on that path

When you first arrive on site here, it appears to be just another farm, with the first 4 visible buildings all conventional-looking and boxy. You then start to notice some of the cob buildings, with their soft curves and colourful bottles embedded into the earth-toned walls, the living rooftops, and some of the artwork created right into the structure. But to gain a full appreciation of the entire "system," a tour is needed, as I received a couple of weeks ago. Quite a bit of work has been done in the 10 or so years since the original founding members bought the property.

Currently there are a number of people working under an employment program, doing projects such as fencing, masonry (thanks to a local expert guiding the team) to build outdoor stairs, and terracing in the new garden area. They are carrying out many infrastructure projects that have piled up over the years. Many of them will stay for the busy summer months to assist with the hundreds of visitors to the site, to work in the gardens, and to help in the natural building projects, along with the educational programs.

The educational programs focus mainly on permaculture, and natural building. There are also interns, who are here to learn permaculture design by working the gardens. The garden includes to large greenhouses, and a few large outdoor plots.

The community has a healing "sanctuary," built as a demonstration of cob and straw bale construction, with a massage studio operated by one of the residents, a private residence, and a meeting room. It is a lovely space to spend time in; you can breathe in and smell the earthiness of it - no artificial materials here - and yet it is a very comfortable place, with heat radiating out of the floor.

The tour doesn't end there, however. There is a workshop, a "credit union" for humanure processing, a new timberframe cob and straw bale building going up, and many other aspects practicing the principle of "closed loop living".

Tonight I'll be making a Shepherd's Pie with mince pork. The pork came from Thelma, a pig raised here last year. All the vegetables will be from the garden.

Chris and I have been using as many of the vegetables grown on site as we can. Since it's so warm here, and the greenhouse is still up, there's actually still quite a bit to harvest from the garden: kale, spinach, swiss chard, and all sorts of root veggies still in the garden like carrots, rutabagas, and parsnips. There's still lots of potatoes to eat, along with apples from the orchard.

The freezer is full of meat produced on site. In addition to Thelma, there is also lots of ducks and chickens in the freezer, a few turkeys, and every day the chickens produce 30 or so eggs. More than we can eat. It's really exciting to be eating so much food produced right here!

There are 4 sheep roaming around outside, but so far I think only their wool has been harvested; I'm not sure what the plans are for them.

The kitchen we cook in is make-shift and temporary. Plans are in the making to build communal space including a new kitchen.

I'm really quite enthused to offer some of my own design input for this future kitchen, which may or may not be used, some day. Think about it: there is so much to a sustainable communal kitchen compared to the kitchens normally used in this consumer, throw-away, high-food-miles society. A sustainable communal kitchen facilitates:
- all sorts of food preservation and processing technology, including food dryers, fermentation (eg, to produce krauts), yogurt and cheese making, pressure-cooker canning, flour milling, wood-fired oven, solar oven, Which leads to:
- local food procurement. Without proper food preservation and processing technology, the community needs to buy more of it's food already processed, which often means non-local. For example, much of the grain grown on the island is not milled. If we don't have a flour mill, we need to buy grain that is already milled, which is only available as non-local. If there is a flour mill set up and ready to use in the kitchen, we can more easily "buy local" because we can make our own flour from island-grown grain.
- lots of storage space to store food harvested on site. This includes lots of shelves for canned products, a root cellar, perhaps an ice-house for cool storage,
- ease of use. All of this infrastructure needs to be accessible, and largely built-in. For example, the food drying equipment needs to be built-in, not sitting disassembled in a box on a shelf, otherwise, the incentive to use it is greatly reduced
- zero-waste. In order to reach zero-waste, a sustainable kitchen needs to be set up carefully so that recycling and composting are really easy to accomplish. Recycling and composting stations need to be an integral part of the kitchen design, not an add-on, to maximize usage.
- green procurement. A sustainable kitchen supports green procurement by increasing the consumption of community and other local foods. This also assists in reaching zero-waste, as the reliance on non-local packaged food is greatly reduced, thereby reducing waste.

If anyone out there has some leads on plans for such a kitchen, please let me know!

What if?

Our new home! We've downsized quite a bit from my house in Whitehorse, but this 28-foot trailer it's keeping the rain off us, keeps us warm, and we can cook and read books quite comfortably. Besides, there is plenty of "common space" here in the community, and Fergus is quite happy in the "Tag 2" commonroom, where we eat communally. He even started walking there! He loves being around the other kids, and of course, the sheep.

This week, Chris and I are cooking for the 10 or so people here for the week. The usual cook, Marisa, has gone with her family to Toronto to visit a sick relative, and we agreed to fill in, as neither of us are working as yet and can afford the time.

For today's lunch I'm "going local" with a potato and fennel soup, Lemon-scented Quinoa Salad with our own scarlet runner beans thrown in, and tahini dressing. Chris is on dinner duty, with a leg pork roast (or "Thelma" as the resident six-year-old informed me one evening over dinner). We'll harvest veggies from the garden this afternoon to accompany Thelma.