Bwaa Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha HA heh... Heh... (Cough) (Still highly personal and biased view of the village... but now it's Vivian's!)
Welcome to Jeanne and Jonathan
(and Thank you to Cher for her great work finding us such awesome new neighbours!) Jeanne and Jonathan have been living in co op housing for a number of years now. I knew they'd land here when they told me that co op housing just wasn't "enough" community for them! I love it!
They have two home-schooled sons, and Jonathan works at UFV in the Geology department. A long while back Jeanne was actually involved with our Stewart Creek Stream reclamation. Somehow while they were looking for a new home they hadn't considered us. Not sure why exactly. Possibly people think we're too green? Or too expensive? Or too something? In the end Cher had overheard Jonathan talking in their office about his desire for a really cool community and she insisted they come for a visit. They became fully invested members over a cool two weeks. Jeanne makes a mean beet salad and I already *love* them! Welcome neighbours!
More welcomes to come! March 20th to be exact!
Spring Chick
ens!
This is where I miss Ann. I'm trying to be witty here and cross two great stories. One about the new baby chicks that are new to the village, and the other about the "Mature Neighbours" club that seems to have popped up here over the last week or so. No real connection- but it was witty when I thought it up somehow.
Yes! We have spring chicks! Shayne and Cher's have arrived, and Julia and Paul's (my husband) are on the way now that the coop is in place. (That was a riot!) We've been practicing eating eggs by the dozen here. We anticipate abou
t ten eggs a day from our batch of chickens alone. There is something gleeful to me about chickens at an ecovillage. They just scream love me! When Shayne and Cher got their sweet chicks, their house turned into a zoo. People knocking all day long to see the sweet (perhaps slightly sticky) baby chicks! I can't wait to sit with kids all around me and listen to the sweet cluck cluck clucking!
And Ann is happy to announce that the kid-free residents and Neighbours-in-Waiting will not be cooped up by winter any longer! They have tickets to As You Like It and they will be doing more outings. The rules seem to be 1. have fun 2. Don't have young children. 3. Have more fun (I'm too motherly to attend at this time, but they seem to be having fun!)
20/20 Vision. The New Homes come into Focus
I know it seems like we work around here an awful lot. But the truth is that coming together with people is fun. This workshop/focus group was no different. Together, about 16 new potential neighbours got together to look at the houses one final time. Its important you know? To have a home you love. We want to love these homes and so we've given the group most impacted by their final state some say in what happens to them next. The result?
1. We have decided to save money by building all remaining units out at once
2. The Common House will be built at the same time
3. We added front closets, and tweaked doors etc.. to make entrance more suitable
4. We will revisit
the kitchens on March 24th after the work party
5. We can't wait to live together here.
We ended up out at the fire afterwards. Music was played. Wine was consumed. Some N-I-W even spent the night and stayed for pancakes the next day. We looked at the site plan and people put stickies on the units they wanted. Blue for money down, Yellow for seriously interested. The other colours are different meaning to me but belong to people we think could end up here one day. We're filling up! It's so exciting to see it all come together. I can feel people's excitement around me. It isn't a jittery feeling th
e way it used to feel. It feels solid now. It feels assured and relaxed. I see knowing smiles on faces now. It feels good.
The next workshop is March 24th. If you think you might want to live here- talk to us. We'll get you the details.
Our Swimming Hole got a Makover!
On March 10th and 11th, we hosted a bioengineering workshop at our portion of Stewart Creek. O
ver 30 people, some of them ecovillagers, worked through pouring rain to cut down willow, cottonwood, and red osier dogwood stakes at the Vedder River. Then we took those stakes and wove beautiful retaining walls on the steep, eroding bank that f
ormed one edge of our swimming hole. Right now, it looks like someone embroidered our stream.
The real beauty of it, though, is that all of those stakes will grow, and by the end of the summer what was a muddy bank will be a wall of lush green vegetation. Our swimming 'pool' will be so much more beautiful (to us and the fish!).
This a a perfect example of how living here makes us bigger than the sum of our parts. To me, "bioengineering" was just a big funny word. In my business I may never have had the time to really figure out what it meant. Imagine my shock walking down to the creek with my kids to see all this... love.... around the creek. I felt sheepish. I watched all those busy people in the rain with tea in hand from my warm window. I received a gift people were keen to give. Of course it wasn't really done "just for me". It was done out of love and passion for the creek. The gift to me is that I learned, I will learn more, and no judgement was made for my lack of understanding before I saw.
Off to a Tea Party at a castle home of some new Neighbours In Waiting!
Over and Out!
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