Local Food for Inclusive Communities Sustainable, tasty, affordable!
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Green Zebra Markets is focused on making local food more accessible and affordable to communities that live in food deserts, where there may be no grocery stores and it is hard to find fresh food. We believe in supporting local farmers and business to increase Vancouver's food independence, rather than relying on imported food.
We’re at at city hall until 2pm today! With our famous salad mix 🥬; hakurei salad turnips; lacinato kale; rainbow 🌈 chard; tinda, desi, mashed potato, & patty pan squash; and amaing heirloom tomatoes 🍅 Japanese Black Trifele, Black Prince, Green Sausage, Striped Roma, Orange Muskat, Cherry Soileil, Blush Tiger, Orange Strawberry, Grightmare’s Pride
Ditch the lawns - plant native plants or food crops instead!
This is why we need to keep our native plants healthy and strong.
Come visit us at today until 2pm! 🥬 Support your 🍅 🥕
Tasty squash and eggplant! 🍆 , Cueball squash, Golden nugget squash, , Black Beauty , Listada de Gandia Eggplant, Long Purple Eggplant
🐝 🐝 🐝
Link in comments! We are a small farm and the damage to our farm was devastating, stressful, and costly. No amount is too small to help us rebuild to continue to provide the Burnaby community with hyperlocal, fresh, nutritious food. Shares are also super helpful!
You won’t want to miss the first carrots and Japanese hakurei white salad turnips of the season! Plus don’t forget our tasty radish, pea, and sunflower microgreens and our fan favourite salad mix!
Tomato workshop by donation! 2pm Thursday June 20th 🍅 Good for beginners and novices - up your tomato game by learning new tips and trellising techniques 🥬 Bring your own gloves, water bottle, hat & sun protection and get ready to get growing!
The toe beans harvest is plentiful this year 🐱
I moth ask you a question: which are better pollinators? Moths or bees? Moths are more efficient pollinators at night than day-flying pollinators such as bees according to a new study at University of Sussex. Let’s celebrate these beauties!
Lettuce celebrate peak salad season! All our leafy greens are loving the cooler weather - you can expect lots of tasty green & red leaf lettuce, super purple ‘darkness’ lettuce, pea & sunflower & radish microgreens, and the return of our famous ‘drunken women’ lettuce from at this Saturday 9am-2pm at Beautiful Easter Egg radishes will also be in attendance ☀️
The Amazing Nutritious Dandelion 🌱
Dandelions are a classic spring foraging green. The greens are best eaten when young, as all parts of the plant are both edible and bitter. The roots have been considered particularly medicinal for thousands of years, and the flowers are even used as part of a traditional alcohol ferment.
They're also a non-native, so you don't particularly need to be concerned with over harvesting.
Note that because the plant produces latex, people with an allergy to latex can have problems consuming it.
Brief update: talked with Burnaby city again and they referred me to BC Air Quality to report my concerns, so I’ll be calling them later today
Note to CSA customers:
CSA/veggie box customers are unlikely to be affected by the damage, since we have 2 other farm sites and veggies go to the CSA first. Our microgreens were also not in harms way so not affected.
What was affected:
It’s more long term lost income from farmers market sales that will be affect us the most. Plus the cost of soil testing and if it tests positive, removing and replacing any affected soil and plants. (And they killed all the bees when they destroyed our mason bee house 😔)
The site that was affected is where we grow most of our long term crops like tomatoes, melons, squash, pole beans, etc. because that’s where our trellising is set up. Also a lot of perennial herbs and fruit trees.
I do at least have some dwarf tomato varieties this year I’ll be able to grow on another site since they don’t require trellising at least.
Overall we will have less veggie this year and/or delayed start on that site until soil testing is done. So the volume we have for sale to non-CSA customers will be reduced
Side note: I was running behind getting plants into the ground at the affected Canada Way site- now I’m glad I was! That means a lot less plants I’ll potentially have to trash. Main struggle now will be finding a place to put them all!
As always, your safety and health is our top priority. We eat this food ourselves and will only have the best quality and safe food available for our customers. We appreciate your support during this challenging time ❤️
Buckle up, farm family, you’re in for a ride.
TLDR local construction company destroyed our mason bee house (and dozens of bees inside it) and dusted our Canada Way farm site with construction debris that may contain heavy metals or other harmful materials, wrecking our currently growing crops and possibly permanently contaminating our soil
ALL of which could have been avoided with a quick heads up to neighbours and a short conversation before demolition began
******
The house that we share a property line and a fence with was slated for demolition. Problem is the construction company didn’t give any of the neighbours a heads up demolition was starting. They also DID NOT EVEN NOTIFY THE PROPERTY OWNER.
