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.

First Edition... the Dandelion Seed!

Hot off the press from Nelson, this awesome publication has submissions from Beehive members Sara and Michael.  Solena, the Editor, lived at the Beehive for several years, and her family were founding members of our house.

Note: Solena (Ed) is the one in the picture who is not pregnant! 
Tasha, who is pregnant, is a Beehive founder.

Enjoy the read! It's worth it because there are many reflections of some of the values we hold up and cultivate in our house, and other houses with similiar intentions... things like: sharing, celebration, cooperation, creativity, growing food, mindfulness, kids, salvaging and overall thinking about the effects of our actions and choices as individuals and collectively.

Thanks to the production team, and to everyone who dreamed and did it.

DOWNLOAD the Dandelion Seed HERE

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!!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

February Work Bee! Outside and Inspiring!

click to enlarge the Beehive!

Yes, Vancouver is in the spotlight these days, but what you may not get to see are all the awesome community things that are happening totally apart from the corporate spectacle that is the Olympics.

We have spring already in Vancouver. The cherry blossoms and magnolias are blooming, as are the tulips and daffs. Not sure what is going to happen with the "Bike the Blossoms" festival which is usually in April... as spring has sprung two months early this year. Not so good for those ski hills where streams have washed all the snow from the billion-dollar ski-slopes. Don't say we didn't tell you not to host the olympics here!



OK, so with the spring the Beehive was buzzing yesterday at our monthly Work Bee. This is when we all work together on our House for three or four hours. You might think... "oh, they must have a clean house after that"' but cleaning is done at other times. What we work on at Work Bees are larger projects that we need more hands to accomplish. The feeling of all working together on something is GREAT! Check out what we worked on:

We started the morning with vegan waffles with fruit sauce by Travis and Leslee. YUM!

Kyle created an advanced recycling centre, since our local community centre now offers recycling of almost everything which is not accepted by our not-so-progressive municipal recycling. Things like foil packaging, styrofoam, plastic bags, electronics.




Michael fixed the roof.



We sorted the shed, and built a shelf for storing nut-butters and apples and other cold-ish things. No pic of the shelf, but here is some stuff.



Travis cooked lunch. One-pot rice and lentils, with barley and kamut too.



Elisa took the fence boards off the front fence, creating a huge new sunny garden! Go back to the first picture in this blog posting and look at the de-fenced fence! Elisa is getting started in this picture.


Donut helped with lots of things, such as
with drilling:


and with airing some things:


and with tapping the maple trees! For real!
THANKS DONUT!




WEST COAST MAPLE SYRUP
Ben's friend Tim lives in the house behind us, and we noticed that when Travis pruned a few branches off of the maple tree that they were dripping! So we asked Tim if we could tap his trees. He said SURE! Wish you were here too Ben! (Ben is escaping from the Olympics on Long Beach and Salt Spring Island)

Here are some pictures of Sara and Travis tapping the trees. They are gushing! Check out that old-school drill.




What a sweet day in the sun.
We love the Beehive!