The Canadian Kitchen Garden: USDA Zone 3

This weekend is the Victoria Day long weekend, which Edmontonians usually consider the beginning of the frost-free season and safe to plant seedlings, and things are finally starting to green up - so my thoughts have turned to establishing my kitchen garden. 

(September 7th update: skip to the bottom of the post for photos from the end of the season!)

happy bee on an Evans Cherry sapling in bloom at the garden centre

I grew up in Nova Scotia (USDA Zone 5ish), but all my gardening as an adult has been in Edmonton (USDA zone 3, which you can push to zone 4 in protected microclimates). The cottage-style garden I made at my last home was purely decorative, with an emphasis on peonies, iris, hostas, and daylilies. I am sorely missing the now-mature Evans Cherry tree we planted in that garden, and the gorgeous sour cherry gelato I made from its fruit. Sigh.

my little raised bed from last summer needs rebuilding already

However, two summers ago we moved house to a larger lot, and so this summer's labour of love is turning the bare bones planted by the previous owners into a proper kitchen garden.

Community Building: Throwing A Block Party

All the houses on our four-year-old cul-de-sac have now completed construction and been sold, so the timing is right to start a neighborhood tradition and make friends with the neighbours. At a Christmas get-together, the idea of a block party met with enthusiasm, so I decided to get the ball rolling and start the process. Once the idea was out there, several of my neighbours banded together as an informal planning committee, and things fell together easily.

Here's what we did:

Slow Parenting: a talk by Carl Honore

Last week, author Carl Honoré gave a wonderful talk on slow parenting as the public keynote lecture for an early childhood education conference. I completely forgot to take a photo during the talk (facepalm!), so instead, here are his books, which you really should read:

Under Pressure: Putting The Child Back In Childhood,
and In Praise Of Slow, by Carl Honoré 

Honoré talked about how childrens' lives have been hijacked by adult fears and agendas, as modern parenting has become a cross between competitive sport and product development. We've been primed by media and advertising to want perfection in everything. This has put both children and their parents under intense pressure that is leading to the opposite of our goal of bringing up healthy, happy children. He shared stories of young adults with helicopter parents who are unable to cope with minor challenges because their entire lives have been stage-managed, the extension of adolescence into late 20s, and grim statistics about ritalin use and abuse, suicide, self-harm, and burn-out.

He's not immune to the pressure to overparent, either. He described how, when he suggested an art tutor to his son after a teacher described him as a gifted artist, his son asked, "Why do adults always have to take over everything?" He also told the story of his daughter, stopping to watch a ladybug on a leaf and coming up with an elaborate backstory and context for the insect - while he looked at his watch and tried to hurry her along. Neuroscientists tell us that quiet moments of contemplation, these 'ladybug moments', are the times when our kids' developing brains are on fire, making connections and absorbing information.

The need to dial back on overscheduling and create more time for contemplation for a better academic and life experience has recently been recognized by Eton (with a project to start in November) and Harvard (with this 2004 letter to newly admitted undergrads). Burn-out is also a problem among young athletes, with many kids dropping out of sports altogether during their teens, and Honore talked about the need to give kids a chance to "fall in love with the game" instead of making sports about winning.

Honoré also observed that our newsmedia-fueled fears of our children getting hurt or kidnapped and the "cult of safety" that arose from that has led to a generation being "practically raised in captivity", never getting to explore nature on their own or play pick-up games with neighborhood kids. Some parents are trying to counteract that tendancy by creating 'Backyard Sports' leagues and neighborhood summer camps, organizing 'Dangerous Book For Boys' parties, and taking their kids to nature playgrounds and outdoor preschools.

Finally, he gave some practical advice and answered questions. He observed that raising children is a journey, not a project to be managed using business-school methods. Less is more: the less stimulation and pressure, the greater the benefits for our kids' development. Furthermore, "by giving our children the very best of everything, we are denying them the opportunity to learn to make the best of what they have," which may be one of the most valuable lessons we can teach. 

Parents in the audience asked: how do we slow parent in an inner city apartment, or with teenagers, or with both parents working full-time?  Every family is unique, so he advised finding what works best for your family. Look at your schedules and your kids' interests, then dial back on the extracurricular activities and give your kids more unstructured play time. Find like-minded families to get a support group or find playmates for unstructured play in safe, supervised spaces. Try art or nature projects as a transition to less scheduled activity during the period when your kids are learning how to amuse themselves without resorting to TV and video games.