They did not put up temporary construction fencing before they started, or before quitting time yesterday when they started demolition. They have now put up flimsy orange mesh between our properties (its a start) but the front is wide upon to 13th Ave where kids can access
🔨a stunning 8-10ft deep pit 🙃
🔨broken glass, jagged metal, other dangerous debris
Basically unsafe contruction practices, not a good look
How they damaged our farm is what’s got me really upset
The common fenced area between the two properties includes our cattle panel farm fence (1/3) and the wall of their garage (2/3).
Our mason bee house was on the wall of the garage. We had no idea they were demolishing the garage today and before we could remove it, the garage was demolished and all mason bee cocoons along with the mason bee house are now lost and buried under tons of rubble. Dozens of bees, dead.
The second and more disastrous way they damaged our farm was by taking zero methods to stop dust and flying small debris. There was no construction fence with fabric to stop any dust from entering our yard.
They did not start hosing down the area to minimize dust until we complained. They then started using a small garden hose with simple spray attachment to hose down debris, which helped a bit, but did not stop large amounts of dust from entering our organic-grown farm beds.
At one point the dust cloud was a house width and two stories high. It absolutely blanketed our yard. It got on the soil, it got on the crops, it got on our fruit trees.
We talked to the foreman on site who was argumentative at best. They didn’t listen to our concerns or take them seriously. They interrupted and talked over me constantly. They refused to stop work. They refused to put up fabric fencing (or any other fencing). They refused to use a more powerful water spray to hose down the debris and dust adequately.
Their opinion seemed to be “we’ve got a permit, we can do whatever we want, we’re not going to stop causing damage and there’s nothing you can do about it”
What has been damaged:
🍅 Our Miner’s leaf lettuce crop will have to be harvested and destroyed
🍅 Our entire 25’ row of chives will have to ve harvested and destroyed
🍅 Our mason bee house along with dozens of bees are dead/destroyed
🍅 We will have to pay for a $300+ soil test at a lab to check for soil contamination
🍅 If the soil is contaminated we will have to do costly remediation methods or worst case remove, dispose of, and replace the top 12” of soil; countless perennial edible plants may have to be destroyed as well
🍅 150 tomato hand grown, heirloom, rare tomato plants may now need to be destroyed
I called City of Burnaby - and talked to their climate action plan team, who said they will follow up with me.
I talked to Burnaby business permit department, and they confirmed they do have a permit for that address. They took my complaint about the lack of construction fence. They didn’t really have advice on what to do about the dust and property damage and environmental hazard.
I talked to a lawyer and will be following up with them tomorrow.
The lawyer advised me to call the police, so now I’ve got a case file with them. At that point I was desperate for someone to stop more damage from occurring.
I’ve called WorkSafeBC to report the open construction site, and will be callling them again tomorrow during business hours to see what we can do about the dust that damaged our farm to prevent them from releasing more dust and causing further damage.
I’m kind of in shock right now. This is our life’s work. This is the only livelihood for the entire household. We are now short ten 25’ rows for planting, during our busy season. Our squash and melon plants are supposed to get planted this week. 100 more tomato plants were set to be planted this week
Now I have no idea if the entire farm site is even usable this season. I’m at a loss, friends.
The last time I got this upset was when our apple tree was stolen, and the huge emotions caused a week long crash because of my chronic fatigue syndrome, and I was couch bound the entire week. Fingers crossed I don’t have a similar crash this time
Being a disabled farmer is difficult during the best of times… really didn’t need this on my plate too.
Our pollinator garden at just bust out in blooms overnight! Was stressed out today but these blooms 🌸 really helped my brain 🧠
Are you a fearless farmer? A hasty horticulturalist? A gambling gardener? Remember - April weather can be unpredictable and still snow sometimes!
Go ahead and plant those tomatoes, but remember to check the forecast everyday or you might be a sad sower 😔 We plant early, but make plastic low-tunnels to protect our beauties until danger of frost is gone ❄️
Fruit tree pruning & working with weeds workshop!
🥬 When: Sunday, April 7, 12pm-4pm
🥬 Where: 4052 Price St, Burnaby
🥬 Bring: Closed-toed shoes, sun hat, water bottle, snacks, nursery pots you no longer need to donate, your garden questions!
🥬 Cost: free!
Learn about healthy pruning for fruit trees, see the results of grafting in action, learn to identify common weeds, how to improve soil health, and how to tame weeds naturally!
We’ll be overhauling a graden space that hasn’t been used in 4 years, and turning it back into a productive space
The plants are watching
And waiting
And plotting 🌱
Mulch warriors, activate!
Adding more arbourist wood chips to our pathways, gradually getting the yard more level - all in a days work! 🪵 🪱 🌱
Gearing up for another amazing year - looking forward to seeing y’all at the and 🍅
We’ll have more herbs and flowers and veggie starts to choose from, have our own seeds to sell and lots of new veggies to munch on!
