I’ve been a member Neighbors Organics Weekly Buying Clubs for a while and was disappointed to see them cease operations a few months ago.

So were a lot of other people who convinced owner Grant Watson to keep it going and here is the next step:

Member Drive to Restart NOWBC Operations

Please show your support by July 21st

Hi Everyone,

Neighbors Organics Weekly Buying Clubs is moving forward with plans to re-start operations, please help us get the co-op started so that we can start selling great organic food again! So far 14 people have filled out the online survey. We need 50 people to take action by July 21 so we can move to the next step. And we need you to tell your friends.

Help us revive NOWBC as a Co-op and start sourcing delicious, local organic food again by doing any or all of the following:

1. SUPPORT THE CO-OP SET-UP: We need a minimum of 50 people who want to be members to send a cheque for $20 to NOWBC to help with consulting fees. Cheques will not be cashed until we have enough to actually proceed. There are funders who will augment this if we show that there is support among our members and potential members. Make cheque payable to NOWBC, put "Co-op Share" in the memo and mail to:

NOWBC c/o Grant Watson 102-5698 Aberdeen St Vancouver, BC V5R 4M6

2. COMPLETE THE ONLINE SURVEY: We need to have at least 150 people fill out our survey. Whether you are ready to sign up to be a member yet or not, please fill out our survey. This helps us decide what the terms of association of the co-op will be.

3. TELL YOUR FRIENDS: Tell your friends and give them the opportunity to sign up and/or fill out our survey too. Feel free to forward this notice! Help us build a strong local food distribution network.If you are new to NOWBC, please see our web site (www.nowbc.ca) to find out who we are! In short though, NOWBC is a source of local organic food, at co-op prices, structured so that members can order exactly what they want from our suppliers each week (and not what they don’t!).

NOWBC Re-Structuring Details

Here is the NOWBC good news–we now have sources for start-up money and some advisors ready and waiting to help us revive NOWBC as a co-op. But here’s the deal: in order for us to actually GET the funding to setup the resources we need to get going, we have to show we have PEOPLE who want to buy food through NOWBC by having at least 50 people commit with seed money. Cheques received by NOWBC will be collected until we have at least 50. Then we will work with a co-op expert to build a business plan and by-laws. You then be invited to join, and funders will be invited to help with seed money. They have already expressed interest, but need to see a solid plan.

With sufficient sale of shares and outside funding, we can move forward–form the co-op, source some food, set up the infrastructure, hire staff and provide our members great food again! We don’t need a huge amount of startup money, but we do need enough people making a commitment to buy food through NOWBC to make it viable. Lets believe in ourselves and

Thank you for your time and interest!
Revitalization Committee: Joanna, Ross, Cabot and Grant
Neighbours Organic Weekly Buying Clubs
www.nowbc.ca

Please share this with all your friends and neighbours.

Tammy T was featured in a blog post last summer. Yesterday, she sent this email and I received permission to print it here.

I have officially entered the hive mind. It is what I had wanted to do so that I may understand her more succinctly. It is a bit creepy though, when the aging next door neighbor now appears to be a failing queen and the groups of teenagers at the skate park across the street are moving like a cluster of bees at the edge of the hive. I hear the buzz in everything, the tiny tapping of bee feet on wood is my new favorite sensation in my ears and having those same feet clinging to my skin as they walk along my fingers, hands and arms is by far my favorite skin sensation these days. I love being with them, I love learning from them.

The queen though has been a mysterious figure to me since the get go. I know her power and I know some of her challenges these days, but I had yet to meet her. It wasn’t until I met her absence that I began to understand a bit more of what it was that she possessed. And like I said, I have yet to truly meet her, but in time I suppose, in time.

When a hive loses its queen you know it right away, it sounds like a box full of mourning monks chanting the same sorrowful LOUD tone. ZZZZZZZOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH as opposed to the higher pitch of ZZZEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHH. I am working on understanding the frequencies of pitch and scent used by the bees. The subtleties are where the communication happens in the hive. When I first heard the sorrowful sound I had no idea what it was. My imagination saw the inside of the hive as a high domed cathedral and they were inside praying. I thought that this hive was a special hive, a different hive, that wasn’t so preoccupied with the hum drum of collecting nectar and instead geared her efforts in prayer. I prayed with them

A few days later a queen arrived in the mail from Pennsylvania. A queen breeder who does not use any chemicals sent her. He breeds bees that can live with the destructive varroa mite and survive (they are called survivor stock). As far as queen breeding goes he seems to have an ethical operation, but queen rearing is a whole other topic altogether!

As we put the queen cage in the hive we played a recording of a queen piping (a call a queen makes when she is being born and letting the hive know she is there). The ladies immediately settled down to a low hum. I continued praying with them.

Will they accept her or kill her? Will there be enough workers to tend the hundreds to thousands of eggs she will begin laying if they do accept her? Will she survive her mating flight or will she be eaten by a bird or grasshopper or spider? Who is to say? There are so many variables in this whole wide world of bees. Nature! So many variables! Makes me want to pack it up and go get a predictable office job so I can buy things to keep it all in control! For someone who is such a proponent of the wild nature of life, I must admit that sometimes I do get flustered with just how wild things really are and I crave some semblance of control. But aha, the bees have called me and I have heeded and so, and so, I humbly submit to the wild nature and ride the ebb and flow of the life and death of the Hive.

