Pictures from our SOLEfood Build

I thought everyone would like to see some photos people have send us from the SOLEfood build. Keep em coming!

United We Can Bike Cart

Bryce Being A Media Hog!!

Kid Carpenters!

Organic Soil From Eco-Soil

Almost Done

SOLEfood Build

Micheal Leventson of City Farmer put a collection of all the media we received from Our SOLEfood Build on his website at http://www.cityfarmer.info. I have reproduced some of his photos and links here. Thanks for putting all this together, Micheal you saved me a tonne of work!

Photo by Michael Levenston

Farm brings dirt without hurt to gritty Eastside

By CTV British Columbia’s Peter Grainger

Sat Oct. 31 2009

A pilot farming project in Canada’s poorest area code is bringing dirt – without the hurt – to Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside.

Volunteers worked tirelessly Saturday to build a community garden. Although urban community gardens are becoming common sights across Metro Vancouver, the East Hastings Street location is quite different because it will be a fully functional farm once completed.

“They’ll be growing vegetables that will be sold to restaurants and the like in the Downtown Eastside,” Projects in Place Society’s Bryce Gauthier told CTV News.

It will also inject a dozen seasonal jobs into the poor neighborhood.

Seann Dory, a project leader with United We Can, said the group is working with an idea called spin farming, where intensive growing is done in a relatively small space.

“So we’ll do multiple rotations so we can get as much produce out of this half acre as we possibly can,” he said.

The land has been donated on a renewable three-year lease from the Astoria Hotel, located right next door.

Photo by Michael Levenston

Despite the good cheer of the urban farm’s first day, syringes, condoms – and even dead rats — visible on the ground are a constant reminder of the challenges ahead.

But this Downtown Eastside project is a seed of hope that should bear fruit — and vegetables — in one of Canada’s most troubled communities.

See video and article – Peter Grainger on gritty garden – here.

See video and article – Peter Grainger on gritty garden – here.

See United We Can web site here.

http://www.unitedwecan.ca/

Downtown Eastside going green

Community Garden: Organizers hope project will create jobs

BY SUSAN LAZARUK

1 Nov 2009

The Province

Instead of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, a group of volunteers covered up a parking lot Saturday with what they hope will be a little piece of paradise for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

About 50 volunteers, working in the sunshine, drilled and hammered together hundreds of twoby-four wooden planks to build two dozen raised-bed planters on a former asphalt parking lot next to the Astoria Hotel on East Hastings.

The 1.2-by-3.6-metre planters were also filled 60 centimetres deep with rich, black soil, and will be used to grow vegetables in what organizers are calling a fully functioning urban vegetable farm on the empty five city lots that sit on the 1,400-square-metre site.

Photo by Michael Levenston

Called SOLEfood, the garden is the brainchild of United We Can, a Downtown Eastside recycling depot run by and for those who collect recyclables, and Projects in Place, a non-profit spreading environmentally friendly projects such as green roofs around Vancouver.

The boxes will be planted in the spring and the produce sold at a local farmers market and to area restaurants and soup kitchens.

“It’s kind of like a local food movement is happening in Vancouver and this will definitely tap into that,” said Seann Dory of United We Can.

The garden will also collect organic waste from area restaurants for its composters, also built yesterday at the site, and sell compost as well.

United We Can is non-profit, but SOLEfood will run as a for-profit project, said Dory.

“We’re not looking to make a buck, but we’re looking to create jobs,” he said.

The garden will train locals with “employment barriers,” including those with drug addictions and mental disorders, to run the enterprise. The garden is expected to provide 12 part-time seasonal jobs, Dory said.

The project germinated in talks about “how to turn this area into a green hub of economic activity,” said Bryce Gauthier, founder of Projects in Place and designer for Sharp and Diamond Landscape Architects, a sponsor.

The land was donated by Astoria Hotel owners the Sahota family, for which they will receive a tax break on city property taxes, said Dory.

