The Grist Mill and Gardens has now started planning our 2025 lecture and workshop series and we’re looking for speakers and hands-on presenters for a wide variety of topics.
We are a 12 acre BC heritage site in the heart of the Similkameen Valley featuring western Canada’s only working waterwheel-powered flour mill (built in 1877) and stunning ornamental, herb and vegetable gardens. History, agriculture and art combine in fascinating ways on our site and here are just some of the sorts of topics we’d love to see:
- Food Preservation (canning, smoking, curing, drying)
- Food Production (bread baking, cheesemaking, sprouting grains, microgreens)
- Food Issues (food security, climate change, GMOs)
- Local History (geneology, local characters, archeology, First Nations history)
- Gardening (planning a garden, xeriscaping, composting, seed saving, companion planting, pruning, pest control)
- Plant Identification and Uses (healing herbs, foraging, invasive species, natural dying with plants)
- Wildlife (birds, bats, pollinators)
- Visual Arts (painting, sketching, photography)
- Fibre Arts (spinning, weaving, knitting, crochet, sewing, quilting, lace-making)
- Rural Living Skills (wood stove cooking, raising chickens and other livestock, candle making, soap making)
- Traditional Crafts (making paper, pressed flowers, wreath making, flower arrangement, quilling)
We generally offer two styles of presentation:
- Lectures – These are offered on weekend afternoons or weekday evenings and are usually no more than an hour long. Weekend lectures are offered at no additional cost to visitors and seasons pass holders. We generally offer an honourarium for these presentations.
- Hands-on Workshops – These are generally two or more hours long and run on weekday evenings or during half or full days on the weekend. They often have registration fees associated which are split with the presenter.
If you’re interested in presenting here in 2025 on these (or any other topic that seems relevant), please use the form below to tell us more about what you’d like to propose.
Please direct all questions to Chris Mathieson, Site Operator / General Manager at info@oldgristmill.ca and please share this with anyone else you think might be interested. Deadline to submit a proposal is March 15, 2025 and submissions will be considered in the order received.