And while we dither, prime Class One land is being removed from the ALR in the Fraser Valley for housing and industry(800 hectares in Abbotsford alone). Disaster approaches and most of us are just plain clueless...

Clueless? Or hooped? After helping a friend sort the few useful clothes and household articles from the crap only fit for a dumpster at our local Sally Anne thrift store last night, I keenly feel the Marie Antoinettishness of some alternative lifestyle propositions this morning.

In the local buy-&-sell, an ad for a 79 Malibu sedan 8-cylinder gas-guzzling beater "still runs" for $300. A basic mountain bike from the local shop, useable for 6 mos. tops in our horrendous winter-road conditions? $1200.

Sigh.

A friend keeps pointing me to the David Suzuki to try and take the challenge and eat just locally produced foods. While the argument that fossil fuels used to transport foods seems to becoming a more mainstream critique, it seems to be the most difficult to come to grips with.

One can be a vegetarian, drive a hybred car, recycle 90% of their household waste, even install solar panels on their roofs. But eating just locally is damn near impossible. Especially in an area with limited agriculture such as BC.

It might be possible in regions such as Southern Ontario where the rich diversity of soil allows for many different things to be grown, especially with slightly more land capacity. But land is even shrinking there due to sprawl.

Definitely a challenge.

Te Aro Arahina, if the best deal you find on a bike for getting around is $1200, you are not looking. try Our Community Bikes, on Main and 17th, or The Bike Kitchen, Student Union Building, UBC. They both sell 'refurbished' bikes that will last you 10 years or more with a bit of maintenance. Most bikes are 200-400 bucks. There are other shops in town like this too...

I ride all winter, every year. My bike's been thru quite a few seasons; belive me, you will suffer in the elements much more than your steed!

Must be quite a basic bike for 1200... With misinformation like that, we are going to see more dirty ol' gaz guzzlers, and less clean bikes!
AHHHHHH!!!!

keep in mind too, that the bike comparable to yer 79 malibu can be had for less than the price of a finger of decent scotch, if ya look hard enuf... =)

Peefer, it isn't just happening in the LM, the ALR is being reduced province wide.

Misinformation, shmendrick? I don't live in the lower mainland, but since I'm not personally impoverished, I suppose I could the drive the 16 hours there and back to take advantage of those cheap used bikes. And, yes, I guess, it's a good thing that the planet is warming up so the typical 10-foot high canyons of snow in my area will vanish sooner and extend our bike season by a couple of weeks, at the very least from mid-October to the end of March. And no, I didn't do a very thorough item-by-item analysis of used vs. new, bikes vs. cars ... but I was looking from the point of view of someone who probably supplements their workfare with 2 - 3 crap jobs and hasn't got a whole bunch of time and energy to devote to cost comparisons. These are the type of people who I run into while volunteering at the local Sally Ann, where goodhearted folk drop off their crap used bicycles that can't even be salvaged by the local bike doctor so they don't have to pay tippage fees at the local landfill, passing that cost along to the little nonprofit organization I volunteer for ... Misinformation indeed!

All that said, I do want positive changes that will phase out our dependence on fossil fuels. Unless it's directly practical to low-income or lower-middle-income families, it's all pie-in-the-sky.

For example, a person faced with a choice between a $45 soaker hose or a $3 Walmart made-in-China by slaves sprinkler will only buy that more expensive, eco-friendly, labour-friendly soaker hose if money is not the biggest issue. So what do communities do? They raise the price of water-consumption which eliminates even more choices for lower income families, like the ability to grow some food.

So, yes, I'm jaundiced from what I see at the place where I volunteer, but my ultimate interest is finding solutions that help to build community networks.

Alison, you could try canning the strawberries using apple juice as a sweetener...works great, and you can do it with other fruit as well. Canning is pretty energy intensive unless you do what my mother used to do, can outside in a summer kitchen with a wood stove. But silly me...this is Vancouver. Who has wood?
My family and I grew almost all our own food for most of my life...it was hard work but not that hard....but you do need a wee bit of land, not much, about 5 acres will do.

You don't need sweetners with any kind of berry if you follow this:
Place the berries in a single layer spread on a cookie sheet. Place in freezer. When frozen, remove berries and place in plastic bags. Store in freezer. When you remove berries for use, they are separated, single berries, not smushed up, and will thaw nicely. You can use these added to cereal or in any recipe. There's enough natural sugars in the berries to eat them just as you would when they were fresh. If you must, you can add sugar at this point. I don't know why sweetners are used at all for berries, as it ruins the natural flavor.
pheebs

I live in the Skeena Valley. While playing cards with some senior citizens one evening I casually queried whether or not they thought we could survive in this region eating only foods produced locally. Without even blinking, one woman assured me that we could. She cited how they used to live when she was a girl and referred to the quantities of vegetables she grew in her garden that she couldn't give away.

True, we still get lots of salmon rushing up the river at various times, there are moose in the woods, not to mention a few local farmers producing beef and lamb. When we get a sunny summer (which used to be rare--we'll see what global warming continues to do to us) we can produce plenty of fruit: cherries, apples, pears, plums.