United We Can funds SOLEfood and various businesses and groups sponsor it, including Eco-Soil, which donated the truckload of soil, and designers and planners, who get involved to gain experience they may not be able to get in their paid jobs, Gauthier said.

A water supply, which may come from collected rainwater, still has to be worked out, he said.

The property, already fenced, will be filled with more planters by springtime.

Link to Province article here.

Photo by Michael Levenston

Volunteers turn hotel parking lots into gardens

BY GRAEME WOOD

2 Nov 2009

VANCOUVER SUN

United We Can organizes program to train people and grow food for markets, community kitchens and restaurants

About 50 volunteers got behind wheelbarrows, shovels, and drills Saturday to begin construction of a new community garden in the Downtown Eastside.

The half-acre garden, located on East Hastings Street at Hawks Avenue, will provide food, job training, and education in urban agriculture for local residents, businesses, and community organizations starting next year.

The project was created by the charitable organization United We Can, with the help of numerous other non-profit groups and businesses. It is part of the charity’s Save Our Living Environment campaign.

“It’s pretty awesome to see the community come together, especially people from all walks of life to build a minifarm,” said Seann Dory, manager of sustainability at United We Can.

Only herbs and vegetables will be grown by hired workers, and a composting system will use food waste from local businesses. The garden will use smallplot intensive farming techniques to yield the maximum amount of produce.

Some of the produce will be sold to farmers’ markets and local restaurants, and some will be donated to community kitchens.

Among the volunteers was Richmond resident Marc Helson.

“Fresh produce in an urban area is a good idea. Nowadays we’re getting our food from so far away when we can get it from local farmers,” he said.

Helson lent his muscles as he transferred soil from a large mound of donated soil to garden boxes using a wheelbarrow.

Once construction is completed in about three months, there will be a total of 80 raised wooden garden boxes, about .6 metres high, 1.2 metres wide, and 3.6 metres long.

The garden replaces two empty dilapidated parking lots owned by the Astoria Hotel. The land was leased for three years to United We Can by owner Gudy Sahota.

“It beautifies the street and everyone enjoys it. It’s good to have some greenery,” said Sahota, who also donated cash to the project.

The partnership between the hotel and the community was made possible by Building Opportunities with Business (BOB), an inner-city non-profit organization aimed at creating business partnerships within the community and promoting corporate social responsibility.

When BOB and Sahota agreed on a low-rent lease, United We Can turned to another non-profit, Projects In Place Society, to oversee construction volunteers and the design of the mini-farm.

Brian Smith, a landscape architect intern, coordinated many of the donated items for the garden, such as soil, building materials, compost pallets and tools.

The 12 part-time employees tending to the plots will be recruited by BOB and trained by urban agriculture experts. They will be paid minimum wage, Dory said.

The work is designed to be flexible for people with disabilities, Dory added.

The same workers will also collect rotten food to make compost. They’ll use bicycles loaned to them by United We Can, which also loans bicycles to those collecting returnable containers for recycling.

“This training will not only teach inner-city residents about horticulture but the importance of healthy food and food security,” said Smith.

The workers will begin to take a leadership role in the next few months, and Dory hopes to consult with local residents and businesses about what kind of vegetables they’d like to see grown.

Another Build: SOLEfood Urban Farm A Success

My son and I wandered in to our neighborhood JJ Bean on Sunday morning. I was still on a high from from yesterday’s build. I picked up a copies of all the daily’s and read the articles about SOLEfood – so pleased at the media response. I thought most of the print media stories managed to keep it positive – without any needles digressions on the problems of the DTES. I enjoyed Susan Lazaruk’s article in The Province.  I thought she did a really nice job of describing the event. The Sun and Globe articles were great too, especially focusing on the efforts of all the groups who played such a crucial role leading up to yesterday.

Anyways, I am truly humbled by how much everyone achieved in half a day, and my thanks go out to everyone involved.

I would like to thank Seann Dorry of United We Can for asking us to get involved and our own Kim McLymont and Heidi Lam. Without your hard work over the past couple of weeks this event couldn’t have happened.