Be like our garlic - reach for the sky, focus on your roots, and remember that growth takes time - it’s ok to grow slow and take lots of rest along the way ❤️
Looking forward to gorgeous weather this week and spending time with farm friends and critters 🌷
daBooz (aka crime heck aka Blue Moon) has been helping me in the greenhouse - he’s decided that the greenhouse seedling heat mats are for napping 😴
Art by Alex Takano
| 19:00 - 19:30 | |
| 19:45 - 20:15 |
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Brentwood Pollinator garden - we turned around and everything had bloomed! The bees are out in full force, as well as hummingbird moths, dragonfly, nymphs, tons of helpful little parasitic, wasps, and ladybugs too! If you want to help support our farm after construction, damaged, our Canada Way site, please visit and share link in bio 🐝 #pollinators #savethebees #urbanfarm #urbanfarming #supportsmallbusiness #buylocal #farmtotable #eatlocal
Super strawberries 🍓 and cherries 🍒 at Burnaby Artisan Farmers Market June 8th @burnabyfarmersmarket #farmersmarket #farmtotable #localfood #eatlocal #yvrfood #burnaby #eatfresh #supportlocalbusiness
Burnaby Artisan Farmers Market May 25th #farmersmarket #farmtotable #localfood #eatlocal #yvrfood #burnaby #eatfresh #supportlocalbusiness
Burnaby Artisan Farmers Market May 18th! Special guest star - a baby goat! 🐐#farmersmarket #farmtotable #localfood #eatlocal #yvrfood #burnaby #eatfresh #supportlocalbusiness
Green Zebra Farm - Brentwood May 17th 🍅 Appearing at the Burnaby Artisan Farmer’s Market this Saturday - Green leaf lettuce 🥬 Arugula 🌱Spinach 🍃Lemon Balm 🍋 Purple bok choi 🥗 Pea and Sunflower Sprouts 🌻Lots of veggie & herb & flower starts for your garden 🧑🌾 #growyourown #garden #victorygarden #urbanfarm #urbanfarming #farmlife #farmtotable #farmersmarket
Green Zebra Farm home base gets ruined by construction company… they had an open construction site with no fencing between our yards for >24hours - still no fence and the extreme dust from demolition with NO mitigation efforts has contaminated our Canada Way farm… soil tests needed to confirm for heavy metals or other contaminants #farmlife #urbanfarming #urbanfarm #environment #heathysoil #savethebees #pollinators #disaster #foodsecurity #corporategreed
Our pollinator garden at #brentwood just bust out in blooms overnight! Was stressed out today but these blooms 🌸 really helped my brain 🧠 #bees #savethebees #pollinator #pollinatorgarden #garden #farm #victorygarden #microfarm #urbanfarm #urbanfarming #beneficialinsects
Come down to @burnabyfarmersmarket at Burnaby city hall today until 2pm! Enjoy the tasty treats of summer 😋 #localfarm #supportlocalbusiness #smallbusinesssaturday #farmtotable #artisanmade
Market day! Market day! New this week - sweet peppers, parsnips, arugula, and red swan beans! @burnabyfarmersmarket #eatlocal #urbanfarm #urbanfarmer #urbanfarming #farmtotable #eatfresh #localfood #farmersmarket
Beautiful day for @burnabyfarmersmarket at Burnaby city hall until 2pm today! #farmermarket #freshproduce #localfood #eatlocal #farmtotable
Green Zebra's in-person plant sale is ON right now at our Canada Way location! We have some new inventory in by special request. We have: Mint Oregano Tomatoes of all kinds of varieties African Daisies Cucamelon Starters And much more! Stop by today from 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm and get your plants for your garden. Whether it's a balcony box or a few acres, we can give you the right plants that suit your lifestyle. Our head farmer, Rachel, has gotten *really* good at recommending the right plants for those that don't have a green thumb. Stop by today!
Love those beneficial insects! This is our large pollinator garden at our #Brentwood #farm We provide habitat for a number of insects, butterflies, and birds which in turn #pollinate our crops and eat the bad bugs. Which types of flowers can you spot? Tell us in the comments #pollinators #pollinatorgarden #savethebees #garden #victorygarden #urbanfarming #foodnotlawns #growyourown #growyourownfood #beneficialinsects
Love those beneficial insects! This is our large pollinator garden at our #Brentwood #farm We provide habitat for a number of insects, butterflies, and birds which in turn #pollinate our crops and eat the bad bugs. Which types of flowers can you spot? Tell us in the comments #pollinators #pollinatorgarden #savethebees #garden #victorygarden #urbanfarming #foodnotlawns #growyourown #growyourownfood #beneficialinsects
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