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"

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.

Beehive on CBC radio 3

Subject: salvaging food from dumpsters. Listen-->

Part one: Explaining and Debunking some Myths
Part two: Tips for Salvaging


-Bread from the Bin-

Discussions with housemates after this interview have revealed for me a KEY PIECE of thinking which guides our food values in this house. Ready for it?

We value food that has a LOW IMPACT on the world around us.
period. It seems simple and clear, and I wish I'd had it on the tip of my tongue for the interview.


Sustainable is a shifting and slippery concept, useful for stimulating discussion for sure, and for thinking about problems from multiple perspectives (personal, systemic, political, etc). But what does sustainable really mean? LOW IMPACT seems to be another way of saying it.

Salvaging from the waste stream means that the impact from food has already happened. Our decision to consume the food does not drive the demand for more of that product, nor are we responsible for transportation associated costs, fertilizer costs, destruction of habitat costs, unfair labour practices, etc.

Excited about Local Food
...and about working in our neighbourhood around the Beehive to meet and work with others who are relearning lost skills of growing the food that will become our bodies! Vive the locavore.

Check out this bit of local inspiration! Knock on your neighbours' doors, talk about projects relating to food in the hood! LINK: two block diet.

FREE Popcorn!!!

Isn't this the kind of house guest we all want?! One who comes home with a GIANT bag of FREE popcorn after her trip to the movies.


Day one.
We worked hard at it. Ate lots of popcorn. All is well at the Beehive.


Day two.
Still going strong. Popcorn is delicious.


Day three.
mmmmmmm... popcorn!


Day four.
Sealed in a bag, this popcorn is fresh and tasty.


Day five.
Yup, we've still got some. Do you want to take a bag home?


Day six.
Popcorn. SO GOOD!


Anyways, not sure how many days we ate popcorn for but this was a "hostess gift" that just kept on giving.
Thanks Andrea!

A Story of Rutabega, Cabbage and Saurkraut YUM!

This story starts on my bicycle.

In December I rode my bike in search of two rare birds that had been seen near the Reifel Bird Sanctuary in the Fraser Valley. Ah... farm fields, local production of food, snow geese, and the largest wintering population of raptors in Canada.

I digress on birds:
See, I was on a personal challenge in 2010 to count the bird species I could find without using any motors. The answer is 183! (Tho including public transit I saw 232!) I wrote about biking and birding in Momentum Magazine, and this is the link to the bird article. Anyways, I did see the birds I went looking for that day (a Northern Hawk Owl and a Yellow Chat).

AND...at the edge of a farmers field I also saw truck-sized piles which were surprisingly coloured... one green, and two purple. Hunh?


(LT and a fraction of our salvaged cabbages and rutabaga's)


The answer is CABBAGES! Hundreds of pounds of offcuts from cabbages after the harvest.

The compost piles were mostly outer leaves, sliced off and left to turn back into dirt. There were also many cabbages that were minorly damaged, sliced by harvest machinery, or with spots of blemish. One pile was entirely rutabaga, with some kind of miner insect that had scarred their surfaces.

Now these piles were up to my head. They were big. This was serious. What should I do?
!!!!!THESE VEGETABLES ARE TOTALLY EDIBLE!!!!!

Did you know in France there are laws that permit gleaning in the fields after the harvest? It is a tradition, and it is mandatory that owners allow access to their fields post harvest, or so I learned from a great film called "the Gleaners and I", by Agnes Varda.


I digress on tresspass:
I salvage from urban dumpsters, which is technically trespassing. But now the question of whether to salvage from Farmer's fields? I believe it is one thing to trespass from an urban corporate back alley, but I tremble at the thought of doing injury to an individual farmer or their family. How could I know if this is an individual family farm, or a corporately owned farm? I want to do no harm to individuals. Even individually-owned farms are subject to the pricing of the industrial food system. I wonder if these rutabegas were out-competed by some rutabegas from california? Can I justify this trespass???


So I filled my bicycle panniers, rode to the bus stop and come home (probably with the most weight I have ever carried on my bicycle). Several days later a car-trip was taken to the field, inspired by a story told by Sister Chan Khong about a Monastery in Vietnam during the war, where hundreds of people survived an entire year by eating pickled vegetables that has beed donated. The monks and nuns had spent a week processing them themselves.

We can do this, we thought!


Saurkraut & salted vegetables.
These are the old ways which have allowed people to survive for centuries without depending on industrial food systems.


Step 1: Prepare the food for storage. Cut off damage and exterior leaves. Likes 95% humidity and air movement, so we've got it outside on the back porch. Vancouver is perfect for this! The photo above is Travis preparing the veg's for longer term storage. We made the kimchi and kraut together one afternoon in December.




Step 2: chop! For our Kraut we used about 1/3 grated rutabaga (traditionally when salted is called Saurueben) to 2/3 red cabbage chopped finely. The Kimchi was a bit untraditional as we used red cabbage rather than savoy. Added carrots, black radish, garlic and chilles. Plus Salt.


Fortunately, our resident fermenting expert Kyle, aka Garliq was at home, who provided the instructions on massaging, appropriately salting, and weighting the kraut to make it perfect. (Check out Garliq's website The Living Medicine Project)




Step 3: Pack the Kraut fiercely, and store under a plate with weight on top. Cover and tie with a bit of bicycle innertube. My hands are appreciated for this labour of love and transformation!



