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Organic Islands Festival

ByKeri Coles

It was a fabulous weekend at Organic Islands Festival. There are always lots of great vendors that support and inspire sustainability. The reason I love the festival the most is the incredible speakers that come to share their wealth of knowledge.

Percy Schmeiser was the highlight for me at the Festival in 2008.  His story is one to know. He is fighting a battle on our behalf. A battle that’s final outcome will not directly effect his life, but it will effect ours. He is devoting his time, money, life energy and integrity to protect our right to save seeds and our right to know whether we are consuming GMO or not. This may not sound like a pressing matter to many of our generation that purchase their groceries at the store and are disconnected from the growing process, but to people who have spent their lives growing and improving food (naturally) this is an issue second to none. It is a very polarized issue and which ever side of the fence you sit on it is impossible to not appreciate the courage, fortitude and strength of this exceptional man.

Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent. Let’s chat about the festival THIS year 😉

This year, the gold star went to Carolyn Herriot from The Garden Path. Carolyn is a local advocate for food self-sufficiency, seed saving, and organic gardening. At the festival, she was having a book launch for her new book, The Zero Mile Diet. She is such an inspirational speaker and another person that I feel has our back when we don’t even realize we need it.

Another sweet surprise for me was seeing The Malahat Revue for the first time. They were fabulous and, come on, how do you not love a band that tours by bike 😉

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