… Everything I’ve described here we’ve done without government assistance. Our hamlet is a self-initiated, self-supported urban homestead that we’d love to see replicated all over the country. The feature that makes this hamlet concept so attractive is that it can be imitated in any urban setting by neighbors building bonds with one another, collaboratively growing food in neighborhood gardens, making optimal use of their local resources, and lightening their footprint on our overstrained ecosystem. And gardening, I can tell...
by Linda Gilkeson, Mother Earth News, February, 2014 Whether you grow food on a spacious homestead or are digging into your first urban garden, ditching the plant-by-rows approach and instead adopting intensive gardening techniques can help you grow a more productive garden that’s also more efficient to manage. These methods will open up a new world when it comes to small-space gardening, which can be so much more than just a few lone pots on a balcony. If you do...
Guest post by Hazel Nicholls, Project Coordinator in SD&G for Growing Up Organic You may already know that school gardens are wonderful teaching tools, providing an ideal space for teachers to engage students in hands-on learning across disciplines. Gardens are known to increase physical activity, healthy eating habits, and positively impact student achievement and behaviour. Impressive benefits to be sure! But, did you know that a school gardens can also serve as a tool for building resilient communities? Consider these...
by Daphne Miller M.D., reposted from YES! Magazine, Dec 6, 2013 I spend my days in a sterile 8×10 room practicing family medicine and yet my mind is in the soil. This is because I’m discovering just how much this rich, dark substance influences the day-to-day health of my patients. I’m even beginning to wonder whether Hippocrates was wrong, or at least somewhat misguided, when he proclaimed, “Let food be thy medicine.” Don’t get me wrong—food is important to our...
Excerpted from the Policies for Shareable Cities report at Shareable.net The sharing economy offers enormous potential to create jobs. Sharing leverages a wide variety of resources and lowers barriers to starting small businesses. Cities can lower the cost of starting businesses by supporting innovations like shared workspaces, shared commercial kitchens, community-financed start-ups, community-owned commercial centers, and spaces for “pop-up” businesses. Cities can also lower permitting barriers for home-based micro-enterprises. Sharing is also at the heart of the employment model that is designed...
A worthwhile read for parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, or educators and mentors of young people. by Amanda Witman, peakprosperity.com How do we prepare our children for a future that is unlike any we ourselves have ever known? How do we create a world worth inheriting when we are so acutely aware that the abundance our generation has taken for granted will no longer be a given in our children’s future? These questions can frustrate and even paralyze us as parents,...
by Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture, October 23, 2013 North America is full of small dying towns that are loaded with perfectly good infrastructure, cheap lots and small homes on large lots. They have commercial centers, water systems, parks, social structures and are surrounded by cheap to rent – and sometimes own – agricultural land. They are walkable, bikeable, quiet and usually human scaled. It would seem that these would be bursting with young families trying to make a go at...
Although we have no water shortage here in Cornwall, the permaculture principle that everything is connected to everything else encourages us to be aware of water issues elsewhere. Here is an example of a successful community solution to a drought-prone environment. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hmkgn0nBgk&w=640&h=360] As the world reels under the threat of unrelenting climate change, erratic monsoons and fast depleting groundwater reserves, The Miracle Water Village narrates the inspirational story of impoverished farming community in India that reversed its fortunes through its visionary...
Although we don’t see it, millions of gallons of water go into the products we buy, use and throw away. The factories that manufacture everyday materials like paper, plastic, metal and fabric depend on water to make and clean their products. Becoming aware of how we use and reuse products is an important step towards water conservation. Water is used in the production of many materials and finished products we personally use everyday. Take cars, for example. It takes 75,000...
by Annie Leonard, YES Magazine, August 2013 Consumerism, even when it tries to embrace “sustainable” products, is a set of values that teaches us to define ourselves, communicate our identity, and seek meaning through acquisition of stuff, rather than through our values and activities and our community. Today we’re so steeped in consumer culture that we head to the mall even when our houses and garages are full. We suffer angst over the adequacy of our belongings and amass crushing...