Strathcona Seed Savers Collective

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Comment by Alexis Bach on January 29, 2011 at 3:09pm

Strathcona Seed Savers Collective

 

Meeting Minutes

for

Saturday January 29^th, 2010

 

 

Present: 

Rebecca Cuttler

Chris Kasza

Ross Moster

Jamie D

Penny Coupland

Liberty Hajek

Sue Brown

Sobey W

Alexis Bach

Robin S

 

First off, thank you to everyone who came, for sharing part of your Saturday with us.  Great Meeting everyone, lots of energy, lots of ideas, lots of potential and growth and paths to move forward with!!

 

So seeing as most of us are beginners, our main focus is to share seed, share knowledge and grow the seed collective together from the ground up. 

 

Seed Saving Resources @ farm folk city folk 

http://www.ffcf.bc.ca/resources/seedSaving.html

 

~ Alexis has agreed to be Record Keeper and store the future seed bank in her storage space in the basement.  She will gladly host future meetings as well.

 

Robin brought up a good point of sharing the seed among the members as well as in the Seed Bank so as to have as much redundancy as possible in terms of keeping seed should one store become unusable for any reason.

 

~ Needed for the record keeping are two binders, one for the Grower Info and one for the Seed Bank, if anyone has binders to donate, great please bring them to the next meeting. Digital copies on a hard drive and a USB thingie (I know, very technical) will be made too. 

 

~ We are to set up a blog and collective email address for communication purposes and for new members to gain access to the collective.   Alexis will investigate the possibility of getting her friend to set up the blog, if  not, other avenues are to set up separate page on the VV website, or see if Amy from Cedar Cottage would be willing to set up a blog for us. 

 

 ~ In terms of sharing knowledge, Penny and Robin are the only people who attended the meeting who have concrete knowledge of seed saving.  Finding more people with this skill and who are willing to teach it with us will be one of our first goals.

 

Penny suggested connecting with the elders of the community who have vast knowledge but a language barrier separates us. Some resources to facilitate this could be Emi in Transition Strathcona, as well as member of Jamie’s building, setting up a luncheon or workshop through the community centre to get the groups together.  Another option is to attend the Seed Savers Workshops hosted by VV @ the community centre, the next one is Feb 27^th, 2010.  A last resort could be to hire Robin Wheeler to come to one of our meetings and give us our own workshop, this would require a financial commitment on our part as a whole to compensate Robin for her time.   

 

~ The idea of collaborating on getting a big dump of compost to share came up, a truck would be needed for that. Or sharing the cost of delivery, which is more expensive than the compost itself. 

 

~ The creation of a simple flyer to distribute around the neighbourhood and inviting more members is in process, once it comes out volunteers to distribute it would be great

 

~ The idea of a walking/bike tour of gardens either participating in the collective or interested in participating is one to be developed.

 

~ Alexis and Ross volunteered part of their plots this season to grow seed for the collective.  Anyone else with space?

 

Comment by Alexis Bach on January 29, 2011 at 3:09pm

 

~ The idea of work parties to help our neighbours with garden projects came up, the first suggestion is Alexis’ greenhouse, made with as much recycled material as possible.  If you have material, time or skill to donate great!!  The work parties could be part of our meetings, but that creates a long day especially for those with kids and other commitments, so I was thinking that the work party could be the Saturday following the meetings, so as not to loose steam. We can set up a schedule next meeting, working our way through all the members and getting those projects that always seem to be put off completed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics for next meeting:

 

~garden planning and allotting which seeds each of us will grow this season

 

~ sharing our seeds for this upcoming season

 

~ filling out the growers sheets

 

~ practice collecting seed

 

~ develop the idea of garden tour

 

~ work party schedule to be determined

 

If you have anything to add or want to comment on, please do!

 

 

 

 

 

Comment by Alexis Bach on January 25, 2011 at 10:18am

Rebecca asked last night at the VV meeting whether we should bring seeds on Saturday and I thought it was a great idea to get us moving, so if you have  seeds you  want to share, bring them along!!