By Brian Johnston | Project Leader
Hola! We were extremely fortunate and productive over the last few months, with another wave of tourism groups arriving mostly from France. So apart from Humberto finishing the beautiful flooring, we were able to purchase an oven for the kitchen! And with a reservation paid for a group of 28 arriving later this year, we were also able to purchase the tables and chairs required for the seating area above the future entrepreneurial sales centre!
Additionally, we had a number of volunteers helping out in the project, and with Lydia and Christine were able to design and create a structure for a future hydroponic vertical garden! This will be used to grow 147 edible plants at a time, while teaching the community how they too can take advantage of vertical space to increase access to healthy foods grown at home.
With Nick we started rustproofing the roof's metal beams, and I finished painting the ceiling black, which has made a dramatic change to the appearance of the spaces with a much more polished look.
And we were also very happy to receive a contribution to the project to renovate/finish one of the pending spaces in the house entrance! This has transformed the centre with counters, shelves and cabinets that give us space to store the dishware that will be used by budding project entrepreneurs to sell to the public, hopefully before the year end if things continue to get accomplished at this pace!
Between all this whirlwind of action, one of my culinary professors from Jonquiere Quebec came to visit at the beginning of March, which was a welcome surprise and break! I hadn't seen Caroline in 13+ years, and it was great to have her around, adding her personal touches to our kitchen space while enjoying the city.
All in all, I am extremely happy and even a bit surprised by the amount of progress the project achieved this past quarter, with the help of a lot of people committed to seeing us move forward. Now I'm looking forward to having things calm down a bit on the renovation side of things, so I can finally start up community cooking classes again and reconnect with everyone eager to continue learning with Vía Cocina!
Talk to you soon!
Brian
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