Now that the cold of winter has set in and that the new year is almost upon us you may ask yourselves “what are the Roulant’s gardeners up to?” Are they hibernating? Not quite… It’s true that our gardening work is now far behind us and that the team is now cozied up inside. That being said, the gardeners are now hard at work on their annual ritual of looking back on the wonderful season that has passed and celebrating the abundance of the harvest and the fond friendships formed in 2014.
The Team
Santropol Roulant’s agriculture team grows larger every summer with the hiring of several passionate interns that lend their hands and joie de vivre to grow all the vegetables in our gardens but also to give life to a number of agricultural related community projects. This year we were thrilled to welcome interns Andrea, Corinne, Elijah, Guillaume, Jérémie, Justine, Keara, Marc-Antoine, Morijah, and Sylvia. Out at the farm they were joined by Catherine, Jean-Philippe, Josie-Anne, and Laura who pitched in as part of the work-trade program. Beyond the contribution of those extraordinary interns we were lucky to have the help of many dedicated volunteers who got their hands dirty growing the hearty veggies which were distributed through our meals-on-wheels program, our weekly fresh baskets, and our neighborhoud markets.
Over the past few years the downtown gardens role in the agriculture program has shifted. They used to provide baskets for a truly urban CSA as well as for our kitchen but with the advent of the farm production shifted out to Senneville. This year though, we were happy to really put the downtown gardens to their best use as tools to reach out to the community and as outdoor classrooms. By extending our volunteer shifts and creating dedicated spots for volunteers that could commit to several weeks in a row, we were able to spend more time sharing our gardening knowledge and offer a deeper experience for our volunteers. To boot, we were able to offer veggies to the vols after every shift (when they were ripe of course!).
Tim’s departure
The end of the season came with some big news: the announcement that our dear colleague Tim would be leaving us to explore new projects. Tim was the motor as well as the mastermind at the inception of the agriculture program at Santropol Roulant. He took the seed of an idea and brought it to fruition over his tenure as director of Urban Agriculture. He then moved on to kick off the farm project along with Sam and Howard. We will miss Tim’s strong sense of ethics, keen understanding of the issues surround our work, his farming know-how, and of course his dashing good looks. Best of luck Tim!
The Harvest
The harvests were generous and bountiful, both in our urban gardens and at our peri-urban farm site in the West Island. The urban gardens located on the 111 Roy rooftop and on McGill’s campus harvested around 1.5 tons of fresh vegetables while the Senneville farm harvested more than 15 tons of veggies! We also harvested a record amount of honey from our two urban beehives (believe it or not, more than 100kg this season) and the Fruits Défendus collective also harvested more than 1600 kg of urban fruit!
All our veggies are sold via our social economy program where the profits generated from one portion enable us to sell another portion of our vegetables at reduced price at both our weekly markets and through the fresh basket program.We want to thank everyone who purchased our veggies this season who made our fresh and ultra-local produce accessible to community members.
Workshops and Events
The summer was bountiful in many other ways with several workshops and gardening events. As is our habit, we kicked of the workshop series with our seedling workshop when winter still lingered in the air. With the help of our urban-ag interns and volunteers from our collectives we managed to host 14 workshops over the course of the summer. In July, we hosted our Intergenerational Summer Brunch at our garden at McGill, where over a dozen meals-on-wheels clients and as many volunteers came to share a home-cooked meal and tour the garden. The season peaked with a bang at the end of July with our first ever Portes Ouvertes, Rue Fermier, where over 500 people flocked to Roy street to celebrate Santropol Roulant’s birthday with a host of workshops, cook-offs, and dancing. The Harvest Gala was our last big gathering and allowed us to bring together our community to celebrate our hard work in the fields and gardens as well as in our community at large.
Community Engagement
All that to say, it’s been quite a summer here at Santropol Roulant! One of the great highlights of this last season is without any doubt the proliferation and deepening of community engagement initiatives within the agriculture program. Not only did we have the chance to welcome a multitude of interns throughout the summer, we also saw the arrival of the Mycollectif/ve (our mushroom collective ) who along with beekeeping and les Fruits Défendus saw their community activities and impacts deepen and flourish. Finally, 330 young gardeners attended a series of gardening workshops and got the chance to reconnect to the source of their food and see an urban sustainable food system in action through our project called Entre grange et gratte-ciel.
Stats!
Here are a few stats on this season’s successes for our urban and peri-urban agriculture program at Santropol Roulant.
- 1.5 tons of vegetables produced in the urban gardens (111 Roy St and McGill campus)
- 15 tons of vegetables produced at the farm (Senneville)
- 3 full-time interns in the urban gardens and 1 full-time intern at the farm
- 1 intern for the Fruit Défendus collective
- 5 mini-interns at the farm
- 87 weekly fresh baskets distributed in the community
- 9 weekly baskets subsidized by regular subscriptions to the basket program
- 17 custom fresh baskets for our MOW clients
- 40 markets hosted across the street from the Roulant.
- 20 Little Burgundy Markets
- 14 gardening community workshops
- 30 participants to our community visit at the farm
- 330 youth participated in Entre grange et gratte-ciel workshops (180 visited the UA gardens and 150 visited the farm)
- 100 kg of honey produced in our urban gardens
- 1630kg of urban fruits harvested in the city
Voilà! It’s been quite a busy summer in the gardens and the full urban agriculture and farm team is now taking some well-deserved rest while preparing the next gardening season! We wish you a wonderful winter to all and see you next year!
– Carlo, Noémie, Sam and Tim, Santropol Roulant’s agriculture team
(photo credit: Ian Chapman)