Still, it's not as though the land base isn't there (although I would bet its abundance is nothing like it once was); but we have become a spoiled and relatively ignorant lot, and I think we would have to work very hard to keep body and soul together.

On a related note, I was bemused when an eco-acquaintance pointed out to me the absurdity of burning fossil fuels to drive water around the continent (in the forms of beer, wine, juices, and, well, water). Why doesn't every little town have its own microbrewery, etc.? Prosit.

Thanks to the authors for raising this issue more publicly; we need to talk about it and get a little more active.

Insanity rules.

A honey dealer stated recently that it cost more to ship his product from B.C. to Ontario than to Asia. If the product were reasonably priced I don't doubt the whole crop could be sold in B.C. Perhaps Ontario and Asia do not have bees.

Very much coming from Quebec, is given as justification for the obscenely high prices of many dairy products in B.C. More madness. B.C.'s cows and goats are as good as any.

From all this and other craziness, it's clear who benefits and who pays.

I'm fortunate in owning a garden. I grow only what I can eat. Even without a garden, most have an area where they can grow a few herbs and vegetables in containers.

With a little resourcefullness, in buying at the right times and preserving, they can be beaten.

Apple skins will provide the pectin you need to get the jam to set. Chekc the library for advice on technique. You might find advice on proportions of honey to use instead of sugar, as well.

How much do people pay for top line steaks in the supermarkets ? Especially, for organically grown veal and beef ? Just a couple of weeks ago we sold a 3 year old dry heifer for .24 cents a pound. Also 2 yearling bulls for .83 cents/pound. There's approx. 500 lbs of top notch meat in that young heifer, but we have to subsidize our heard to the tune of $4,000 per year from our old age pensions, because we can't cover the costs of feeding them in the winter from what we get for them. So, figure out how much profit the feedlots and supermarkets make on our subsidies ?

We could sell any amount of organic veal, professionally butchered, government inspected, cut, wrapped and frozen to customers' specifications, for $3,/pound, but there's no market for it. So we have to sell at the auction sales, where our beautiful and clean animals are shot full of antibiotcs, growth hormones and steroids as they're being loaded on the buyers' trucks. And that's the crap city people are buying at exorbinant prices and eating, so that the likes of Pattison can buy bigger and bigger yachts and jet planes.

As far local self sufficiency is concerned, we bought this land 30 years ago to see what we can do with it. We've been developing it for organic production ever since, just for our own pleasure. It is beautiful and we wouldn't live anywhere else, but we have no topsoil at all, 4" of sod over clay and rocks to China. We have 5 months of snow cover and frost every summer month. We built our garden soil with organic methods, and can grow and preserve much of our needs for the whole year.

In other words, as I keep repeating, family farms are the most efficint food production systems on Earth, as long as we free them from the deadly ties and effects of market economics. Even at that, we can meet and beat many prices, but have no markets, because people rather spend several times the amounts on junk foods in the supermarkets, than buying the best imaginable from small suppliers. No hard feelings, we're having the best years of our lives with clean air and clean foods. Let the stupid asses eat garbage if that's what they want. And now I can smell some of our organic veal from our kitchen..... Ed Deak, Big Lake.

In a recent item on CBC radio mention was made of a farmer receiving a few pennies per pound for a dairy cow that had stopped giving milk. I checked the next day and supermarket prices for beef bones were over $1.00 per pound. The bones of that dairy cow would have covered what the farmer received. The hide and most the the meat would have been pure gravy.

I had a book in the works - even have the title registered: Are Food Prices Theft? I did dozens of interviews with shoppers outside supermarkets. All of my tapes and notes were ripped off in a car break in.

I was happy to learn that many are fighting back. They're making preserves, avoiding the white trash and making their own whole grain breads, their own beers and ciders, including a dark beer from wheat bran, their wines from dandelions, blackberries, broken rice, carrots, potatoes, beets, parsnips, tomatoes etc.

Many that ate meat used tricks to use less - making batches for freezing of their own pies and sausages, using decent fillings. (The last beef sauaages I bought tasted like 90 per cent sawdust)

Thankfully, not all are manipulated by the food industry. We could however do very much more in our schools were it not for the fear (I suspect) of administators of appearing to run interference against the interests of the marketplace.

I grew up helping on my best friend's farm - cattle, horses, a variety of crops - all marketed locally. At one time it supplied most of the dairy products for this area (Springbok Dairy). Now a grand Arnold Palmer-designed 18 hole golf course occupies this land. True ecocide- the justification being that attracting tourists and entertaining golfers trumps sustainability. And how very short sighted, as oil begins its past $100 per barrel. Wonder how much that head of February lettuce from the San Fernando valley will set us back five years hence? Bioregional economic sustainability (AKA the family farm) will return, but only when the need becomes pressing enough. Greenhouses could help, if only to protect young seedlings from the sleeting ultraviolet, toxic particulates, and increasingly inclement weather we are providing for our grandkids. Folks can hardly breathe in Toronto, yet the 401 is as full of cars as ever. Vancouver and way out the valley sits under a cloud of thick poisons much of he time, yet people snivel that they can't pedal their bikes to work. Ah well, we've made our bed, shat on it, and now we have to sleep in it. Sweet dreams indeed.