Mr. Honoré will be back in Edmonton next April to promote his upcoming book, The Slow Fix. Meanwhile, both the above books are available as e-book editions from the various online vendors (is there something ironic about that?). You should also check out Carl Honore's website and TED talk on slowness, and this blog post from another local parent who attended the same seminar.

Slow Living: The Hunt

You may have noticed that when I write about my wardrobe or my decor, or even my bicycles, I end up using the words "thrifted", "vintage", and "antique" a lot. I love the variety and sense of history that older objects bring to a space or an outfit. I love that antiques are green. I love hunting for them, learning about them, and using them. I love the stories that they tell.

While I've never joined a collectors' club, I've been a casual collector of antiques and vintage since before the days of eBay (oops, I just outed myself as old, didn't I?). Now that my kids are both in full-time school, I'm able to spend more time on The Hunt, so I thought it would be neat to make summaries of the cool things I've found a semi-regular feature on the blog. I'm going to include things found at thrift shops, antique malls, or on Kijiji since all three of those are dominated by vintage and nearly-new items in my city.

Here's what I've scored in the last couple of weeks:

The folding plywood chair by American Seating that I told you about yesterday.

Pyrex bowls, a fluted Fire-King bowl, and a small Pyrex casserole - all $5 each at Value Village -
because borosilicate is best.

A china creamer souvenir of Whitehorse, Yukon; a GourMates by Glo-Hill mid-mod chrome serving platter;
and a Birks house brand silver-plate tray to go with my silver-plate tea set. All from Value Village.

Also, for my wardrobe (no photos because I sent most of these things for dry cleaning):
- two wool pencil skirts and one linen tulip skirt
- two lace-trimmed black polyester camisoles from the '80s
- one white cotton button-up blouse

I'm doing the link party thing for the first time, so please be gentle with me. Today I have linked up with Simple Design's Thrift Haul (well, I will when the next one goes live on Monday - meanwhile check out her 5 rules of thrifting) and Cap Creations' Thrifty Love.

Slow Living: A Home Pottery Studio Tour

Slow living isn't only about living locally, sustainably, with handmade things you love, in a way that supports and celebrates your community's traditions and skills. In an ideal world, slow living includes setting aside space and time for creative pursuits. Learning and practicing an art or craft can enrich your life and be incredibly fulfilling.

While there are lots of professional studio tours on ceramics blogs like (Mud)Bucket, I thought you might be interested in seeing the home pottery studio of a passionate hobbyist, my talented mother Sharon Merriam.

Sharon Merriam at work in her home studio. Photo credit: Peter Merriam.

Mom has moved between media for most of my life. When I was a child, she did sewing, macrame, crochet, and embroidery; when I was in my teens she began life drawing and watercolour, and went on to printmaking. She immersed herself in workshops and extension courses from the local fine arts college. About a decade ago, she began taking pottery classes and workshops, and she was instantly hooked. Ceramics is now her primary medium, and we rarely have a phone conversation where she doesn't report on her latest pieces or the glaze combinations she is trying. The walls of her work have become thinner, her designs more adventurous, her range of techniques more comprehensive, and she has joined a potters' guild and shown her work alongside that of professional potters. At this time, she is enjoying expanding her skills, and has artistic freedom to spend time and effort that she could never afford to give a single piece as a production potter.

Here are some photos I snapped around the house of her work:

A collection of yunomi and glaze test chips on a table in the living room bay window.

A series of sculptural works based on the female figure line the stairs.

 

 

 

  

This is the first in a sculptural series using thrown rings. To the right is a raku vase.

The wave-shaped tray is her most recent experimental piece. The large vase was wood fired.

The creation of this version of Mom's home ceramics studio has taken years. Before she took up pottery, she had a portable easel, and a corner of a spare bedroom that was used to store supplies and reference books and her works on paper, and most of the artwork on the walls was gradually supplanted with her best work. When she began her love affair with ceramics, she did all her work at Atlantic Pottery Supplies, during classes and studio time. She found that arrangement limiting as she became more skilled and more serious about her craft. After renovating to install a new laundry room in an upstairs storage room a few years ago, the laundry room was converted into a home studio so she could practice throwing (that is, using a pottery wheel) at home. When she purchased an electric kiln last fall, that room became the kiln room (with some electrical work and the addition of a kiln vent fan), and a storage room in the basement was cleaned out and converted into the new throwing-drying-and-glazing studio with the addition of a ventilation fan and a sink. A table for hand-building lives in the basement rec room, and the storage for the pieces she has made has happily spilled over into many rooms of the house.

The electric kiln in its own room, a former laundry room. That thick black cord is the electrical cord for the kiln, which was professionally wired to a lockable box with the sort of on/off switch you see in factories in the movies. The white cord in the background is for a vent fan in the window.

