the inside of our dream bike trailer market stand- bin at bottom, with 2 shelves for presenting food.
The fleet of bike fruit/veg market stands- these have been all over montreal to sell fruits and veg at low costs to mainly low income communities. Their missions: to support local farms and make local food accessible to low income communities. Awesome!
vermi bins in santropol roulant basement
roof garden level 1: self-watering containers. These require a lot of water.
a beautiful wash station (a market gardener’s dream:)
roof garden level 2- raised beds retained by a lush border of white clover. The whole roof has a self-watering system which works well since roof top gardening can be susceptible to drought.
Note the bee-hives: apparently urban bee-keeping is really taking off in Montreal. Bees love the city since there are always different flowers blooming at all times- keeping them healthy and happy. Keep some bees!
Meals and veggies delivered by bike!
Stop # 3– Visiting a member of the Fruixi team, and then a visit to the rooftop gardens at Santropol Roulant.
Seb and I planned to meet a member of the Fruixi team for breakfast at an awesome worker cooperative cafe called Touski.
Fruixi has 5 bikes that set up fri-sun in different parks in low income communities in montreal. Their bikes are beautiful- small market stands built onto the back of the bike- built by a local commmunity member out of Quebec sourced materials and recycled plastic. The food they sell is on average between 14 and 31% cheaper than in grocery stores. Most of the food is local, but not organic (because of price). They were able to gain a lot of support from other organizations and the city.
Seb and I are convinced- we have been thinking for a while that we would like to do this: sell our produce on mobile bike trailer stands. We sketched our first bike trailer market stand in March, not knowing about Fruixi- and we were so happy to hear about their existence and success.
I can just see it now: a city of bike marketers selling local produce at adjusted costs to different neighbourhoods.
We missed a lot of the Santropol Roulant tour because we took the opportunity to go see the fruixi bikes, but we were able to see some of their urban growing- they generate compost in the basement with red wiggler worms, and grow beautiful veggies and keep bees on the roof (see pics!).
