Webinar S2 E2: How-To Grow a Community Food Forest
Thursday May 28th from 12-1pm ADT.
Register Here: https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/webinar-how-to-grow-a-food-forest
For this webinar, we are talking about Community Food Forests! Community Food Forests are a dynamic planting of perennials including food-producing trees and shrubs, edible fungi, and medicinal plants. These grassroots and community-driven projects are popping up all over in Atlantic Canada, sprouting in unused spaces like meridians, parking lots, school grounds, and backyards. Existing in small towns and large urban neighbourhoods, community food forests are about community members coming together to feed each other, learn about their ecosystems, and participate in long term sustainable community solutions. Community Food Forests are more than just landscapes, they are educational spaces to learn about propagation, seed starting, food processing, and more. Come hear from two community food forest coordinators who can provide insights into how to start a food forest in your community, building partnership, challenges to look out for, and what unexpected joys come from this community initiative.
Let’s get all the community food forests together in one room!
Season 2 of our webinars series takes a ‘how-to’ focus, where we learn how local people are putting big ideas into practice. Episode two of this season welcomes Mandy Sandbach of the Scotsburn Community Food Forest and Andrew Mathis of St. Mary’s Community Food Forest
Bob Cervelli from the Centre for Local Prosperity will moderate and we will begin with an interview/panel discussion, followed by a Q&A.
This webinar series is by donation – our recommended donation is $10, but any amount is appreciated! A Zoom link and calendar invitation will be sent after you register.
Mandy Sandbach:
Mandy Sandbach of SOULfully SOIL is a permaculture practitioner and longtime community organizer who coordinates the Scotsburn Community Food Forest and supports resilient, relationship-centered food systems through nearly two decades of hands-on experience.
Andrew Mathis:
Dr. Andrew Mathis is a regenerative design educator who seeks to empower people to envision and co-create a hopeful flourishing future for all. Andrew teaches courses and workshops on permaculture, food forest design, and sustainability, and has worked with community groups, First Nations, and schools to design and implement projects that bring people together around growing food. He has been involved with the development of five community food forests and volunteers his time to manage the 0.6-acre St. Mary’s Community Food Forest with the help of summer students. Andrew lives with his wife Anna in an old farmhouse with their children Gibson and Juniper on the Nashwaak in the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik. On the weekends they can be found in the garden, tending the bees, or foraging for wild mushrooms.
Webinar context:
The world is changing at an unprecedented pace, leaving many individuals and communities with a sense of uncertainty, and in many cases, worry. How do we respond to this rapidly changing world? How do we strengthen our local agency and resilience, socially, economically, and ecologically? In our current context of trade partner volatility and imposed tariffs that threaten to worsen the financial realities within our communities, we want to shine a light on thriving examples of re-localization in our region!
Re-localization is a concept and movement with an aim to become more self-reliant in our production and consumption (while reducing reliance on distant supply chains) in every category — from energy, to food, to finance/investment, to climate solutions, and beyond.
This series will be held on the last Thursday of each month and will explore examples of re-localization across Atlantic Canada.
Watch previous episodes here: https://centreforlocalprosperity.ca/our-projects/webinar-series-building-community-economic-resilience-through-relocalization/
SAVE THE DATES! Next webinar episodes:
- May 28th – How-To Grow a Community Food Forest
- June 25th – How-To Host a Repair Cafe