- 📅 2025-02-23
- 👥 Ash, Vee, Molain
- Facilitator: Ash
- Note taker: Molain
Delegate Circles
- Communicator Circle Report
- Q1 Community Partners Meeting
- Collaborations
Production
- Production Brief Development
Organizing
- Upcoming Workshops
- Upcoming Tabling Events
Logistics Program
- Next bulk yarn order
- Bulk Seed Order
Collective Development Update
Open Hours
Action Items
- Ash has set up a connection with Wyldspun to collaborate on products using some of our invasive wood to create tools for fibrecraft
- Ash has been preparing that wood outside since Autumn
- Wyldspun is excited to work with the invasive wood for March Fibre Market
Upcoming:
- Date for Q1 set is March 1st for 4-5:30pm for first Quarterly Meeting
- The meeting will allow us to connect them to each other and to present them with a brief of our production goals for the year, with the hope that we can find places of overlapping interest to coordinate our energy and resources together.
- Agenda https://cloud.recomp.eco/s/dZyrPHqHoeFyc2N
- Still to-do last-minute outreach before the meeting, and to collect priorities for those who cannot attend
- Ash will continue to compile the upcoming agenda this week
- Molain will follow up with the Hamilton Gardening club they met last year for cultivation contacts
Seedy Saturday:
Out of the contacts from seedy saturday we still need to follow up with the following:
- 1 - Direct Follow Up – Project (Garden Bioremediation)
There will be an open hours this week at Ash's place at 1-6pm Wed Feb 26
- Anyone with craftwork they are working on is welcome to come by
- Will be discussing techniques and the production plan for Q1
- Still pending, deprioritized the past week
- Most of the report is complete and it mostly just need a couple of pages on how we have used our fibre and textiles filled out and then the general lessons learned section filled out
- we should get this done sooner than later as its already Feb and it would be good to get it to a professional and finished state so we can put it on the wiki and provide it to our community partners
Next Workshop
Dye workshop with GDSB
Recomp Point of Contact: Charlotte
Members Participating: Ash, Brynn (Driving), Charlotte
Date: Feb 29th, Start: ???
Location: Island Lake Conservation Area
Description: A member of the GSDB has asked us to come and run a workshop to teach their teachers the basics of working with dyes with a focus on the invasive dye project
In Progress:
- A new date was set, but questions have arisen about the nature of this workshop and what the contact wants from it
- at this point there are two options:
a. We go, facilitate, and charge our typical fee
b. We host a workshop here, either one-on-one or small group, do not charge them, but allow them to purchase books and materials from us at the normal rate
- It has become clear we need a standard protocol for setting up workshops, including pricing expectations and template pages to allow people to set up workshops more easily
Planned Workshops
- Empire Make Space [April]
Interested Orgs
- Neighbour to Neighbour
- Recreate
- Main Fabrics [April]
- Hamilton Craft Studios
- Green Venture
Orgs Contacted With No Response
Uncontacted Orgs
- Environment Hamilton
- Burlington Fibre Guild
Date: Mar 23rd
Time: 10am - 4pm (vendors arrive earlier)
Point of Collective Contact: Ash L
Discussion:
- Ash proposes making another bulk yarn order ASAP so that we can get in before the tariff kick our economy's ass (althought Elitespun has said that they wont be raising their prices when tariffs do hit)
- Ash is going place a $25 order for a sample pack of their main product ranges so that we can get a better sense of what we can order for our next bulk order.
- We got our samples back, but we got some raw fibre samples including ones that have synthetic fibres in them
Planning Document: https://cloud.recomp.eco/s/jt3JSzaasR8o5L2
- Vinny will make the initial planning doc for this
Report Back:
- Ash has reached out to Wyldspun
In Progress:
- Create a planning doc for this event
Hamont Queer Trans Market [March 29th]
2pm - 7pm
- We have paid our fee on this
- We still need to get a planning doc for this one too
**Pinch **
- Steph, the manager of Pinch suggested that we sell some of our seedlings through Mad Meadow, who tables at Pinch during the spring and summer.