i make sugarless jam with pomona's pectin. ok, it's shipped all the way from greenfield, massachusetts, but it makes it so that i can still have jam and not with sugar from beyond the continent.

pomona's pectin is extracted from citrus peels (rats, there's fossil fuels in there!) and reacts with calcium powder (instead of sugar) as a gelling agent.

then again, strawberry sauce is just as good.

the two things i've found most helpful in the tasty adventure of local eating are:

sharing food costs with a larger group of people - i live with 3 other adults and one child. this cuts down on resource use as well.

gaining skills in organic gardening and growing my own food. this is the best way to deal with the high cost of organics. while i empathize that organics are expensive, i urge people to remember that prices are high because our government and our society does not support organic farmers. organic farmers struggle to produce high quality food which is a labour-intensive process, and they make far less than minimum wage for their efforts. i market-gardened for a summer and apprenticed with a seasoned organic farmer... i know first hand the struggles of low-income living and organic farming.

as for the land question, check out the LLAFF (Linking Land and Future Farmers) model. http://www.llaff.org
many people are farming on other peoples' land these days by negotiating long-term leases for food production. you don't need to be rich to grow organic food, just creative and willing to interact in a meaningful way with your community.

I'm with Pheebs on the sugar fix. Locally grown strawberries have always been sweet enough just as they are and while freezing does consume some energy, I suspect it is less than used to make jam.

I use the same frezer technique for my tomatoes rather than canning them. The main benefit is getting rid of all the salt required to can tomatoes.

I must laud the authors for this lifestyles article and for actually giving others the encouragement to at least open our eyes to what is available locally if even just seasonally.

I normally shop Safeway, but don't think I've ever bought their strawberries simply because they are far to huge to have any taste or to be from anywhere in Canada.

Perhaps a teacher or a highschool student could answer this question: Do students anywhere in BC still get home-ec. style courses and, if so, are preserves anywhere on the agenda.

It seems all we hear about preserves these days is the danger and the lack of proper equipment as bottle manufacturers change styles and lids leaving people with a lifetime's collection of worthless bottles.

An interesting idea and experiment. But eating only what grows within 100 miles is a return to the conditions of the Middle Ages and not the situation we will find ourselves in with Peak Oil. It will be more like a return to 1900 where we had national markets for certain products enabled by the use of the railroad. Rail is the most ecologically sensible use of a declining oil supply and in time we could convert to modern versions of coal-burning steam locomotives. People have been working on this technology, see http://.5at.co.uk/Brienz-Presentation.html
http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/porta.html http://www.trainweb.org/tusp/index.html Thus, it would be no problem to import wheat from the prairies or sugar, made from sugar beets, from Ontario.

Re: Ghostsmachine- "someone needs to call Falcon"

I ordered Falcon a copy of the book "The Long Emergency; What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?" by James Howard Kunstler through chapters to Falcon's office in Victoria. According to my Chapters account it was shipped last week.

When the s##t hits the fan within the next two years from the effects of Peak Oil don't let him say no one knew.

That said, I do blame the mainstream media more than the politicians for our society’s sleepwalking into threatening times these last few years. To quote from Alex Paterson, “humans in general are very reluctant to give up their beliefs as to the nature of reality because they have invested a lifetime of expense and effort in arriving at those beliefs. Acknowledging that their perception of reality may no longer be applicable in the light of new evidence usually presents humans with the uncomfortable choice of dispensing with a paradigm that they are used to - and which has probably worked quite satisfactorily to date - in favour of a something new and yet to be properly defined. Few humans have the courage or strength of character to pursue such a course of action, as it usually results in considerable personal discomfit associated with a lack of supporting structures around new ideas and a fear of the unknown, not to mention the vociferous ridicule by their contemporaries towards anything new."

Remember how the media was all over Y2K? A non issue. Yet when we have an important issue the same media does not cover it to the extent needed to change public consciousness like they were so successful with doing with Y2K. (Yes it is hard not to be cynical regarding our media today).

I have even been disappointed with The Tyee’s lack of significant coverage for the last 6 months (since I have become aware of seriousness and immediacy of the issue) although articles like these are a start to address the fact that our current 2,000 mile petrochemical grown diet may soon be a thing of the past.

You make very good point JRG, especially about the media and particularly our pet Tyee, which I too feel isn't delivering enough on the future racing at us.

However, I would hope if Tyee is to start looking at the deadlines or whatever you call the pending realities, it not limit coverage to energy, at least not as something to waste.

Instead I would welcome far greater environmental coverage in general.

After reading many of the comments above, I'm struck by the fact virtually everyone who has put their hands to the soil in recent years realizes global warming or (for those seeking a more suitable euphanism), global climate change is altering conditions here at home.

The problem as I see it is no one appears to be tracking it on a regional basis.

Have we lost the ability to grow certain crops in the Fraser Valley? Are there short-term opportunities in more northern areas to replace or at least seasonably avoid buying Mexican or Californian veggies?

Who's in charge?

The media won't cover anything that may hurt the stockmarkets, because, that's where "wealth is created!" We can see this wealth creation in our daily lives...............

