We are aware that greywater is not presently allowed in the City of Kamloops. We hope Art Ludwig’s books in the local library will foster conversation and increase awareness of the benefits of greywater in dry climates.
The government officials are concerned that greywater could be a “health hazard”. I find it interesting that I can spray pesticide, herbicide and fungicide and that’s legal, but reclaiming water from my laundry machine or bathtub is a health hazard!
Until greywater is legal in Kamloops, we can still collect rainwater off our roofs and use this water on our gardens. Thank goodness that’s still legal in Kamloops.
If you would like to learn more about greywater, Deanna Hurstfield sent me this article called Rainwater Harvesting and Grey Water Reuse. This greywater review of practices was completed by the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
This is a beef curry made from shank meat from our bull. The tomatoes for the curry came from last year's harvest at Gardengate. The yellow pear tomatoes and green peppers came from our garden. Shaen made Baba Ghanoush from the first eggplant he has ever managed to grow.
Shopping for dinner is a short walk through the garden to the hoop-house. Everyday something different is ready for picking. This is fresh produce at its best.
I just wanted to share some of our garden harvest for this year. We are still managing to get lettuce and assorted greens from the garden for daily salads. We have been enjoying a range of summer squash and our winter squash are finally coming along. Shaen and the girls have been enjoying freshly dug potatoes from our potato permaculture patch. We have picked this year’s crop of raspberries and sour cherries. A friend harvested our currents so she could make jam. My girls had some wormy, scabrous apples that they thought were the best apples they ever tasted. We are just starting the harvest of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and eggplant. My girls love the yellow pear and cherry tomatoes and just pop them into their mouths right off the plant. A weed called mallow is taking over my garden; I am researching the medical uses of this plant, which are many.
The sunchokes are way over my head. The lettuce has finally bolted but I still can get leaves for salad everyday.
At our elevation the nights are already getting cool. The hoop-house is becoming a warm haven. Shaen realized he has too many plants and will reduce the number next year.
As promised I have let my garden go wild. The only weeding I am doing is in the spring and mostly we are sheet mulching with straw. Shaen wants to try deep mulching for next year to try and reduce the need for watering. Shaen is also letting the plants go to seed for two reasons. One is to have a more of a permaculture garden and the other is to collect seeds for next season.
Our plums still need to ripen. Plums are my favorite dried fruit. I have never found a commercial dried plum as good as the ones I dry myself.
We have had a number of wild visitors to our garden this year. We have had a numerous visits from what we think are Black-chinned Hummingbirds. Sonja saw what she thought was a very strange hummingbird. Erika later identified it with her Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North American as a Sphinx Moth. The Tree Swallows have disappeared with the last of the mosquitoes to be replaced by the Oregon Junco. The most exciting visitor for Meadows our warehouse cat, was a big green caterpillar with pink stripes and a big spike on its tail. Meadows wisely decided not to eat this strange meal. The caterpillar looked most like a Privet Hawkmoth but they are not found in North America.
If you have very little space, container gardening can be the answer . Look for the micro-climates around your home. Here are some hot pepper plants.
We have become converts of container gardening. Container gardening allows us to find the micro-climates around our house and use these spaces for food production. At our elevation, frost comes early, and many of our plants are just starting to produce when the season is over. With container gardening, we can move the plants to more protected areas around the buildings. We can move them into the hoop-house if only a few weeks are needed for the harvest, or even bring them indoors to extent the season even longer.
Containers allow you to grow food anywhere. This tomato plant is right in the middle of the GO BOX Storage parking lot. This plant is a real producer.
Updated October 26, 2012: Earlier this week I had special visitor to my garden. I was just about to exit the back door, when there in the Russian Olive was a Burrowing Owl. We both looked at each other in shock. I gasped, those yellows eyes took me in, and the owl flew away. I have only seen Burrowing Owls in pictures, but the long legs and size made me sure I was seeing a Burrowing Owl. It was my understanding that this rare, endangered species was not found this far north. Thanks to the internet I found a video of Burrowing Owls in Lac Du Bois Grasslands Conservation Area.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it?s the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead
I have just received this Call to Action from Margo McIntosh, Weston A Price Foundation leader for Wilmot, Wellesley and Wellington, ON. If you would like to sign the petition, we will have a copy at GO BOX Storage. Please come in person to sign the petition if you would like to see raw milk legalized in Canada.
