A community farm has been forced out of its base of operations, and its looking for all the help it can get to build a new home.
The Sharing Farm Society is a group of local volunteers who grow vegetables and harvest produce to give to charitable food organizations.
Its home base, or the Hub as they call it, was a garage it acquired back when it was established in Terra Nova.
The sharing farm hub had been a garage and it was a property that was donated to the city several years ago, and we were specifically told by the city that it was absolutely off limits, said Gretchen Frazer, the Sharing Farm, marketing and communications.
One of the founders of the farm said, Well, can we store one thing, and that sort of grew from there. [The city] said Okay, you can store one thing and then the next thing the city knew we were running all of our field operations out of the garage, she laughed.
But as they soon found out, the garage was never meant for storing such large amounts of produce and vegetation. It soon became not only a hub for the society, but a for rats and mould, as well.
So they decided a renovation was necessary and received funding from the City of Richmond plus several grants to do so. However, things were far worse than they could have imagined.
The garage was beyond renovation and a complete rebuild was deemed necessary, something that is far more expensive than the original renovation plans.
They are looking at an approximate cost of $100,000 for the overhaul, while the entire farm budget for the year is only $80,000.
For now they are running make shift operations out of a rental storage container and are on the lookout for a construction company to take on the rebuild as a community project on their existing budget.
If you want to help, visit http://www.sharingfarm.ca/contact-us/.