Bisqued wares await glaze on a shelf in the hallway near the kiln room. Photo credit: Sharon Merriam

My kids making pinch pots with my mom at the hand-building table in the basement rec room.

The long, narrow storage room was converted into a ceramics studio with two sections. This shot was taken from mid-room, of the glazing area and the sink (there is a washroom on the other side of that wall that made plumbing in a new sink possible).

Shelves of tools and projects at various stages of completion line the walls.
These are trimming and carving tools.

Handmade brushes for glazing.

Glaze ingredients and premixed underglazes. 

Ready to start throwing. The day I took these photos, Mom threw a cylinder for a project we are collaborating on.

 

Using ribs to throw and compress the cylinder's walls. 

Checking the height - not tall enough. That's a sketch of my sister on the wall.

  

Compressing the lip of the cylinder before she cut and stretched it.
Notice the sculptures on the shelf above her head.

Compressing the edge of the cut-and-stretched cylinder. The reason we did this instead of using a traditional slab approach was that the throwing process gives the clay a more organic feeling.

Ready for the next phase!

This is after the next phase: once the clay was leather-hard, we cut the thrown-and-stretched slab into tiles, and I transferred my design onto them and carved out the outlines. It's a Craftsman-inspired ceramic address plaque, showing a heavy Glasgow school influence. 

Here it is with the underglazes painted on. It's hard to tell from the photo, but variation in how many coats of underglaze were used will affect how dark it will be after firing - and the colours after firing will dark purple and dark green. After it has been bisque-fired, the remaining glazes will be added, then it will be fired again.

Viewing photos of the studios of professional artists and writers can be inspiring, but seeing how a passionate amateur integrates their craft study and practice into their home and life can have different lessons. Sometimes, our creative pursuits and passions are not easily contained in a single display case or dedicated room, and that's okay. As the witticism goes, creative minds are rarely tidy.

If (unlike my mom) you're striving for a minimalist version of slow living, there are ways you can manage the chaos that creativity brings. You can have a live/work arrangement like hers, with extra systems in place that help you contain the mess while you are working - professionals with live/work studios would be good models to follow for this. You can choose to work in a separate studio to manage the chaos that creating large works can bring. Alternately, you can be very deliberate in choosing a medium where completed works and works in progress can be stored compactly, or even digitally.

If your personal style is more maximalist, having a live/work space and surrounding yourself with your influences and your own creations is an inspirational way to have a slow home!

{21 Aug 12 Update: edited slightly to reflect feedback from my mother.}

The Suburban Slow Home Case Study

Exactly a year ago tomorrow, I wrote a long post about living slowly and sustainably in the suburbs that I'd like to revisit. (Go reread it and meet me back here, mmmkay?)

The approximate floorplan of our new home, not to scale.

As I've been showing friends our new home, I've noticed that I'm a bit embarrassed by it. It's bigger than I feel like we need. It's one street over from million-dollar mansions with ravine access, whose property values we might be lowering by parking our dinged-up 12-year-old Toyota in our driveway. The master bedroom and ensuite all by themselves have more square footage than my first apartment. Almost every surface finish is some variant of builder beige.

So far, not so slow, right? But that's actually part of the plan. We wanted a house with great bones, good solar orientation, and a big enough lot for a large garden, in or near the new-urbanist neighborhood where we were already living, where we can live for the next couple of decades. We got all of those things with this house, plus a great location that's well-connected to recreational walking paths and the bike trail network, and good proximity to amenities (a yoga studio two blocks away! close enough to school and groceries that we can theoretically live car-light!). Unfortunately, there aren't many houses available in our neighborhood that meet our criteria, so we compromised on getting a bigger house than we were looking for in order to get a bigger yard; our other choice to get a bigger yard involved moving neighborhoods and living through a stressful renovation of an older home. Our new home will be a case study in gradually customizing a fairly typical builder-basic suburban move-up house to make it a slow home. I hope documenting it here will be helpful, given that about half of North Americans live in suburbs. All those houses and the infrastructure that serves them are already built, so discussing ways to slow them down and make them more sustainable is worthwhile. You'll be able to follow our progress on this blog using the tag 'slow home case study'.


Here's our to-do list, in no particular order:


- When we took possession, we did a little painting and moved in, then held off unpacking all the boxes while we worked on repainting and staging our old house for sale (watch for a post about that soon!).

- Now that our old house has sold, we will move our remaining furniture, then gradually invest in a mix of antique and new furniture to fill the obvious gaps in the new house. Right now I know those gaps include a sofa bed for the 'bonus room' to allow family movie nights and accommodate visitors, and book storage to replace the built-ins we left behind.

