Luncheon Feb 16,2017

Today's meeting saw the return of our South African team and along with several guests they heard a fascinating luncheon speaker on this cloudy, near-spring mid-February day. Team members Marieze, Mike and Anne Marie, Brian and Harold all sported good tans and gave us snippets of their very successful trip to be shared in much more detail at an evening social soon. Carlo, Vaughn, Richard (Times) and a couple visiting from Canmore, Dana and Percy, joined in to make a decent Oh Canada!

Pres Brian introduced our guest speaker Richard Walker. Richard has been a farmer, herbalist and food forester for over 40 years, taking a degraded land site in Grand Forks in 1985 to a the first food forest in Canada. He now lives and practices his art in Osoyoos. He shared his passion about soil health and its link to nutritious, diverse food, human health and sound economics. He has been instrumental in the growth of small and large scale food forests across Canada.

It was fascinating to listen to Richard describe what is possible in our own Town of Osoyoos in the way of planned canopied forests of Chestnuts and Pecans at the top down through several layers of tree nuts and fruits/berries down to ground cover of herbs, vegetables, medicinal plants to even below ground plants. Planned, diverse plantings can be accomplished in small garden lots, boulevards and parks. They can be adapted to taking up CO2,  heavy metals and even tackling invasive species. He sowed his ideas and thoughts to the crowd and judging from the response and questions, found fertile ground and maybe even a Rotary sponsored community project? One immediate takeaway is to investigate including some portion of a food forest in our sponsorship of a natural playground near the elementary school.

Richard has published a small paperback book 'Food Forestry North of the 49th' which I can attest to is a great read. I think we will hear more from him.

Cheryle spoke about the recent passing of Vern Neilson, our current District Governor. He will be honoured at the District Conference April 28-29 in Kelowna.

Carlo is off to Revelstoke Friday for 3 days with all of the other inbounds from 5060...a fun time.

Vaughn spoke to the Coyote's winning ways with the playoffs games starting here on Feb 24th and 25th. Think about coming out to help at the beer garden and watching great hockey.

Harold won the 50/50 and is donating the proceeds to the next S. African project that the team will be presenting.

Think spring!