The farm of one of our local collaborators, Rémi Roy, has become something like a farm extension of the 3E forest land. Located on the opposite end of Ste-Anne-du-Lac from the 3E land, it has been a working subsistence farm for generations. A work exchange arrangement has evolved between Rémi and 3E. Rémi has been using his lumberjack and jack-of-all-trade skills to help with 3E land improvements and maintenance, sometimes for pay but often as part of an informal labor exchange where 3E collaborators help out on his farm, with a share of the production going to 3E. This has included, among other things, planting 400 tomato plants of 17 different varieties, a variety vegetables for canning and pickling, fruit and flowers for fermentation into vinegars, a medicinal herb garden for the preparation of herbal tinctures, and now the arrival of two young milk goats for experimenting with cheese making. Lumi and Kivi (Finnish for snow and pebble – although alternate names Cheez and Whiz may overtake those names) have taken up residence in a spacious pen and enclosure built entirely from scavenged materials with the help of a team of 3E collaborators, in the goat equivalent of a barn-raising, The big news is that Rémi has bequeathed his farm and farmhouse to 3E! Since it will be many years before this transfer actually takes place, it makes it imperative that we design a land trust and foundation structure embodying the cooperative and alter-economic practices guiding 3E activities that can endure across generations. Over the next year or two, we will be working with the Aqueduct Foundation (the charitable branch of the Scotia Bank) to imagine how this could work. They have taken on 3E as a test-case in supporting cooperative land-based initiatives with an ecological profile, which will be a new priority area for them (if currently envisioned changes to their charter reach final approval this fall). Another major donation has come to us from Luke Shirock, who has donated his car to 3E, enabling us to have a resident vehicle on the 3E land. Thank you Rémi and Luke! And thanks to our Patreon members, whose contributions do so much to enable us to continue the work, and are all the more appreciated now that 3E is really taking off along so many vectors.
