Apple trees are one of the few fruits that can be grown easily in southern Quebec and have been used for centuries to make cider, jams and sauces. One day, I’d like to have an apple orchard of my own.

What: Theory and Practice of Organic Apple Tree Maintenance

When: Saturday, March 20th, 9AM to 4PM

Where: Lobinière, Quebec

Duration: 6 hours

Description: In collaboration with the Collective regional agricultural training, Team Haunted Farm organizes a course on mastering techniques based on the size and maintenance of organic apples.

There will be further concepts such as the physiological development of apple trees, their major pests, the basic techniques of pruning with distinctions appropriate for different sizes of trees (from training, annual maintenance, fruiting and most importantly, restructuring of old apple trees).

At the end of training, participants will be able to make the right size of Apple tree, the recultivation of abandoned apple trees and to develop a plan to fight against the major integrated pests.

Cost: The cost of this course is about $ 50 (or less, the total fee is divided in proportion to the number of entries). Depending on the interests of participants in a sequence can then be available on the cuttings (in April) and planting (Fall).

Who: The trainer is John Lamontagne, CFP professional arborist of Fierbourg. For more information and to book your spot, place contact (as soon as possible!) Lea, Coordinator for Productions Haunted Farm.

Looking forward to prune in your company for the finest apples this fall!

*** Possible barter tuition cons of 5 hours work size in the orchard the next day (ie Sunday AM March 21) and / or work the size of the orchard in exchange for the equivalent  vegetables (summer 2010); to negotiate with Lea. ***

* Chance of carpooling and lodging on site. *

Contact: Lea Charest, for the Haunted Farm
585 rang St-Eustache, Lobinière, Quebec
796-3277, leacharet418@hotmail.com

I have been eating a lot of raw food for about 9 months now and the difference in my energy level is amazing. I hope to eat this way forever.

In addition to personal health benefits, eating raw foods is more sustainable as it requires less energy, fewer chemicals and fewer pollutants to produce.

If you want to see more evidence of how good raw food diets are for your health and for sustainable living, see this movie. Wednesday February 24th at 7PM at Coop la maison verte: 5785, Sherbrooke st. West, Metro Vendome + bus #10

Source: Raw in Montreal

“Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 days is an independent documentary film directed by lead editor Aaron Butler that chronicles six Americans with “incurable” diabetes switching their diet and getting off insulin. The film follows each participant’s remarkable journey and captures the medical, physical, and emotional transformations brought on by this diet and lifestyle change. We witness moments of struggle, support, and hope as what is revealed, with startling clarity, is that diet can reverse diabetes and change lives.

Buy the DVD “Simply Raw”

10th Annual Seedy Weekend Seed Fair in Montreal at the Montreal Botanical Gardens

This event aims to promote seeds of the open-pollinated variety which have been grown locally and sustainably.

Please note this year’s changes outlined below as there have been quite a few. You can contact Action Communiterre for a more in-depth interview at animation@actioncommuniterre.qc.ca

This year’s seedy weekend will take place over two days, Saturday, February 13th and Sunday, February 14^th 2010 in order to accommodate the public’s growing interest in this event. For that same reason, the layout of the room will also be modified to allow for greater circulation. The fair will run from 10 :00am to 4 :30pm. Access is free, but a voluntary donation would be greatly appreciated, as the event is organized as a fundraising opportunity for Action Communiterre (a non-profit, community organization that sponsors collective gardening and works on issues related to urban agriculture and food security) and les Amis du Jardin Botanique de Montréal, who’s mission is to support the Botanical Gardens and it’s cultural, educative and scientific development. There are however fees for parking at the Botanical Gardens.

There will also be a snack kiosk in one of the adjacent rooms catered by Au Pois Chique, a non-profit organization taking care of a local ‘meals on wheels’.

Location :
Montreal Botanical Gardens
Pavillon d’accueil
4101 Sherbrooke Street East, Montreal

To get there: The parking lot entrance of the Botanical Garden is located on Sherbrooke Street, between Pie IX and Viau. The Botanical Gardens is also accessible by metro, Pie IX station
Important notice: The parking lot now has parking meters. The cost is $10, payable by coin, or by credit card

• How to talk about peak oil and convince others that this issue will impact us very soon?
• How to discuss climate change and its consequences for Montreal?
• What is the Transition Town movement, which offers a response to these issues – a movement created by citizens for their community? It is based on facts, focuses on concrete action, and most importantly, is also fun and inclusive!
• How can we find inspiration in the Transition Town movement to launch initiatives in various areas of Montreal, in order to reduce our dependence on oil and better resist the shocks of the near future?

Free entrance – Donations welcome
Bring your mug!

