What a Fall!

By Tamara Rempel

What a fall! I have loved the prolonged autumn weather. My chickens have definitely appreciated being allowed to range free for almost a month more than usual. Our goats and rabbits are happy to have green grass to eat, rather than the dried stuff they would normally be subsisting on at this point. I'm pretty happy to not currently have to haul water for any of these critters. Or to have to shovel a path through the snow to go collect eggs. And I am lighting our wood stove almost more for pure enjoyment presently and to dispel the longer evenings of darkness, rather than needing it for warmth.

Does the comfortableness of this unseasonal weather make anyone else uneasy??

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When it Comes to Sustainable Living, We're a Society of Distracted Drivers (retro)

by Eric Rempel

An essay by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute intrigued me. He drew a metaphor between distracted driving and the way we all deal with sustainable living. He says driving is dangerous. In fact, it’s about the riskiest activity most of us engage in routinely.

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Winter Composting -- My Experience (retro)

By Rachael White-Simard

Since we moved out into the country many years ago, composting has been one of the things that I have tried to incorporate into my daily life . . . and into the life of my family. I love the idea of a closed waste cycle and I try hard to accomplish this.

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Regenerative Food Production for Most of Us

by Eric Rempel 

I got my agricultural degree at the University of Manitoba in the 1960s. I don't recall ever talking about regenerative agriculture then. Soil testing was considered progressive because farmers were still learning how to use chemical fertilizer. Soil tests told the farmer what chemical nutrients were in the soil which in turn helped the farmer decide how much chemical fertilizer to apply. Farmers were also just learning how to use weed control chemicals. I don't think we learned anything about crop fungicides. Our fathers had been organic farmers who knew little about chemical farming.

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From Sustainability to Transformation (retro)

By Jack Heppner

When we began writing columns for “Rethinking Lifestyle”, South Eastman Transition Initiative writers frequently used the term, “sustainability.” Our quest was to find ways to preserve resources for future generations. Our perspective was that this would require us to downscale our expectations and simplify our lifestyles to some degree.

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