- The next step in personalizing our home will be to add architectural moldings, paint walls, hang artwork and family photos, and unpack the rest of our things (and purging more things we don't need or use as we unpack).

- Obviously, since this is a slow home makeover, I'll be looking to incorporate ideas from Slow Home Studio's courses and Slow Your Home's bootcamp as I fine-tune our floorplan and work out what else we need to do. I'll also be following my own advice and bringing local materials, the work of local artisans, a sense of place, and a timeless design aesthetic to the decorating scheme.

- A big goal for this summer is to get the kitchen organized for efficiency, to allow home baking and canning to happen, and make it easy for us to make more of our own food from scratch. (My daughter has asked me to start teaching her how to cook. I am so excited about this! Especially since the disruption of moving is the perfect time to incorporate healthier eating and exercise habits into our daily lives, and switching from processed to homemade will help us accomplish that. Slow food FTW!) We also will consider adding cold cellar storage and/or extra pantry space in the basement. 

- We also need to get the garden in the back yard properly set up with a play area for the kids, raised beds for planting veg next year (so the dog doesn't play on top of the seedlings, like she's prone to doing now), and the perennials (divided from the mature garden at the old house) and fruit trees (including a seedling Evans Cherry transplanted from the old garden) planted; this will include removal of a fungus-infected hawthorne tree and replacement with another fruit tree. Oh, and we should arrange outdoor furniture on the back deck for eating al fresco and entertaining, and add a shade structure since it's currently only useable in the evening. Someday I'd like to have hens, too, but since (a) they're not legal in my city yet and (b) sharing a yard with our bird-dog might be stressful for them, that will have to wait.

- Meanwhile in the front yard, the door and porch need paint, and we need a pair of chairs and the existing minimal landscaping (and dead tree) replanted to make the front of our home more inviting. Right away, we will set up a bin or two of outdoor toys and bubbles and chalk so our children play with other neighborhood kids on the sidewalk, and I'd eventually like the sod pulled up and the area relandscaped as a Japanese garden with a small kid-friendly bamboo fountain, some boulders the kids can play around, and a stepping-stone path through the plantings - so it would double as a decorative space and a place neighbors would actually enjoy hanging out and building community. I need to think about whether the front garden would be xeriscaped with a high proportion of native plants, or whether my concerns about urban food security will mean I choose edible landscaping - both approaches have merit. I also need to consider the neighborhood rules with respect to landscaping (which are mostly written to prevent people from creating no-maintenance gravel 'gardens', W00T).

- Bikes are already taking over the garage, so we need to get a compact bicycle storage arrangement in place. My youngest won't tolerate riding in a rear seat instead of pedaling for much longer, so we also need a bicycle setup that allows easy bike rides for me and the kids to school and grocery stores to minimize our car use (although the kids can also take the yellow bus starting in autumn). I already have a pretty sweet vintage 3-speed roadster with front and rear baskets that I use for shopping trips.

- Obviously we will also want to do an energy audit (probably through new local nonprofit eco-retrofit specialists C Returns) and start making improvements to our home's energy and water efficiency - this process will definitely get a separate post or five. The house already is relatively efficient, being only four years old, so I predict that the energy audit will suggest a lot of little things that can add up to make a difference, like repairing gaps in insulation and adding caulk. Our budget won't allow us to strive for net zero any time soon, but I also think replacement toilets (TOTO dual-flush) and a solar installation (possibly via Enmax's new Generate Choice program) will be happening at some point, and I'd love to install a sun tunnel into the windowless laundry room.


- An easy and obvious green project will be to set up an air drying area in the laundry room, and install an unobtrusive (retractable?) clothesline in the back yard.

- To add character and useful features to the house, we'd like to add built-in bookshelves and window seats, and add trim to make the interior architecture more authentic to the period it's attempting to reproduce. I suspect that the Not So Big House book series will be consulted alongside the Arts-and-Crafts/Craftsman/Mission/Prairie reference images for ideas.

- A practical way I can make a difference will be to make a point of riding my bike to shop at neighborhood businesses (especially the mom-and-pops) and the local farmers' market, and requesting bicycle parking where racks haven't been installed yet by developers. Both the Mary Poppins Effect of seeing a mom running errands in street clothes on an upright bike and the presence of more bike racks should encourage other people to use their bicycles (and I can vouch that there are plenty of families riding for fun and errands in the more mature New Urbanist neighborhood next door where our old house is).

