Canada’s Agriculture Day is February 23, 2021. A day in which we raise a fork to the food we love and the people who produce it! 

The Cowichan Valley is rich in a wide variety of agriculture sectors including fruits and veggies, beef, dairy, chicken and eggs. We are very proud of the producers who are committed to providing our communities with locally grown and raised goodness right here in our backyards. 

The Cowichan Exhibition is proud to showcase and support local agriculture through our annual fair and the Islands Agricultural Show. 

What can you do to celebrate Canadian Agriculture? 

• Make some noise on social media using the #CdnAgDay hashtag
• Post a picture or video of yourself enjoying Canadian Agriculture in some way
• Cook a delicious meal of locally sourced ingredients
• Shop local for your groceries! #Supportlocal
• Talk to your kids about local ag and have a little fun with the #CdnAgDay Doodle Sheet

Let’s ‘raise a fork’ to our local agriculture producers! 

Both the Inspired Pop-Up show, held Sept 6 & 7th, and Quilts in the Barn, held Sept 11-13th, were a success! We had almost 500 entries come in over the two weekends of photography, baking, flowers, garden produce, quilts and other textiles. It has certainly been an unusual year and we want to say a big THANK YOU to every one who volunteered, brought in their entries and came to visit us! We were proud to be able to put on an event that brought the community together, while we safely stayed apart. Thank you to everyone who embraced this event in place of the regular fair that we all love and we hope to see everyone back again in 2021. 

Congratulations to all the winners of the Inspired Pop-Up Show and congrats to all the People’s Choice Award winners during the Quilts in the barn show! 

Quilts in the Barn Peoples Choice Winners:

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

“UN”FAIR-20 Event Gallery (click to enlarge)

If you’ve ever attended the Cowichan Exhibition or the Island’s Agriculture Show, you’ve probably seen the Poultry in Motion Mini Barn – a great place to learn all about what it’s like inside a chicken barn in BC. The mini barn was created to bring education to consumers about how chickens are raised in the province!

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Poultry in Motion hasn’t been able to visit all the fairs, schools and community events that they usually do, so they’ve gone digital! Click Poultry In Motion to learn all about chicken producing in BC, connect with producers and visit the kid’s section for a colouring book and some neat recipes!  

We are pleased to present “UN”FAIR-20 in September since the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic changed our regular fair plans. The “UN”FAIR will feature two live shows where exhibitors can showcase what they’ve been up to during COVID-19, when we all had unexpected time on our hands! We’ve even added some Dr. Bonnie Henry inspired classes to honour everything she has done to keep our province safe. Visitors to the shows can rest assured that we have taken all precautions to make this a safe event, while providing a way to bring our community together, while safely staying apart. Keep checking back often as we provide details on both of our shows and how you can participate! 

Thank you so much to everyone who who came out to our Drive-In movie nights this past weekend! All 4 shows were Sold-Out! 
We are so grateful to have been able to work with Fresh Air Cinema’s to put on this event for all of you. Fresh Air Cinema is in partnership with FortisBC who help to cover the cost of the events, which occur in communities across the province. 

Thanks to your generous support over $5000 was raised for Nourish Cowichan! Your donations were matched by Coastal Community Credit Union to help make this possible and we are proud to offer support to an organization that does so much good in our community. 

We would also like to give a shout out to Chek News and Return-It, additional partners of Fresh Air Cinema’s who help make this possible.

Stay tuned!

In keeping with the regulations outlined by the Provincial Health Officials, our indoor spaces are open to community gatherings such as small meetings, workshops, classes and AGM’s. We have set up the Pearmine Room and Mellor Hall to accommodate social distancing requirements and provide hand sanitizer in every room. We also have lots of available outdoor space for rent as well. Please contact the office to discuss the options for your event. We are committed to help you bring people together while safely keeping apart.

UPDATE: Tickets to Onward and The Lion King are SOLD OUT!!! There will be ABSOLUTELY NO TICKETS SOLD AT THE GATE, you must pre-register to attend. Please bring your ticket confirmation to the gate, NO TICKET = NO ENTRY!

We will be hosting a drive-in movie theatre on June 5th, 6th & 7th! This event is put on by Fresh Air Cinema and Fortis BC. Coastal Community Credit Union will be matching all donations and 100% of the proceeds will be given back to support Nourish Cowichan! For more information on the event and how you can get tickets for “Back to the Future”, click here: Outdoor Movies BC  

The health and safety of our community is of utmost importance to the staff and volunteers at the Cowichan Exhibition. We understand that extraordinary measures need to be taken so that we can adapt to the new “normal” as quickly as possible. In order to support community health and prevent the spread of COVID-19, our facilities have been closed and all events have been cancelled since March 17, 2020.

We are grateful to the leadership of our Provincial Health Officials and as the Province slowly re-opens, so will we. We are committed to ensuring that events hosted at our facility adhere to the Provincial Health guidelines and have stepped up our efforts to keep things clean and sanitized for public use.

The Cowichan Exhibition has been a supporter of community events for the past 152 years and we recognize that our plans for hosting upcoming events will need to adjust. While the events and protocols may be different, we are constantly looking for ways to bring the community together while we stay apart.

As the guidelines continue to unfold and change we are hopeful that we will be able to provide some summer events that will bring our resilient community together once again. Stay tuned!