2023 was rich in its bounty and beautiful memories. Barka Canada celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2023. Our friends from Barka UK — Ewa Sadowska and Andrew Keogh — were able to visit for this celebration. We would like to sincerely thank everyone who was able to come to our event or contributed over the years to our projects. We had a wonderful opportunity to reminisce about the many people who we were able to help, many of whom then helped others regain their dignity and health.

Our Community Farm produced a bounty of organic vegetables, garlic and herbs. A portion of these proceeds ($1000) was donated to the Kopernik Lodge Foundation which celebrated their 50th anniversary with a beautiful Gala dinner. We are excited about the new facilities being built for the lodge and how it continues the rich legacy of its Polish founders.

A new group, our women’s support group, has also begun meetings, with many exciting ideas planned for next year.

As we await Christmas, let us be thankful for all our blessings and filled with hope for a prosperous and joyful 2024!

Come Jesus; come, give strength to the light and to the good; come where dishonesty, ignorance of God, violence and injustice dominate; come, Lord Jesus, give strength to the good in the world and help us to be bearers of your light, workers of peace, witnesses of truth. Come Lord Jesus! (Benedict XVI)

The first year of our Community Farm was a huge success! Now the next busy season is approaching quickly and we are looking for volunteers seeking to help with our farm project. Please contact info@barka.ca for further details.

We worked hard and we had fun – have a look:

Our delicious and beautiful crops:

Art by Eric Sosnowski:

Please see also earlier posts about our Community Farm and the videos therein:

• A Farmer Never Rests
• Barka Community Farm Summer 2022

We are grateful to our members and volunteers for their work, resources, and wonderful companionship, and to RussLynn Blueberries for allowing us to use their land in Abbotsford and making it all possible.

Barka Canada would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This year has been a busy one for us and our friends at Barka Poland, who opened their hearts and homes to many refugees from Ukraine. We helped organize a benefit concert put on by the BC Canadian Polish Congress which raised $4,100 which was used to directly support those who fled the war into Poland.

Our Barka Canada team spent almost 1000 hours this summer cultivating crops at the community farm, which were sold to fund our outreach program. We are confident that our investment in organic heirloom garlic will yield dividends next harvest. We are thankful to share our harvest with those who need it this Christmas, and that we can enjoy it together in peace, knowing so many around the world are not so fortunate.

We join Pope Francis in prayer:

Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace; enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our brother or sister. Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness.

Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, and may the words “division”, “hatred” and “war” be banished from the heart of every man and woman. Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands. Amen