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!!

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

Do you want to live in community?

The Beehive Collective House is looking for a new housemate / collective member for July 1, Aug possible.

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 hold safe space for individual and collective growth.

 ♥

We welcome interest from queer folk, elders, youth, people of varied colours and cultures. 

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
• Animals
• Community-building and skill sharing
• Laughter, games, music, stories, creativity
• Growing food (we have a garden), and foraging.

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!

Kombucha!

One of the things we regularly "create" here at the Beehive is Kombucha, a fermented tea drink - slightly bubbly, slightly tart, pretty darn yummy!! Travis usually tends to the SCOBY (the Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast - someone correct me if I'm wrong), but I've been wanting to delve into the world of Kombucha, so at this month's worker bee I gave it a go!

The "ready" Kombucha (been fermenting for a little over a week) was strained and poured into a jug to be stored, sealed, in the fridge. The SCOBY is left in a small amount of the Kombucha to keep it happy until more tea is added.

Recipe for the tea:

per 1 Litre of water
- 1 heaping tbsp black tea
- 1/4 cup sugar

Boil everything together, then let it cool.

Add the tea mix to SCOBY and let it "cook" in a warm place ... until it tastes YUM!

Hivers share collective living inspiration south of the border

Exciting things underway in Bellingham, Washington as they are forming a Network of their Collective Houses (known as Co-op Houses in the US).

Jeff from Sushi Tribe requested that someone from the Vancouver Collective House Network present about what we've done in Vancouver to build our network. El T and rSara took up the challenge and rode bikes to Bellingham one fine February day. Once on the road we certainly did not need our jackets in the warm sunshine.

We left at 10:15am and arrived at our destination at 4:45pm, after a skytrain ride, a bus, and a 50+km bike ride along country roads and river trails. What a way to go!

Once in Bellingham, Jeff gave us a tour of the Sushi Tribe House. Then about 50 people joined us from at least 10 different houses, and we gave a brief presentation about the VCHN: on the history, what are current roles are within the Network, projects that have brought us together, and why we continue to be inspired to spread the skills and inspiration of Collective Living!

Potluck dinner followed, with much local home made food and a long line up to get some, but with plenty enough deliciousness to go around, and for all to eat their fill.

Excited to see what Bellingham comes up with, and have no doubt the inspiration will continue to spread! Yay for collective living.

ONWARD! South to the border

bus to WhiteRock with bikes leading the way

bikes skip the 2 hour border wait

sun & sea south on the coast

fording streams

closer to Mount Baker

path along the Nooksack River

very narrow trail, without clear signs that other bikes use it. eee

muddy single-track

El T stops for a snack

Doug our guide, knowledgeable about erosion, birds, bikes and bike routes. We picked him up along the way and he escorted us on the back routes into Bellingham. Thanks Doug!

We Made It! El T and Jeff outside Sushi Tribe. They run a seriously inspiring Alternative Library, with neon sign and all. This is in addition to a collective house with 15+ people living together.

One of the two rooms of the Alternative Library

Into the foggy night to catch the Train home after a resplendent and nourishing community potluck. We have a tired meeting planning workshops on the train, and bicycle home (checking the dumpsters along the way of course!) and fall into bed by 11:30pm.

Local Salt

M roasting the Vancouver Island Salt (www.visaltco.com). Yay LOCAL salt! We dried it because it was a bit sticky. Feb Workbee.