Winter in the Yukon often begins in the season of Summer

Traditional Landscaping is too 1950s.

A few shots from the summer...

Grow your own food.  Repurpose garbage.  Let your weeds grow tall. 

It looks good, and produces food and medicine for you.  And it's free.

Edible plants: Curly kale, Ornamental kale, Calendula, Nastertium, Tomato, Mint, Terragon, Basil, Thyme

Native plants: Fireweed, Yarrow, Caribou

High Latitude Gardening: Round Two (grow greens this far north!)

Fireweed, Black Spruce and direct sunlight at 10:30pm

Spinach
Green onion
Oak leaf lettuce
Green beans
Radishes
Turnips
Carrots
Cucumber
Dino kale
Curly Kale
Red Russian Kale
Beets
Alaska Peas
Swiss Chard
Celery
Tomatoes

That's what we're growin'.  While some of my stash has been going missing at the White River Community Garden on the other end of town (see last post..) the greenhouses that Rita, Randy and I grow in are doin' well.  You'd be surprised by the small amount of land needed to have a consistent harvest of greens and veggies.  We've been using about 40 square feet between two greenhouses and have been harvesting every single week.  The season is slowly winding down already (last night was the first frost) but the greenhouses are still producing.  We've been getting a consistent harvest of greens (easily enough to supply 3 - 4 people with their weekly share of greens) and Rita and Randy have been canning beets the last couple of days.  We've had too much that we've had to start giving away greens and veggies so they don't go bad.

We grew in greenhouses so we would be able to lock heat in through the nights and take advantage of the hot sun in the day, while we had it.  Leafy greens grow fast this far north.  We always have a consistent flow of kale and beet greens.  They don't mind the cooler nights (kale prefers it, actually), and you don't need to wait for hot sun to produce a flower until it begins producing the fruit (ie, our tomatoes and cucumber are struggling).  If I were further south I'd grow more tomatoes, but if you're in the north, your best bet is to grow leafy greens.  Ya won't be disappointed.

Typical early-season weekly harvest (mid-June).  Spinach, Radishes,
Radish microgreens, Spinach shoots, Dino, Curly and Red Russian Kale.

An early-July weekly harvest.

Late-July/Early August weekly harvest.

Chantelle sleeping amongst beet greens.

Indoor edible jungle, number one.

The downside of community gardens

Sense my sarcasm?

Harvest wild edibles and use them as tea and medicine.

This stuff grows like crazy all through the Boreal Forest.  Yarrow can be made into a tasty tea and is also used as an anti-septic.  If you get a cut or scrape while on a hike, chew on a few of its leaves for a couple minutes, and then run the leaf he affected area.  A lot of native herbs (regardless of where you live) have such properties.

Look 'em up and check 'em out.

DIY Rainwater Harvesting System made of Garbage!

                                      

The cabin I live in has no plumbing.  Although I shower and often eat on the other end of town, we've had to cart water over to the cabin from the gas station which is a 5 minute walk down the highway.  Well, we're now harvesting rainwater to cook and clean dishes with.  Things just got a little easier over at the cabin.

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The premise of this blogpost is that paying to live an environmentally and socially responsible lifestyle is backwards.  Paying for sustainability is a contradiction, and if we really want to live environmentally and socially responsible lives (in other words, if we want to be accountable for our actions when it comes to the environment, labour and our consumption), then what we have to do is radically decrease our personal consumption.  By saying this I don't mean that we should all start buying hybrid cars or ride the bus once a week and deem ourselves "doing our part".  Nor am I saying that we should merely lobby the municipal government to build bike lanes and then conclude that the "crisis is averted" because the government will save the planet for us.  What we have to do is change ourselves.

Re-skill yourself and learn how to problem solve.  Little by little.  

It's empowering.

In this blogpost I want to display how cheap, easy and creative it can be to repurpose existing resources which are found all around us.  I'm talking about resources like barrels, PVC tubing, old bike frames and tools.  In an overgrown field amongst rusty cars these resources are seen as garbage.  On a clean store shelf they are seen as commodities.

You don't need money to accomplish things.  You need skills.  And creativity.  And maybe some guts to hop into your first dumpster. 

A facilitator at the Florida Earthskills Gathering I went to in January told stories of how he took the concept of "dumpster diving" to the next level.  He was interested in making his home more sustainable and energy efficient but took a unique approach to retrofitting his home.  His goal was to spend as little money as possible.  So he started searching through dumpsters on construction sites, behind mechanics shops and big box stores.  He told us how he built a rainwater harvesting system out of things he found in the dumpster.  He spent zero dollars in its construction.  And he now doesn't use municipal water.  He collects his own, and is now one step closer to becoming off the grid.

After hearing this story I decided I wanted to do the same.  And now I have!

Wrap your head around terms like "repurposing", "reclaiming" and "radical resourcefulness".  Did you ever move old couches from the curb down the road into your bedroom or basement during Spring Cleaning when you were a kid?  How about searching through milk crates of old records which were a dollar a piece to find something you thought was rare?  Dumpster diving is just like that, but next level! 

But enough with trying to make this seem cool.

I used an old barrel, an empty cleaner tub, a bucket, 7 milk crates, some mesh and a bunch of used vacuum hose to build what collects my water for me.  I salvaged them from around the property of the cabin (there's a bit of old junk laying around from when the owner still lived here..) and from the garbage at the hotel I work at.  I also used silicon and nails.  I don't drink it, nor do I shower with it.  The water will be used to cook with, wash dishes with, and brush teeth.

1. Rain gathers on roof, flows into eves trough

2. Rainwater is diverted into used vacuum hose

3. Rainwater drains into "silk catch" (bucket filled with rocks, covered with mesh).
This filters out sediment and decreases velocity of water.

4. Rainwater drains from silk catch and is filtered for sediment
once more before entering primary basin.

5. Primary basin.

6. Secondary basin, with nozzle. 

Pie time

Whoever planted a patch of rhubarb on the hotel property years ago had a good idea.  Hidden amongst 5 foot tall fireweed was a huge rhubarb patch which now belongs to the kitchen and which will soon be in pie form.  My sidekick Carter and I harvested it from the hotel property today.  Good work, we do.