Happy Harvest Festival!

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of hosting a table for Pacific Gardens at Nanaimo's second annual Harvest Festival held on Wesley Street in the Old City Quarter.

I'm usually not a fan of these events, and when asked to volunteer to person a table at them, try to find ways to be otherwise occupied.  But this was fun! And having a zombie flash mob during the proceedings certainly added to that :-)

It was an absolutely gorgeous fall day - lots of sunshine, a fresh breeze (not so fresh as to blow down our display, or scatter our flyers and rack cards, thankfully) and pleasantly warm.

There was great music, lots of interesting booths with like-minded, friendly people, as well as excellent food provided by local restaurants, and best of all, money raised went to Nanaimo Foodshare.

Pacific Gardens hasn't been to public events like this for quite a few years now, as we've been busy focusing on getting our community established and building up our organic gardens.

I noticed a big change in attitudes since then.  When we talked to the members of the public at the Harvest Festival about cohousing, the question was not, "What is it?", but, "Is your building completed now?"

People understood the concept of creating a building that fosters community, and, contrary to what developers seem to think the 55-and-overs want, were delighted with the multigenerational aspect of Pacific Gardens.

They were pleased that we are focused on growing our food, and that everyone who lives here, whether owner or renter, is entitled to their own garden plot. They knew why that was important.

After five hours or more of talking about what intentional community means, I was a bit hoarse - but also very happy to realize how much the ideas that had seemed so avant-garde a short while ago were now part of the mainstream.

Kathryn

The Story of Us

We're busy folks here at Pacific Gardens.  Every week is filled with meetings, gardening, maintenance and cleaning chores, proposals to be developed, agendas to be crafted, and forms to be filled out. The list never grows shorter. It's easy for us to get overwhelmed with our responsibilities, so much so that sometimes we forget what it is that we have achieved in creating this community.

This week we got a wonderful reminder from a new resident, Glenn, who told us he knew immediately that he wanted to live here when he saw the word "cohousing" in our ad for rentals.  He had been interested in intentional communities for a long time, and had followed the progress of several groups that wanted to build cohousing developments.

What impressed him most was that we had actually done it!  He knew of at least five or six proposed cohousing projects that never got off the drawing board, and yet, our little band of dreamers and idealists and activists had managed to create this beautiful building, after many years of effort.

We invested the money from our savings, pension funds, and sales of homes and property, hired architects, construction managers, code consultants, marketing assistants, arranged for construction loans, researched energy-efficient heating systems and environmentally-friendly building materials, and spent hundreds of hours in meetings.

And then three years ago, we got our occupancy permit, and here we are!  As I sit here in my office, I can hear the children in the atrium.  Outside my patio window the dew glistens on the flowers in Susana's garden and on late-ripening tomatoes in the veggie plots of our other enthusiastic gardeners.

The story of us is pretty amazing, as Glenn reminded us. On Saturday we'll be setting out our stall at the annual Harvest Festival held on Wesley Street in Nanaimo from 10:30 am to 3:30 pm.  If you're in town, come on by and we'll tell you more!

Kathryn