The Beehive Collective House is looking for a new housemate / collective member for August or September, 2018.

We welcome interest from queer folk, elders, youth, people of all colours and cultures, radicals. WE ARE: ages 3 to 46, of european-settler ancestry, a trans-positive space.

Due to the physical two-floor nature of our home, our space is regrettably not accessible for all types of bodies. 

in the garden today

WHO ARE WE?

The Beehive is an established collective house located just off Commercial Drive.  We believe that mutual support in the domestic realm fosters stronger individuals and stronger communities.  Collective living is a powerful form of activism, allowing us to exercise our values of social and environmental justice right in the home.   Together, we aim to hold safe space for individual and collective growth.  As a new housemate you will join 5 other adults and one kid (3yrs). There is a guest room for friends and visitors.

WE VALUE:

• Shared meals (we have a big kitchen and eat dinners together)
• Environmental consciousness and practice
• Open communication and supporting each other
• Vegetarian/vegan/freegan/local food; cooking from scratch
• Kids
• Kindness to animals and all other forms of non-human life
• Laughter, stories of the day, music, creativity
• Growing food (we have a garden), and foraging.
• Community

COST:

varies depending on income, but it is very affordable.  Inquire if you need specifics.

STABILITY:

we ideally seek someone who plans to live here for longer, rather than shorter; we have been a low transition house for the last 6 years, and this adds to the warm sense of connection in the house.

 

IN JOINING US SOME OF THE THINGS YOU WILL BE INVOLVED IN ARE:

• Eating together is one of the great joys of collective living, and since the Beehive's inception it has been a central priority of the house.   We share sit-down dinners almost every night of the week, and we expect that people are home for dinner at least half the time.  We each cook dinner one night a week for everyone.  We eat ethically sourced food (local, home-grown, CSA, organic, dumpstered, unprocessed and/or minimally packaged).
• Regular, organized housework to maintain our community, we live with a lot of structure.
• A twice-per-month house meeting lasting 1.5 hours based on consensus, and a monthly 3 hour 'workbee'.
• Having friends and guests over for dinners and overnight visits.
• Occasional larger social events such as potlucks, meetings, workshops, food-processing parties.
• Processing food – fermenting, canning, dehydrating, etc.
• A happily bike-based home.
• Overall, we exercise simple, economical and environmentally friendly living.  We are social but not a party home, and the house is usually quiet and calm in the evenings, with a clean kitchen.

HOW TO PROCEED WITH INTEREST:

If think you might be interested to consider joining our home, please send us an email and answer the questions below: at thebeehivehouse@gmail.com

• Why do you want to live at the Beehive?
• What do you do?
• Do you have experiences living collectively? Or with other Collectives?
• What skills do you bring with you?
• What are you passionate about, or how do you spend your time?
• Any questions or concerns?
• Please include your phone number, as the next step is a conversation.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

~the bees: Sara, Ben, Beth, Caitlan, Michael and MM.

Preserves

Its that time of the year when fruits and veggies come inside and cozy up inside little glass jars for their winter hibernation!

Big shout out to Jenna and Sara for their preservation projects!!

view from our living room window

I know we've had a lot of garden posts this summer, but I think that's because its just so AWESOME!!
There's our huge and happy grape vine producing wee grapes, red robin approved blueberries, reach-for-the-sky-high pole beans, and of course, zucchinis!
The rescued fruit trees seem to be doing well in pots, especially the 2 fig trees - hello growth spurt! Meanwhile I've created an almost medieval looking suspension system for one of our older dwarf apple trees in a container - growing apples and spindly branches didn't look like they'd be a winning combination! I'm looking forward to moving that tree into a bigger pot and give it a good pruning in the autumn.

Autumn planning?! Yikes! I'd better get outside now and enjoy some nuce summer weather!
Bye!

Beehive Gardens are LUSH plus we're in the news

Tomato Greenhouse

Herb garden

Squash, Greens and Peas

Potatoes are taking over!

