Consumable Earth – Kamloops

PRESS RELEASE from the City of Kamloops – Internet Helps Kamloops Commuters Go Green

Kamloops— Kamloops commuters now have an additional alternative to driving alone to work.
The City of Kamloops, in partnership with BC’s Commuter Connections, is providing a free ride
matching service to local area residents through their on-line ride matching program,
www.carpool.ca.

“Carpool.ca takes about two minutes to use”, says Anne Marie Thornton, Director of Commuter
Connections, a BC-based non-profit that is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions
through the implementation and promotion of ridesharing. “Commuters enter in their own
information and instantly receive a match list of potential carpoolers. The site is free, easy to use,
and secure. In addition to ride matching services, the Carpool.ca website contains a variety of
information and resources including a cost calculator and carpool etiquette tips.”

Commuters simply visit the website www.carpool.ca., choose “Kamloops” from the list on the
“Find a Carpool” page and fill out an on-line form. After submitting their information, participants
instantly receive a list of potential carpool matches. All information is kept strictly confidential.
By providing commuters a fast and convenient way to find carpool matches, the City of Kamloops
hopes that the introduction of this travel demand management program will help to further reduce
vehicle emissions and alleviate increasing traffic congestion. The www.carpool.ca service is used
throughout Canada, with over 8,000 registrants and growing.
The total annual cost for the program is $7,000 of which $6,000 is sponsored by the BC Climate
Exchange, a program managed by the Fraser Basin Council, and the remaining $1,000 is
contributed from the City of Kamloops.

When: Sunday November 15, 2009 at 2:00pm-6:00pm (Third Sunday of Month)
Where: 2853 Bowers Pl, Kamloops, BC
Contact: Caroline Cooper at 250.374.4646

We will be hosting a Weston A. Price Foundation Potluck. Please bring one nourishing traditional dish to share with others. If you are unsure of what a nourishing traditional dish is, please read Dietary Guidelines and Dietary Dangers. Please bring a list of ingredients for the dish or a copy of the recipe. This is for those people with food allergies or sensitivities to even properly prepared nourishing traditional foods.

We will be discussing the formation of a herd share program for Kamloops. If you are interested in raw milk, please come to this meeting.

November 14 - Food Gathering

You are invited to share your knowledge and enjoy great food. The motivation behind this event is to get local growers and consumers to start dialoguing – sharing their knowledge / skills / expertise / etc. Although they want to get people talking they are by no means limiting the dialogue to local growers – all are welcome.

10-4pm
Neskonlith Hall.
5km West of Chase.

Suggested donation $2.
For more information contact Judy – 679 3082 or Illona 679 8421

With the change of each season there is a new set of tasks and jobs and projects that arises. Shortly before the frost hit my girlfriend and I filled out pockets with paper bags and with a pencil behind my ear we wandered through her yard gathering seeds that will be planted next spring. I’ve come home on more than one occasion now carefully clutching a handful of seeds that I knocked off a flower head while walking the streets of my neighborhood.

Having recently moved into a home that I plan on spending the next decade in I would like to get a head start on whatever I can in regard to the gardens for the coming spring. I’ve been talking to people who garden and filling my head with all the sorts of tasks that I can do now before the ground freezes so that I will be better prepared to get my garden growing next year.

Next up: Raised beds.

It turns out that building and preparing a raised bed is a perfect fall activity. Building them now and filling them with earth, leaves, compost, manure and/or straw will give the soil lots of time to settle before I try to plant things in them in the spring. Fortunately I have a stockpile of wood neatly stacked along one of my fences that I have recently taken an interest in. In particular the 12′ x 36′ cedar boards that I have now decided will be what I use to build my raised garden beds.

There is 15 yards of gravel coming to my house later this week. The gravel will become what my beds sit on. The entire area will be gravelled so that I don’t have to deal with weeds and to provide good drainage for my boxes.

I’ve screwed together 6 3ftx6ft  frames that will become my beds. Each of them is held together at the corners with a wedge of 2×4 (also from the scrap pile) that has it’s pointy part sticking down. The idea is that they will serve as little stakes that keep the beds in place and provide the boards with some support. I guess. I don’t know I just read this all on the internet and copied what people told me to do. I’ll keep you posted about how they hold up.

Next project… indoor winter greens…

…. simple ideas to accomplish well nourishing your body without a lot of work. Super Fast “In a Pinch” recipes. Looking at trends in diet, raw, vegan, low-fat, high fat, blood type, paleolithic, macrobiotics and more. What to look for / avoid at your market or grocery store. How to effectively include local eating in your everyday, regardless of season.

