Jewish Urban Homesteading Workshop Series

Kavanah Garden, in partnership with Makom: Creative Downtown Judaism, is proud to present:

Jewish Urban Homesteading Workshop Series!

Urban homesteading is a movement that promotes sustainable, self-reliant, urban living. This workshop series will introduce participants to some of the skills that can help us live more sustainably in an urban context, honouring the Jewish values of caring for our earth and community. We're going back to our roots!

All workshops will take place at the Kiever Synagogue in Kensington Market at 25 Bellevue Avenue, unless otherwise indicated.

All workshops are $25/person. Register for 4 workshops for $90 or all 8 for $175.

For more information, please contact Risa at 416-805-8382 or risa@torathateva.org.

Pre-registration and payment are required to confirm your place.

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Organic Gardening 101: Planning & Planting
Wednesday, April 28, 7-9pm
Discover how to grow your very own Garden of Eden! This workshop will address the basics of planning and planting your own urban food garden.
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/ylrlg8t

Chocolate Making 101
Wednesday, May 26, 7-9pm
Wouldn’t Chanukah gelt taste so much better if it was made from raw, vegan, fair-trade ingredients? Make chocolate that nourishes your body and spirit!
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/ygez2rd

Composting 101
Wednesday, June 23, 7-9pm
According to our rabbis, a righteous person does not waste even a mustard seed! Discover how to turn your vegetables scraps into nutrient-rich soil!
*Special Location – Bathurst and Dundas Area
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/yzurfr5

Jam Making and Canning 101
Wednesday, July 28, 7-9pm
Who doesn’t love strawberry hamentashen!?! Learn how to make and can your own jam so you can enjoy a little taste of summer goodness next Purim.
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/yzlvput

Herbal Salve Making 101
Wednesday, August 25, 7-9pm
In addition to Bubbie’s chick soup, local herbs can be used to encourage health and healing! Learn how to make your own herbal salves to nourish your skin.
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/yj9jx29


Pickling 101
Wednesday, September 15, 7-9pm
No deli sandwich is complete without a kosher dill pickle! Learn how to make your own pickled products such as sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickled beans.
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/yhgak2p

Seed Saving 101
Wednesday, October 20, 7-9pm
In Bereshit/Genesis it is written, “To your seed I will give this land” (12:7). Learn how to save seed from this year’s harvest for next year’s vegetable garden!
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/ykcn6o5

Beer and Kombucha Brewing 101
Wednesday, November 17, 7-9pm
Hebrew? Webrew! Or at least we will brew….beer and komucha that is! Learn how to make your own deliciously fermented beverages! L’Chayim!
Click here to register for this workshop: http://tinyurl.com/yler43l



Click here to register for 4 workshops: http://tinyurl.com/yjyvq94
*Please note that you will be contacted to indicate which 4 workshops.



Click here to register for all 8 workshops: http://tinyurl.com/yzlggul
*Yeah for you!

Kavanah Garden Employment and Volunteer Opportunities

Looking to join the Kavanah Garden Growing Team for the 2010 season?

Click here for more information on the different employment and volunteer opportunities currently available.

2009 Kavanah Garden End of Year Report

With winter finally here, now is the time to reflect on our incredibly successful first season at the Kavanah Garden and to vision plans, projects, and programs for next year!

Click here to see our End of Season Report for 2009!

2009 Kavanah Garden End of Year Report Blog

View more presentations from torathateva.

Fall Photo Update

What a fall season it has been so far!

Here is a look at what has been happening at the Kavanah Garden in the last few weeks...

Our sunflowers grew to be almost ten feet tall!

We harvested over 300 pounds of fresh, local, organic produce for local charities such as United Chesed (http://www.unitedchesed.com/) and Ve'Ahavta (http://www.veahavta.org/).

We grew many different varieties of tomatoes!

From left to right: Black Cherry, Matt's Red Cherry, Yellow Pear, and Green Zebra

We had young adults from D.A.N.I. (http://www.dani-canada.com/)

help us harvest produce for tzedakah.

We celebrated a Bat Mitzvah at the garden! As part of her Bat Mitzvah project, Iris spent the summer volunteering at the Kavanah Garden, most notably by bringing her artistic and creative vision to the space. Here is the lid of our composter that she painted - "This is the way of the righteous, that nothing, not even a mustard seed should be wasted." Mazel Tov Iris!

With the help of some incredibly talented volunteers, we built a pergola that will serve as the frame for our sukkah during the holiday of Sukkot. During other times of the year, the structure will be converted into an outdoor kitchen area with rain barrels to catch rain water and hanging mesh for drying onions and garlic in the fall

And here is our sukkah! The walls are bed sheets that we dyed using Goldenrod flowers and black walnuts from our field.

SK students from Leo Baeck (North Campus) visited the garden to help us harvest the Atomic Red Carrots that they planted as JK students in the spring! Harvesting turnips!

We hosted our first ever Sukkot Celebration! Over 50 community members joined us to sing, study and enjoy a candle-lit vegetarian potluck dinner together in our sukkah.

Thank you everyone for helping make our first season at the Kavanah Garden an extraordinary one! A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed their time, energy, and vision to this project.

With radical gratitude,

Risa Alyson Strauss (Kavanah Garden Program Director)

Kavanah Photo Update :: September Begins!

Its the beginning of September now, and the harvest just keeps coming!

Our sweetest harvest yet! Straight from the cabbage patch!

Oh alright, here are the real cabbages.

We've been working hard in the garden. There is Ron harvesting the cabbages.

Our young strawberry plants are really too new to put out much fruit. But Tamara certainly enjoyed our first and only strawberry of the season!

We've got plenty of zucchinis (and other veggies), but our fruit seem to be growing in singles this year. This is our melon!

And we had a surprise guest as well. Presenting the common garden snake - in OUR garden! Mark promptly caught it to show around. It had been wiggling around in our tomato bed.

Kavanah Garden Photo Update :: August

A lot has changed at the garden since our last update! We're harvesting! And the garden has been beautified by hand-crafted signage. We enjoyed a wonderful community festival day with all of you! And, did we mention the harvesting???

Volunteers helped us to paint signs showing all of our different vegetable crops.

The entrance way to our garden has been significantly improved with this Torah-full piece of art. It was painted by a bat-mitzvah girl who is working at the garden as her bat-mitzvah project.

Our garden beds are now labeled with Hebrew letters. We'll never get lost again!

Children of our CSA members often come along to pick up their boxes. They love hunting for snails on Thursday afternoons, while their parents choose their produce.

A volunteer helping us mow the pathways using a push lawn mower - with a bit of extra muscle we are limiting the amount of fossil fuel we need to maintain our garden.

These sunflowers are available through the Tikkun Adamah CSA.

This is a picture of Tamara building our solar oven, in honour of Birkat HaChama (blessing of the sun which occurs once every 28 years, which we did in February).

Harvesting: in keeping with the Mishnaic law of ma'aser (donating a tenth of one's harvest) we have been donating produce through United Chesed and to a local food bank and shelter.

Bok Choy

Crooked Neck Squash

Our apprentices went raspberry picking at a local organic farm and then learned how to make raspberry jam, which was sold at the community festival.