Tea Creek Site Development Plans

In the above images you can see the current site layout of Tea Creek, the planned structures and features, as well as zones and areas of focus for future development. 

Support Indigenous Community Land-Based Education and Access

Did you know that we hosted over 1,000 additional on-site Indigenous guests in 2022? Many are kids, youth, and elders. Examples include:

• Elementary and High School class visits from Indigneous schools and classes
• Elders groups from multiple communities
• Community days where any Indigenous family can drop in

Each visitor is offered a warm meal, a chance to participate and learn from our land-based programming, and an opportunity to bring fresh healthy food home.

These visits are currently not funded or supported. We have multiple opportunities for improvement including:

• Support for supplies and materials to provide tours, meals, and food to take-home
• Funds to hire additional hosting staff, so we can host more guests, and add more community days, workshops, and special visits
• A welcome structure such as a gazebo where we can sign visitors in and out, and conduct orientations
• A "hay wagon", mutli-seat side-by-side vehicles or golf carts to provide on-site transportation options for the young, old, and physically disabled. We'd love to stop using our regular farm trailers, which are not well suited for people transport!

Local Accommodation Options for Out-of-Region Trainees and Guests

• Support the accommodation costs for out-of-region Trainees to attend Tea Creek's training.
• Directly support the development of our existing accommodation property to add RVs (in the short term) and guest cabins (in the longer term). The site is 3 acres. We can add 'camp' style accommodations such as trailers or RVs in the short-term. 
• Support a local Indigenous entrepreneur to create their own B&B, and we could refer guests to them.
• Support an Indigenous Carpentry cohort to build a Cabin(s) or Tiny Home(s) over 12 weeks, including all costs. This would also include sponsoring trainees as ITA BC Carpentry apprentices.
• Support the larger vision for accommodations, affordable housing, and incubators for Indigenous farmers and entrepreneurs! Click here to view the design brief.

Help us build our Longhouse Food Hub!

Images for inspiration only

Tea Creek already has over 1,200 Indigenous guests per year, hosts community visits weekly in the busy season, and distributes tonnes of food per year into Indigenous families and communities. We are lacking facilities for our food hub. The Hereditary Chief of the territory we live on requested that we build a longhouse at Tea Creek. Since then we've been presenting the concept of a central Longhouse Food Hub at Tea Creek.

Provisionally, the Longhouse Food Hub would feature:

• Commercial Kitchen(s)
• Food processing facilities
• Cold storage, root cellar, and freezer
• Multi-purpose space for food distribution, education, and cultural food and medicine activities
• Composting facility nearby
• Elders parking
• Located centrally near fresh food and medicines

The cost to create the Longhouse Food Hub centre would cost $1,500,00 - $2,500,000 depending on scope and scale. 

Support Childcare for Trainees

Lack of affordable, reliable childcare is a large barrier for trainees at Tea Creek. Our site also offers a fantastic environment for children, if they have competent caregivers to keep them safe. Ideally, we would have a complimentary childcare service located on-site for participants who are unable to secure childcare at home. At a minimum on-site we would need a play area including a weather shelter (such as a gazebo).

Children on site would benefit from our land-based, culturally-safe education. They'd also have access to healthy, local food daily. 

Some Ideas:

• Support a local Indigenous entrepreneur to start a childcare business, possibly on our site, which would be actively supported by Tea Creek. 
• Support Tea Creek to add a child care space on site. 
• Provide funding for trainees and participants to hire their own in-community childcare. 

Using wood waste to build soil, compost, and heat structures

In land clearing, trees and brush are usually put into slash piles and burned, releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Instead, we chip as much as possible and use the chips as weed-suppressing mulch, and also as important soil and compost builders. Our wood chipper runs for much of the growing season, and trainees learn how to safely operate the chipper and use the chips for soil building and different food production such as bedding. We also process trees by hand for heating fuel, as most of our structures in the north are wood heated in the winter and shoulder seasons - and we can go through a lot of fuel heating structures during training.

Some Ideas

• Support the purchase of another wood chipper, to be lent out to communities for their own foodland development
• Support a firewood processor, to process slash piles
• Fund the creation of an on-site small scale compost facility (structure with at least 6 bays), which would ideally also feature heat capture
• Support a local Indigenous entrepreneur with startup costs for a firewood/ wood chipping business