Your help is needed to support the efforts of a new working group of raw milk consumers across Canada.?We are the Canadian Consumer Raw Milk Advocacy Group and our website is www.rawmilkconsumer.ca.
ACTION TO TAKE We have a petition that will be presented in the House of Commons in the fall of 2012.?You can help by circulating this petition through social media, in your health food stores, to your contact lists and through your chapter members.?You can also collect signatures for us at health shows, farmers markets, etc.?Any way that you can help will be appreciated.? Even if all that is on your petition is your signature, we want you to mail it! The petition must be hand signed and the originals presented to the House in order for it to be taken seriously.?The petition link is on the front page of the website.
ACTIVITIES We are working on an education package for Members of Parliament both Federal and Provincial. A photocopy of the petition signatures will be part of that package.
It is imperative that we collect a significant number of signatures for this endeavor and we are counting on WAPF Chapter Leaders and members to help us make a difference in Canada.?Working together as a countrywide effort instead of little pockets of well intentioned people will bring better results.
This effort is not limited to the collection of petition signatures.?Our information package will be sent electronically to every MPP and MP in the country.?For this we are recruiting people from each province to help us with both the distribution and the follow-up after a few weeks.? This will all happen in the fall.?We will be need at least one person in every province to coordinate the efforts for their province with our help.?My hope is that one WAPF Chapter from each province will take this on as a project, work together and help to make change happen. If your chapter wants to do this please have someone designated to join our working group so that you are kept in the know. If you are interested in this please contact me at margo@balanceyourapple.com or margo@healthharmonybalance.com and I will put you on a list to be kept informed.
For the Quebec Chapter Leaders and members, I was contacted by Bobby Gregoire from Slow Food Montreal.?He can be contacted at info@slowfoodmontreal.com.?Bobby helped me when we were organizing the rallies across the country for Michael Schmidt last November.?His group is taking volunteers to do what sounds like exactly the same thing our group is doing and we will be collaborating on this.? We were going to have our website translated into French but will instead link to theirs when it is done.?If you are in Quebec and would like to help out on a provincial level, please contact him.?Please watch our website for that update when it is available.?If you collect signatures for us in Quebec please send them to the address on the petition so they can be used at the Federal level.?I feel that we will enlist the help of more French speaking people outside of Quebec as well if we link to a Quebec group and website that is working in collaboration with us and the same for them with English speaking people inside Quebec.
Thank you everyone! Lets work together to create change in Canada!
Margo McIntosh, RHN, RNCP, CGP Registered Nutritional Consulting Practitioner WAPF Chapter Leader: Wilmot, Wellesley and Wellington, ON
If you only have time to read one book, I would recommend Nourishing Traditions. This is a very practice book.
Over the last few years, GO BOX Storage have donated a number of books about nourishing traditional foods and healing diets to the Kamloops Public Library. The Weston A. Price Foundation considers most of these books recommended reading.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price Pottenger’s Cats by Dr. Francis M. Pottenger Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride Put Your Heart In Your Mouth by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride Life Without Bread by Dr. Christian Allan and Dr. Wolfgang Lutz The Fourfold Path to Healing by Dr. Tom Cowan Know Your Fats by Dr. Mary G. Enig The Cholesterol Myth by Dr. Utte Ravnskov The Untold Story of Milk by Ron Schmid The Whole Soy Story by Dr. Kaayla Daniel Performance Without Pain by Kathryn Pirtle The Garden of Fertility by Katie Singer Honoring Our Cycles by Katie Singer The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein Seeds of Deception by Jeffery M. Smith Genetic Roulette by Jeffery M. Smith The GMO Trilogy (DVD) by Jeffery M. Smith The World According to Monsanto (DVD) by Jeffery M. Smith Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care by Sally Fallon Morell Create an Oasis with Greywater by Art Ludwig Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers and Ponds by Art Ludwig
