Almost exactly ten years ago, the South Eastman Transition Initiative came into existence. The Initiative was then and is now a loose grouping of individuals who have coalesced around the notion that our lifestyle, focused on consumption, was and is unsustainable.
A few weeks ago, in this blog, I was imagining a revolution here in Manitoba. Don’t worry, I was thinking of a quiet revolution, a food revolution… one in which our own province becomes the major source of what goes into our mouths and bellies.
So, this is a Re-thinking Lifestyles blog post, yes? Why, then, am I writing about soil and farming?
Mother Nature does a fantastic job of keeping our earth covered in green plants. She might be the expert to consult on growing green plants – her methods differ substantially from ours but maybe we could mimic them more closely than we do.
I wrote previously in this blog of how the enticement of making sauerkraut out of squash led me to turn cook books on their heads. All thanks to largely unsung heroes, bacteria.
Recently, Thomas Daigle, technology reporter with the CBC suggested that the internet is using 11% of the total electrical energy used by humans and this percentage is increasing.
Sustainable isn’t enough. Sustainable just maintains the current state of degraded soil. What’s needed is a regenerative agriculture … to restore the soil to the level of nutrients that existed prior to industrial farming.
So Sobeys has discontinued its use of plastic checkout bags as of January 31, 2020. Sobeys claims that this will initially eliminate 225 million of these plastic bags.
You might be surprised to know that 6,000 years ago – what… 4000 BC? Yes, people in China were preserving cabbage without the use of freezers or even canners. They made sauerkraut – even then.
I think it started with the squash – I had lots, but no cabbage. I had been learning about making sauerkraut – I wanted to make sauerkraut – but difficult to do without cabbage, wouldn’t you say? And what to do with all that squash?