Regarding "tommymoore's" comment that the family farm will return. I wish it would be so, but farmers are getting eaten up by the thousands by agribiz every day, all over the world, encouraged by their own governments. The "economy of size" they call this crime wave.

Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide every year. Their self supporting dairy industry has been destroyed by "cheap" Danish imports, encouraged by their free trader government, as a "wealth creating measure", so they can get some hi tech and 1-800 answering jobs under the "competitive equilibrium of globalized market economy" .

In Europe, an estimated 3 million farm families are being pushed off the land by their joining of the EU. The same in Hungary where real estate prices of land have skyrocketed, pushing farmers off the land, making room for Western European buyers. The locals, as here in BC or in Canada in general, can't afford to buy, or survive on land with small, or subsistence farms. In Mexico millions of farm families have been pushed into city slums by NAFTA.

Canada is losing about 10% of farm families every year. Here in the "heartlands" of BC, land prices rose by up to 1000% about 15 years ago with the influx of German and Swiss monies, fleeing Europe. Prices have gone down a bit since, but still too high for farmers and ranchers to survive. Young people want city life. We have old timer ranching neighbours who are sitting on millions of dollars worth of land, but don't know how long they can hang on, meanwhile they can't afford the proverbial pot to pee in. We solved the problem by giving away our land to a deserving young couple, who are going to look after it when we're gone. If we'd tried to sell it, a logging contractor would have bought it at a high price and there wouldn't be a tree left in 3 weeks. This is called "Business friendly market economy" no political Party, not even the NDP dares to question.

This is the picture of neoclassical market economy, yet nobody dares to challenge the universities, where this garbage science is being taught. People are protesting, carrying posters and sandwich boards around with silly slogans, meanwhile, next door the universities are brainwashing students, yet go unchallenged. Does anybody know the reason, why they're untouchable ? What happened to academic freedoms, where people could speak up and demand answers ? Ed Deak, Big Lake.

JRG
I heartily concur. Your cynicism toward a media that so shapes our lives is fully justified. Consumer advocacy seems not very high on its list.

I, also, would like Tyee to include in its Home page a continuous thread related to our often-pathetic media performance.

One example:
Yesterday, Province staff reporter Sarah Fox told of the shooting to death, by a Kamloops RCMP officer, of a vehicle driver attempting a getaway from an alleged crime scene.

The short report referred three times to the officer feeling his life threatened - a clear spin, in my opinion, to gain public support for an officer who discarded other options to act as judge and executioner.

Further reported today by Province staff reporter Ethan Baron, was that an uninjured accomplice was released without charges. I'd not be surprised at a deal having been made to ensure silence.

cc Sarah Fox

Re: Fiat lux "meanwhile, next door the universities are brainwashing students, yet go unchallenged"

One reason has been proposed by John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University:
"For some seventy years my working life has been concerned with economics, along with not infrequent departures to public and political service that had an economic aspect and one tour in journalism. During that time I have learned that to be right and useful, one must accept a continuing divergence between approved belief—what I have elsewhere called
conventional wisdom —and the reality. And in the end, not surprisingly, it is the reality that counts.

...it is my conclusion that reality is more obscured by social or habitual preference and personal or group pecuniary advantage in economics and politics than in any other subject.

More to be told is of the longer and larger departure from reality of approved and conditioned belief in the economic world. …out of the pecuniary and political pressures and fashions of the time, economics and larger economic and
political systems cultivate their own version of truth. This last has no necessary relation to reality. No one is especially at fault; what it is convenient to believe is greatly preferred. This is something of which all who have studied economics, all who are now students and all who have some interest in economic and political life should be aware. It is what serves, or is not adverse to, influential economic, political and social interest.

Most progenitors of what I here intend to identify as innocent fraud are not deliberately in its service. They are unaware of how their views are shaped, how they are had. No clear legal question is involved. Response comes not from violation of law but from personal and social belief. There is no serious sense of guilt; more likely, there is self-approval.”

[P]
milk from dairy cows, and meat & bones from beef cattle, are two different critters....[/P]

zen,

you wrote:

[P]
milk from dairy cows, and meat & bones from beef cattle, are two different critters....[/P]

The animal still went to the slaughterhouse and, if not diseased (which was not repoorted)
would have been marketed normally - meat, bones, hide, fertilizer - everything except the "moo".

Fiat, I would kill to get good organic veal. We are lucky enough to live near several great organic beef and chicken producers, but I really had to search for them. Most people don't even think about going direct to the farm. We're also lucky enough to be able to afford to eat good quality local food, although I do so much baking/canning that I can't justify not buying sugar. 2 large bags of in-season local produce from my local farm market/veggie store costs me maybe $10. People really can afford to buy this stuff...they just need to dig around and find sources. If you are super hard up, you can compost and grow container veggies in tiny spaces like a balcony or patio. We currently grow rhubarb, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, lettuce, carrots and all our own herbs in our backyard. If I wanted to give over then entire front/back yard to food production, I could grow enough to be almost entirely self sufficient (wheat/corn/squash/beekeeping/chickens etc.). I really wish that elementary and high schools would focus more on the economics of global food production. Peak oil is just starting to kick in, but nobody seems to connect higher fuel costs with higher imported food prices/less food.

