Unstuffed: August 2012

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Greetings from my Garden!

Sometimes this is what, "stopping after work to pick up something for dinner" looks like for me. Instead of freezing in the frozen food section and waiting in line at the checkout while a musak version of the Beatles' 'Michelle' is piped through tinny speakers at the grocery store, I find myself biking in a pencil skirt and strappy sandals, to my allotments. There I'm greeted by the live-wire hum of cicadas, birdsong and a light, refreshing breeze. I feel the heels of my sandals sink into the earth as I meander between the garden beds. I pull a few carrots that need to be thinned from one bed, two summer squash from another. A quick weeding rewards me with purslane, lambsquartes and amaranth, all delicious. Added to the handful of chard, kale and turnip greens I gather, it will make for a tasty and nutrient rich vegetable dish. A flash of colour catches my eye and I quickly pick a bunch of flowers for the table at home. Grocery shopping done and bag full, I take a few moments to notice my surroundings, feel the sun on my skin and give thanks for the gifts of my garden. Back on my bike I head home to make dinner from fresh-picked, organic ingredients still warm and damp from sunshine and earth. And I didn't have to stand in line. Only thing is, without the tabloids at the checkout, I have no idea how little Suri is handling the split between Tom and Katie. Darn! ;)

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Greetings from my Living Room Chair

"To understand the profound importance of regenerative agriculture, the kind of farming that builds natural capital, we need to see it not as a fringe or retrograde activity- "unable to feed the world", as conventional agronomists would claim- but as a heroic and undersung achievement in the face of overwhelming institutional neglect, cultural dissipation, economic monopolies and dire ecological challenges from chemical, nuclear and genetic pollution, climate change and an eroding resource base in the land and in society."
~ Peter Bane

The practitioners I work for gifted me with Peter Bane's new book, The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming For Town and Country. I read the first chapter yesterday. It made me feel all tingly and excited inside.

The book was a parting gift. My job ends in a couple of weeks. I've got plans for what I'll do next. Garden farming is one of them.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Wordless Wednesday

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali