You don't need to wait for an election to vote

Elections. That amazingly democratic time that comes around every four years or so and gives us, the people, a chance to have our voices heard, to show the elite that we are in charge and to bring about the changes we want to see. All great and valid points as to why we should vote, except, four years is a long time to wait to have your voice heard. Why wait when you have the ability to vote with your actions and your money every single day. If you get angry about oil spills, use less fuel.

If you disagree with the amount of plastic polluting the planet, reduce your plastic consumption.

If deforestation makes you sad, be careful where your wood, palm oil, meat or soya are sourced.

If water shortages and droughts keep you up at night, use less water.

If corporate tax dodging seems unfair, give your money to small, independent, local businesses instead.

If you are concerned about the dwindling fish numbers, eat responsibly sourced fish (or none at all).

If the banking industry seems corrupt, where are your savings?

If Genetically Modified foods make you nervous, buy organic.

If the exploitation of miners across the world seems unjust, consider where your electronics and jewellery  come from?

If child labour seems cruel, don't buy cheap clothes.

There are a lot of problems in the world and if we continue to support them with our actions and money they will continue to be problems. Vote everyday and we can start to see real change.

A Month of Sunrises

According to the UN 54% of the world's population live in cities, a figure that is only expected to increase.  Man made dominates in the city, a concrete jungle of traffic, wifi, and pollution in all it's forms are ever present. Nature doesn't get much of a look in except in our small backyards, parks, or tree lined roads. Which means that an increasing number of the world's population are not getting a daily connection to nature. I am one of them. With this realisation I wanted to see if there was a way to connect with nature on a daily basis while remaining very much in the city and in my regular routine. I decided I would watch the sunrise every day for a month. It wouldn't be a big connection, it would undoubtedly be better if I could go off and climb a mountain every day, but it would be a closer connection than if I did nothing which was a step int he right direction. Now I should make one thing clear, I have never been a morning person. I have very strongly been in the 'snooze until it is almost impossible to get where you need to go in time' category. I always wanted to be a morning person, it's just the evening version of myself with all the good intentions to get up early differed from the morning version of myself who had control of the snooze button. The same "morning me" definitely put up a strong case as to why I should stay in bed at 5:20am when the alarm went off on the first day of July. But as I climbed up onto my roof with the all important cup of tea carefully balanced in one hand and sat watching the sun lazily creep up over the horizon,  I wondered why I didn't do this every morning. The city is a very different place at that time of day. A blanket of peacefulness drapes over an otherwise hectic scene. People create a lot of noise when they are awake, it is amazing how many other things you can hear when most of us are asleep, especially the birds. I guess every time I had been up at that time of day I was in a rush to go somewhere, I had never simply sat and observed. But the birds of the city put on an impressive daily performance to a sleeping audience.

As the month went by I started to notice other changes in the environment that I would have otherwise missed. A foggy day had far more consequences on my morning than before as it made for a dull view. For a few days in a row the city even had smoke from a nearby forest fire block the view entirely. I had to, rather happily, adjust my alarm clock each morning to account for the slightly later sunrise and noticed the sun start to edge her way south as the days grew marginally shorter. All of these are things I knew happened but I had never sat to experience the subtle changes myself.

As for all the negatives of getting up early none really manifested. I wasn't constantly exhausted, if anything I felt refreshed. I was able to establish a morning routine with far less distractions and achieve things before my day had usually started. The biggest lesson from all this however was that you don't have to make big changes to change. You don't need to quit your job and live in a cabin in the woods to be connected to nature. The smallest actions can be enough to put you a step closer to where you want to go. If you take lots of small steps soon enough you'll have run a marathon.

Change Makers Vancouver- Our Community Bikes

As part of a new project called Change Makers I am interviewing people and organisations who are doing things a little differently and are creating positive change in the world. The aim of this is to share some inspiring projects and show that there are alternatives to using unethical corporations, connect people looking to be the change to companies that can help them achieve that goal and maybe even encourage you to start something of your own.

Our Community Bikes is based in Vancouver and from the outside looks like a regular bike shop. However things are done a little differently inside. In this bike shop you don't simply pay for someone to fix your bike, you fix your own bike with the guidance of trained bike mechanics. It doesn't stop there either, they offer skills training, employment therapy and bikes for people who could't afford one otherwise.

It is about education, self reliance, getting your hands dirty and as I learned after chatting with Jesse Cooper, who has been with the organisation since 2003, a whole lot more.

Tell me what Our Community Bikes is all about? 

Our Community Bikes is about education, empowerment, empathy, and accessibility. We look to give new life to the hopeless, bringing back the lost, the forgotten, and allow each person and bike to tell their stories through refurbishment, recycling, and reuse.