Zen, you can eat dairy cows. A lot of people who keep a cow at home breed the "milk" cow once a year to a "beef" bull to keep her freshening and eat the result when it's old enough. Beef cows like the Angus are bred to put on weight, while a cow like a Jersey is much smaller and thus less cost effective for a commercial beef farmer to raise (but puts out gallons and gallons more milk). Taste-wise, there isn't much difference.

But yeah, I can see what you're saying re: the milk and the meat being a different product of the cow.

Rhea, there are tens of thousands of healthy, grass fed cattle in the Cariboo. Enough to feed whole cities with good, wholesome meat at low prices. Some may have had some shots at birth, but otherwise drug free. Our calves get 1 cc vitamin and 1 cc selenium. That's all. There's no market for them as they are and have to be sold at the auction sales for pittances, bought up by feedlots, now mostly US owned multinationals, like Cargill, shot full of chemicals and hormones, forcefed with grain to put "marble", otherwise known as yellow, stinking tallow, into the meat and sold to supermarkets then to the sucker public at huge profits.

This is all the public's fault. They could demand healthy, chemical free products, but they'd rather pay through the nose for junk. There used to be local food co-ops by families and we supplied organic vegetables, eggs, chicken, meat to them, but they're long gone. Now there's the odd farmers market, which we can't afford to supply on account of the nearest one being 55 km., so we just have to sell most of our calves to the criminals. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

I think we need a Kyoto Accord style of leniency for lower income families in our own country. It galls me that levies and taxes which are used to dissuade waste and pollution end up like a noose around their necks, while wealthier people have the freedom to participate or not on a voluntary basis. I can't think of any other way to make our waste and pollution reduction schemes or experiments like the 100 mile (and organic) diet work.

I do know that when the main meal of the day is a package of noodle soup split four ways, the family has little say over whether the local store carries organic beef or not. I'm sure they regard any beef a luxury -- freezer-burnt, full of veins and grizzle and fat, swept up from who knows what part of the animal. It's still protein.

Here's an interesting fact my brother made me aware of: Canadians could meet our Kyoto goals by merely giving up Christmas. George Bush wants to continue his middle eastern adventure for at least another dozen years. Hmm.. wonder why that is? Do you think possibly his crooked, greedy, and criminal administration of terrorists is tuned into the "Peak Oil" scenario? Bastards. They will reap what they sow. We had better divest ourselves soon of our US economic bedfellow, or the coming implosion will subsume us contemporaneously.
Ed Deak (Fiat lux): we need more people with your insight and wisdom. Thanks for your words.

Got shivers reading that.

Write some more big words.

Fiat lux,

You wrote:

"This is all the public's fault. They could demand healthy, chemical free products, but they'd rather pay through the nose for junk."

You are so right. Shopping can be a depressing experience when you see the over-priced (redundant,I know) garbage going into the baskets. You have to wonder if many of them are literate.

Of those that are able to sort out the food marketing BS, if not for themselves, you'd think they'd give a care for their overweight. sugar-crammed, attention deficit-disordered
kids.

I don't believe that this is so. According to Smart Growth BC's "state of the ALR report":

For the record, I'm a big supporter of the ALR and am not very pleased with the City of Abbotsford's ALR exclusion for industrial land. But the ALR is not shrinking in BC -- yet.

re: Moderate Man, the ALR is not shrinking.

The Smart Growth state of the ALR report does confirm that the total land area of the ALR hasn't decreased by a signifiant amount. The issue is in the quality of the land that IS being excluded by the ALC. This is typically PRIME agricultural land, some of the best in BC, as in the case of most municipal exclusions. This land is being replaced by inclusion of relatively infertile areas with (very) poor soils. If we are talking about the ALR soils' potential to grow healthy foods in any real quantity and by non industrial means, then we are indeed losing the ALR.

Moderate Man, I would be shocked if the amount of prime agricultural land isn't shrinking in BC.

Sure the ALR may still cover as many acres/hectares as it did back in the '70s, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts the amount of prime land has shrunk drastically and has been replaced by more marginal acreage.

I'd love to see the stats on the ALR, especially if they break down the relative value of the land today compared with several times over the past 30 years.

I certainly would like to see that you are correct, but my cynical side says it's simply impossible, unless golf course have been left within the ALR on the intentional misunderstanding that it might yet be turned back into productive farm land.

Thanks for writing about your challenge. I'll be interested in reading more about it.

I shop only at Capers and I'm getting pretty fed up with them. They appear to be gouging when they are charging, as they were yesterday, almost $5 a pound for BC broc! And, usually, it is almost impossible to find BC products. They have some but few. TI don't entirely trust Mexican organics, besides the gas issues! The BC organic nut company, "Nuts to You", products are more than imported from the US ones. They have really gone down hill since they were bought by a US company. Still, it is the only store in my area that sells organic produce to the extent that I need. And, I enjoy the staff who are very nice.

I don't think we need to eat much meat and Irespectfully, veal is a terrible practice. I can't bear it. This influences how I shop too. I want eggs not only for their health reason, but for the lack of suffering involved to the chicken. I'm sorry, I don't want to be insulting. I just think it's terrible. sigh I could never live on an food animal farm.

