WORKDAY Saturday October 30th

Hi Everyone!

We are planning another workday on Saturday October 30th, starting at 10 a.m.

Pizza lunch will be provided.

Please bring any big ladders (12' and up) you have, work gloves, and any socket wrenches or drills with long 7/16 sockets.

We are down to the very end - please come out and help us finish this up before Old Man Winter cuts us off!

Help us win 25 000$ toward the community garden!

Well, everyone - we have TWO greenhouses standing now!  We still have some work to do to stabilize them and to fill them up with all the good things we'll need for next spring, but most of what we need is on site, and we'll just need a few hours of your time to get it all moved in!

Meanwhile, i've been busy working on our submission to Joey's Only Seafood "Revive Your Community" contest -

Here is our video (which we submitted along with an essay) - the prize is 25 000$ grant money toward Hinton Community Garden Society!  Voting has started, so please visit

www.joeys.ca/contest/nominations.html

 and vote as much as you can!

The First Greenhouse Goes Up Today!

Well, today is the day - This Saturday, October 16th, starting at 10 a.m., we will be erecting the first greenhouse.

We still have one concrete pour to do for the second greenhouse, but we are all set for the first, and eager to get it up before the weather turns.

If you haven't come out yet, please come today!  We can use all hands on deck to get those huge arches up in the air!  Teenagers welcome!  Retirees welcome!  Anyone welcome!

Lunch will be provided around noon (pizza, in case you are allergic) - and we are hoping to be done by 4:30 p.m. at the latest.  If we get a lot of people out, we'll be done way earlier!

Please come out and support the Hinton Community greenhouse!

Here is what it looks like this morning (and i'll post the after picture tonight, too!)



We really do need you today!

Sunday afternoon concrete pour - and it's a go!

Yeah, we know it was snowing all day, but for some tough minded volunteers and board members, that just made us work faster!

I'm pleased to report that today, the first day of snow in Hinton, September 19th - we've finished the first of four concrete pours - this means one half of one  greenhouse.  We are hoping for better weather tomorrow, and if we get that and a few men, we'll take off the forms and get ready for the next pour - we'll need to take off the forms, reshape them, backfill around the posts that are done so we can get better access to the other side of the greenhouse.  And we'll also be putting down the string for the second greenhouse and leveling the boxes on the second half of the first greenhouse - so lots of work to do!

Noel Corser will be phoning or emailing the people who've helped so far in hopes of organizing another weekend workday - if you are free and interested, please come on out and help us get this thing done before snow is here to stay!  Noel's email is noelcorser@shaw.ca.

Anyway, this is how it went down today - we got there at 12, the cement truck got there around 1 - and we left, all tools washed off and all posts inserted, at 2:30 p.m. - so it wasn't a huge time commitment, but we had about ten volunteers and that really helped us move quickly along the line.  Foothills Concrete did a great job, too!  We are so grateful for Lane's help and advice!

Thank you to all the great volunteers who have come out so far and helped make this happen...

stephanie and the greenhouse crew (pictures to come!)

Workday Saturday September 11th, 2010

Thank you to all the great volunteers who came out today and helped us figure out how to get everything ready for the concrete pour of the footings!  Tomorrow afternoon is concrete!  Come out and help if you haven't already :)

Hinton Registration Fair

So we had a little table at the Hinton Registration Fair - and if you were there, you saw these lovely ladies, with membership packages and plot information.  If you are interested, but didn't make the fair - feel free to leave us a note here, on FB or thru email (or come on out to the next board meeting - Thursday, at 7 p.m. in the Teck Coal Room in the library!)

Mary Anne Godard and Pat Richardson manning the table...

WORKDAY this Saturday, August 28th! This is the real deal!

Well, this picture is just to get you in the mood for next year's garden - this is my hugely pregnant sister in her garden in Stony Plain :) - Let me tell you, those home grown veggies are so good!

Well, i'm back from my summer vacation and in my absence, Noel Corser and his brother Aaron have worked hard to make the engineering/building permit part of our project come together.

And now, we are ready to build the forms we need for the Build Day!
 
This will be the last workday before the actual Roof Raising, which will follow maybe even less than a week later (depending on the weather and how long it takes cement to set :)...)

We really do need quite a few volunteers, and i know this is short notice, but this SATURDAY, starting at 9 a.m., we will start building the forms.  Bring a lunch, bring a friend, bring a smile for your neighbours surrounding you and let's get this phase of the "Community Garden" done!

I hope to see many of you there!  We got a lot of "out of town replies" from the email we sent out earlier, so if you know other people who are interested in this project, please tell them, as well - they may not have gotten the email we sent out.

Thanks, Hinton!  This really has been a community project and i'm looking forward to seeing this finally up and standing!

stephanie fehler
president, Hinton Community Gardens Society

Another workday, one step closer...

We had another workday on Saturday - beautiful sunny day with a little breeze - perfect for being outside and working with your hands.

We'd love to have more people come out and help, so feel free to grab your drill and join us for our next workday.

Right now we are taking a little break, while trying to get some of the big things done on site.  The grading has been done for two smaller greenhouses, and we'd like to get the trenching done as soon as possible.