Back in the 20s, North Americans could buy fresh raw whole milk, real clabber and buttermilk, luscious naturally yellow butter, fresh farm cheeses and cream in various colors and thicknesses. Today’s milk is accused of causing everything from allergies to heart disease to cancer, but when North Americans could buy Real Milk, these diseases were rare. In fact, a supply of high-quality dairy products was considered vital to North American security and the economic well being of the nation.

What’s needed today is a return to humane, non-toxic, pasture-based dairying and small-scale traditional processing, in short . . . a campaign for real milk.

In an effort to provide this for my family and my community I would like to put out there to anyone interested in joining a cow share in Kamloops. A cow share is basically an arrangement in which a group of people all own shares of a cow collectively. Because we all own the cow it is then legal for us to distribute it’s raw unprocessed milk amongst ourselves. Not sell it. We can get together and make cheeses for our families. Enjoy fresh real cream and home whipped butter.

If this is something that you would be willing to support please contact me or leave a comment. I have pasture in Westsyde and husbandry skills. I need milkers; minimum two for morning shifts and two for evening shifts. There would be benefits to being a milker. For more information on cow shares please visit the hard working folks at http://www.wildthingorganics.ca

Fall is harvest time. There is something truly magical about it and I love hearing about the many ways in which people prepare for the coming cold season. Here at home we continue our path of exploring food storage and choices that we make.

I was fortunate enough to inherit a large box of pears and apples earlier this month. The apples were easy they went into small shallow boxes and in the root cellar. I was then posed with the daunting task of what the heck to do with 50+ lbs of pears! I cold packed and canned half of them, dehydrated half of what was left and the rest we ate. We must have eaten at least one or two pears a day for two weeks. There are still pears in my fridge that I have been told to make pear sauce with. Oh yeah pear sauce is really really good.

Urs Bauman of Quail’s Farm has been so kind as to supply my flour for years now. Fall is when I buy it and the night before I pick it up is when he grinds the grains. I purchase 10kg bags of rye, spelt and wheat flour and then store them in large rubbermaid bins, in my cellar.

What I am interested in sourcing locally is nuts and seeds. Being vegetarians we eat a lot of these and so finding a local source would be beautiful. Currently we order them bulk through a wholesale food order that gets put in twice a year. They get stored in the freezer.

Frost hit rather suddenly this year and I know that a few farmers were hit somewhat unexpectedly which resulted in loss of crops. I remember a recent cold market morning chatting with growers who frantically picked the last of their produce late the day before and what they could salvage that morning.

One thing we’ve loved in exploring food storage is how it is bringing us in touch with where our food comes from. We are also discovering how ‘convenient’ our world has become in such a short time, how we are about to lose an entire generation of knowledge regarding food storage and household husbandry skills that our grandparents took for granted. It makes me thankful that I have had the realization to bring it back so that I might pass it along to my children maybe even living to see a shift in how we all think about food.

I happened across this the other day and my first thought was, ‘Hey what I cool idea I can do that.’ And then I thought about it a little more and then I read a few of the articles and comments that people were making about the idea and I thought, ‘yeah food is easy if you are homeless’. And then I thought about it a little more…. what if you aren’t homeless? What about the single mother who is struggling to make ends meet? I bet she would sure appreciate a few PB&J sandwiches for the kiddos. What about the senior who never eats anything that is all that good for her? I bet if you sat and hung around with her for a while munching on a sandwich you’d be the highlight of her week.

The point being. I love the idea. I love the simplicity of it. Our problems can really be that simple. We love to complicate things and say oh but what about this or that or when blah blah blah. Why can’t we just smile at each other a little more and start with that?

So what is a simple solution? How about socks? It’s getting cold out and I would hazard a guess that most people who live outside could use another pair of decent socks. I go into thrift stores all the time and I am going to start buying socks. Good ones, thick ones, wool ones and ones that have no holes in them. I am going to put two pairs of socks in my bag and when I see a man on the street who looks like he just might live not too far from there I am going to give him a pair of socks.

Another simple thing is that I donate all of my clothes to the women’s shelter. I have a clothing habit like most women. I purchase clothing from thrift stores on a regular basis and am constantly rotating my closet. Most of the clothes are perfect, relatively in style and will do a girl just fine, maybe even excite her to find, during a rough patch of her life.

Please feel free to share your simple ideas for giving back and helping to support your community.

May 2, 2009 10:30 am to 12:30 pm

Join the Council of Canadians, Citizens for a Just Peace and Kamloops District Labour Council for the 33rd Annual Walk for Peace, the Environment and Social Justice.

There will be music, speakers, activities for kids, sign painting and the walk starts at noon. Gather infront of Stuart Wood Elementary at 245 St Paul St at 10.30 am.

Contact Anita Strong for more information 250.377.0055