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Seedy Sunday Edmonton, Alberta 2016

This Sunday, March 20, 2016, my husband and I attended the Seedy Sunday event in Edmonton, Alberta , the city where our son and family live, and where we are visiting while the grandchildren are on their Spring breaks. I feel so blessed since this is my second opportunity to attend a Seedy Sunday this year, actually, this March!!   If you look back to the previous blog post, you will see that I posted about going to the Seedy Sunday on March 6th at Nanaimo, Vancouver Island.  What is really fun is introducing my daughter-in-law to the Seedy Sunday concept.  She has done a masterful job of gardening in her backyard to the point that her freezer is full of produce through the entire winter.  How many people can say that about their urban kitchen garden?  She really enjoyed herself and came home with some new ideas. We attended a couple of the lectures: the last half of the Food Security panel (with encouragement to not only focus on Food Security, but to also encourage schools

SEEDY SUNDAY 2016 in Nanaimo, BC

This weekend, on Sunday, my husband, Zoe dog and I drove down Island to Nanaimo for the annual Seedy Sunday. Seedy Sunday (or Seedy Saturday) is a gathering of gardeners, local small seed companies and nurseries, in a low-cost local venue where they can learn from one another, exchange ideas and seeds and plants in a comfortable, social setting-- a 'fair' would be another way to describe it.  Nanaimo is located midway up (down) Vancouver Island.  The first Seedy Saturday happened on Vancouver Island 23 years ago, in Victoria.  There are now over 140 Seedy Saturdays/Sundays across Canada. You can find out more about Canadian Seedy Saturday and Sunday schedules by going HERE .  I am happy to see that we will be able to attend another Seedy Sunday this year when we visit our kids and grandkids in Edmonton. Carolyn Herriot was one of this year's Seedy Sunday's speakers.  She has authored The Zero Mile Diet: A Year-Round Guide To Growing Organic Food    

Being Food Secure in an Insecure World

The world is falling apart.  This is not news.  This is not rocket science.  I happen to be Seventh-day Adventist and believe that this world will come to a startling end and that Jesus will return again, but even if you are not a believer in "end time Biblical prophecies" you probably recognize that there are more wars, rumours of wars, and natural disasters occurring closer together all over the world than ever before .  And that requires being prepared for the "emergency" situations that are going to affect all of us at some point-- the Hurricane Katrinas, the Haiti earthquakes, the landslides, monster blizzards, tornadoes, floods, etc. that will mean, at the very least, inconveniently long power outages, but more likely, no ability to buy any food (let alone good quality organic produce) and water, hunger, devastation to our homes, and clogged emergency response rooms in hospitals and walk-in medi-clinics.  I live on an island.  It's a   large is

Step 2: Get the Organic and Heirloom Seeds

So, yes, I do have that bag of Vermiculite towards my eventual Square Foot Garden, but the highlight of this pre-garden season is going to the Seedy Sunday event in Nanaimo.  We drove there with our dog and met our son Conrad just outside the doors to the sports complex in innercity Bowen Park. Inside the building it's a little like what I remember from my childhood Fair days in the "exhibits" buildings.  Here you will find table after table of people (mostly farmers) selling seeds that they breed and/or collect themselves-- heirloom and organic being the words that you look for on the banner and seed packets.  There are also related items for sale, such as mason bee condos, jams, small plants, lily bulbs, flour varieties, honey, and garden ornaments. Taking command of the place with unmatchable energy is the day's emcee, Dirk Becker.  Dirk and his partner Nicole are "backyard farmers" from nearby Lantzville.  They've run into some conflicts w