For there really is only one Hive. All bees feel it, all the backyard bees that are being loved and treated with such care can feel and are affected by the murder of the queen mother that happens every spring when the majority of beekeepers re-queen their hives to prevent a failing queen or swarming. I believe that we all have the ability to feel these subtleties. It is just that the bees don’t have a choice. Subtleties are how communication happens and if the entities in the wilderness were to tune off the subtleties they would die. Unlike humans who have been trained to tune them out so that we can survive. Imagine if we were in tune with all the subtleties of our world today? We would be completely bombarded with so many chemicals and loud sounds and strong vibrations of our modern industrialized, mechanical, technological era that we would be incapable of doing much else.

I find the Hive mind is much different than the Human mind. It is all connected for sure, but I find that there are so many sections and segments…fragments, I suppose, in the Human state. The Hive mind is continuous and ever flowing. Life, death, pain, love, mystery, assuredness, community and conflict all exist at once. There is no separation between me and my enemy. I will kill you if you try and enter my domain. I will hurt you if you try to steal from me, AND you are me. We all exist as one. I suck on the nectar of your soul and you feed me. I am filled with love and you are love. We all exist as one. Blessed bee

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Background and commentary here, here and here [Source]

The video:

I love this creative blast from the past, but I think Richard Nixon might be starting to lose his relevance….

The sign makers told me this was not a real quote, but when you watch the video, Kevin Falcon says that the Gateway Project will not raise greenhouse gas emissions. Go figure.

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Technorati Tags: bill+43, translink, vancouver, bc, kevin+falcon, protest, gateway, project, keep+translink+public

Flying from Toronto to Vancouver today, I saw this out the window:

I’m 30,000 feet in the air. With 3x optical zoom, here’s the view from 10,000 feet:

This is a ground level perspective:

The circle is a person standing in the middle of the road. Get more views on the size of this wind turbine from the source: www.neuraldynamics.ca/PrinceWindFarm/SizeComparison/defau…

Official website: Brookfield Power
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Technorati Tags: prince+wind+farm, wind, energy, turbine, sustainable, green, power, ontario, canada

In addition to the big picture view, Bill Mollison shows how to setup a growing space on an apartment balcony!!

Update: 14 August 2007 - Bees gone! See comments.

T. who I met through the Guerrilla Gardening Meetup Group asked me if I could host a bee hive in my garden. My house neighbours said okay in exchange for some honey.

They arrived tonight….

A Boy Bee

T[apprentice] & S[teacher]

There are bees in both boxes. The cardboard box contains a swarm with a virgin queen. S wants the bees outside to go inside and to stop the established bees from killing the new ones, she sprays the swarm with a mixture of sugar water and vanilla.

The old bees will lick the vanilla mixture off the new bees because they taste good and be accepted as friends.

In just over a day the swarm started building a honeycomb

Here they are at the entrance of their new home

Eventually they will get inside

Another view of the honeycomb they made

Daylight pics to be added in a few days….
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Vancity Bike Share | ChangeEverything.ca

Take it. Ride it. Pass it on.

Welcome to the home of the Vancity Bike Share – a community experiment.

Vancity Bike Share wants to see you to get on a bike, share it with others and spread the word about cycling. It is a chance to try alternative transportation, increase your daily exercise and share with your community.

Changeeverything.ca is your Vancity Bike Share home base. Currently, we are looking for people who want to participate in this experiment. If you’d like to get your hands on one of our bikes, click here.

Launch party:

Come eat some pancakes and watch as the Vancity Bike Share takes its first pedal!

June 27, 2007
7:30am-9:00am (BEST’s Pancake Breakfast)
9:00am – 9:30am (Launch of Vancity’s Bike Share)
200 Granville Street (Granville Square - just west of Waterfront Station)

Work colleagues on their new bikes:

It looked like it would rain at any moment but never did.

http://www.eatlocal.org/

My focus on composting and sustainability has led me to some interesting places on the ‘net. Lately, I’ve been looking for extra compost bins on Vancouver Craigslist. While reading the posts, I find many people asking for worms aka wrigglers to start their own worm bins. This is great news. Even though I offer for sale a completely different [better] composting system, - no fruit flies, no odour - I am happy to see people take the steps to reduce their food waste.

I have replied by email a number of times to individuals with this information:

City Famer’s Worm Composting page

City Farmer’s Worm Supplier page includes suppliers in BC, Canada, The U.S.A and from around the world.

The City of Vancouver

has a limited number of Worm Composters available at the low price of $25. The units come complete with the bin, lid and tray, worms, bedding and instructions, and a mandatory one hour workshop at the Compost Demonstration Garden [aka City Farmer - Al]. To register for the workshops or to get more information, call the Compost Hotline at 604-736-2250.

The GVRD’s Composting and Yard Trimmings page has a A Guide to Composting with Worms [.pdf file]

Finally, if you live in Vancouver, I have thousands of worms in my compost bins if you want to come over and sort through the stuff. Call or email me. My contact information is on the Home page in the left column.

Cross-posted to changeeverything.ca
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Technorati Tags: craigslist, vancouver, craigslist+vancouver, gvrd, worms, worm+suppliers, cityfarmer.org, city+farmer, compost, composting, vermiculture, worm+bin, indoor+composting

I recorded this on the weekend.

The “Video Fireplace” of nature.

This is a hive at the Strathcona Community Gardens in Vancouver, BC.

Look closely and you will see pollen on the legs of the bees as they walk from their landing area into the hive.

Aside from the wind, the sounds in the background are an industrial area [see map link above] across the street from the gardens. I’ve been here in the summer where four hives are active and I still can’t hear the bees buzzing because of that noise unless I get really close.

This clip was filmed using a Samsung Digimax D53 camera and the 3x optical zoom. I am sitting about 3 feet away from the hive. Windows Moviemaker used to add the Titles and brighten the image 1x.

Comments and feedback welcome.