Ah yes, it seems many days have passed since the last entry - my bad completely. It's not that I've lost interest - quite the contrary. But, between work and other "stuff" I had, I just needed to ease off on something, that ended up being the blog.

Anyways, with that hopefully face-saving little bit out of the way, it's probably a good idea to do a little update on the state of PCHRI. I guess the first would be to comment on the membership, which has grown to a dozen. I have to say that I'm a little surprised, given the size of the community. I guess the only disappointment I have with this is that all of the members were already of the "green" sort or Peak Oil aware. Not to take away from the excellent group of people we have, but it will be great when the day comes when were up a dozen more, they being "the awakened". I still hold on to the hope that the folks in Poplar Hill/Coldstream will rise to the challenge before the challenge rises to them first.

Anyways, this summer has seen PHCRI voice it's support for Valleyview School, which is caught up in an ARC through the school board. What this boils down to is that, due to declining enrollment, they may close our local school and bus the kids elsewhere. This, I find, objectionable from the point of view of not only a tax-paying a community member, but as someone who sees the school as a vital anchor both now and in a low energy world. Valleyview has boasted great scores in Grade 3 and Grade 6 annual testing, and is staffed with an amazing bunch of educators. This will be a fight PHCRI will be engaged in.

This summer has also seen us join with the Envirofriends of Coldstream, in getting a farmers market up and running. The Envirofriends deserve a very big tip of the hat for all the leg work they've done in setting up and promoting this initiative, and contacting PHCRI to work collaboratively in running it through he summer. Speaking of running it, the market is open every Saturday, from 9-12, and is seeing a core group of vendors settle in. There's also the expectation that when folks start seeing their vegetable gardens bear fruit (pardon the pun), that we'll see some of that produce show up there. We've already seen baby tomato plants, rhubarb, lettuce and arugula. There's also a local bakery and two vendors selling home made crafts. This is a wonderful initiative, one we hope to see grow in the years to come.

The next item we will be digging into is a skills inventory. In brief, it's a survey of our community to see what residents have what skills. In a resilient Poplar Hill/Coldstream, we'll need to know who to call if we need an electrician, or plumber, or doctor for that matter. I'll save the details for a separate blog, but for now I'll just say that it will be a great way to get our name out there, meet people, and get a feel for some of the people-strengths of our community.

Until next time. (and it won't be another three and a half months...)