Here are a few links:

The Sun
http://tiny.cc/shom8

BCTV

The Globe
http://tiny.cc/GX4hm

The Province
http://tiny.cc/4J5B8

Youtube:

SOLEfood Urban Farm – Garden Raising!

Projects in Place is gearing up for our latest community build and we’re looking for volunteers! SOLEfood, an initiative of United We Can, will see the creation of an urban farm on five vacant lots next to the Astoria Hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side.

…

The Farm will transform more than 15,000 square feet of unused asphalt parking space at the corner Hastings and Hawks Ave into a fully functioning farm. Through this project inner city residents will find employment; community kitchens will gain a valuable source of local and organic food; and community members can find a social hub and information source.

Projects In Place, Sharp & Diamond Landscape Architects Inc. have been working with United We Can develop a master plan and Vision for the farm. This first build is part of a larger initiative undertaken by Save Our Living Environment (SOLE). Some of the many groups involved in this project include:

• Building Opportunities with Business
• Kristina Welch and the Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation
• Louise of the Recycling Alternative
• Toby Barazzuol of Eclipse Awards and SBIA
• Potluck Cafe
• VEEES
• Green Inner-city Cluster members
• Participants and organizers of last week’s Ideas Jam

Next week’s build will see the first phase of the farm become a reality. By Spring of 2009, the hope is to have a fully functioning urban farm along Hastings Street.

Come out to help bring this new development into being Saturday October 31st. We will be kicking off the farm raising at 10am. Light refreshments will be provided. Participants will build planters, compost bins, a community mural and a garden shed. Volunteer spots may be limited. For more information and pre-registration please email us at projectsinplace@gmail.com

For more information and pre-registration please email us at projectsinplace@gmail.com

Soup Can Walks

We are very fortunate to have a growing list of contributors who hear about the work we are doing and offer to contribute in some way. Well, contributions take more convincing than others. Lately I’ve been spending some time with a really dedicated group of people from my neighborhood, Mount Pleasant. We’ve spent a fair bit of time down at Our Town cafe, scheming how we can make this place better. Lots of talk about greening alleys and growing food on roofs (more on that another time).

Over the course of these discussions I was fortunate to meet Julia Lew, a very creative and thoughtful Mount Pleasant resident who has graciously agreed to share with our blog the unique way in which she came to see and understand our neighborhood.

…

Soup Can Walks, Julia Lew

Three years ago, I had an idea for a personal project. I love to walk, I love to take pictures and I wanted to live car-free. I decided to combine all three and discover, with camera in hand, what was in my own backyard.

My plan was to explore every block within a one kilometre radius of my place. I marked my apartment building with an ‘X’ on a map and used a Campbell’s Soup can to trace a circle around it. I dubbed my project the Soup Can Walks.

I divided the Soup Can Walks into quadrants to make the walks and photographs easier to manage and organize. Whenever the mood struck, I would venture out for a Soup Can Walk and continue where I last left off.

The walks, as expected, yielded unexpected surprises. The surprises came in various guises: the cool – a Buddhist monastery; the ridiculous – a hotel and spa for dogs; the beautiful – a series of bright graffiti murals on a row of old industrial buildings, and the personal – the simultaneous poetry and horror of discovering that my childhood home sat at the edge of the one kilometre border in my final Soup Can Walk –coming full circle indeed.

By the end of the project, I had accomplished what I had set out to do – I became intimately acquainted with my backyard. But more than that, I had, at the time, unknowingly seeded myself into my community. With each step I took, each thing I noticed, and each photograph I shot, I was growing a love for and a connection to my neighbourhood. In the end, I discovered my home and it wasn’t the ‘X’ on the map, it was the entire circle.

Julia L.

