Rethinking Lifestyle

I’m a keen CBC radio fan, and was listening to ‘Spark’, as Nora Young interviewed Ben Faulk who runs a design business called Rural Homesteading in Vermont USA. The basic idea of his business is to provide advice on designing homesteads – for those who simply want to grow a few home grown foods for their own consumption to those who want to make a living from their land.

It is easy to talk about how growing food in monocrops for multinational corporations is more efficient. And the debate about who gains from these – the consumer, the farmer, the pesticide company, the seed supplier or the multinational who contracted the food to be grown, and the cost to the environment and society is not the topic of this blog.

Rather what is important is our individual effectiveness, and Ben Faulk talked about this. If you don’t earn much money, or indeed if you don’t have paid work, then it is highly effective for you to grow even just a little of your own food rather than buy it in the grocery store. And even if you work and are highly paid, a couple of hours each week in the garden will pay off. Obviously the savings you can make depend on the size of your plot, what you grow, how the external inputs (fertilizer and pesticides) you put into it, and what you do with the food you grow. For example, I grew 30 tomato plants from seed this year which supplied us with fresh vegetables all fall, and with a little work they provided a supply of tomato sauce, salsa and chutneys for the coming year. For less effort we have fruit bushes, which need very little tending but gave very satisfying yields in summer and fall. And for real lazy gardening I also grew mint, which I cut fresh to make tea all summer and fall (hot and iced) and dried sprigs for tea over the winter.

In North America and Canada, the idea of living with enough land to produce food is growing. However, it is not usually the economic benefits that drive people to grow their own. Rather it is factors like reducing your environmental footprint (your food travels less), personal satisfaction, superior taste and freshness, more nutrients (less time to plate so less nutritional breakdown), and less pesticides (if you grow organically).

The homestead movement is much like the transition movement – it’s about developing resilience to change. It’s about creating a food production environment that is more resistant to fluctuations in the price of seed, chemicals and the price the processing companies will pay, and the price of oil. In fact the price of oil is the biggest factor on the cost of food, and our willingness to pay for it. As the oil price goes up, we would rather cut back on food than put less gas in the vehicle!

We don’t all need a homestead. To feed a person through the growing season you need just 200 sq ft, which most gardens can accommodate. A few fruit bushes, a salad patch, some herbs – if you want to try something new this year, why not a garden?