- We are aiming to do nightly rides and walks with my family to explore all the local paths, to increase our familiarity with the neighborhood and get more exercise - and, when we are in the ravine proper, to get the kids exploring nature and seeing the animals and birds that live down there. My husband is actually using the GPS features of his phone to map all the unmarked trails through the sanctuary while he is walking our dog, which he then plans to annotate and add photos to before making it public on GoogleMaps. I'll let you know when that project is posted.

- We will also eventually finish the basement to make the house useable as a multigenerational family home, so that the square footage per person ratio becomes more appropriate. For now it will just stay unfinished playroom and crafting space, but there is room for another large bedroom, living area, and plumbing roughed-in for a bathroom, so adding a kitchenette to make it an in-law suite would be a relatively simple proposition. If we will be doing this, we'll need to also apply aging-in-place criteria to our design decisions throughout the house, such as ensuring that doors and hallways are wide enough, lighting is bright enough, flooring has enough cushion (cork?), and larger rooms have enough soft furnishings to prevent echoes (although we can't do much about the multi-level floor plan).

- Setting up the room closest to the front entry as a studio and home office appropriate for client meetings will facilitate both a home-based business and a telecommuting work arrangement - and will be crucial for supporting my goals of finishing rewriting my business plan and relaunching my career once both the kids are in school full-time.

- Since the choices made for a slow home should last forever, we will also need to keep the likely long-term effects of global economic crises, disruptive technologies, and climate change in mind as we make each decision - and we will need to do all this frugally (so we can pay down our debts as quickly as possible). This will involve a lot of time, research, creativity, and willingness to make things ourselves.

Any other ideas for things I should add to our to-do list for the Suburban Slow Home case study?

Passport To Summer Fun: DIY summer camp ideas

Last summer, some friends and I had standing playdates to do a sort of DIY Summer Camp, trying to knock as many activities around our city as we could off the bucket list below. However, we did it with a twist, inspired by the Nova Scotia Museum passports I remembered from my childhood - we got small inexpensive journals for each child, and every activity got a page or two of the book, with ticket stubs or other memorabilia and a printed photo from the event and a written date. If we had an opportunity to do something separately as a family, that went into the Summer Fun Passport too. We called it a scavenger hunt, but there was no prize for who completed the most tasks off the list, just the fun of seeing how full the passports were by the end of the summer.

I kept a kit with the passport notebooks, a pen and a gluestick, the bucket list of ideas, and a book journaling notepad in a large ziplock bag in my summer go bag all summer long. As we did stuff, I'd put ticket stubs or other mementoes into the bag and snap some photos, and once every couple of weeks I'd print out photos and glue things into the passport. We'll do a similar kit for the go-bag this summer, with the printables I mention below, an actual date stamp, and our updated bucket list.

PASSPORT TO SUMMER FUN: SCAVENGER HUNT

* = indoor activity for rainy days or once the weather turns cold

playground playdates - a stamp for each new playground you try

electric tram from Whyte Ave to Downtown

*Royal Alberta Museum bug room

*Art Gallery of Alberta

Edmonton Zoo visit including pony ride

Fort Edmonton Park visit including train ride

John Jantzen Nature Centre (has both outdoor activities and indoor ones)

*Muttart Conservatory

*a movie in the theatre

Edmonton Fringe Festival play

*West Edmonton Mall aquarium and wave pool

*Terwillegar Rec Centre

*Airplane Museum

road trip: Calgary Zoo

road trip: train museum

road trip: machine museum in Wetaskiwin

Devonian Botanic Garden butterflies and Japanese Garden giant bell

road trip: Elk Island National Park and Ukrainian Village

road trip: Jasper National Park

*kitchen chemistry day: volcanoes, bottle rockets, and making slime

*math and spelling fun day

building a cardboard space ship or club house

*reading three books borrowed from Edmonton Public Library

*chef school day

berry picking and corn maze

decorate bikes then go for bike ride and picnic

*yarn craft day: learning to crochet / knit / braid / weave / make tassels

make stepping stones

mystery day (using your sleuthing kits)

composting and gardening day

painting self portraits
*music making day (with homemade instruments)

*puppet making and puppet show

hula hooping camp

take a hike in the River Valley

*Tour de Value Village

*Telus World of Science

This summer, to encourage unstructured outdoor play in front of our house so we meet our new neighbors and make friends, do some community building on a street where some houses are newly built, and spend some time exploring the natural world at our doorstep in the Whitemud Creek ravine, we're adding these activities to our list. (For more ideas along these lines, check out the fantastic blog and new book from Playborhood.)