How do you differ from a regular bike store?

We allow the interaction of maintenance with the customer. We are encouraging them to hang out and pick up a tool, and learn some technical skills, empower themselves. We also offer a large range of used parts that comes from donations and salvage. This offers a bit more choice in the financial realm. We also specialize in the restoration of obsolete technologies, as we have the skill and parts to refurbish bikes that no longer have after market parts available, or very few. As well, we run different types of social programming, like volunteer training, peer skills, life skills, occupation therapy and job instruction for staff, volunteers and other folks.

What was the inspiration behind starting Our Community Bikes? 

Mostly it was about accessibility. Impoverished or low income families that relied on bikes to move around the city needed a source of inexpensive service and parts. Also, the idea was to create a community hub were many folks of all walks could come together and learn from each other's life stories. Environmental, we were able to create a recycling outlet for all the bikes moving to the landfill, as well as generate revenues from the salvage!

What did those involved with the start up do before this? Were they very experienced in this industry?

The people who helped start up were cyclists themselves, but from different backgrounds and experiences. Only one or two had firm mechanical experience. Many of them though were active in pushing cycling as a transportation alternative. Activists if you will.

Were there any difficulties that the team faced in starting such a unique enterprise?

In the first five years, funding ran dry and the directors were almost sure that we would have to close our doors. But it turned around and through a little luck and some hard work it came back.

At the beginning the lack of experience from a financial, management, and mechanical perspective posed many challenges as well. It took some time to get some experience.

Why do you think it is important to have a space where people work on their own bikes rather than pay for someone to fix it for them?

The biggest thing we face today is a separation from out tools and our technologies. We aren't allowed the opportunity to be interactive with our material possession in such a way that we can understand it's basics. The trend of just being an operator isn't conducive to healthy learning. Offering the public a space to understand their tools and their equipment is empowerment. It foster the growth of confidence and curiosity. We needn't be a specialist to understand but only curious, which leads to many more levels of healthy learning and broadening understanding. It's a path to accepting community!

What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their own business or non-profit that contributes to positive change?

Hold fast!!   It's really challenging as any business owner knows to start this sort of thing, but reach out to your community for help! Get many hands on board! Look for volunteers that can bring managerial experience and a dedicated team. Don't let lack of funds be the barrier, because some creative media, and thinking and fundraising can bring that in.

What are the next steps for Our Community Bikes?

We are to settle in to our new space, pay off our loan and pay back into our line credit, start some living wage policy for staff, and start a new round of strategic planning. We want to get that financial buffer back, and acknowledge the staff skill so we are able to retain the skill we help develop, and start spinning up more programming oriented towards people with barriers and other various groups in need.

We also have a fundraiser in our space (a party) on Friday the 30th of October, and that we are also looking for one time and monthly donors through our donate button from our website. It goes through Canada Helps, which automatically issues tax receipts.

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/pedal-foundation/

What is the change you want to see in the world?

It would be great see social equity take the stage, bringing about empathy and understand, community, which would in turn trump personal gain and greed.

Thanks to Jesse and the team at Our Community Bikes www.pedalpower.org/

Give a little thought to the next time your bike needs some love and see if you could perhaps support a great organisation while learning a new set of skills in the process.

Connect and learn about food without growing it yourself

Living in a city isn't ideal for growing your own food. I have been city bound for several years in London and now Vancouver. I have always wanted to grow my own food and become a little more connected to the whole process but time or space has often offered me enough of an excuse to avoid starting. This is the first year I have ever really prioritised learning about food. It's strange, with hindsight, to think it has taken me 32 years to get around to learning about something I am so reliant on and interact with every few hours. I still face the same issue of lack of space but this year I have made more time for learning. That extra time has allowed me to start a Permaculture Design Course and volunteer one day every week on an urban farm. While these experiences have taught me a lot about food they have also made me realise that food production can be very time consuming and some people simply don't and never will have the time. But what I have also discovered is that there is still lots of ways to understand, connect with and learn about food than working on a farm. Here are a list of ways you can learn more about your food without growing it yourself.

Avoid the Supermarket. Supermarkets might give off the impression that they are in it to provide healthy, affordable, nutritious meals for you and your family but lets face it, at the end of day they just want your money. The supermarket experience disconnects you from your food. Too much choice, everything wrapped in packaging so it lasts longer, picked way before it's ripe so it ripens on the way to you, lots of waste and staff who often aren't connected to the food supliers. Buying food in a supermarket is a chore and there is very little opportunity to learn about the food you are buying other than the fact it comes with another one free.

