Making a living in our modern culture usually requires that you participate in the destruction of the world. We can’t go back to Homo hunter-gatherer. Is there another way forward?
There is an another way to make a living that enables you to do what you love and save the world at the same time. I [...]
The Virgin Islands Sustainable Farms Institute (VISFI) was founded six years ago by Georgia native Ben Jones. It’s a place dedicated to building community and creating networks of sustainable agricultural projects, with a focus on nature awareness, permaculture and primitive skills. For those in search of some learning and adventure, VISFI offers internships on their [...]
For the past two and a half months the Montreal Permaculture Guild has been giving classes on Urban Permaculture issues. Between forty and fifty people show up every week to learn and practice sustainability, regeneration and community building. So what is it that’s been making this class, run out of a back-alley community center, so [...]
The economic crisis has a bright side; it will be the catalyst for the rebirth of the local small farm. These will be the kinds of farms that we need: diverse, organic, and educational.
Diversity is the Key
The new generation of small farms will be more diverse than the previous generation. During the era of cheap [...]
Walking into the abandonned building in Montreal’s Point St-Charles neighbourhood was like finding the door to Narnia. Reuptedly one of Montreal’s tougher areas, it also has one of the strongest feelings of community I’ve seen around here. This old bank has been the site of organizing for an Autnomous Social Center that would allow freedom [...]
Heartroot Farm is a place unlike any other. Granted my opinion is somewhat biased seeing as I grew up there, but all the same. The place feels different from others. There is an intensity, a quality of human and non-human interactions, and of silence, that is hard to find elsewhere. When people come here it [...]
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living is the title of a new book put out by the Rhizome Collective of Austin, Texas. The book is a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) manual based on their Radical Urban Sustainability Training course (RUST). Scott Kellog recently presented the book at the co-op la Maison Vert in the Notre Dame de Grace [...]
Stacking Functions is a pretty basic permaculture principle which suggests that each element in a system be used to serve as many purposes (functions) as possible. Applying this idea that everything has multiple uses to our gardens is hugely contrary and subversive to the premises of industrial agriculture which focus on very limited outputs from [...]
Nitrogen exists at the heart of life on earth. Literally. Amino acids, which make up protein and muslces in our bodies, as well as the basic atoms in DNA use Nitrogen as one of their building block elements. Nitrogen is also essential to the molecules of ADP and ATP, which allow transfer of energy during [...]
A few nights ago the Montreal Permaculture Guild (montrealpermaculture.org) kicked off the Montreal Urban Sustainability Education, or MUSE course. The course is a year long and covers everything from designing urban space to greywater systems and seed-saving, as well as discussions and applications of the social side of permaculture. It includes a summer practicuum where [...]