bike ride (a new stamp for each path explored)
nature explorer (a new stamp for each path hiked and each new animal sighted)

skipping games (to be played on the sidewalk in front of our house)

sidewalk chalk art creation

sprinkler day (set up sprinkler, small water pistols, spray bottles, bucket of ice in front yard)

lemonade stand

made a new friend (a new stamp for each playdate)

block party
gardening (our front yard is a blank slate so the kids will get a stamp for a garden centre trip followed by helping me plant some perennials and containers)

exterior decorator certification (painting our front porch and setting it up with seating for resting and snacking, and a couple of summer activity buckets full of outdoor play toys, water toys, sidewalk chalk - I have a good idea how this will look but the kids will get to provide lots of input so it's an area where they want to hang out)

We're also travelling to Nova Scotia for three weeks, so we'll also add stamps for

trip to the beach

trip to a museum

visit to a historic site

going for a hike

lessons from the kids' cousin who teaches swimming

day at the cottage


Here are some more posts to give you ideas for your own DIY summer camp or passport project:

• Simple Homemade has a great post with free printables for stamps you can glue into your 'passport'.
• Heather Carson has a beautiful printable for a summer passport with stamps - but less space for memorabilia and photos than my scrapbook-ish approach.
• Jackie at weelife is taking the passport approach too, and has her bucket list on her blog - lots of great ideas to add here! 
• Imagination Soup (for older kids) and Parenting magazine (for preschoolers) have great summer camp ideas - and Oopsey Daisy are doing a series of guest posts with summer camp ideas for a range of ages with the cutest crafts ever.
• Brown Paper Packages has a great guest post from a mom who outlines the book-themed DIY summer camp she did with her triplet daughters.
• I like 504 Main's approach of doing an organized camp one day a week where each family takes a turn hosting activities.

What's on your bucket list this summer?

Ten Easy Ways To Take Life More Slowly

{This blog post is adapted from the talk I gave at the 2012 Millet Womens' Retreat on March 10th, and reposted from my guest post yesterday at Edmonton's NextGen. I was so honoured to be asked to contribute, given all the amazing work NextGen do. I didn't quite succeed in whittling a half-hour talk down to 1000 words, but it was fun trying.}


Another Earth Day, another avalanche of press releases and sales flyers. Sometimes it feels like 'green' has become another hokey sales pitch for gadgets you don't need, doesn't it? However, Earth Day is more than just an opportunity to get a great deal on a rain barrel at the hardware store. It's a chance to rethink how our everyday actions have an impact, not just on the planet, but closer to home.

This is what Earth Day is actually about. Earth & Moon as seen from Mars
(3 Oct 2007, HiRISE camera, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter).  

Want to make your impact on the planet and your community a positive one? Try slowing your life down.

By 'slow', I mean the opposite of 'fast' as in 'fast food' and 'fast fashion'. The Slow Movement is a worldwide grassroots initiative that seeks to mitigate some of the negative effects of consumerism and globalization on communities and traditions, using mindful, ethical, interactive, and playful means. It's a philosophy that's being adapted to many different subjects, including slow food, slow fashion, slow design, slow home, slow travel, cittaslow (slow cities), slow craft, slow marketing, slow parenting, slow science, slow journalism, and slow technology. 

At its heart, the Slow Movement is about making choices that support communities and celebrate their traditions and skills. Here are ten easy ways you can incorporate its ideas into your life.



1. Local Is Lovely

Thinking locally is the most important idea behind the Slow Movement. Consciously choose to shop, eat, bank, and use services in your community. Seek out things that are grown or made locally, and support local independently-owned businesses. Live Local are Edmonton's best resource for shopping, dining, and eating locally, and they've written a great explanation of why choosing local makes a big difference. 

2. Think Sustainable

Yes, being green is part of being slow, because sustainable practices build healthier families and communities. The emphasis in the Slow Movement is less on eco-marketing buzzwords and energy efficient gizmos, and more on doing what you can with what you already have. There are lots of easy, inexpensive ways to make your home and life more environmentally friendly. A couple of strategies that can make a big difference are looking for third-party certifications to back up a manufacturer’s sustainability claims, and thinking about a product’s life cycle (How and where was it made? Was it shipped far? How long will it last? Does it offgas? What happens when you're done with it?).

3. Think Long-Lasting

Choose to buy things that are durable, timeless, and well-made. If you consider the life cycle of an object, something you will use and love for decades beats out something you won’t, no matter what other eco-attributes it has. So, aim to buy fewer, better things – and go ahead and eat off the good china.

