offered to teach us how to access and contribute to it. Thanks Amy! I will send you a copy of our digital database so far, once I've put it together.

Tara has volunteered to promote our collective, and will try to bring a few more people to our next meeting. She has also agreed to brainstorm on some ideas for fundraising. Thanks Tara!
Some things we need some funds for in the short term: the binders, printing charges, the box to store our seed collection.

Everyone has agreed to fill in "Seed Data Base" sheets for all the varieties they intend to contribute to our seed bank, and hand them in during our next meeting, or email them to me. These sheets can be found available for download online here, under the "Downloadable Resources" section, pages A.5 to A.5.8, or can be photocopied from Robin Wheeler's booklet from those same pages.

If I've missed anything in all this that you think would be important for the group to keep a record of please let me know!

We need to brainstorm some more about a physical place to house our seeds.... a cool, dry cupboard at someone's place? a dry, lockable shed in a private or community garden? And then someone will need to step up as the collective's seed keeper, to make sure that this stash stays safe.

Ross, thanks again for your efforts in getting the October workshop happening, and helping to connect and coordinate people to make our first meeting happen. Please stay connected, and let's see how our collective and a Kitsilano collective could collaborate! I'll keep you on this list until you let me know otherwise.

Ok, so that's that :)

I was thinking a good time for our next meeting would be roughly one month from our first, so say February 8th, or the Saturday closest to that date. It depends on how much time you all need to get ready for it, aka have the blog ready, have the binders ready, have your seed info sheets filled in, etc.
Does a month seem reasonable? Let me know, and then we can move on to finding a place to meet.

Thanks again everyone! Take care,

Robin

Comment by Cylia on January 11, 2011 at 7:15am

Hello Kasza:  no problem.  I am hoping minutes will be posted.  Cylia

Comment by Kasza on January 10, 2011 at 4:25pm

Sorry I didn't make it out.  I had forgotten about a previous commitment I had made for the weekend.  Will minutes be posted somewhere from the meeting?

Comment by Cylia on January 7, 2011 at 10:48pm

Ross:  I have contacted all of the confirmed attendees and emailed Kasza to ask if he will be attending. I will check early tomorrow morning to see if he replies since I'm signing off the computer now.  cylia

Comment by miel on January 7, 2011 at 10:36pm

I am so happy to hear that this event is happening! Sad to say I won't be able to make it tomorrow (I just found out about it now...I was blissfully offline for two whole weeks), but I am certainly interested in being actively involved in the seed saving collective...i will stay tuned for what the next steps will be!

Miel

 

 

Comment by Ross Moster on January 7, 2011 at 9:53pm

Hi Cylia,

Is there anyone you couldn't reach?

Comment by Amy Tran on January 7, 2011 at 9:44pm

Hi Cylia, I've "friended" you!

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page