Investigating

Lately I have been feeling the need to be creative, resourceful and motivated. I always talk about wanting to change how I live and "go green", but I don't feel as though I am really making an effort to do so. I don't "look outside the box". I always make an excuse like "when I'm done with nursing" or "when I have kids" or "when I have energy". The thing is, I would much rather start changing how I live NOW so that I can focus on implementing what I have learned when I'm done school or have kids. I would rather do the work now and start the change so that I can continue rather than start my journey when life gets even more busy. I realize that it is a process and that it won't change in an instant (although I would much rather it did) so I just have to take baby steps.

This "Going Green" bandwagon that I am more than willing to jump on has been frustrating and rewarding. It's difficult to always be conscious of what you are doing, what you are wasting, what you can recycle, and what you can somehow reuse.

Green Practices already implemented:

• Canvas and cloth grocery bags
• Walking to the grocery store
• Stainless Steel water bottle (Purica Steel from Nature's Fare)
• Glass containers for left-overs (both sets on sale)
• Eco-friendly cleaning products (Shawna, do you know if your homemade laundry detergent works in a high efficiency front loading washer?)
• Run the washing machine on cold
• We recycle everything possible
• Growing our own Herbs :Greek Oregano, Sweet Marjoram, Lemon Basil and Rosemary
• We use our local library (currently reading Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood)
• Erik rides the scooter to work
• Simply in Season Cookbook - We need to use this more, but we love it!

Things I want to do when we have our own home:

• Compost - My sister hates the idea and we live with her right now so that's a no go.
• Garden - Vegetables, Herbs, Grains, Fruit

New things we are trying/going to try:

• Buying Local Food
• Buying Organic Food
• Using Whole Grains in meals (Does anyone have recipes or ways of doing this?)
• Eating less meat (this is going to be tough as I LOVE meat)

The main thing am focusing on right now is buying local foods. I needed to do some prep work with summer being just around the corner so I did some investigating yesterday. In the past, all my attempts to find "Local Produce - Kelowna" came up with stores selling local foods. Although they are all great stores (Nature's Fare, Paul's Produce etc.), I am interested in making a connection with the actual farmers. I want to learn more about the process of growing the food and, let's face it, I want to remove the middle man.
As I said, all previous attempts were in vain, but I finally found an excellent website. If you're living in BC and want to find out which farms are certified organic go to this website. Please. It is awesome. I found farms all within a half hour of where I live that sell many of the things I am interested in buying!

Some of the organic produce I am most excited for are:

• Raspberries
• Tomatoes (I wish we were growing our own)
• Mushrooms
• Carrots
• Onion
• Corn
• Potatoes
• Beets
• Vanilla Beans
• Beans
• Cucumber
• Asparagus
• and seeds for when we have our own garden!

And we have some local, but not organic:

• Grapefruit
• Oranges
• Honey

I also found an organic whole grain distributor... I need to look into this more as I have no idea what to do with whole grains, but we'll see. They are from Saskatchewan, but their prices seem reasonable and shipping and handling wasn't too bad. I'll keep you posted.

I. Am. Pumped.