4. Sharing Is Caring

Borrow from your neighbors. Use your local library. Rent tools instead of buying them. Join a car sharing group. Barter, trade, and swap. All these ways to share items aren't only cheaper than ownership; they’re also a great way to reduce your personal environmental footprint and build community. Collectively, these activities are referred to as Collaborative Consumption, and peer-to-peer services that use sharing as their business model are exploding in popularity all over the world. 

5. Less Is More

Voluntary Simplicity and Minimalism are twin strategies for slow living. Minimalists aim to buy less, higher quality stuff, and say that living with fewer things is freeing, in addition to being more environmentally friendly. The term Voluntary Simplicity tends to be used by people who aim to live frugally and self-sufficiently.

6. Make Do And Mend

Fixing things – and buying things that are designed to be fixable, instead of having planned obsolescence – is sustainable behavior, but also helps us to learn new skills and share skills with each other, and we tend to cherish objects that we have mended with our own hands.  

7. Wabi-Sabi

Wabi and Sabi are concepts that come from Japan's Zen Buddhism. The concept of wabi includes harmony, balance, simplicity, and humility; sabi translates literally as "the bloom of time". Taken together, the words describe the beauty of everyday, functional objects that we cherish because they are well-used, patinated, handmade, and tied to memories. Wabi-sabi is also living in the moment, simply and authentically, and letting seasonal rhythms and local availability influence our lives. 

8. Think Handmade

9. Think Traditional 

These two ways to slow down your life go hand-in-hand. If a goal of the Slow Movement is to protect regional cultural traditions from globalization, industrialization, and consumerism, then it follows that passing on the traditions that you grew up with, and learning more about the traditions of your region and your ancestors, is an important part of slow living. When I think of the traditions I know of from my family that are no longer celebrated, they all have to do with making things by hand that are mass-manufactured now – like hand-quilted blankets and recipes with days of soaking time. There are countless hand-making skills and family recipes that I cannot learn easily from family members now that I live in another province – I need to turn to books and blogs and YouTube videos to figure them out. Not much is handmade any more, so to preserve those skills and traditions we need to support the artisans who are using them, and learn the skills when we get a chance.

The flip side of that is the intrinsic value of living with handmade things – their beauty and their durability. Just knowing an object is made by hand makes it more special, even if it doesn’t come from our personal set of traditions. Knowing who made something and where it was made makes it even more special.

10. Take Your Time

Try literally slowing your life down. That could mean doing things more slowly and carefully, to get a higher quality end result. It could mean saying no to things that are not a priority for you, to make room in your life for your passions. It could mean taking a sabbatical to research a new area, taking a course to learn a new technique, or taking time off for a vacation, to help inspire new work.

As you can see, incorporating the ideas of the Slow Movement into your everyday life could make it more beautiful, meaningful, sustainable, and connected to your community.

Slow Home: Do You Know Your Home's History?

One of the central goals of the slow movement is to foster a sense of community and connection, and researching the history of your home is a great way do that. Here's a case study on how to go about it, using the house my husband and I just bought. I thought it would be fun to show that even a relatively new home can have a history worth looking into!

If you live in an older house, you may find the tips and resources in the "Be your own House Detective" articles in the October 2010 and November 2010 issues of UK genealogy magazine Family History Monthly very useful. There are also great resources at the UK's National Archives and Bricks and Brass, and at Active History (for Canada) and the cities of Edmonton and Calgary - try adding your municipality to the search terms 'researching history of house' to find relevant resources for your area.

{Step 1: Write down what you know about your home's previous owners, builder, architect (if any), location, and prior land uses.}

Our new house was built in neo-Craftsman style in 2008 by Alberta-based builder Homes By Avi, as a  spec home using their "McCullough A2" plans (according to the builder's records; the MLS listing had it as a former showhome). The subdivision in which it was built is new enough that when we moved to our current home in an adjacent subdivision in 2001, the land was farmland used for growing canola and wheat, and deer and the occasional moose were routinely seen grazing along the road. It is still an active construction zone with only about a third to a half of the lots completed. The land is adjacent to a ravine that has been designated a wildlife refuge, called MacTaggart Sanctuary. A lovely unpaved walking path winds through the Sanctuary along Whitemud Creek's wooded banks past an active beaver colony, and the path connects to paths through our city's river valley and comprises part of a huge hiking trail network called the Waskahegan Trail. 

I snapped this photo from the edge of a beaver dam in MacTaggart Sanctuary last October.
Nearby there was a trail of flattened grass on the bank, where the beavers like to slide into the creek.