Step 4: It's working! Wait for a few weeks, or sample whenever you like.



EAT IT!!! We've got rutabaga-garlic pickles, kimchi, and saurkraut with caraway seeds. Li and I just finished a second batch of kraut because our first one is already gone. In jars in the fridge makes it easy to pull out at meals. Hard to keep the jars full around here!

The great Abundance of Collective Living

Things accumulate at the Beehive!


These thirteen umbrellas are one example of the surprising abundance of collective living! Who's unlucky?

There were times before I lived here when I did not have an umbrella when I needed one. I don't have that problem anymore! We've put a few surplus umbrellas in the Free Box (outside on sunny days).

Bees don't really need umbrellas right now because it is SO COLD in our city! Come over for dinner, or to drink tea and be warm!

Urban Foraging

The beehive is in the news again...

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!

Fresh Greens and Stuff

Hmmm... who's hungry?
Here's a little post to let you know that we are still alive and eating here at the Beehive!



The night of this dumpster run we ate an amazing soup of fresh water chestnuts, daikon radish, squash, tofu, spinach and brocolli. Plus a side of radish pickles. Plus a crispy salad of butter lettuce, iceberg lettuch and tamari-roasted sunflower seeds.

The soup stock was made from vegetable ends and healthy veggie offcuts that we'd been saving in the freezer from a month of cooking.

Dumpster Run with the Bike Trailer!

Impressive! We estimate that we brought home 200 pounds of food today from the IGA dumpster. Haiden had a box on the rack of his bike, and I had two panniers plus a FULL TRAILER! The bicycle trip home took a looong time.

Feels like it was worth it... likely we will be feeding 60 people tomorrow. For sure we will let them know where the food came from so they can make their own choices, but as you know if you read this blog, the food is 100% good, much of it organic.

This is what we brought home. Click to enlarge for a close up of all the goodness! Sorry I couldn't fit all the bananas in the picture.



Oh, and here is a link to information about the Workshops we are hosting tomorrow!
The Vancouver Collective House Network presents
A Day of Workshops about Collective Houses

What is wrong with the world?

Voila Ben and Michael and... some more bananas.
This time an ENTIRE BIN was full of bananas.
I did what I could and filled all bags and loaded them high on my bike! Wizzzz...



These bananas are not over ripe. They are not bruised. They are not singles...

I wonder, is this an example of LOOKS-ISM? ...Where things that look better are privileged in our society? I mean, maybe these bananas are not uniform enough in length or shape? Maybe they are still a bit green? Maybe there was a better looking shipment that came in to steal centerstage under luscious lighting on the banana display in the produce isle near you.

I have heard that cute babies get more attention right from the start, getting more love, opportunities, food, etc.

Question: When you shop do you choose the prettiest vegetables, the ones in the absolute best condition? Or, what if you are shopping at the Farmers' Market and the food was grown by a farmer near you? Might you choose more unsightly produce, or do you still search for the nicest, best, freshest and most perfect? What kind of an impact do these choices have on our larger food system?

So, I can say that the fried banana's were delicious (thanks Travis), and the vegan banana pancakes also (thanks Ben). Michael is enjoying his banana health shakes. And well... maybe there will be more bananas in the bins soon! At this rate yum yum YUM!

It is a treat eating bananas these days. We never bought them before.

Why?

Bananas travel way too far to be environmentally benign, and we've all heard about the insane industrial production practices... things like sterile workers paid nothing to dip their hands in burning oil, pesticides, bags filled with foremaldehide killing pests, bananas ripening on schedule, and trucks driving through long nights, burning diesel, ripping up the I-5 to dump their loads in the garbage outside the grocery story.

Ah... thanks for the rant.

dehydrating bananas

When you rescue a lot of bananas from the bins, what do you do with all of those bananas? One fun thing to do is dehydrate them. They make really yummy snacks to take on trips, hiking, bike touring. Tastes like candy. Really.

Here's how we do it. (Dehydrator required.)

1) Peel back one side of the banana.

2) Slice lengthwise. Use a butter knife for this or be really careful you don't slice your fingers.

3) Lay the strips out on the dehydrator trays.

4) Sprinkle on cinnamon.
(or get crazy with nutmeg, or cayenne, or salt)

5) Dehydrate for about 8 hrs at 58C/135F.
Here's what they look like when they are done.
Sweet and chewy.

IGA Motherload

Travis and Leslee filled four panniers from the bins today.
Our fridge is full!

grapes

Solena is a good friend of the beehive.

She doesn't live at the beehive anymore, but she comes to visit us often.

She is five and loves to teach other people about plants. She also enjoys salvaged grapes from the bins at IGA.

Mom loves salvaged flowers

This July, Michael's mom, Donna, came to visit the beehive for the second time. After her first visit to the beehive two years ago, she was inspired to begin recycling and doing yoga.

Here's Donna with Sara, helping set up this blog:



During this visit, we introduced Mom to salvaging food. She followed Sara and I through a tour of the dumpsters on Granville Island, where we all found some lovely flowers to wear in our hair.



Mom and Sara went to laughter yoga together, a first for both of them. They laughed for an entire hour. It had a lasting effect on Sara:



Here's Mom looking at the 2010 Olympics development:



Mom had a great time visiting us, and we look forward to her next visit!