Here is a great web site and I was looking for a blog which I love, but have failed to bookmark. I'm so sorry I can't find it. It's a couple who are doing everything by hand. They are retired American postal workers/hippies. The man writes really well and informatively about all manner of things and posts fantastic photos. They have a great sustainable property and lifestyle. Darn.

Anyway, here are a few I enjoy.

http://www.pathtofreedom.com

http://www.cityhippy.com

http://www.madaminsane.com

They also post good links.

Sorry.

http://www.madameinsane.com/

Te Aro Arahina, I also think it is terrible that poorer people can't afford clean, healthy organic food and water. It and shelter should be the most basic human right.

I walk into Safeways and the food seems dead. Children suffer all sorts of issues from it and they are now coming up with studies such as the recent one that received such little press, about GM corn, (that we are eating in Canada) is causing tumors in rats.

Monsanto should be run out of business and some of their execs put in jail!

A while back there was a controversy when certain B.C. Interior orchardists were bleating about poor sales of their products, aided by a glut of fruit and as a result of the situation, wanting to sell their orchards to developers.

A big deal was made at the time with pictures of apples being fed to pigs. Even so, consumers were paying top dollar for B.C. apples of inferior quality. Many had been stored too long and were more brown than red. Others that did not look so bad were often without taste. As with other food products, I feel that marketing boards must share the blame.

There was a suspicion, in any event, that some of those orchardists came late to the game with the intention of making hefty developement dollars out of "protected" land.

I don't recall the final resolution.

Hi. I am writing from Humboldt County in California. I really like the story about living off a 100 mi diet. We have a saying down here "buy locally, think globally." Right now we're lucky for the farmers markets and the Community Supported Agriculture farms. But, I am a student and single mom, I don't know how I could only buy food grown within a 100 mi of here. I do try to grow some of my own food like tomatoes, garlic and herbs out of half wine barrels on my one bedroom apartment front porch. What gets me is that we have a huge front lawn that could be converted into a garden. But I guess that's not too good on property value and it would take a lot of work convincing the owners and ripping out the grass they so nicely keep. Any ideas on conquering the landlord?

I notice that this is the first of a series. The topic has certainly drawn considerable interest.

I don't know what triggers the move but it seems a great pity that just when the discussion warms up the thread gets moved to the "Neverland" of Recent Stories.

anarcha,

You asked?

" Any ideas on conquering the landlord?"

You can try guilting him/her out by reminding him of all the birds he's killing as he no doubt "weeds and feeds" the lawns. Less grass to care for.
Vegetable gardens don't have to be ugly. Encourage him to read about the Victory gardens encouraged in the British Isles during WW2. Find what vegetables the owner favors, then share the produce. After the first crop you'll having him buying seeds and giving a hand with the weeding, Go for it! Good luck.

I'd love to see the stats on the ALR, especially if they break down the relative value of the land today compared with several times over the past 30 years.

This is an excellent point, but without better information, it is hard to demonstrate. The thing is, often there is land within the ALR that isn't particularly good farm land. When the ALR was first designated, they included lands based on soil classification data that was not very site-specific. Often land with poor soils was lumped in with land with superior soils. When a property owner has land with relatively poor soil in the ALR, they are in a tough situation, especially if their land abuts higher quality soils: their land isn't great for farming, yet it is also inappropriate for development because of undesirable impacts of urbanization on farming neighbours.

It is pretty tough to get land, especially good farm land, excluded from the ALR. Most applicants need to demonstrate that the land isn't well suited for farming, and then they need to identify other lands with higher agricultural potential, usually at a 2:1 or greater ratio, for inclusion at a different site. Also, they need to demonstrate that the new uses for the excluded land will not harm adjacent farmland. Although this system is far from perfect, it has allowed the ALR boundaries to change over time without shrinking its overall size.

So, cynically speaking, you are probably right, at least sometimes: sometimes good land gets excluded, although this is extremely difficult to do in practice. Although this may be true at times, I have also seen it work the other way, in which marginal farmland is excluded and more higher-quality land from other sites is included in exchange.

Again, for the record, I totally support the ALR protection of high-quality farm land, but anecdotal data on what gets excluded or included points both ways. We need better information to say that the best farm lands are being paved in BC.

But do you know what rots my socks about a farm use permitted in the ALR? Some forms of greenhouse horticulture. Placing a concrete pad on high-quality farmland for greenhouse agriculture defeats the point of the ALR (i.e. protecting good soil). Maybe in some cases greenhouse agriculture would be better suited for industrial land use classifications in order to protect the best farm land for soil-based agriculture.

Vegetable gardens can be as beautiful as flower beds if they're properly designed. Try doing a google search on "formal vegetable garden", "formal kitchen garden" or "parterre". A lot of medieval kitchen gardens were designed to be aesthetically pleasing as well as productive, and you can find designs from ultra-formal to more like a cottage garden. You can also mix veggies with flowers for a more attractive appearance. Marigolds are great anti-pest plants. I use raised beds for my vegetables - it gives a neater appearance, keeps the weeds down, and warms up faster in the spring. My old neighbour used to have a lovely formal veggie garden on his front lawn made up of 4 semi-circular beds around an open space with a rose tree in the middle. It looked gorgeous. Try doing a sketch plan and giving it to your landlord so they can make suggestions.

