5th Okanagan Winter Mixer: Wrap-Up Post & Resources!

The 5th Okanagan Winter Mixer brought together @ 100 people over the weekend to learn, share skills, and make new connections. It was a fantastic group with lots of familiar faces and a whole bunch of new ones.

A huge thank you to all our amazing speakers – you were engaging, thoughtful, and inspiring! The slideshows and handouts are available from almost all of the sessions. You can DOWNLOAD RESOURCES FROM SPEAKERS here (email Emily at okanagan@youngagrarians.org if you have technical difficulties). Tara Nakashima from Invati Yoga wanted to share this YouTube video with you – Yoga for Farmers. Danny Harris who led the Small Engine Repair and Maintenance suggested that instead of sharing his powerpoint, you should just give him a call if you have any questions.

Thank you to Pauline Terbasket and Dixon Terbasket for opening the Mixer and welcoming us to their traditional territory. We’re grateful for Pauline’s introduction of the four food chiefs (Black Bear, Spring Salmon, Bitterroot, and Saskaton Berry), and to both Pauline and Dixon for sharing their knowledge, experiences, and passion of indigenous food sovereignty.

One participant shared that, “the crop planning for profit workshop was super helpful! Sean explained the format and tools he uses and I left the workshop feeling empowered! It was great to learn about a system that is directly applicable to me and I was able to go home and starting using what I had learned right away for planning my first season of growing.”

Corine Singfield’s workshop on integrating livestock into crop rotations was very thought provoking for me. It was great to learn from the experiments she is doing at the Tsawwassen Farm School (TFS). Take aways for me include: turkeys can make great “lawn mowers” in orchards, and pigs can do amazing things to reduce flea beetle and cabbage moth pest pressure when rotated through trap crops (frequently enough to prevent them making big holes). It also reinforced just how beneficial chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, etc. can be in building soil in the farm system!

I popped in and out of several other sessions, and it seemed like a lot of great knowledge was flowing, and lots of conversations overflowing into breaks and meal times between speakers and participants, and peer to peer.

Giulio and Scott from One Big Table did an amazing job feeding so many farmers and featuring all the seasonal local produce that was contributed to the Mixer. Thank you Urban Harvest, Grass Root Dairies, Fieldstone Organics, Rancho Vignola, Askew’s Foods, Vale Farms, Fresh Valley Farm, Nature’s Fare Market, Sproule & Sons Farm, Rosebank Farms, Shuswap Coffee Company, Choices Markets, Gathering Place Trading Company, Armstrong Apiaries Honey Company, Little Creek Dressing, West Bank Harvest, and Claremont Ranch Organics for the fantastic foods contributed!

Congratulations to all the folks that won Peavy Mart gift cards, a 2 night stay at the Big Rock Ranch tiny house, and the great collection of chicken books!

The Farmer Slideshows were awesome! We’ll have to do that again because it’s so much fun to see what other people’s farms look like, to learn about their farm “fails and hacks”, and learn about great local organizations working to build a healthy and just local food system.

This little guy loved this poor little chicken so much he licked it raw! Not to worry - all those feathers grew back, and no further birds were loved too much. — This little guy loved this poor little chicken so much he licked it raw! Not to worry – all those feathers grew back, and no more birds were loved too much.

Thank you again to everyone who participated and supported to make this event such a success!

This event was made possible by the Central Okanagan Foundation and with funding provided by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia through Growing Forward 2, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative. Thank you to all our funders and sponsors.