French Court declares Monsanto guilty

Finally, US Agri-business Monsanto is declared guilty for the use of its pesticide in farming.  According to the Reuters’ Article:

“Monsanto always considered that there were not sufficient elements to establish a causal relationship between Paul Francois’s symptoms and a potential poisoning,” the company’s lawyer, Jean-Philippe Delsart, said.  Previous health claims from farmers have foundered because of the difficulty of establishing clear links between illnesses and exposure to pesticides.

Vanity Fair’s, Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear, tells the story of Monsanto’s ‘seed police’ and the tactics used to intimidate small farmers, coops and country stores.  The ‘seed police’ are sometimes referred to as ‘Gestapo’ and ‘mafia’ according to the article.

Taking Action

• Watch the World According to Monsanto and become aware the Issues

• Sign Millions Against Monsanto Petition
• Naturalize your home garden
• Read your Food labels

New beginnings, 2012

With a new year, the feeling of introspective and renewals can give us inspiration and motivation to embrace sustainable living in a positive light.  With a little adjustment, one easy way to do this is choosing to eat healthy.  according to Health Canada by eating well and being active for 2.5 hours is a good start on a healthy path.

Consider visiting your Doctor and discuss your plans for eating and activities.  Allergies play a role in some people’s choice so be aware of your situation.

Try a couple of activities such as: walking, stretching, bowling, dancing.  Eating fruits, yogurt and nuts lead to healthier bodies.  One of my favourite snack is apples, grapes, strawberries, oranges, mangoes (changes with the seasons), with homemade yogurt, raisins and nuts.  I try different  combinations of fresh fruits, dried fruits and nuts.

Another way is to make a smoothie with fresh or frozen fruits.

Honey can be added to sweeten to taste.

Either way, delicious and health.

 

 

A Bridge, Naturally

Nature gives all the materials for living and functioning.  This is an amazing example of sustainability, that includes, the social, environment and economic aspects we so rarely see.

Rain, rain and more rain

 

For the month of May, 2011 there was a lot of rain, making it muddy to work at the community garden.  The upside is that the ground really had a good soaking, which saves water and the time for watering.

One really good way of saving water and money is capturing it with rain barrels. As you can see, we draped a piece of landscape cloth under the cover to ensure that we don’t encourage mosquito larvae-a problem if water stand still.

We encourage our gardeners to use an watering can and try to pour it on the  roots to build a strong root system.  This encourage the root to dig deeper in an effort to find water under the surface, which will take less time to water, saves money and time.

 

During a particularly heavy rainfall -which the gardeners got caught in at the Windfields Community Gardens, there was about 6 inches of rained in about 15 minutes, as you can see below in the wheel barrow it was quite a downpour.   By the way, standing water encourage mosquitoes, so try and empty any containers with standing water in, if available in your water barrels as soon as possible.

 

 

Tracking your energy costs

Making the decision to save energy makes economic sense and have a direct impact on preserving our planet.  There are many ways to make sustainable decisions that are easy with the results having a triple bottom line.

The new saveONenergy campaign aims to further instill a culture of conservation across the province. It not only supports a Cleaner Ontario, but also provides consumers and business owners with year-round tools, tips, and incentives to help them reduce their electricity consumption and save money.

Login to the OPA website and start conserving:

https://www.myaccount.hydroone.com/unsecure/EC/ecustomer/en/ECInitialization?Page=ECCreateNewSSOOnlineProfilePage

Resources

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/personal/lighting/basic-facts.cfm?attr=4

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/services/energy_aware_oec.html