Sprouts have higher vitamin content than raw veggies and fruits! You can grow them year-round in your home, without a garden or greenhouse and they are great for kids, too!

Coop la Maison Verte will host a sprouting workshop on January 20th 7:00PM-9:00PM. 5785, Sherbrooke st. West, Metro Vendome + bus #105

Cost: $25. To reserve your place, please call Tara Peters at (514) 722-7127.

Tara will bring several different types of sprouting jars and trays. Expect to get your hands dirty a little bit and bring a pen as there will be handouts on which to take notes.

Forest gardening is usually done in warmer climates, but having the chance to do it in our cold climate is very exciting! Unfortunately, the following series of weekend classes are about 5 hours away in upstate NY. You may go for one weekend or the whole entire 4 weekend course! Discounts and some work trade available.

Source: Apios Institute

Join us for a hands-on skill-building experience in forest gardening from start to finish. Learn to transform traditional lawn landscapes into abundant food-producing perennial gardens. Each unique weekend equips participants with the skills needed to get started at their own home or expand the abilities of a gardening business.

Forest gardening yields local abundance, healthy families, and thriving ecosystems. Join us to build your own knowledge and experience and bring these ingredients to your home and community. Imagine a future of homegrown fruits- berries, pawpaws and persimmons, perennial vegetables- sorrel, ground nuts, water celery and more! All of this is possible.

February 26-28: Design & Theory- Dave Jacke, primary author of the Award-winning 2-volume Edible Forest Gardens, will kick off our first weekend with an evening talk. Throughout the rest of the weekend we will begin the design process for a future farm on our host site.

April 16-18: Install & Establish – In our second weekend we will get our hands dirty while we Install and Establish a brand new forest garden. This is the third year in a row that we are planting out forest gardens in the Hudson Valley!

May 28-30: Tend & Caretake – The already existing forest gardens at Camp Epworth will receive our love and attention in the third weekend of the series. We will immerse ourselves in how to Tend and Caretake the gardens to support future food abundance.

June 18-20: Food & Medicine – This leads us to our final weekend with special guest Dina Falconi. In this last weekend of the series we will harvest the fruits of our labor and spend the entire time making Food and Medicine.

This is a great idea! Entrepreneurs can buy one of these containers that fold out into an off-the-grid food stand and have them shipped virtually anywhere in the world. These would be great in rural Hawaii (Molokai or the Big Island), national parks or any place that gets lots of sunshine and is not connected to the grid.

Source: Scrapbook

Daniel Noiseux is the man behind Mubox… a successful restaurateur with a background in architecture and graphic design. The business is positioned to sell self contained restaurant units made to order to the prospective restaurateur/operator’s gourmet menu offering. The “ready to ship” Muvboxes are easily transportable by rail, road or sea. The Muvbox has incorporated solar powered batteries, recyclable materials, and biodegradable packaging for customers. The notion of offering a sustainable restaurant solution to operators, coupled with healthy culinary menus, contribute to Noiseux’s ultimate mission: TO DELIVER A FUN EATING ENVIRONMENT THAT RESIDES COMPLETELY ‘OFF THE GRID’.

This has real potential as a solution to re-define wealth that calls back to an earlier definition:  a roof over your head, clothes on your back, running fresh water and fresh food grown nearby. And the concept is analogous to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) where many individuals invest in the health and prosperity of a nearby farm.

Source: Alternet

The goals and structure of the the [Slow Money] movement are fairly amorphous — cynics might say squishy — more on the philosophical than pragmatic level for the time being. Tasch’s recent book “Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered” (Chelsea Green) aims to spark and incubate investment at all levels in local or regional food systems. This means not only organic farms, dairies and ranches, but food processing facilities, food artisans (makers of jelly, cheese, etc.) and retail or distribution networks, restaurants and stores.

“It is two things: a new way of thinking about money at a macro level, in terms of philanthropy and social investing, and on the ground it is getting money into local food systems,” said Tasch. “Our objective is a very robust network at regional and local levels across the U.S. — many, many players who are all interested in the same goal: rebuilding local food systems.”

Butterworks Farm in Vermont practices "Slow Money"

“People joining CSAs and shopping at farmers markets is the beginning of this sea change. People think of those as consumer rather than investment dollars, but they are a kind of investment.”

How much Slow Money can raise remains to be seen. Rather than using a venture capital model they are seeking to mobilize hundreds of thousands of members contributing millions of dollars per year which will then be used to seed the nurture capital industry. Founding members — 150 of them — contributed at least $1,000 each. And the overarching goal, Tasch said, is connecting investors with food systems in their own regions.

