Consumable Earth – Kamloops

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…

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

I finally did it. I hung a clothesline. I now have a 40ft made mostly by nature clothes dryer and it cost me $40 whole dollars. It was surprisingly easy to hang also granted I had some help.

First we screwed in two hooks to studs coming off the house and the garage one of said studs was high up so there was some precarious ladder climbing involved. We thread the wire through each of the reels and into the winch tightener thingy. A couple muscular turns and viola! Clothesline.

Hardest part was finding somewhere sturdy clear and safe to string it. Oh and cutting the darn wire wasn’t easy either thank goodness for wire cutters. I’ve read on BC Hydro’s website that you can actually string a wire off a utility pole so long as it is just a hook and someone can unhook it easily if they need access. Best to give them a call first if you are considering this option.

We also have a mini retractable clothesline for in the house to hang the, um, more delicate items. That one was just as easy to install; two screws in the wall for the unit and screwing a hook into a stud for the other end. We don’t actually own a dryer which means hanging clothes is our only method and I am completely ok with that.

My daughter says when she is grown up there is going to be no money.

I say all the power to her. “Money is the root of all evil” or so it goes. Think about what you could do with your life and your days if it did not revolve around getting a paycheque to ‘pay the bills’. It is tryly a hard thing for people to conceive and wrap their heads around. I mean we have been raised in this reality and another is sometimes thought of simply not possible. But what if we all worked together? Or for each other for the benefit of the community instead of for some obscure corporation or ‘the man’. What if I tended your children while you fixed my car? What if Susan down the street made our clothes while Henry from next door grew potatoes for our supper? What if the world rolled back about 150 years and we started again, tried again.

Ok, obviously it is not as simple as that but one has to start somewhere right? My vote is for the change to come from within the communities. People, populations are vehicles for substantial amounts of change though we are sometimes often led to believe that this isn’t true it truly is. We are powerful. We are creators. We are the people.

So I have a profession and services to offer occasionally even stuff and I am sure you do too. Heck we all do. What if we had more time to help each other out? Start small. Do what you can for your neighbours and ask them to return the favour. Build the community and the resources we have right at our fingertips.

1. (more…)

Well obviously there are some big ones but one thing at a time or just five.

1. Spring is coming so getting rid of the gas lawn mower for a push one is definitely on it.

2. Rain barrels for collecting roof water too. It is going to take a bit of work to figure out that one or maybe it will be simple. I’ll keep you posted.

3. We should all collect our grey water and use it to flush the toilet. Too much grey water? Shame on you or you are awesome… water the lawn with it.

4. Never accept another plastic bag, ever. Ok so I am sooo close on this one I loathe the things yet I still have them. Don’t accept plastic bags.

5. Buy everything locally. Admittedly this is a big task and really lots of little tasks. Every item counts.

.: Be good to yourself and to others :.