Next Tour: This Sunday May 3rd from 10am to 12:30 pm. Please contact us to reserve your spot. ann@eco-sense.ca or 250-478-2680

The Update… a little late
Every month lends to a dilemma, we usually burst into the month with vigor, spewing thoughts, experiences and new found knowledge, feverishly writing our updates early so as the month draws to a close the update will just need a little tinkering. Then the dilemma, we enter the second, third and fourth weeks of the month…and at month end we open up the saved file…. This month has turned into three months without an update.

So what are the topics for this month? Local food…Ann’s rant on Sustainability in the Highlands…Public tours…Workshops…swine flu…and finally…Eco-Sense T-Shirts!

Tours:
If the recent public tour of April 5, 2009 is any sign… it’s going to be long. Our April tour from 10 am-12:30 (2 ½ hours) turned into a 10am… till 2:10 pm. It was foreshadowed when just before the tour Ann turned to Gord and said “OK! I’ll let you talk today.” Then came the group introductions where people briefly express their areas of interest, at which point Gord turned to Ann and said… “WOW… this… is going to be a long tour.”

T-Shirts for the triple bottom line:
This month we wanted to talk policy, food sovereignty, energy decentralization, and the immense amount of interest people have in sustainable everything. But before everything else… to respond to the question that we have always said “NO” to and now say “YES”. Yes, we now have Eco-Sense T-shirts available, despite marketing and logos going against all our values, and being terrible with anything sales related, we have broken down from the requests. I can just see it… Move on over Martha Stewart… it says “Eco-Sense” on that compost thermometer! So for all those interested in their very own Eco-Sense organic cotton T-Shirt they are now available. $20 (Sorry, no thermometers yet.)

Highlands Sustainability Task Force:
Ann is the sole female member on the newly formed Highlands Sustainability Task force that has six month to come up with a plan to present to council. This is proving to be a very interesting process for Ann who is new to the committee method and fears too much talk and not enough action. But those with much more committee experience feel that things are moving very quickly…interesting to observe the different perspectives on progress. But then, Ann and Gord are well known for their rapid progress with Eco-Sense and getting things done.

Eco-Sense and Bare Mountain:
Ann presented some innovative outside the box ideas to the nine member task force last week. It was well received by most, except one task force member, (a Bear Mountain property developer), who repeated laughed and rolled his eyes at the ideas presented.

Last fall Ann started thinking about sustainability in relation to municipal taxes when the family received their 2008 BC assessment on the Eco-Sense home. Basically the family will be paying extra municipal taxes because of their $80,000 sustainable energy investment for all their future energy generation. The PDF version of this power point presentation is available here: http://highlands-sustainability.wikidot.com/heat-tax-presentation

The basic concept for the Highlands Eco-Action Tax (HEAT) is that our homes and the way we live within them impacts “Natural Capital”. These impacts, from resource use to carbon footprint can be offset in three major ways.
1. Environmental Capital (lifestyle changes and efficiencies)
2. Social Capital (volunteerism – personal time and energy)
3. Financial Capital (money)

Check out the presentation to learn about these ideas. It is Ann’s hope that many more ideas will be spawned from this initial discussion.

Changing minds and behaviours:
It seems that our biggest challenge as a species is how to change our behaviors. It is our opinion that people will only change VERY slowly unless there is an immediate threat or a financial stick. Our Sustainability Task Force has to come up with ideas to effect change but it seems that the public doesn’t want to change their behaviours, doesn’t want to pay for their impacts, but wants climate change and green energy to be addressed. We need a Reality Check…the threat from converging catastrophes is not going to have a happy fairy tale ending without some real action. We all need to change behaviours, change lifestyles, reinvent a sustainable economy, and throw tonnes of money at these actions… without this we are living in a fairy tale world. Our politicians are unlikely to lead us here, so we all need to create the movement so the brave politicians can then jump in front of the parade and start to lead.

Teaching about Food Sovereignty:
How do you teach your kids about the importance of food sovereignty, besides giving one and not the other dinner, fend off the hungry one with a dangerous compost thermometer as a weapon and an ORGANIC COTTON Eco-Sense T-Shirt as a distraction? At the Baird house, we don’t actually starve any kids to teach food sovereignty, but we do initiate discussions about food at the dinner table. What better way to learn about food while you are breaking bread together. The other benefit is that no kids dare complain about the dinner contents…

Really local food:
This month starts with deciding to prepare for chickens… (vegans cover your ears)… meat birds to be exact. Yup, we are busy considering the implication of raising a few meat birds while eating our lentil, sesame seed, sunflower seed, and raisin dahl. The discussions include the kids planning to each raise their own chicks. This is a big step on behalf of the kids and Ann (who regularly cuddle the laying hens), all willing to move forward with this plan. Gord, pleased with the level of rational, notes how great it would be, and how special it would be, for Emily and Parker to each have their own special chicken… for their birthday dinner! Ann almost spit out her lentils and the kids both fell silent and cocked their heads as if to process what they thought they just heard… all while Gord spilled into tears of laughter.

Food security starts with knowing where your food comes from, and being comfortable on how to grow, manage and process it yourself or support local farmers doing the same. If one chooses to eat meat one needs to accept that meat comes from living creatures. Eating local for us means eating some local, organic, and well treated animals.

We had some friends over earlier in the month and the discussion arose about the costs of food. In this home we spend $300/month on food for Ann, Gord, Emily and Parker. This includes the $100 spent on local goat milk. We look at our dinners with excitement wondering what innovation will arrive on the table. As Gord makes the kids lunches… there is a more resigned excitement… and when the morning brings oatmeal the kids are surprisingly full from the dinner the night before. We use simple ingredients, nothing fancy, but good and healthy.

One key step to sustainability is learning how to cook with basic ingredients, like beans, and turnip, and spices, and so on. Breads are homemade with ground grains, seeds, nuts and our ladies eggs; we always look forward to a new batch of bread every two days.

Swine Flu:

We are amazed at the speed that the world can act when there is an immediate threat to humans like Swine Flu or the economic threat of DEPRESSION…yes we said the “D” word!!! Flood waters of climate change are a heck of a lot more disastrous than epidemics and not being able to buy a home or new American made car… and no action on this will (is) resulting in much more harm to the many living populations living on the earth. The most dangerous swine flu is the viral pigs protecting their fat hams at the expense of the climate. OOOPS… a rant. (Apologies to the actually pigs that are beautiful intelligent creatures, that unfortunately we have attached negative connotations)

And just so everyone knows…every rant gets embedded into the cob…to be preserved for five hundred or so years. Our email updates from the past year are going into the walls of our cold storage building to be constructed this year…we may even slip some history into the cob walls of the bathroom at Eagles Lake. If anyone has items they wish preserved please let us know. There is SOOOO much going on these days that needs to be preserved for future generations in non electronic format.

Workshops and Courses:
We are doing lots of teaching this year from our tours to solar PV to earthen floors and counters, to hands on cob workshops, to resource recovery (grey water and, yes, s*h*i*t, recovery). Check out our website or follow this link. http://www.islandnet.com/~anngord/services.html#tours

Ok, there it is!!!
Ann and Gord