Grapevine has started to make an arch over the front gate

Kale and Horseradish on the Boulevard

Some flowery types

Raspberries along the side of the house

Sage

the wee Fig trees

Sandwich in the herbs

Donut in the herbs

 BONUS EXTRA: check us out in the news on the Tyee

Bread and "the Bulge"

We found ourselves with an amazing abundance of salvaged bread yesterday (probably ~40 loaves)!  After much slicing, most of it has gone in the freezer to save for later, but we also called on nearby friends to come and take some away - there was way too much for us alone to eat + freeze!! 
We also had a bit of a french toast party this morning, yum! (with strawberries from our garden, and salvaged berries and pineapple!!)

Amazing bread haul by J-bird!

 

 A little while ago, the city made permanent some traffic calming features in our neighbourhood, including making some "bulges" that close off some car traffic directions at roundabout intersections (great for bikes + quiet neighbourhoods, very confusing for those visiting the neighbourhood by automobile!).
RedSara signed us up with the City of Vancouver's "Green Streets" program to care for the "bulge" on our block.  We now have a lovely little garden, "bulging" with:

• Rosemary
• Lavender
• Fennel
• Day Lillies
• Garlic
• Sunchokes
• a dwarf apple tree
• a salvaged heather plant
• lots of FLAX!!
• Orach: a spinach-like plant that we got seeds from EYA (Environmental Youth Alliance) and RedSara's mom
• a Tea plant
• a Loquat tree
• Coltsfoot
• Sunflower
• Arugula
• Calendula
• Collard
• Kale
• Dill
• Columbine
• Mallow
• and many more.... that we're not sure of the names...!!!

All enclosed in a lovely living low willow fence!

Friendly neighbourhood kitty, Larry, hanging out with me at "the bulge"

A garden tour from this morning

Front Left: Sage plant, behind it is a collard plant going to flower/seed, below is a lush green carpet of flax plants, and in the back some peas and other young plants. Can you spot Sandwich the cat?  Another common find in the garden ;)

Little baby apples on one of our dwarf apple trees

Potted tomatoes, sheltered from the rain in the awesome A-frame that Michael built

Soon-to-be-yummy strawberries!

Already thinking about what we'll need to plant next year

Can you guess?  One of my favourite additions to the garden this year!

Experimenting with Microgreens

A lot of the chores I'm responsible for around the house are cleaning oriented; which is great, I love to have a clean and healthy home! I am also really enjoying exploring some food-creation chores lately (see the previous post on Kombucha!)

Something I started up as the winter set in was sprouting. I tried a couple different kinds of seeds; Alfalfa was popular, radish sprouts were spicy, and a couple other miscellaneous seeds were unremarkable.

A really exciting experiment that's been sprouting on my mind is microgreens. I've really wanted to try growing some for a while now but was overwhelmed thinking about substrate to grow them in; often it is single-use potting soil. Sure its possible to compost it afterwards, but I hesitate to go buy a bag of soil to experiment with.

Red Sara to the rescue! With some "material" she had around (possibly cotton?) that she had been saving for such an endeavour. I think sunflower sprouts are the usual suspect for microgreens, but I'd heard of kale being grown, and I just happened to have a large envelope of kale seeds collected a couple years ago that need using up.

Success? I think I'll harvest in the next couple days, we shall see!

November Workbee

These pictures are from working together on our monthly Sunday morning workbee. The only mammal not actively helping was sandwich (reportedly slept in after a late night).

ElT gathering leaves for our yearly composting needs. We've gathered many from the surrounding blocks.

 

Michael moving the raspberry canes so they will no longer shade our veggie patch. Sara helped too.

Sara takes some pictures.

 

Lisi acts disgusted cleaning the bathtub and tiles.

 

Ben gutted the fridge, cleaned, and got rid of many 'degueulasse' and unidentifiable items.

 

Leslee (with Donut, and Greg staring at Donut) washes rags and carpets, after finishing making lunch YUM.  

Supporting Roles:
 

Donut helped prepare chickweed from the garden for lunch.

 

Here Greg poses by his portrait. Thanks for looking so good, Greg!

 

Tiger and Spider watch work in the garden from their perch in the livingroom.

We work together once per month to tackle larger projects, and enjoy the togetherness of shared work. Plus, the house always looks and feels GREAT after we all put in such focused energy. Awesome Beehive!

Good News about Organic Waste in Metro Vancouver

Couldn't resist posting this article... I think this means more compost available through the city.

article from Vancouver Sun

"Kitchen Scraps to be banned from trash across Metro Vancouver
After changes made, most cities will reduce garbage collection to once every two weeks, with organics picked up weekly.

