May 11th marked the 18th annual Stone Soup Festival, which took place at the Britannia Community Centre on Commercial Drive. The festival is a celebration of food, art, environment and community and brings awareness to the issues of food security and benefits of eating local. Having never been before, I decided to check it out.

Most of the booths were selling food or plants or supplying information about various organizations where you can get involved in volunteering for the community. 



The TreeKeepers is a relatively new program that encourages residents and businesses to plant more trees on their own property. The program is being tested this year in six Vancouver neighbourhoods. They sell trees for $10 and fruit bearing trees for $20. Currently they are sold out but have plans to expand to other neighbourhoods next year.  



No festival is ever complete with music and several bands were playing on the during the event.



Inside the gym, liquids + solids cafe & market generously provided free soup to festival attendees.


All the utensils used are made of corn and recyclable.


Volunteers helped serve bowls of Cuban bean soup.

Yummy!
Each table was decorated with lilacs and freesia in a mason jar vase. Beautiful!




It's nice to see little kids get involved with gardening!




The girls from Victory Gardens were there selling seeds and veggie starts.

Truck Farm was also there! The 1993 Mazda pick up truck was turned into a mobile garden, driving around Vancouver teaching people about growing food. The owner is also responsible for Strathcona 1890 and sells easy to grow seeds. They also have an Indiegogo fundraising drive going on right now.  



I love the license plate: NON-GMO