September 12, 2010. Beware the subversives on Haultain Boulevard in Victoria, B.C. The friendly women gardening in their edible front yard greet all passers-by with conversation and invitations to harvest food.

Guerrilla gardeners Rainey Hopewell (photo top) and Margot Johnston (photo right) are claiming common ground to use for the common good. With a nod from their city agencies, they’ve planted vegetables in the parking strip in front of their house and offer them free for the taking. The Haultain Common, as they say, is a “neighborhood-supported public food garden on public land, where all may harvest.”

A lovely magic is happening around the Common: community. Neighboring children and adults have joined in to help plant, mulch and harvest the potatoes, tomatoes and squash (above, Grace Vardy).

Chalk messages on the sidewalk tell passers-by when particular vegies are ready to pick. The birth mothers of the Haultain Common note that most people in our culture tend to be reluctant to receive if they haven’t first given. So “we just give them some tomatoes or potatoes and encourage them to come by and harvest in future.” And many of them do just that. For some, this produce helps keep hunger at bay.

The subversiveness is spreading. Edible gardens are appearing on other parking strips. Neighbors are putting in backyard gardens. Harvest parties are being held. People are getting to know one another. A neighborhood community is happening, centered around zero-mile, locally-produced, picked-the-same day food.

Look forward to a delightful conversation with the Haultain Commoners who have catalyzed a neighborhood transformation — with fun, food, sharing and camaraderie.

Watch or listen to the program: Claiming the Commons - Food for All on Haultain Boulevard.

As a matter of community food security, what if on every street, in every neighborhood, people had a cache of dried foods stored? Not just for their family, but to share with their neighbors if the trucks stopped rolling. Such sharing brings more security and community than defending with guns.

That’s the vision of our longtime friend Loraine Webb, right here in our hometown of Nevada City in the Sierra foothills. With her Neighborhood Readiness Project, she’s making it happen with two major steps. She has arranged with locally-owned markets to provide discount prices for quantity bulk foods. And she helped assemble the equipment to pack foods in nitrogen for greater longevity.

We taped a show with Loraine and equipment assembler/fabricator Jim Wray. Loraine covered her vision, and the practicalities of buying, packing, storing with more information on the website NeighborRP.org. People are encouraged to buy whatever they want to have on hand, like grains, nuts, legumes, seeds.

Jim demonstrated each step of bagging food in plastic bags in which nitrogen replaces oxygen. It includes a holder for the plastic roll; a heat sealer; a small vacuum; a nitrogen tank. His simple setup is replicable by any community.

We taped the show at the recently-opened APPLE Center for Sustainable Living in historic downtown Nevada City. It’s an educational and resource hub, a project of Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy, APPLE of Nevada County, which was founded in 2005 as a response to concerns about the impacts of Peak Oil.

The APPLE Center for Sustainable Living is looking into making this equipment available to the public on an on-going basis to meet the continued long-term food storage needs of our community.

Naturally, after taping the show, we bagged up 50 pounds of winter wheat and 25 pounds each of red lentils and red quinoa. Our neighbors will know they can come here to party if the food trucks stop rolling!

Now we need to spread the word to every neighborhood across the county and the country.

Watch the show “Bag It! Packaging Bulk Foods with Nitrogen.”