Would you like to spend Christmas 2011 in your new ecovillage home?

Building C9: two flats still available!

We are building C9 next. The following units are already taken: the townhouse on the end (blue), the upper middle flat, and the lower end flat.

Stil available: middle lower flat (shown as green in the picture) and the upper end unit (yellow). Email welcome@yarrowecovillage.ca if you'd like to see detailed floor plans (we've been asked not to post the actual plans on the internet). Both flats are about 1000 s.f. with two bedrooms, although the upper end unit also has an attic truss that allows you to have a bit of an artist's garrett upstairs.

The local Yarrow volunteer society has released the latest Yarrow newsletter. (If you are a Facebook user, we have a little ecovillage group there as well.)

The Park Next Door - New playground coming this summer!

We live right next to a park... Yarrow Central Park. We’re lucky... it’s like an extension to our own garden and back yard. It’s dense with trees, the special kinds they put in parks, that you’re not so likely to have in your garden ... maples with speckled leaves that look like the sun is shining on them, even on a cloudy day. Oaks beautiful in form and leaf, but which you’d rather not have to rake under and elms and evergreens making a canopy of cooling summer shade.

Early in June, the local volunteer community hosts “Yarrow Days” in the park, with booths selling locally made products, lively live music, a multi-fragrant barbeque ( I haven’t noticed what kind of meat they cook, I’ve only ever had my eye on the strawberry shortcake ) and fun and games for the kids.

The rest of the time, the park has many users, in all seasons.

Apres le Deluge

If you look down the blog, you’ll find an earlier item showing pictures of wind-damaged greenhouses with the title’

“Apres le deluge, c’est nous.

That’s me playing with words, an uncontrolled pursuit of my over-heated brain. What had originally come to mind was: Après moi le deluge.

Deluge is absolutely the right word for the weather we had, but when the phase popped into mind, I wasn’t clear on its provenance and meaning. So I wiki’ed it.

NutShell Niblets #27- - February 14, 2011

Ann's very personal, highly biased and incomplete guide to the ecovillage ... in a nutshell, and with only a little no hyperbole. (this time!)

Home for Sale in our next building – ready at the end of December

It’s two bedroom and the affordable price includes a share in all our common facilities, too!

Rental Opportunity

There’s still an opportunity to rent a room within our shared house. Please get in contact if you’re interested.

Community Meeting

We’re meeting more often right now, because we have a lot of ground to cover as we want to be to tell new folks what to expect in moving here – like ... Can I let my dog off leash? How much are the strata fees and what will they cover? What does being a ‘member’ mean?

We’ve made steady progress with answering many of the questions. And we tackled a batch of new ones yesterday- read on!

Work Contribution hours

We know we can reduce our strata fees, if we do some of the work ourselves around here like raking, mowing, painting, answering email enquiries and participating in Team meetings. And we know too, that working together builds healthy relationships within our community. But how much work must we each do, to get the necessary jobs done and have a fair distribution of tasks?

Windstorm Calamity

On Saturday, a winter wind storm blew here so fiercely, that it ripped one of our farm’s greenhouses... the galvanised metal pole one -right off its moorings and flung it rolling across the field towards the houses. It caught a foot on a pile of lumber and disintegrated into a pile of twisted poles and flapping plastic.

Apres le deluge- c'est nous- Ohn's and then Osprey Farm's greenhouses

Local residents can get vegies from our farm too!

Ohm Organic Farm is a 1/2 acre certified organic farm operated by Nevin & Shauna Gavigan, located at Yarrow Eco-village in beautiful Yarrow, BC. We sell our produce at local markets, and restaurants, and have a small Community Supported Agriculture Veggie Box program, as well as supplying our Eco-villagers with fresh farm produce.

You can sign up for their 2011 vegetable programme on their website:
www.ohmorganicfarm.ca

Good for the Land, Good for the Consumer, Good for the Farmer

For only $20/week ($400 Regular Share) or $40/week ($800 Large Share), we'll make you a box of quality, organic produce every week from July to mid October. Conveniently available for pick up at our market stall at the Abbotsford Farm and Country Market, or come on out to our farm at Yarrow Eco-village in Chilliwack, BC and pick it up. It's that simple. We'll also give you an easy to follow recipe guide on how to cook the wide selection of vegetables you'll receive, throughout the growing season.

The weeds are growing , mushrooms too.

Nevin: It's time to get plowing and prepare the greenhouse

Guest Blog- Tidy Tidbits from Nelson BC and a home for sale there

Nestled just outside of Nelson, BC resides a quiet Co-housing Community of 11 families. The Middle Road Cohousing Community has been in operation for 15 years. I am Terese Westergreen, my family and I moved to the community in the spring of 2010.

We have had so much snow this year. It seems we are shovelling everyday.We have really enjoyed getting to know our community this winter through skating on the rink the community built, lots of shared meals, gatherings & celebrations. We are thinking about gardening and have started our seed ordering. This will be my first year for planting a full garden in the community and it gives me goosebumps! The children are enjoying their homeschooling and flexible schedules. We have so enjoyed the communities involvement in their learning. We have many adult readers that spend hours with the children as well as grandpa figures that take them climbing and teach them lots of life skills.

We are blessed!

I've not been home with the children for many years, as I was needed to work. My work now is at home with the children and tending the home and all that entails. This has brought me back to be able to pick up some of my previous joys including sewing, tatting, dehydrating, baking and cooking. I'm very thankful to be able to do all these things in community. The years of waiting were certainly worth it.

Also wanted to share that we have a home for sale in the community. We are eager to invite another family to our community.
http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?propertyId=10308923&PidKey=-1874250779

NutShell Niblets #26- - February 2 , 2011

Ann's very personal, highly biased and incomplete guide to the ecovillage ... in a nutshell. With only a small amount of (necessary) hyperbole, this time.

Suggestions for reading this Nutshell Niblet –

If you want loosey-goosey creative writing about why I love this village, then start with “Studies show that”

If you want to get to the good stuff about what we’re really doing, scroll down to “Community Meeting”

If you want a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry, that’s at the very bottom.

And to follow progress in construction, jump past the Niblets entirely and scroll down the blog.

Studies Show that...

We’ve burst our seams for our weekly resident community dinners in the last while.... no room is large enough to hold the whole mess of us. Too many people around here! Now, by the dividing the group in half, we do two dinners per week. Hmmmm, I’ve noticed one or two people, mainly one person actually, with the initial ‘J’, who shows up for both meals, bowl in hand! Hhummmm! Wait a minute!!!

To be fair, he can’t wait to be chef on double-duty, too, so that’s alright. Chuck of http://www.cohousingco.com/ tells us that when we have our regular commonhouse and are serving six meals a week, not every person comes to every meal. At his cohousing village, the average is 3-4 appearances out of the possible 6. When there’s abundance on offer instead of scarcity, it’s easier not to over-stuff. And in consequence, our commonhouse dining room is planned efficiently to be the right size.