Saanich Seedy Saturday 2018

For the third year in a row, Haliburton Farms and the Gardens at HCP hosted ‘Saanich Seedy Saturday’. We would like to thank everyone who came out to make this bustling community event such a success. It was difficult for attendees to leave empty handed – from fresh veggies like carrots, squash, and onions, to an amazing array of seeds, to a great selection of plants including unique edibles, native plant species, trees, herbs, succulents and more.  There were wonderful community vendors sharing information and encouraging everyone to get more involved and to keep learning to be better growers
Gratitude to the speakers for helping inspire their audiences to live a healthier and more sustainable 2018. What a great way to start the year. Bill Jones was the first speaker and attendees enjoyed his presentation immensely. He is incredibly knowledgeable about edible local mushrooms, and gave some helpful safety, preparation and storage tips for people interested in making more use of them. His cookbooks are awesome sources of info about choosing and storing foods as well as great collections of recipes. A couple of the photographs in his Deerholme Mushroom book proved useful in the talk, and he added some bonus info about nutritional content and medicinal uses. I think he’ll be seeing a lot of new faces at his upcoming foraging sessions at Deerholme Farm! The second speaker was Dan Jones.  He spoke with a lot of passion about the importance of seed saving, and illustrated his talk by distributing Salt Spring Seed packs to the audience as he spoke about some of his favorite seeds and grains. A flurry of seed swapping ended his talk, as audience members followed his generous lead by sharing the freebies between themselves, and people rushed to be among the first to get their hands on his hot-off-the-press Awesome Ancient Grains & Seeds book.
The Gardens at HCP was thrilled to have been a part of this event again and it was so wonderful to see visitors to Saanich Seedy Saturday exploring the wintery gardens, even in the drizzle. We thank Haliburton Farms for all their hard work putting this event on and a huge thank you to our wonderful volunteers who help every year to make sure it runs smoothly. As one attendee shared, this event is an “example of what can be done when like-minded folks get together”.