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Designing The Sustainable Life

© Bob Ewing

Food is where community begins. We can build community, create meaningful livelihood and design sustainable neighbourhoods and safe streets when we pay attention to how the food we need travels from the field to the table. First stop, the soil, where Life begins.

Through our involvement in this journey we can discover how to care for the soil which provides, in collaboration with the weather, the essential nutrients that enable plants to grow strong and healthy. When we feed the soil we feed ourselves. When we feed the soil we create the conditions which enable future generations to feed themselves. For it is the soil that provides the environment which enables plants to thrive. A good gardener makes soil.

Care of the soil is how we learn the importance of our connection to the earth and what our role is within the web that is Life. We learn to prevent problems such as erosion. Through skills, such as observation, we can witness, for example, how much sun falls on a given spot. With this information, we then can design our gardens to best take advantage of the amount of sun that reaches that space. *

Exercise:

To improve your powers of observation start keeping a journal. Carry it with you as you go about your daily business. Take time to make notes, such as the weather, the looks on peoples' faces, the birds and butterflies you see, plants and pets: are people walking, riding a bike , running or driving. Note sounds as well as sights. *

When we care for the soil and look to future generations, we begin to think about water and how we can use it wisely and incorporate water saving and water retaining systems within our system. Water is fundamental to the success and longevity of any food production system. We need to know how to design our systems so that they waste no water and that we, through careful design, can full advantage of rainfall and other forms of precipitation. If we take a close look at nature, spend time outside, rather than sitting in front of our television sets we will learn from Nature and as we do we will learn how to take responsibility for ourselves and for future generations. * Exercise:

At least three times per week reduce your television watching by one half hour. Use that time to discover the world around you, your immediate environment, indoors and out. Get to know your living space and the area immediately outside your front door. If you live in an apartment or condo, extend this to the outside of the building.