Andrea's Everything Eco Exploration

Mycelium Sun by Raya Wolfsun. http://www.rayawolfsun.com/2014/04/24/mycelium-sun/ One of the most fascinating topics to me is soil. Earth Dirt. But more-so what makes good soil. Or, more accurately, who. The soil micro- and macro-biomes are rich webs of life Unravelling energy from the dead. Decomposers Little-celebrated yet immensely-important, Decomposers are to thank for the fact That we aren't all chin deep in refuse and dead cells. They break down dead and dying organisms, To process and recycle the nutrients from our bodies. Returning the calcium in our bones, The iron in our blood, The nitrogen, carbon, potassium, magnesium, oxygen, Into bio-available treats for new life to sample. Without the cycling of nutrients, the Earth would be a big dead thing, All existing nutrients trapped in the dead bodies preserved, shrivelled up in the sun. Decomposers like bacteria, fungi, bugs and worms work hard, chewing through the detritus of sloughed off cells. Fungi produce hyphae, myc...

We live in a two room place, and our spare room has been slowly taken over by plants. We just recently added an aquaponics system to our seedling, micro-green, and 3D printing operation I decided to also try my hand at oyster mushroom farming again!  This is spent grain and pine shavings and coffee grounds that have been pasteurized (SRSLY don't skimp on sanitation!!)   then mixed with colonized spawn from an old growing kit and put into sterilized containers with holes drilled in the sides.   5 buckets and one extra bag!  They're kept under plastic bags so the stay moist but can still breathe. I really hope they make it! Oysters are my favourite.

I went for a long soggy romp along the river yesterday.  I bundled up in fleece and a long purple rain slicker, mittens and galoshes, and sloshed through slick puddles on clay and sandy paths along a muddy river I slipped and slid and hid in the underbrush that dripped fat drops on the brim of my hat. I'd packed almonds and cider and tea, and set off between the trees To see how far I could get along the north side of her swollen banks. It felt so freeing. So grounding Surrounded by these trees waking up and unfurling curled leaves Taking hearty drinks from the steady drizzle before it drips back into the river.

Wow, what a crazy year 2020 has been so far! At the beginning of the year I was preparing for a trip to France to do Workaways , and not much else beyond that. My partner was going to start running an urban farm company, and I didn't have much planned except for trying to get into the child care & education field and sitting on the board of my favourite music festival and running their Eco-committee. When we left France the Covid-19 cases in France were double digits and mostly in Paris. There was single digit cases in Calgary. But that quickly changed. Fast forward to the present, Calgary has the most cases in Alberta! There has been over 4,000 cases, with over 3,000 recovered (that's pretty good at least). But as with most of the country and world, most of the city shut down as self quarantining was encouraged. Schools, day-cares, restaurants and bars, any thing non-essential was closed. This was not a good time to try and find work! Luckily my partner was still ...

Hello again! I’ve realized that I am no good at regular updates to this blog. Living in the woods with no internet has a big part to play in that. But at long last, I’m back to give an update on my west coast life. Recently Michael and I have invested in a solar array. We’ve got two monocrystaline 270 W panels, two 400 Ah, 6 volt flooded lead acid batteries in series, a charger and a inverter. The whole system cost over 2,000$. And while the price was an uncomfortable pill to swallow, we are now off the grid energy wise. It feels right, to be set up in a small clearing in an alder and salmon berry forest, less than 500m from a small organic farm, and to be hooked up to solar power. It feels like one more step towards assimilation with our natural neighbours. In a sense, we are photosynthesising energy to run our little trailer. And our bodies are fuelled by the vegetables we pick, which ate the same tasty sun, less than a km away.  On our property we also have our own l...

Sweden is burning your trash and unsold clothes And it's being touted as an environmentally applaudable behaviour. This is green-washing at its peak. Incineration/waste to energy (W2E) is second last on the waste management hierarchy. Simply it means they burn the garbage to produce heat which makes steam which runs a turbine. It's not very energetically efficient, and it requires a lot of big machinery and filter systems to ensure the pollution doesn't escape and spread its toxic vapours everywhere. And then they must safely dispose of the concentrated chemical ash. But what I find most troubling about W2E is that they lock cities and countries into contracts, assuring they provide a certain amount of feedstock / garbage each year. This sways the motivation away from reducing waste in the first place, and instead towards the perpetuation of our over-consumptive materialist culture. There's no incentive to implement zero waste practices or change behaviou...

That title is not the cat walking on the keyboard after I've typed my name. No, rather it is a class of non vascular plants, which contain mosses, like those found in the order Andreaeopsida. I've just recently learned a fun little mnemonic to remember the division of evolution: "Dutch king Phillip came over for green spinach" or : Binomial nomenclature is when we name things with two Latin words. These words are the  Genus and the species. Species  being the most specialised branch of the tree of life, whereas kingdoms can be seen more as the trunk of the family tree. The three main kingdoms are Animals, Plants and Fungi.  When I mention class and order in the first paragraph, I'm talking about a branch that forks off around the middle of the time line of evolution. Mosses are an early evolutionary plant, and consist of a rudimentary life form, so it doesn't include a vascular system ie: a way to get water up from the ground and into high branch...

Again, it's been a long time since I posted here. My last post was talking about the new chapter I entered when I parted ways with what I thought was my dream job. Going forward, not only do I feel like a new chapter, I feel like I'm on to book two of my life! Which is an exciting place to find myself, and I would like to share my experiences and learning with the ethereal internet. Two months ago I moved to the Sunshine Coast in order to try something different, challenge myself, and learn more about the natural world. I started off by getting really into embroidery. I had people asking for commissions, and even got my work into a local bistro. I was taking much needed time to fill my creative well, and simply be. And when my hands got too sore from embroidering, I would explore nearby forests and lakes, and I began to learn the native plants of a new environment. For a few years now I have become very interested in plant medicine and the amazing wealth of nutrition...

