Hey folks,

Well, we got our chickens and now we're jumping into the whole thing with both boots on! As part of a "Compassionate Communities" project put on by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, a small group of people started talking about a way to visit and get to know others interested in edible gardens, chicken coops and bee hives. We came up with the idea of a "crawl" and applied for a Neighbourhood Small Grant...and got it! So now we have to organize the thing.

Here's the email I just sent out to our current mailing list (see below). Especially after reading the post about a possible summer gathering, I'm hoping some of you might be interested in getting involved with this event - as participants, hosts, volunteers, whatever you like. If you are, it's probably easiest if you send me your email address directly. I'll also post regular updates here, through I'll spare you the organizing ones.

Hope to meet some of you in person real soon!

Surya
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Eggsellent News! We have secured 500 buck buck bucks from the Neighbourhood Small Grants Program (no poultry sum!) to launch the first ever East Van Chicken Coop and Culture Crawl.

Just to refresh your memory (or for those who are hearing about this for the first time), we are planning a one-day self-led tour event of neighbourhood chicken coops, beehives, and edible gardens...with a few workshops about making and using edible cultures thrown in for good measure! The event will be in mid to late September and will cluster in different areas of the Frog Hollow and Cedar Cottage neighbourhoods.

So, with cash in hand, it's time to start hatching a plan!

We are looking for chicks (and roosters) with ideas and talent in the area of:
· Finding coops and gardens – recruiting locations of gardens, hives and coops for the tour; contacting locals to see if they will be involved
· Map Making - we hope to have youth involved in doing some community mapping and producing the final works-of-art for use on the day of the tour
· Coordinating volunteers – particularly recruiting and organizing greeters at various garden, hive and coop locations (especially multi-lingual volunteers!)
· Marketing and advertising – people interested in helping get the word out: making posters, setting up a website/blog etc
· Organizing workshops – we hope to offer a number of short workshops on making food cultures (yogurt, kin chi, sourdough etc)

We especially need people who can speak another language in addition to English, so we can reach out to as many participants as possible!

Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House is hosting a planning session on Tuesday June 5th This will be a great chance for us to brood on the possibilities, so please consider joining us at 6:00pm to find out more. We're looking for a few more people to take on leadership roles - and this would be a great place to start.

So, here's to laying the ground work for an eggciting new venture! Hope to see you on Tuesday!