Redrivergirl:

I won't shop at Capers or "trendy" markets like them - I find they are far, far too overpriced for the quality of their merchandise. Given that they cater to the Kits/West side yuppie demographic, I'm not surprised, but I'm not interested in paying for their "I'm so cool, I eat organic and drive an SUV" marketing campaign.

I'm really lucky in that I live out the valley, so I can bike/walk to local farms and markets for fish/eggs/berries/produce at low prices. I get Avalon milk/dairy and great organic/fair trade coffee (Kicking Horse) from Save-on for less than a pound of Starbucks, and SuperStore carries a large range of organic products for items like canola oil that I can't get locally produced. I use Small Potatoes Urban Delivery and our local co-op for organic bulk flour and sugar and other baking supplies. We also have a local farmers who do organic/natural beef and free range chicken and are SPCA humane certified, so we try to buy a side every year and split it with friends. It means that I shop at several places, but the tradeoff is that I get good local and organic food almost as cheaply as "regular" produce.

If you want to find sources for cruelty-free chicken/beef, check out the SPCA's web site - they now certify farms who meet humane animal treatment standards as "cruelty-free". I can understand people who find meat eating gross or cruel, but I like meat too much to give it up. My compromise is that I pay more to support local producers who treat their food animals humanely.

Moderate Man, I agree with you on the greenhouse uses, but I would suggest it's on par with keeping golf courses in as well because they are never ever going to grow anything taller than cropped greens again despite the best of assurances.

Let's face it, golf courses are not built as temporary playgrounds for adults, but as utilities around which to develop overpriced housing.

Allan:

I agree with your statement re: golf courses.

Another ridiculous thing about the ALR: roads and highways are considered a "temporary use" and are therefore permitted on ALR land. Most farmers I have spoken to get pretty annoyed when a new road is proposed that bisects their fields since it is often difficult & dangerous to cross a busy road on agricultural vehicles.

The irony is that roads are usually more permanent than buildings and other land uses ... once a road is built, it usually means that there will always be a road on that right of way.

Langley Township is (finally) doing some interesting work on planning for the boundary areas between urban and agricultural uses:
http://www.tol.bc.ca/files/web_files/planning/Edge%20Planning.pdf

I'd love to see more of this kind of work implemented, to protect good farmland & the property rights of those adjacent to farm land.

I think the market for agricultural land is a classic case of market failure. The market assumes that its parts are substitutable: that is, it is possible to convert agricultural land to urban uses, and that it is equally possible to convert urban uses to agricultural land. Since this isn't so -- the transformation is only one-way, unless you are looking at it from a geological time frame -- the state is justified in preventing a free exchange in the real estate market for agricultural land.

In Gary Paul Nabhan’s book, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods, he recounts his own attempt to eat four out of five things from within a 400km (250 mile) radius of his home in Arizona for the period of one year. He dubbed this radius his food shed, and he was mostly successful in his quest although he made many compromises based more on politics than practicality. Nabhan describes in detail the politics of food including the ecological cost of food production. The book is a worthwhile read if one is interested in the geopolitics of food and I heartily recommend it.

On one level, I strongly support the spirit of Smith and MacKinnon’s position; I particularly empathize with their comment about flavorless fruit and vegetables sold out of season.

However, noble though their motives are, I cannot support the overall idea that we ought to only eat from our local food shed.

Their contention of “fossil fuels bad” begs the question of how they got to the strawberry fields to begin with. Did they drive or take public transit? Both methods require fossil fuels. I know this is a straw man argument, but I could not let it pass. Furthermore, immigrants to BC imported grain and sugar – if one does not want to eat sugar for political reasons, that’s one thing, but to exclude it simply due to an arbitrary map line strikes me as impractical. Ditto the flour and grains.

What about coffee? Chocolate? Vanilla? Olive oil? Not in BC. How about citrus fruits? In winter, lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, grapefruit and others are as close as most of us in Vancouver will come to fresh seasonal fruit.

Another issue is cost. Food, good fresh local seasonal and well raised and bred, should be easily accessible to everyone. In North America, people seem to have a love affair with over processed and over packaged ready to eat food. In no small part this is the result of good marketing and cheap prices; eating a healthy diet requires a lot of attention to ingredient lists and access to a healthy food budget; therein lays the core of the problem. Smith and MacKinnon may have the means to pay $11/kg for local honey, but with the average family income in the $50K range, that’s a hard sell for most people.

I try to support local farmers as much as I can: I do most of my fruit and vegetable shopping at the farmer’s market between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving; I buy free range beef, pork, and lamb from farmers in bulk – the joy of the large freezer in the garage.

Ideally I’d buy nothing but adjectival (free-range organic shade grown pesticide free unmedicated additive free non-genetically modified) food products. Like most people however, I have a finite budget with which to feed my family; I also only have so much capacity for research to check all the sources of my food. I already spend what some people would consider an inordinate amount of time cooking and baking, preserving, canning, and freezing. There is a limit to what one person can do.