{Step 2: Look for documentation and clues to the house's former life outside and inside the home.}

We don't yet have possession of the home, but I took lots of photos and measurements during the house inspection, and we will take another look once we are in. We don't expect to find much, since the property was built so recently - but in an older home, the architectural style and changes to the layout as the home has grown additions or suffered renovations can give important information about its date and past. So, taking measurements and drawing up your house's floorplan can yield clues. When we compare our home to the current version of the floorplan linked above, we see a number of changes: the entire second floor is different (with 3 larger bedrooms and a media room, instead of the four bedrooms shown in the PDF), and a hallway was closed off and space stolen from the front room to add a shower stall to the powder room and a closet to a home office suitable for seeing clients. Those changes and the slightly worn builder-beige paint throughout this house are consistent with the information from the MLS listing that it was a showhome before it was lived in.

A quick, rough sketch of the house's actual floor plan, not-to-scale.
Modified from the current version of the McCullough marketing materials on the Homes By Avi website.

{Step 3: Look for further information that is part of the public record. Start with online searches, then check with the local archives for your city, county, and province (or state). Don't forget to look at the websites of community organizations and local newspapers, as well as local histories, maps, surveys, and census records for heritage homes.}

Here is what I found out:

- By searching on the street address, I found the website of a business that was run from the home office of the house, and the name of a previous owner.

- By searching on the name of the subdivision, I found the marketing materials for this subdivision and the one next-door, information about adjacent model-green-community subdivisions, the city's neighborhood profile and Neighborhood Area Structure Plan (PDFs), and an article for the local community league's newsletter about the history of the subdivision (on page 18 of the PDF). The city's plans call for this to become a highly walkable mixed-density neighborhood.

- From the Neighborhood Area Structure Plan, I learnt that there once were coal mines on the north bank of the creek, and as a result a larger buffer zone than would usually be needed is required around the ravine. This makes for nicer park areas on the upper edge of the ravine. Googling told me that the development on the other side of the ravine (Twin Brooks) is on the site of a former mining village, traces of which can still be found in the subdivision. So I'm guessing that the miners who dug the mine shafts in the ravine lived there.

- From the newsletter article, I learnt that the farm and ravine had belonged to Walter Street, who had retired to a one-room cabin overlooking the ravine, and that Maclab Enterprise's Sandy Mactaggart bought the land from him (after years of conversation) with the promise that he could continue to live there, and that the ravine would become a nature reserve. Mr. MacTaggart made good his promise and arranged for the land, along with adjoining land owned by the Province, to be donated to the University of Alberta as a nature reserve.

- I also learnt a fair bit about the colourful, community-spirited Mr. MacTaggart who bought Mr. Street's farm and ravine from him. Anyone who lives in Edmonton is likely familiar with the development corporation that Mr. MacTaggart was a partner in, but the many new residents of our rapidly-growing city might not be aware of the large role he and his wife played in both building Edmonton's inner-ring suburbs and cultural community (I've lived here going on eighteen years and had not been aware of his work and legacy). I do think it's fitting that the nature reserve and the new neighborhood on its edge are named for MacTaggart.

- A sign (in the photos above) at one of the entrances to the MacTaggart Sanctuary from the new neighborhood of MacTaggart confirmed the newsletter story, and added a few crucial clues to Walter Street's identity: that he lived 1878 - 1969, that he fought in World War One, and that before his retirement to farm the land beside Whitemud Creek Ravine, he had managed the stable at the Edmonton Ice Company.

- I found Walter Street listed in the 1950 Henderson Directory for Edmonton, occupation "stableman Arctic Ice Company" (who bought out Edmonton Ice Company), living at a Rossdale address near (or perhaps in) the Arctic Ice building at 100 Street and 97 Avenue; by 1952 he had moved and is no longer listed (although a carpenter of the same name is).

- A search on Walter Street, Edmonton, Alberta on Ancestry.ca led me to census records of two possible individuals, one of whom was married (and seems to be the carpenter I just mentioned) - and the other of whom is too young to be the correct individual, if the signage placed in the community is correct, but who otherwise seems to fit the facts. I'm now corresponding with one of the people researching that Walter Street's family tree, and have promised him I'll make enquiries at the local archives to see what else we can learn. Using the dates from the signage instead of a location in Edmonton has suggested a few other possible individuals, so I will need to find more information in order to narrow down the origins of the Walter Street who farmed the land my house now sits on, regardless. My next step will be to visit the archives, in person.

Walter Street's name ought to be more widely known, since his foresight and generosity ensured that his land on Whitemud Creek was preserved in as unspoiled a state as possible for us all to enjoy. I hope he would approve of the beautiful wildlife sanctuary and the neighborhood being built on its banks.