Forget Uber or Lyft, Kootenay Ride Share is where it’s at! If, for whatever reason, owning and operating a personal vehicle is not possible for you, your transportation options are going to be limited. This is especially true if you live rurally. Public transit is infrequent and unreliable, walking and cycling may not be feasible or just downright dangerous, passenger rail is for the rich and famous and good old Greyhound ceased operations altogether in 2021. How are you going to get around? Taxis are one option, although they can be expensive and many small towns don’t have them. Then there ..read more

I love animals. We had a hobby farm when I was kid growing up with cows, horses, pigs, chickens, goats, geese, a few cats and a dog. I encountered quite a few wild animals on our property as well, including rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, skunks, deer, elk, moose and bears! Then I moved to the city.  I always had cats living in the city but, it just didn’t seem fair to have a dog. I love big dogs and I believe you need a big yard for a big dog. When we moved back to the family farm in April of 2021, I started thinking about getting a dog again. I told my husband that I wanted a big dog like a ..read more

“Ageing is the aggressive pursuit of comfort”. When I recently read these words for the first time, I had an aha moment! I had been thinking about this very concept but, I hadn’t quite figured out how to articulate it until I stumbled across this quote by Gary Brecka.  Gary is a human biologist and co-founder of 10X Health System. With more than 20 years of functional medicine experience, he’s known as a bio-hacker. Bio-hacking is the use of supplements and technology to help enhance human biology and ultimately improve health, performance and well-being. But Gary isn’t just into bio-hac ..read more

“If it can't be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.” - Pete Seeger     I considered writing a blog about the importance of conserving water or the merits of building more bicycle pathways or listing some of my gardening successes. But, then I realized that there is an 'elephant in the room' that no one is talking about. We need to talk about a solution that could fix all of our problems today. Reducing our consumption. Our insatiable consumption patter ..read more

We buy 30 million Christmas trees every holiday season. There is a meme circulating the internet suggesting that we should buy living potted trees instead. Can we talk about how misguided this idea is? What if we just didn’t buy any Christmas trees at all? In the true spirit of the holiday, why don’t we just leave those trees in the ground? Leave them to do what they do best, provide a complete forest ecosystem with homes for other animals, minerals for other plants and oxygen for us? Potted trees are not a solution. This is greenwashing. It’s time for a new tradition all together. One that ho ..read more

For a number of reasons, replacing the 4 way stop with traffic lights is a step backwards for Nelson. First, this is a waste of precious tax dollars. The government of British Columbia plans to increase trips taken by walking, cycling and public transit by 30% by 2030. To support this target, they have established another target of reducing kilometres driven by personal vehicles by 25% within the same time frame. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI) enjoys an annual budget of $9 billion dollars but only planned to spend $30 million on active transportation in 2022. $30 million ..read more

This is us! My husband and I are your hosts at Bear Spring Eco Retreat and creators of Reworks Upcycle Shop. We're both over the age of 50 and, together, we do it all. We are your housekeepers, cleaners, gardeners, landscapers, carpenters, sales staff and recyclers. We wash toilets, do laundry, weed gardens, mow lawns, plan events, stack firewood, repair furniture, vacuum tents, greet guests, remove wasp nests, build fences, preserve food and plant flowers. We also find time to listen to music, volunteer, make art, walk in the forest and throw parties. Our goal is to build a sel ..read more

I’ll admit that I read about Maine’s Food Sovereignty Act well over a year ago. The implications of this act did not fully register in my brain until I started helping my family produce food here on our family farm. I took access to food for granted.  When I was a kid growing up, my Dad always kept a few milk cows. In those days we consumed unpasteurized raw milk from those cows. We sold the excess to neighbours in big glass gallon jars. Those jars were recycled, washed in our kitchen and filled again. My Mom separated the cream from the milk, made butter and cheese and sold that too. In ..read more

I can’t believe that it’s 2023 and we’re still so wasteful. We’ve endured another whole year of crazy heat waves, more species extinctions, fishery collapses, incredible flooding, atmospheric rivers, freezing rain, crop failures, rising food prices and some of us are still completely oblivious to the consequences of our human actions. I recently came across a blog promoting apple slices soaked in carbonated soda and then packaged in a plastic bag as a healthy snack. Yikes!  My initial reaction was to ask what was wrong with just eating an apple. It comes with its own packaging, a pee ..read more

Surrounded by forest, I was inspired this fall to start making wreaths from foraged materials. As an artist, it's another amazing medium to work in. I hope to sharpen my skills enough to start designing floral arrangements for my Mom's flower farm next year, Dutch Girl Peonies. As an eco entrepreneur, I am really intrigued with the idea of using only found materials on hand. Of course, I purchased string to tie everything together, but it too is 100% biodegradable sisal. This makes my wreath entirely compostable. The thing that surprised me the most, though, was just how many beautif ..read more