Lazor said organic farms will likely never be as profitable for investors as more traditional stocks, but he thinks people are increasingly seeing such investments as an attractive option in the holistic sense.

“People’s perceptions of good [financial] risks are the traditional exploitative and extractive industries that are ruining the earth,” he said. “Folks that have the dough are going to need to be satisfied with a lower return on their dollar, and get their satisfaction from knowing they’ve made the earth a better place.”

Slow money involves the belief that investment in sustainable local food systems is likely to pay off financially in the long run, since it simply makes more sense and curbs the costly environmental and health damage wrought by industrial agriculture. But it may not pay off quickly — hence the “slow” — and the payoff may not come in direct dollars back to the investor but rather tangible or intangible benefits to food producers, the environment and the general public.

Slow money proponents see the economic crisis, paired with increasingly alarming news about the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, as an opportunity for a new economic and agricultural paradigm.

“Our historical experience with global industrial finance is now in question — people are not completely sanguine about the prospects of venture capital and investing in China as it has been practiced,” said Tasch. “There’s a lot of economic uncertainty, so just the idea of diversification, putting one percent of our money to work in local food systems, is more attractive. And the number of people just interested in food is at an all-time high, people are starting to understand problems with industrial agriculture, industrial food.”

Tasch is hoping to get thousands of signatories to the Slow Money Principles, which include, “We must bring money back down to earth” and “We must build a nurture capital industry.” Whether or not people invest or donate, he hopes people use the holiday spirit to forward the principles far and wide.

Back yard chicken coops are illegal in Montreal and all boroughs, but here is an example of bringing sustainable thinking to an old structure:

Sourse: Transition Times

Chicken Coop

The black chicken coop on display inside the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is sleek, like a chicken-house-of-the-future. The air slats that ring the wooden coop are perfectly parallel, and the square nest boxes that line the back are uniform.

Even the tiny ladder that allows the chickens to climb up to the ledge where they’d sleep looks like it was made with precision — which it was.

But the idea behind University of Colorado senior Jeff Troutman’s coop is decidedly down-to-earth. The architecture student set out to build a chicken-house that could be manufactured easily and inexpensively — and sold at an affordable price to Boulder’s burgeoning set of urban hen-keepers.

“I would love to see it become a functional coop in people’s backyards,” he said.

Keeping a flock of chickens next to the lawnmower shed is a practice that’s taking off across the country and across Colorado, as more and more cities make allowances for backyard birds. Boulder allows them, as do Superior and Longmont.

For proponents like Troutman, who, as a renter, has never had a flock of his own, backyard chicken-keeping is partly about knowing where your food comes from — and where your waste goes.

“That’s the idea behind this — to create a cycle, instead of this throw-out culture,” he said…

“It’s part of our local culture,” Pyatt said of Boulder. “People want to have backyard hens or gardens, but they don’t know how.”

Instead of the old debate over land use: development vs. farms; housing vs. green space, Agriburbia is a clever compromise.

Source: Denver Post

AgriBurbia - Denver CO

Six years ago, Matthew “Quint” Redmond suggested to Milliken planners that a corn farm north of Denver could increase its agricultural value and still anchor nearly a thousand homes.

“I got laughed out of the room,” Redmond said.

Today, Milliken’s 618-acre Platte River Village is ready for construction, with 944 planned homes surrounded by 108 acres of backyard farms and 152 acres of drip- irrigated community farms. The plan is for the farms to feed local residents and supply restaurants while paying for community upkeep. And Redmond, a 47-year-old planner-farmer, has 13 other Front Range projects mulling his “agriburbia” concept.

Redmond, co-founder of the Golden-based design firm TSR Group, travels the country preaching his urban farming and development idea. He envisions a future where the nation’s 31 million acres of lawn are converted to food production. He sees golf-course greens redefined with herbs; sand traps as “kale traps.” He sees retirement homes engulfed by farms and office buildings where workers escape cubicles on farming breaks.

Redmond, along with his born-on- a-farm biologist turned planner wife, Jennifer, sees an urban landscape like none before.

“This is where we are all going to go. We need this,” said Redmond. “Everyone thinks they are so smart by crafting a 2030 plan for the future. I say we need a $180-a-barrel plan, on how our communities can be self-sufficient when oil becomes too expensive to ship food across the country.”

Self-sufficient. Sustainable. Locally produced. Agriburbia incorporates all three concepts.

“Is there a better use of the land than growing your own food right where you are going to be eating it?” said Janie Lichtfuss, mayor of Milliken, which is positioned to become the first agriburbia community.

Perhaps, one day, Montreal might realize a version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, a city of tall buildings surrounded by open space and farms.