Rick Havliks business grew out of a really out-of-control home-brewing hobby.
Theres a lot of waiting around when brewing beer, so he and his brewing buddy explored other do-it-yourself projects.
Theres this satisfaction that you get when you hold up a beer in your hand that you brewed and realize its actually pretty good and it actually wasnt all that hard, Havlik said. Its almost an addicting rush where you start asking other questions like what else can I make?
Owner of Homesteaders Emporium, Havlik wanted to make cheese, jam and roast coffee but he wasnt sure where to begin. He searched around town, ordered supplies online and on his first try made sour milk, fruit syrup and burned beans, according to his website.
Now the 28-year-old apartment-dweller provides the know-how and the supplies that make activities, including composting, doable in a small, urban space.
Havlik says customers of his shop on East Hastings near Heatley Avenue include people in their 20s who are discovering heritage skills, homesteaders who aim to be self-sufficient, preppers who are preparing for a breakdown of the global supply chain, and regular people who wish to learn the pickling and sausage-making skills their families failed to pass on.
Homesteaders Emporium started monthly workshops on gardening last fall. Havlik, a member of the Strathcona Business Improvement Association and its sustainability committee, saw an opportunity to take the sessions outside and into the BIAs Resource Park, which includes commercial recycling and composting and 27 garden beds on a former parking lot.
The first time I went over there they were full of weeds and it seemed like no one had really been paying attention to them for a full season, Havlik said.
Charlotte Fesnoux, Resource Park site coordinator for the BIA, says a restaurant was keen to manage the urban garden, but the arrangement faltered. Now the BIA is renting 14 of the plots to Homesteaders. It will use 10 of the plots for workshops and participants who pay $5 to $10 per session (prices slated to increase in July) will take produce home. At least a quarter of the harvest will go to the meal program at the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House, and Havlik has invited the neighbourhood houses gardening group and representatives of The Salvation Army Grace Mansion to use two plots. Flax is sprouting on two other beds for the Urban Weaver Project.
Havlik believes interest in beekeeping, pickling and preserving is here to stay. It is sort of trendy to trend almost toward Portland-style hyper awareness of whats happening with your food, Havlik said. Learning to take on do-it-yourself food projects or prepare or process food in different ways, that kind of goes hand-in-hand with just a generalized increase in the amount of attention that you pay to what food you eat.
For workshop information, see homesteadersemporium.ca.
crossi@vancourier.com
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