Shade Garden - concept development - 2023 12 25

It is hard to see in this photo, but I believe there were two ravens in a tree the other day. Way high up. They were much, much larger than the crows that flew nearby.

We are in the middle of unprecedented change in our organization of family, work, property management, food sustainability, climate change, demographic pressure.

Our household is in the middle of it. We are homeowners in our 60s. We are providing housing for adult family who are unable to fend for themselves (frail elder mother, disabled brother). The work we have done in our previous lives to generate cashflow is no longer sustainable due to our age, and the family caregiving responsibilities we are providing to our frail elder. We are also at an age that the work we do needs to satisfy our values, we need to feel that our work is building strength in the family and in our community. At one time our property was surrounded by a 30' cedar hedge and covered in lawns. Our food source is the local grocery stores - the quality and selection of produce, the cost of fresh food, is dependent on an unsustainable food system that relies on long distance transportation for us to have fresh tomatoes in our salad. For the last three summers, at least, we have experienced drought conditions that necessitated water conservation and watering limits. Watering lawns was not considered a priority and many urban gardens were fronted by dry, brown, lifeless patches of grass. We are in the middle of burgeoning demographic pressures: the rate of population increase amongst dependent elders, adult earners, and dependent young; a health system over capacity and shifting healthcare infrastructure to private homes; the cost of post secondary education and the likelihood of finding a living wage after graduating; the burden of support that is transferring from the baby boom generation, through millennials to Gen X, Y and Z. In our household we are developing ideas to sustain ourselves through the coming, predictable difficulties these multi-dimensional changes will bring.

Shade Garden is working on a concept to turn our urban properties into a network of interconnected mini-farms. These farms will focus on transforming unproductive urban property into self-sustaining food production. The goal is to reduce our dependency on long distance transportation and to develop our local capacity and capability to produce food while simultaneously reducing the amount of food waste that is going into municipal waste systems.

We want to use what we have to build self-sustaining food productions systems and develop collaborative, cooperative strength in our local neighbourhoods. It is through these local, interconnected relationships that we will develop the solutions that will ease the pressure of over-burdened, anachronistic systems that can no longer function in these new realities of change.