This is in no small part why I am a member of the Slow Food movement. I joined because I think food is undervalued – not in terms of price, although there are arguments to be made there – but in terms of health and wellbeing and our connection to the farmers who keep us fed. The big grocery chains now carry a majority of pre-packaged pre-prepared processed food; or, as a friend of mine quipped, the now carry food over ingredients.

What we really need is not to limit our food shed, but rather follow Slow Food’s position of eco-gastronomy – choosing and eating foods that are the product of sustainable agriculture, whether organic or conventional. We need not deprive ourselves of foods simply because they come from afar.

Hmm, I just read an article on 'edible landscaping'.

Some California towns have a lot of restrictive city by laws and your landlord may not be able to do that even if she/he chose. But, I agree, if you were into it, they might be open to it if they got to enjoy some of the bounty. There might be community garden plots around you somewhere. And, they do have raised garden bed one can buy for a balcony.

Rhea, I would love to be able to shop as you do. I may check out an urban organic produce delivery. I used it once before when they first started out quite a while ago.

Bylaws against hanging laundry in public view,
bee-keeping, and vegetable-gardening on front lawns are all questionable and should, in my opinion, be defied. If enough who wish to challenge their stupidity were to write their local papers, I'm sure they could win wide public support in overturning the rulings.

In the case of frontyard, food growing, California, with an economy based very much on agriculture can be shown to be running interference on behalf of agri-business where such silly anti-gardening bylaws are in effect.
The irony is that many of those manicured lawns, besides killing birds, are suspect in childhood cancers and birth defects. Now, there is an area where laws might better be directed.

Bees, fruit trees and bushes,laundry, vegetables and chickens should be the accessories for every modern home landscape. That, and livery stables within every so many miles' radius. Arteries opened up strictly for horse and horse-cart traffic.

Bicycle lanes and pedestrian walkways before vehicle lanes.

Good stuff. Mr. Deak, you need a direct market connection with city folks, so you can bypass the middlemen with their hypodermics. I find living on a small island makes you acutely aware of imports, and their extra costs. It's a twenty mile circle in my case, and I always look locally first. As the article reveals, it's a cornucopia in summer here on the BC coast, with salmon running, and gardens overflowing, but the cold wet winters are hard on those who don't plan ahead.

Having tried it, I often wonder if strict vegetarianism is a luxury of lower latitudes and cheap oil, since the further north you go, the less practical and healthy it becomes. Nowadays all you can find in soya is GM. But the obvious carbo for this bioregion, the lowly potato's genetic diversity is also shrinking, to a point where another blight-induced famine like the Irish had is almost inevitable.

So, with peak oil and ecosystem-shifting climate change on the door step now, start saving all your seeds, and have fun cultivating unusual varieties of the standard veggie fare. If the whole economy and transport system crashes too quickly, it won't be mere stockpiles of food that get you through the pinch, it'll be communities pullling together for the common good. Humans have always been quite quick to adapt, as well as lose their tempers under duress. So it's good to see so many waking up and planning ahead.

Oh! I found that blog i was looking for. I like it so much.

http://earthhomegarden.blogspot.com/

Hi there...

Three things...

1) very interesting idea...will follow with great interest...GOOD LUCK and namaste!

2) the link that redrivergirl gave for my site should be http://cityhippy.blogspot.com and not cityhippy.com - strange coincidence that I came to this page and found that link...small world eh?

3) Thanks for the shout RedRiverGirl...it is my site you were talking about right...? Nothing at Cityhippy.com!

Namaste

CH

Paging Fiat Lux (Ed Deak, Big Lake):

Ed, you wrote:
"..It is beautiful and we wouldn't live anywhere else, but we have no topsoil at all, 4" of sod over clay and rocks to China. We have 5 months of snow cover and frost every summer month. We built our garden soil with organic methods, and can grow and preserve much of our needs for the whole year.."

I have an acidic, rock-laden, dimly lit property in the Laurentians (Quebec). Drainage is excessive, except in low-lying areas. Frost can occur during the growing season.

I'm looking for methods to reclaim or create, if possible, growing areas for organic production.

Please contact me or post here any links or books, etc. you still use or remember having tried, etc.

Thanks
brightday

Dandelions:

My friend's grandmother was a refugee from the Korean war, and her family lives together in Ontario. Her grandmother has an amazing repertoire of delicious recipes made from scratch out of dandelion leaves, roots, flowers, and other veggies she grows in the garden, all harvested with a flathead screwdriver and a steak knife.

Gomae: Gather a brick-sized bundle of fresh youngish dandelion leaves from a quiet location away from the road. Wash well. Steam leaves for 3-4 minutes over boiling water. Slice into 1 inch strips. Let leaves cool and dress with rice vinegar mixed with steaming water and vinegar and honey to taste.
MMM!

She makes a tea of dry chipped dandelion root.

Dandelion leaves dry well and taste great shredded into soups and stews. They are perhaps the simplest organic green to grow - I can't seem to stop them from growing everywhere if I don't regularly eat them. They are really nutritious too... In Italy when I was there, they were always available ready to make into salad at the market or the grocery store.

I wonder how the iceberg lettuce was ever developed!