Once the trenches are done, it's simply a matter of putting the posts in the ground, backfilling them, and then we can raise the structures and prepare the floor afterwards and pull in the boxes we've made.

It would be so great to have this project all completed, up, filled with good soil by the time of our Grand Opening on September 10th!  But it won't happen without people coming out and lending an hour or two at a time!

We've got a trencher booked for tomorrow - so if any of you know how to drive a mini excavator and dig perfectly straight trenches, give me an email (or leave a comment here!)

Guess what happened today?

Seriously, today started out as a pretty big bummer.  Volunteers were pretty thin on the ground, and then all of the sudden there were men and machines and the terrain was being totally transformed!

I don't want to leave anyone out, and i'm afraid i will, but still, a shout out to the Nigel and Natalie Parton family (including my right hand men Malachi and Isaiah and right hand girl Eliana), to Noel Corser, to Alex Reavie who contacted Mike Radley Industries, Ltd who did the grading, Jamal Nasrabati, Holly LaRochelle, Brian Carnell (who taught me to use the saw!  Awesome!) - and to Glen Barrow who kindly came out to restart the generator for me (there's a choke?  who knew?)

This is getting pretty exciting?  See what i mean?.....

Oh, before pictures (after the jump) - please please pretty please take our survey?  Just so nobody is left hangin' at the work site?  Our next workday is an evening one - 5-9 pm. on  Tuesday, July 13th and i'm pretty sure you will be surprised when you come out!

We're planning the Grand Opening in early September, too - so anyone with grand ideas or a flair for decorating (which i do not have!), please come on out to a meeting one of these days and share your great ideas - or leave me a comment here or email me :)

And now, pictorial grandeur:

Rise and Shine!

Well, everyone...

I am proud to report that we have put together half of the boxes we'll need for the greenhouse!

Our workday on Wednesday (from 9 till about supper time) went great, but a little slower with less volunteers on site.  Thanks to everyone who came out or who lent equipment!  It was another beautiful day for being outside, smelling the freshly cut lumber and making something come together with your own hands and your own neighbours!

I wanted to remind everyone that today (Friday July 9th) is another workday - It looks like there may be rain today, but we are still planning to get out there at noon, and there is a chance some of the ground work will be done this week for the actual greenhouse!  We're working on it!  For now, though, if we can get the boxes built and if people are willing to lend us a few hours, it will sure make it a lot faster!

We are planning to arrive at noon, BUT we've had bad news this morning, and we really need a generator or two.  If anyone has one they can lend us, even if you can't come for the build, we'll be sure to get it back to you at the end of the day!  Please phone Stephanie at 817=5542!

Here are some pictures of our Wednesday build day - i can't wait to show you a picture of the greenhouses standing, but really, won't it be more exciting to be there as it goes up?  We're getting close!

Hope to see you out today!  And even if you can't make it, but you've got friends who could come, or teenagers who are looking for something to do - send them to us!

Upcoming events for the Hinton Community Garden Society!

Hi everyone!

We had a meeting on June 29 at - you're always welcome to come and vote or share your ideas, if you have the time... We'd love to have more imput, especially if you have some creative, green ideas, and we could sure use some help (probably more in the fall) with writing for grants - if either of those are your strengths, please come out!  

Our next meetings will be in the Teck Coal Room of the Library - 

Thursday July 8 at 7 p.m.

Thursday July 15 at 7 p.m.

our next workdays will be (at the greenhouse site between the curling rink and the Hinton Centre)

Wednesday July 7 starting at 9 a.m.

Friday July 9, starting at noon

Tuesday July 13, from 5-9 p.m.

Saturday July 17th starting at 9 a.m.

What we'll be needing for the workdays depends on how many people we get out, but two things we will need for sure in making boxes is generators, and hammer drills.  Once we start building the greenhouses, we'll need the big freestanding ladders... If you have any of this equipment and would be willing to lend it, please email Casey at Casey.Petkau@Century21.ca and let him know!

Also, if you have any compound mitre saws that you are willing to bring out, it would mean we can work twice as fast to have two saws going - again, Casey is the man to talk to!

If you are free for even a few hours on the workdays, feel free to come on down and pick up a drill or a carpenter's pencil, or a board...

If you drive past the property, you can see the piles of boxes there already - we're getting so close!

Hope you're having a great summer

stephanie 

Welcome to the Hinton Community Garden Society blog!

This is our first blog post, and we thought we'd celebrate with a  little movie, showing what we accomplished today!

We met at the greenhouse site at 9 a.m. and got started, planning, sawing, and drilling - we went through a little over a sixth of our lumber and have more than half of one of the greenhouse boxes put together!

It was a great time, working with great people on a beautiful day, to accomplish a thing of beauty and usefulness...

We are planning a second work party on July 7th - stay tuned for more details!  We are thinking an afternoon/evening work party once the locates are done and the ground has been graded...

Thank you so much to all of the volunteers who made today possible and even enjoyable - and thank you, too, to the wives, children, husbands and parents who let their family members take a whole day to work with us.  We appreciate this so much!

Next meeting is this Tuesday, June 29th, at 7 p.m. at the library in the Teck Coal Room - and the next work party will be July 7th!  We are getting closer and closer to our goal now!