By the end of next year, if you live in a house in Metro Vancouver, your kitchen scraps will be banned from the trash.

That means everything from apple cores to chicken bones, bread crusts, eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags, paper towels and pizza boxes must be in your green bin instead of the garbage can... ...read more here

Lasagna Mulching

B harvesting horse man. in Burnaby

B harvesting rainbows for our garden mulch. We hear it is very high in potassium and happiness:)

LT layering seaweed during January "Workbee". S and B gathered seaweed (Tsawwassen), horse manure, and rainbows to layer with leaves and compost.This will magically turn into soil hopefully in time for spring planting. However, this week (end of Feb) our darling crow friends have been rooting around in it, displaying the manure on the sidewalk. Looks like the magic is not happening very quickly yet. We had rinsed the seaweed with collected rainwater to remove salt. The rest has been left in the rain for a more thorough rinse.

July Beehive Garden Update

The Beehive Garden, early July, 2010

Vancouver has experienced a cold cloudy summer up until these last two weeks, so our garden has been slow to flourish. Our veggies and fruits seemed to be struggling, not green and verdant as we all hope for, considering how much time we are putting into our urban plot this year. Also, we do not have a full sun garden.

We consulted with Jodi, a local expert in permaculture (also in aquaculture). One thing she told us is to water with URINE. Dilute it 3 to 1, or up to 10 to 1 for tender sprouts. Heavy feeders like it best: squash, corn, kale, tomatoes, & peppers. We've noticed a MASSIVE spurt in growth in our garden since we began this fertilization method.

It is fun to talk about too! I hear the Swedish Government has been researching urine-on-plants for 20+ years because they recognize the importance of closing the nutrient cycle. Urine contains really big amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous, both essential nutrients for plant growth. In Sweden they separate urine in the wastewater and use it on crops on a large scale. It does seem strange now that I understand the value in urine that we just flush it out to sea.

Some hints on using "liquid gold" on your garden: use the urine before it starts to smell, so the same day is best. Also, about once a week is a good goal for heavy feeders. Following up after urine-watering with some plain ol water helps the nutrients soak in to the level of the plant roots.


Anyways, really I just want to post some pictures here of our garden over the last few weeks, but the pee is a pretty big deal I guess, too.


Heading out to water the garden in the early morning



Hose around the big rock



The Tomato Greenhouse built by Michael. They've grown TONNES since this picture was taken. There are also big basil plants, a pepper from our CSA, and some starts (amaranth and collective farm woman melon).



Michael and the Collard Tree, which has fed us all through last winter and this spring. We were trying to save seed from it, however all the pods seem to be infested with worms. Plus, the ants are farming aphids all up and down the tips. Into the compost instead! Good thing we still have collard seeds which Travis saved previously which we can use this winter.



A wee Patipan squash. Four days later it is more than doubled in size!



Wild Carrot (aka Queen Anne's Lace) with one red flower per umbel, and one wasp on the left blossom. Click to enlagre any of these photos!



OK, and now to the things we harvest from our garden and make in our kitchen:



Brassica Flowers in salad and steamed greens.



Strawberries! We've had a tremendous strawberry crop this year!!! They're done for this year, tho.



Rye FROM OUR GARDEN went into this three grain salad! The Rye is the brownish grain with the orange tip. Also in this salad: kamut and barley grains. Click to enlarge.



Three Cherry Jam! In a pot on the stove, using green apples for pectin.

This Cherry Story should almost be another blog post, because it's so long!

One morning this week Andria and Ilan and Sara started off on bicycles, with Andria pulling Ilan in his WeeHoo, and Sara pulling a trailer with a ladder in it.

Andria had arranged to pick some sour cherries from the neighbourhood. We picked the sour cherry tree, then called the rest of the crew from the Beehive. All 8 of us rode about the alleys of eastvan picking cherries off trees (only when the owners gave us permission of course). We felt like cherry pirates in the windy wind!

Sadly we do not have any pictures of the adventure. All that remains are the jars of preserves which we made afterwards: sour cherries in apple syrup for pie, sun cherries in brandy, and three cherry jam, pictured here. Oh, and the legendary stories!

Yay for free fruit, and for the luxury of time to acquire and make use of it!