We make stuff, build stuff, fix stuff, reuse and repurpose stuff. I get all excited for compost, seedlings, new recipes, fresh batches of jam, a completed hat with matching mitts, and snappy pickles. Pascal gave me a clothesline (hung and complete with pegs!) for a birthday present one year. I'm about to make him a new winter hat. Our dog is named Relish in honour of the fantastic relish recipe Pascal's Mom gave me.You get the idea.
I grew up on a farm where "making it" was what we did. I've always brought a little bit of that homemade mentality with me where ever I go. At times this meant canning cherries on a hot plate in a one room shack or making homemade meals for crowds in a tiny, gross student kitchen.
I still love figuring out how to make stuff for myself, how to circumvent consumerism and conspicuous consumption, but I live in a major urban centre now. No more bucolic fields and frolicking new born calves. For a few years I thought I'd never adjust. No space, no time, no quiet. Everyone running around like chickens with their head's cut off. It felt weird to even think about making stuff, especially when everything I could possibly need (and more) is available 24 hours a day.
But that's not really the point is it?
I stumbled across Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen and my eyes were opened to the world of Urban Homesteading. A whole social movement of people who make stuff instead of buying it. Who believe in social and environmental justice. Who practice community building and localism. I was no longer a displaced ruralite. I was an Urban Homesteader and Radical Home Ec'er!
Having a term for my work makes it easier to explain why I do the things I do. Urban Homesteading and Radical Home Ec wrap up urban agriculture, social and environmental activism, DIY'ing, anti-consumerism and unlimited learning and creativity into a neat little seed ball that never stops sprouting. It explains why I preserve so much, why I have plans for a chicken coop, why I clean with baking soda and vinegar and why I'm teaching myself to make fantastic clothes from old saris.
Currently on my list of things to make:
homemade deodorant with bees wax...
a new shirt, skirt, pants...
a successful loaf of gluten free bread...
grow sprouts...
lemon butter...
apple raisin chutney...
a chicken coop...
Never a dull moment around the Peace Flag House.
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