Another Great Killarney Gardens Story From EAGA

Check out this link from EAGA, the people who kindly made all the planting possible. They dubbed themselves soil relocation engineers. Nice term. That pretty much captured the spirit of the day. Maybe I might add Wet Soil Relocation Engineers! Here’s the link to the article and some more pics.

http://eaga.ca/eaga-gets-muddy-for-a-green-cause

More Photos From The Killarney Gardens Playground Build (From EAGA)

Well its been a week, and I am still drying out. It was an amazing day though. The folks at EAGA.ca http://www.eaga.ca/ sent me some great photos of the build day, so I thought I would put up another post to share them with everyone. The final mural will be installed this weekend, then everything should be complete. I’ll be sure to send out some pics of that as well.

Enjoy the photos.

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A New Playground For Killarney Gardens

Killarney Gardens is a housing Cooperative in South Vancouver. Thanks to Kaboom! an organization dedicated to providing children with places to play, Killarney Gardens received a new playground today.

After months of preparation, more than 100 volunteers from Kaboom!, The Home Depot Foundation, Projects In Place and several other businesses and organizations installed not only a playground, but a community garden, a habitat garden and several community murals. We started early this morning, at 6:30am, and worked like trojans for hours in the rain. By 2:30pm, just in time for the weather to clear, the playground was complete. Projects In Place is proud to have played a significant role in the design of the gardens, the murals and several of the smaller play structures.

The Jumping Boardwalks:

The Jumping Boardwalks are raised wooden structures people can play or sit on. We installed 5 boardwalks through a group of existing old pine trees and planted several habitat-friendly species underneath.

Jumping Boardwalk

Jumping Boardwalk

Jumping Boardwalk

Habitat Planting

The planting at Killarney Gardens consists mainly of mature pine trees and grass. The planting designed by Projects In Place was made possible by a generous grant from EAGA (http://www.eaga.ca/). The planting design uses native plants that will create habitat opportunities for native insects, birds and small mammals, like squirrels. It also uses little water and does not require mowing.

We started digging holes early – right at 8am, but quickly found that plants were getting trampled by the number of volunteers, so we decided to wait a while.  Of course, that meant we barely finished on time…

Habitat Planting

Kids Murals (kids using art to transform their environment)

One of the most inspiring parts of our community involvement projects is when we get to work with kids.  When the fruits of their labour is an art piece that transforms a dark wall into a fun space, we feel pretty good. That is really what Projects In Place is all about.  John Lennig from Big Top Sign Arts (http://www.bigtopsignarts.com/) is one of our favorite people to work with and when we conceived of the mural project, he was the only person we wanted to work with. You have seen John’s work throughout the city, you just don’t know it. For years he has been patiently keeping an old art form alive by hand painting business signs, menu boards, movie sets. His work is truly unique, and he has a great rapport with kids. The theme of the mural was “The Playground Of Our Dreams”, and kids were asked to draw their visions on panels.

Kids Art Mural

Kids Art Mural

Kids Art Mural

Kids Art Mural

The murals are drying and will be raised on Sunday. We’ll have some photos of them in place in an upcoming post.

Green Roof Raising @ Radha

Well everybody, the Radha Green Roof Raising was a big success. Almost one hundred volunteers participated in the install on friday and saturday. We received lots of media coverage, hundreds of emails quite a few requests for future projects. As for the emails and requests, please be patient as we sort through them all. We will are trying to respond as quickly as we can.

We will be keeping everyone up to date with future events and announcements. In the meantime, we thought you would be interested in a few images and links from the event.

Green Roof, Blue Sky, Big City

Early Set-Up: Pavers To Protect the membrane

Moving Materials Up A Narrow Stair Well

Cutting Underlays: Filter Fabric, Water Retention Layer, etc...

Volunteers Putting The Mats In Place

PIP Members Bryce, Heidi and Charlie Plant Habitat Pods

Even The Graffiti Looks Better

Done!

The Radha Green Roof Raising Covered In This Week’s Courier

Group raising ‘green roof’ awareness

Sandra Thomas, Vancouver Courier

Published: Friday, September 04, 2009

Follow this link.

http://tinyurl.com/nsgx2m