Spring Fling [Spring]
- HCS's spring market event, which one of the directors has ensured us we would be able to get a table at
- We are working on getting more info for this
Imagine In The Park [June 6 - June 7, 2025]
- Ash has withdrawn their application for Imagine in the Park due to time contrainsts and a lack of collective capacity to run workshops at an event that has 1000 - 2000 kids and families passing through it
- this item will be cleared next meeting
Current Status:
- 1 Rural Dye Plot Planted (plot tarped to be triple the size for next year)
- 6 Urban Plots Planted
Report Back
2025 Cropping Plan
- We should begin drafting a cropping plan for this coming year before the end of January.
- The plan should consider:
- The number of seeds we have available
- The amount of space in current dye plots that is avialable
- The potential for more dye plots to be added before the start of planting
- The current available capacity in the two greenhouses we have access to (seed trays take up limited space)
- The possiblity of selling dye plant seedlings through partners
- The plants we do not yet have established (e.g. weld, dyer's broom, Chinese woad)
- Timetable for scheduling harvests
- Rough plan for producing and moving the compost needed to feed beds and any new beds
In Progress:
- Following up with McQuesten about their offer to host plants and let us use their greenhouse next year
- Follow up with Other growing partners to get a sense of how many flats we will need to initially produce
- Work with the rest of the team to create a timeline for when we absolutely need to start getting flats of the plants that take longer to mature (e.g. indigo)
The other project in the dye program, the Food Waste Dye Project is inactive right now as time and resources are focused towards establishing the Dye Growers Network and developing our practices of extracting colour from invasives
In order to have more merchandise to sell at seedy saturday, and to give us a chance to get practice designing and producing items with our dyed textiles: DJ and Ash are collaborating on producing an initial run of seed harvesting bags using a design out of one of our dye resource books (The Wild Dyer).
- We still need to get the cord and sinches for these
- we still need to attach the back straps to them so they can be clipped to things
- We aim to work on these for the next open hours Wed 19th
- Molain will place order for bulk cotton twine
Mushroom Culture Wishlist
Ash
- ash needs to test fungal cultures
- ash needs to reach out to our rural contacts to select trees to fell for next years mushroom logs
Molly
- Molly put together the list of cultures for the next order, which we will discuss at the retreat
- We need to discuss when we will be ordering our next batch of cultures (this still needs to get done)
- This is on hold until we have more room in the culture library
Mo
- Mo isnt currently able to take this on
Katie
- Katie is looking to find a new home for KW's mushroom growing supplies in the near future
- Ash created a new shared folder for the anthology project
- Ash, loyalPainter, underwaterInnovator, and underwaterKnave are all onboarded for the project
- Ash is working on some environtmental design for the project's setting
- Progress on this project currently on the backburner until winter
- Ash will put together voting proposal for second bulk order of yarn
- needed to be prepared for March Fibre Market
- expected price: $1000-1200
We have 5 people signed up for the open collective contributions
- We've been accepted to Co-Op Academy, but it starts in the fall
- We're looking to form a provisional workers co-op to process payments in the meantime
- We're looking to form provisional teams
Link to previous meeting:
https://wiki.recomp.eco/en/meeting-minutes/collective-development/2025-02-23
- Ash will create a post to outreach to active members to see who is interested in joining the Onboarding working group
- Ash needs to message Empire Make Space to set a date for a spring workshop
- Molain will follow up with the Hamilton Gardening club they met last year for cultivation contacts
- Molain will bulk order the cotton twine
- Carya will create voting proposal for seed order
- Ash will make voting proposal for bulk yarn order
Breakout Session: N/A
Goal: Set out initial framework for the year's production goals (cropping plan, dye vats, etc)
Yoooo Soupfest is on Tuesday!!!!