The shrinking world we are moving into…

I just started reading Jeff Rubin’s book Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller; it got me to thinking, how would I and we deal with less of everything. Less food (imported or otherwise), less stuff (be that computers, coffee, cloths, clutter) and less waist (pun intended). Would we actually “survive”?

Mini-farms for food security and improving your life

Summer’s here and the time is right, for enjoying your home and your garden. So, it’s also time to maybe think about changing the garden and the grass lawn you have to something more useful (not that you have get rid of all your flowers and grass, just convert some of both into a vegetable garden). Now, I can’t take credit for this idea (many have suggested it before and I think it’s great); but recently on The Surrvival Podcast, the presenter, Jack, suggested that roughly 2 million Americans (and I would suggest a corresponding number of Canadians (say 200,000)) should become farmers again and start producing food.

Off the beaten garden path

Sofar at CtC, most of the focus has been on reducing one’s impact upon the environment by using energy more efficiently, turning off things when you don’t need them and/or evaluating if that new gadget is really something needed. Also, it’s been about looking at what we as a society are willing to accept being done in our name by government.

So, now it’s on to an area that will help anyone improve your quality of life; it’s gardening, whether in a condo, apartment or house. In my case, my wife and I have a small raised garden setup in the backyard that in late summer supplies a nice bounty of tomatoes, carrots, herbs, peas and eggplants for some fresh, home grown food in the Autumn and Winter months. It doesn’t supply as much food as I would like; but given a few years and work, I hope it have it provide about 1/3 to 1/2 of the fresh vegetables used over the year.

To Downshift or not to Downshift (and why)…

The idea of Downshifting has really appealed to me (and now my family) for a couple of years. Why Downshifting though…

Review of “The Urban Homestead”

A book Review of The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erick Knutzen.

I decided to buy this book in January 2009; being at times a lazy reader, I’ve only just finished with the book. Saying that, in the end it is a good primer on starting to turn your home in the city into a homestead.