Shop at local stores instead of the supermarket. Buy your food from local grocers, delis and butchers. The experience allows you to connect with the food much more as you can ask the staff questions about the food. You'd be surprised how much information the staff in a smaller grocery store can provide if you simply ask. Most are happy to tell you and can even give you advice on other things you might like to try. There is more of an interaction between staff and the food and therefore there is more interaction between you and the food. It is often locally sourced, less packaging and you can ask them to order things in or offer advice on how it should be cooked.

Farmers Markets allow you to speak directly to the person who most likely nurtured that carrot from seed to food. You can ask whether it is organic or not, where it was grown, how big the farm is, how many staff, do they have chickens? All of these interactions allow you to understand the process behind your food getting to your plate which makes eating it much more enjoyable.

Community Supported Agriculture or CSA for short raises the stakes once again. The concept is that you sign up in advance for a share of food for a whole season. The farmers get busy growing the food and you collect the food each week. A CSA directly connects you to your food. You eat seasonal produce that was harvested the same day, you share the experience with the farmer of abundance and shortages, and you taste what real, fresh, nutritious food is supposed to taste like. You can ask all the questions you want, you will build up a relationship with the farmers and you can more than likely actually help harvest the food if you can spare a little bit of time.

Bake, Ferment, Preserve offer relatively quick and easy ways to start understanding your food a little more than just handing over money in exchange. Bake some bread, ferment some cabbage into Sauerkraut or simply preserve some pickles for winter. I can assure you that baked bread tastes considerably better than any store brought bread (N.B. this may only apply to you the baker).

Sprout some seeds. While technically sprouting seeds is growing something it is so amazingly easy and quick to do that I can't think of a good enough excuse for you not to try this at least once. It will cost you next to nothing as all you need is a window sill, a glass jar, water and some seeds. They may not feed your entire family but they offer that connection to seeing food, that you have looked after, grow. It will take you back to being at kindergarten growing cress and you will be just as excited the first time you see the seeds grow. Sprouted seeds are also incredibly nutritious for you too. Here are some great instructions on how to sprout.

I know for some people the cost of food can be the main priority in all of this. While some delis and butchers can be over priced you don't need to buy all of your food from them just a few pieces once every few weeks and sprouting really will not cost you more than the price of a loaf of bread.

If you have any other suggestions for how people can start to better understand their food please share in the comments below.

Change Makers Vancouver - The Homesteaders Emporium

As part of a new project called Change Makers I am interviewing people and organisations who are doing things a little differently and are creating positive change in the world. The aim of this is to showcase some inspiring projects, connect people looking to be the change to companies that can help them achieve that goal and maybe even encourage you to start something of your own.

The Homesteaders Emporium is a store that I have visited a lot since I first discovered it. In their words they are 'a one-stop-shop for urban homesteading'. If you aren't familiar with homesteading, it is anything related to living a self sufficient lifestyle. Growing, preserving and making your own food, raising animals, foraging... it's a long list that comes under the homesteading umbrella. So for me The Homesteaders Emporium is like being a kid in a candy store. It is empowering to know that there is an alternative to simply relying on paying other people to make things for you and that with a little bit of patience, practice and mindfulness you can take a lot more responsibility for the things you consume.

Tell me about The Homesteaders Emporium what is it all about?

Homesteader’s Emporium is a small brick-and-mortar shop located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Our goal is to make it more accessible for folks to gain skills, tools, and materials to move toward more self-sufficient lifestyles. Living in a pretty unique period of time where it’s almost impossible to ignore how our interactions, behaviours and ways of life affect not only our own immediate environments, but the global climate as well, this shop is an effort to offer access and opportunity for urbanites to develop skills in self-sufficiency for more sustainable living practices. We sell and rent supplies, create community to learn with, and are also a bridge for folks to access mentors and teachers to learn news skills through our workshop programs.

Homesteader’s Emporium is one tiny window folks in the city can look into to find connection to the everyday basics of life - things our fast-paced city lives can miss entirely. I was listening to an elder share about his last train ride when a little boy pointed to some animals outside and said “what are those?”. His mom answered “cows.” The elder was shocked. My roommate had a similar story working with kids on a small farm called Southlands. Recently she told me of a group of kids who were super excited about helping out on the farm because it was like being in Mine Craft. They moved around the farm walking like pixelated square avatars, moving bales around and feeding the chickens in robotic motion. A part of living in the city means prioritizing efficiency and productivity, which sometimes means not being able to, or forgetting to prioritize the basics of life, such as food. What is ground beef? What is soap? Where does my fried chicken come from? WHAT?!?! A real chicken?? But they’re so cute!

What was the inspiration behind starting The Homesteaders Emporium?

