From EcoReality

Back field in motion

It's been an interesting month at EcoReality. There's been a lot of moving going on this month -- vehicles, people, chickens, trailers, buildings.

Veggie Van Gogh moved to the Salt Spring Fire Department parking lot on Saturday, June 16th, to make an appearance at the Salt Spring Transportation Options Faire, also called "Getting Around Salt Spring" or GASS. This mini-festival featured electric cars and scooters, a preview of the bus system that is slated to start in the next year, and other information booths and speakers on topics such as ride-sharing, proposed off-street bike/walking paths, community design for alternative transportation, and more. I took a survey of people interested in forming a biodiesel production co-op on the island, and had some interesting conversations with people who are enthusiastic about sustainable transportation. And I even got my photo in the Driftwood.

Moving in this month is our newest WWOOFer, Carolyn Hocquard, from Victoria. Carolyn is living in Veggie Van Gogh while helping us part-time, working at Thrifty Foods and saving up money for studying graphic design in Victoria this fall. If you see her working at Thrifty Foods, please say, "Hello!"

We've also been refining our biodiesel production system. With the help of WWOOFer Sarah Thompson from New Zealand (who moved in and out in one week), made several test batches that convinced us that we need to set up a workable chemical lab in the workshop. We've calibrated salvaged glassware, installed a salvaged electric range, and turned a coffee urn and old blender into a test batch processor. We've also got several sources of oil lined up. All we need now is some labour! Let me know if you are interested in helping out.

Our chicken tractor is one coat of home-made polystyrene varnish away from being finished -- a task that rainy weather has kept at bay. The chickens moved into it prematurely after an incident with a local predator, but now they're safe and sound at night. Having thoroughly fertilized the front (east) orchard, we went out one morning and moved the chickens and their mobile coop into the west orchard. They were a bit confused at first, and kept escaping and going back to their old digs, but have now settled in, evidenced by increased egg production.

When we first started looking for a trailer to turn into a chicken coop, we put it out on a local mailing list and soon had five offers! So we took the best two, the second of which we moved onto EcoReality this month. It will become a "goat tractor," a mobile goat shed, so we can run the goats on short leads clipped to lunge lines, rather than having them on long, tangly ropes or buying expensive fencing.

When we first moved to Salt Spring, Carol and I brought all our earthly possessions to EcoReality in Moby (The Gweat White Wefwidewated Twaiwer). The driver we hired did a masterful job of getting Moby through the stone columns bracketing the driveway, and back between the cottage and workshop, but the spongy ground in early May 2006 kept him from putting Moby where we really wanted her: next to the workshop, out of the viewshed (mostly) of the cottage.

Moving Moby was low priority until recently, so we cleaned-up and leveled the destination, and hired Ward Drummond of Salt Spring Transport to put it in back of the shop. Ward masterfully stuck it within inches of where we wanted it, in spite of my help and indecipherable hand signals.

Moving a business is never easy, especially when you move it from a permanent location to a mobile one. Advisory Council members Tom Billings and Irja Kriegel are preparing to exhibit their glasswork at various art festivals this summer, and will be living in an RV, pulling a combination workshop, trailer, and art festival booth behind them. The only problem: what to do with their old 10'x12' shop, which their landlord insisted not remain when they left?

Tom said they were going to burn it, but Carol and I both cried, "No! Don't burn it!" So we went over with hammers, drills, and wrecking bars and took the building apart and hauled it back to EcoReality. The wood will be de-nailed and stacked out of the weather underneath Moby until needed. You can never have too much salvaged wood on hand when you have lots of projects going on!

--Jan Steinman Communication steward