It's been a while since I've posted in here. Mid October I landed a prized position at DIRTT. A company I admired and studied in university. As established DIRTTbags told me, it's like drinking from a fire hose.  I was thrown into the throng and hit the ground running.  Everywhere I looked there was something needed greening.  But I was inexperienced and green myself, and I floundered. The fire-hose kept firing and I was soon struggling to keep my head above water. I won't go into more detail, but let's say that chapter of my life has since come to an end. At first I was distraught, caught unawares as the safety net of salary slipped away. But upon further reflection this new change of pace allowed for many opportunities to present themselves. Now I could dedicate time to commission painting, hiking, foraging, camping and cabining. I could enjoy my summer without the blanket of stress. I felt it was for the best. Now, money has always been a teather. And...

Like caterpillars on the underside of leaves,  left to our own devices we devour more than what we need   I am a self professed environmentalist.  I pledge allegiance to the Earth. But I find our side is losing a long drawn war. A slow slip into defeat. We are simply outnumbered. We're encumbered by the hands clasping at our heels,  Like mud weighing down our slowing step. Soon we might stop, and watch the rush of corporate fuel ignite. With each tree we uproot we create more kindling More tinder in a dry drought desert. Why can't we be bothered To make a simple  switch Use a hand dryer instead of paper towels For example. I feel alone in my effort The behaviour has set like dye I gravitate towards the hand dryer every time Because I see no point in consuming a resource in less than 30 seconds Placing it in a trash bin and condemning it to a lifetime buried in a wasted grave Preserved in  airless inertia. And I can't say w...

We've created a backwards loopholed logic that frames our every day.  We've gotten lost in the word play and persuasion.     Our purses burst & beg impulse purchases.   Does it please us sufficiently?

I can talk about large lofty ideals, an upheaval of the current unsustainable systems. But this massive change cannot happen independantly. It needs to be made up of the efforts of dedicated individuals who take matters into their own hands. The consumer has more sway than most believe. If we are prepared, proactive and consciencious of our impacts, we can make the right decisions to start removing single use waste from our lives. Some steps are easier than others, and the best ones to start with include bringing reusable items with you to eliminate the need for disposable single use objects of convenience. If you bring a mug with you everywhere you'll never need to buy coffee in a cup. Sames goes for plastic bags, reusable utensils, water bottle. I even bring a reusable tupperware so I don't need to ask for a to-go container (which are sadly most often still styrofoam!) Living in a consumerist society it is difficult to escape the entrapments of convenience. Nearly everyth...

With my life I want to take a specific journey. I want to work towards a world where we are conscientious of where we stand, understanding our impacts and repercussions to our creations. Though I am still fresh in the journey of my mind, I believe I have enough heart to persist through time. I have the foresight to see far into the future I am working towards. I’ve been observing possibilities, analytically attempting to prove my hypothesis. I have ideas. I see the true natural world around me and the way in which it works together. To gather up the fallen leaves, to turn that into the nutrients you need, that is invaluable. An infallible system is one that has a use for its outputs. Saying goodbye to our by-products shouldn’t be to simply bury or burn them. We must turn them back to the beginning, thinning the stream of waste, of worst-case-scenario. In Ontario, they’re trying for Extended Producer Responsibility. Because their familiarity with the waste should increase their a...

The face of Calgary's Sheppard Landfill Waste is fresh on my mind. I find it quite upsetting when I’m fretting over whether to reuse or recycle my yogurt container, while corporations are throwing away truckloads of cardboard because they can justify the cost. The urgency is lost on them, deep in the depths of the corporate beast, under accounting, budgets, absolved costs and so on. I am a bipolar disposer. Filled with a call of action to improve the system some days, other times I find I am helpless, dragged in the undertow of an un-improving system. Calgary has highest per capita disposal rates in North America. Our streets may be clean but our landfills are swollen, growing fat in the abundance of space we’ve been graced with. Prairies create a disparity, downplaying the necessity of reduction because of an amplitude of open spaces to burry our waste. We are rich, and our wealth is wasted as we replace our resources on the daily, throwing away lightly used goods, becaus...

Is Coconut milk really better when you look at the triple bottom line? I never go to Starbucks, but the article still raises valid concerns about our ever growing appetite and the extent to which corporations go to make profits under the guise of 'healthy options' or 'vegan friendly'. Often times the results of globalism are neither healthy, friendly or profitable to the locals in the exploited exporter countries such as Indonesia in this case. Unnatural mono-cultures are grown in climates incompatible, so more fertilizers and pesticides need to be used, contaminating the natural surroundings and the native peoples. And don't even get me started on the amount of disposable products that leave their stores every hour, recyclable plastic and paper that just ends up in the landfill to be preserved for centuries... We really need to look at the big picture, and see how these large corporations are slowly destroying the planet. Once you realize, you can act a...

I attend events for a living. I talk to people, and try to educate them. I tell them about recycling, and what our containers turn into when they're recycled. It's a laid back and fun job, but often it is disheartening. Most people aren't interested in learning, only lured in by our giveaways. It's so hard to truly get through to them, to change their behavior. Recycling is at the forefront of our awareness these days. It is the most famous R; reduce and reuse haven't quite caught on. To me recycling should be the last resort when dealing with our waste. But as we live in a world diminated by convenience and single use products, reducing and reusing aren't really options. Recycling is the easiest and most widely applicable, and that is why it is gaining the most popularity. Almost every municipality has its own recycling facility, and they can vary substancially.  In Edmonton for example they have an Integrated Processing and Transfer facility that receives the...