Our store was born of necessity. In 2012 if you lived in the Lower Mainland and wanted to get into beekeeping, cheese making, fermenting, etc, there wasn’t really an easy way for you to do that. You had to track down a club, mail order supplies you’d never seen before, fiddle around and jerry-rig your own equipment, and generally work pretty hard to be successful. We wanted to make DIY just a little bit more accessible, and our own experiences indicated the best way to do that was to make supplies and education available in a brick-and-mortar space.

What did those involved with the start-up do before this? Were they very experienced in this industry?

Our starting team was drawn together by our hobbies and passion for making from scratch, but none of us really had professional experience with running a store. We just were trying to create something we felt was really important. The owner (Rick) worked a bit at Mountain Equipment Co-op, and that really coloured the type of shopping experience and work environment we wanted to create. He also tutored kids in an after school program, and dabbled in IT consulting. The other early hires were a hair stylist, off-duty school teacher, and a young mother re-entering the workforce. We were and are a bit of a ragtag crew, but we make it work!

Were there any difficulties you faced in starting such a unique business?

There were and are. The biggest challenge is education - after all, we’re not really in the product business, we’re in the skill business. The products just happen to be where we get our revenue, but they aren’t what keeps us in business. That means we spend more of our time coordinating workshops, compiling resources, and writing instructions than we do selling product - even though we don’t earn money on those things!

Most stores selling specialty goods end up charging a high premium, but our whole aim is to make the activities we cater to accessible. That means we’re trying to juggle a large number of suppliers and many, many different products, without applying a higher markup than a larger chain store might. To do this, we use inventory tracking that is much more complex than the average store our size, and spend a lot of time sweet-talking suppliers to work with us on our orders.

Why should people try homesteading instead of just buying things from a store?

1. It’s way more expensive to buy ready-made products from a store. For example, sauerkraut takes about 30mins of effort to make, but costs $5-10/litre in stores and farmer’s markets. If you made it at home it would cost you about buck or two at most and I’d bet you’d like it more!
2. It’s gratifying to make things. People are creators. We’re agents of change. We like to move things around and transform them. Growing your own food from seed, making your own cheese, composting your own scraps then turning it into nutrient-rich soil for your garden - doing these things not only FEELS satisfying, but it creates a special connection between you and your self. Learning these skills shifts where your source of life comes from - your source of life being food, water, shelter, clothing, community, etc. It is extremely empowering to be very closely connected to your source of life. When you make something from scratch, you become attached to every aspect of the process. When you buy something, you’re only attached to the outcome. Can you imagine what kind of impact this can have in our lives?

What tips would you offer someone looking to start being more self sufficient?

Start small or go all in. Whatever works best for you, but don’t be too attached to the outcomes of your experiments. The other day I wanted to make no-knead sourdough bread, which was a first for me. I had seen some folks do this at different stages of the Tartine-style process but I had never seen the whole process through. I also have a short attention span for multi-stepped instructions, so I skimmed the process and went for it. At the end of the day, I had messed up every possible step either in timing or in technique, but decided to bake my loaves anyway. They weren’t the perfectly chewy crusted, soft and airy loaves my partner and friends make, but they were excellent toasted with butter and I was happy to share them with my friends and family. Most importantly, I learned a bunch from the million mistakes I made (turning and shaping are different things for example!), so I am really excited to apply those lessons to my next batch! I imagine, like with most things, these projects get better with time, as long as we stay open enough to keep learning.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their own business that contributes to positive change?

Your greatest challenge will likely be to find a balance between pursuing your mission and making enough money to keep operating. Remember that while you may not be in business to make money, you need to make money to be in business. Watch your cash flow and keep on top of your books. Find a good bookkeeper before you do anything else. The values-based for-profit has not yet gained broad acceptance in our economy, so get ready to be pulled in both directions. Good luck!

What are the next steps for Homesteader’s Emporium?

We’re working on providing more resources for home-learning, as a way to complement the in-store experience. For example, our rentals program is really popular, and our staff can give some advice on how to use a rented item (e.g. a honey extractor or a pasta maker). Soon though, we’ll have instructional videos to go with most of them!

What is the change you want to see in the world?

We want to live in a world where people are connected again to how things are made and where things come from. Obviously everyone can’t do everything, but we think by making it easier to engage with products by making them, we can encourage more conscientious consumer behavior. It starts with food - learn to make cheese, learn about dairy cow welfare! But it doesn’t stop there. Making soap leads to learning about all the miscellaneous additives that go into modern consumer cosmetics. Learning to repair a cell phone reminds you that fixing electronics is possible - and if enough people do it, or even if enough people hear about it, we can drive demand for easily-fixable devices that don’t wind up in landfills. It can create benefits for society AND the planet on many different levels.

Thank you so much to all the team at www.homesteadersemporium.ca keep up the good work.

The next time you are in the supermarket maybe just stop and consider how many of the products you are are about to buy could you try making yourself...