Re-localize Re-Skill Re-connect !
Reweaving our lives together with nature & community.
Local Living resolves a lot of our current problems & instead provides us with health and fulfilling connections in many ways. Local Living uses less energy for transportation & packaging. Local Food is fresher, more fun and connected. Local living supports the local economy, plus we can know the plants or the plant growers. Organic food is healthy for the environment and animals, including us humans ! It calls us outside, we are more “embodied”, exercised, and local living can easily include socializing.
Happy Happy. Needs of humans and the earth getting met in a way that is healthy and thoughtful…all the way back to the source. This process creates a connection to the inter-relatedness of All Life & is a motivation for gratitude & co-creation.
I am gradually transitioning to a mostly local diet… local honey, maple syrup, eggs, some meats, local milk, foraging, CSA vegetables 6 months of the year and preserving food for the winter (fermenting, drying, canning, winter greens in the hoophouse, sprouting seeds). My next step is to find a local source for grains & to planting more perennial plants here, like June Berries.
Here are some ways to connect to local re-sources !
FORAGING ! A direct relationship, with no planting or tending ! Find your local plant friends and develop a relationship ! Harvest daily from your back yard. Let sections go a little wild, and things will grow, or bring some plants or seeds in and let it do its thing. Attend an HERB WALK or Plant Walk. Jim McDonald is an awesome local herbalist. Super informative website. MSU foraging. Foraging in Michigan ~ lots of pics.
Join a Foraging Club or start one. Michigan Mushroom Hunters Club.
CSA– Community Supported Agriculture. Farm to Table. Buy a “share” of the harvest food from a local farmer. Pick up a box of food each week during the growing season. Optional, recommended ~ harvest the food ! Search by zipcode ! Two CSA’s I know & love: Upland Hills Farm CSA, Three Roods CSAFARMERS MARKETS ! Search by zipcode. Two markets I know and love: Royal Oak Farmers Market. Eastern Market – Detroit.
Other LOCAL FOOD. Search around for Local Honey, Eggs, Milk, Meat. Check out the Maple Syrup & program at Kensington Metropark Farm Center on Metro Moms website ~ a Other LOCAL FOOD. Search around for Local Honey, Eggs, Milk, Meat. Check out the Maple Syrup & program at Kensington Metropark Farm Center on Metro Moms website ~ fabulous source for LOCAL EVERYTHING ! Cider, Fruit, other! I am gradually transitioning to a mostly local diet…Local honey, maple syrup, eggs, some meats, vegetables 6 months of the year, preserving for winter (fermenting, drying, canning, winter greens in the hoophouse, sprouting seeds)G
row Yur Own ! Dance & co-create with other life forms ! Google search for Gardens. Permaculture. Container Gardening. Vertical Gardening. Hoophouse gardens for growing winter salads. Kale, arugula, spinach, Japanese greens, can all freeze and thaw and live all winter in an unheated hoophouse ! Cover crops.
Let’s go S.L.O.W. ~ S.easonal, L.ocal, O.rganic, W.hole,
Grow food with others: Community gardens: find one or start one somewhere ! Community Gardening ! MSU extension links ! Master Gardener links, including Native Species.
Sauerkraut ~ purple cabbage from local East River Organic Farm !
PRESERVING food: dehydrating, fermenting, canning, smoking and salting….
Fermenting. Traditional way to preserve and increase nutrients and proprobiotics ! Small yeasties and beasties ! Sourdough wraps ! Sauerkraut, kombucha, yoghurt + more. Very easy, and like a pet…needs a little attention. “Wild Fermenting”, “The Art of Fermentation” Sandor Katz. I also love drying food, making sour kraut, kombucha, sourdough wraps and more !
FUN and very interactive with the liveliness around us at the micro level !
NATURAL BUILDING & Sustainable skills. Strawbale Studio outside Oxford, MI has classes and opportunities to tour, learn, network. Strawbale Construction, Living & Thatched Roofs, Earth Ovens, Rocket Stoves, Fermenting, Foraging and more ! The Kids Cottage at Kensington Metropark FARM CENTER, is open to the public and a great place to take kids to hang out and explore. Tillers International, a farm education center in mid Michigan offers a lot of traditional skill classes, too .
Compassionate Communication. Non-Violent Communication … an “awareness discipline masquerading as a communication process”. Getting along, connecting, getting our needs met joyfully.
Triple Bottom Line. Valuing not just profit, but all three “bottom lines” : the “Environment, Economics & Equity”. Another way to say it is valuing “People, Profit and the Planet”. Or “Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share”.
Michigan Interfaith Power & Light – Connecting Faith & Sustainability
MIPL Facebook Support for Congregations to be ecological & address climate change, including this resource: Green Sanctuary Manual This 118-page guide was updated by the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in 2009. The program it outlines is meant to “give roots and wings to the vision of a world in which all people make reverence, gratitude, and care for the living Earth central to their lives,”& suggests specific activities that congregations of all denominations can do to further these goals.
Permaculture uses environmental design to meet human needs while supporting the ecosystem.
Permaculture: The Growing Edge Trailer – 2.27 min
Permaculture and the Sacred. Youtube Keynote to Harvard Divinity School by Starhawk.
Transition Culture. Taking the resources we have now to make the transition to a sustainability ~ ecologically, economically, socially ! How to do it !
Parks & Programs Get lost in nature at these five S. E. Michigan Parks. Walk, bike, rent a canoe, contemplate, breathe or play !
30 Simple Ways to Immerse your Kids in Nature.
GET EMBODIED ! I am really appreciating the many ways Hamsa Yoga of Lake Orion meets so many of my needs to be centered, strong, flexible, connected to life. Also recommended is Karma Yoga.Karma Yoga. Bloomfield Hills, MI.
Why not co-create an inspiring list of LOCAL RESOURCES with your family or group ?
Re-localize Re-Skill Re-connect ! “Think Global, Act Local” !