Day 335: Conferencing and Farming

Wahoo!  We made it through our presentation at the RCBC conference!  (and I didn’t throw up.)

I’m actually starting to think I’m passed the puking-before-public speaking stage of my life.

Anyway, after much frantic rehearsing on the 2 hour car ride to Whistler and much sweating at the back of the room waiting for our turn, Grant and I finally got our 20 minutes in the spotlight.

It went off really well.  Everyone laughed at the appropriate times during our trailer (we showed an extended version of the one on this site) and had tons of questions and tips for what we could do with some of the stuff in our bins.  The people we talked to definitely seemed supportive of our project and the idea of reducing waste, and I really hope that some of them went home and made a little change or will go back to the office on Monday and spread the word.

After the conference, we headed up to Pemberton, where a couple of our friends have started an organic farm.  Holy crap, if you want to appreciate your food sources, just spend an afternoon hoeing broccoli on a local farm in the blazing sun!  It’s damn hard work.

At first glance, you might not think this has to do with zero waste, but I assure you it really does.  What is more waste free than buying local food with no packaging direct from the farmer?

Alisha and Delany are farming about 4 acres of organic vegetables basically by hand.  They have a small tractor that is about the size of a lawnmower, but they hoe and weed and transplant seedlings manually.  For all you city folk who romanticize about dropping it all for a life on the farm, well, they’re doing it! (and they’ll be at the Kitsilano market next sat)

As we headed home that night with a pocket full of business card contacts from the conference  a (cloth) bag full of organic spinach and kale, I had the feeling that even though our year is up on July 1st, this project isn’t exactly ending.

In fact, I feel like the awareness and lifestyle we have learned about during our Clean Bin project year is maybe just “the beginning”.  I hope so.