How and what we eat may be among the most important decisions we can make for our body’s health and for the health of the planet. We are being challenged to find ways to eat healthy food because the prices of groceries are climbing higher and higher. Last year, grocery store food prices rose an average of 10%1. This year, they are forecasted to rise another 5 to 7%. Nearly one quarter of Nova Scotians are having a hard time accessing healthy foods2. It means that we need to think more creatively and communally about how to source nutritious foods, so that we can protect our health and the environment in which we live.

At the food security workshop last Thursday, we were joined by a very passionate, engaged group of five people who highly value local food and community-based solutions. There was a couple with a farm and their own greenhouse, a young man tasked with connecting the food security community in the Western region, and a mother and child who have just moved from Ontario and want to grow some of their own food. The discussions were very engaging and all kinds of ideas were brought forward.

One idea was to rethink how we use the term food security. The definition of food security that is commonly used is taken from the World Food Summit of 1996: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, [social] and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 1996). For some people, the word “security” brings to mind militarism. It can be directly connected to the term national security. It is often used in the context of the global scale and when talking about hunger, poverty, and food aid. The term food security still has its uses however if we want community-based approaches to flourish without an imposed “national security” agenda I find it best to use a term like food resilience.

Food resilience is when people have community-based capacities to source their own healthy food, even in times of crisis. It looks like a local food system that includes community gardens, backyard and patio gardens, community supported agriculture (CSA), farmer’s markets, and farm stands. It can include practices like seed-saving, wild foraging, gleaning fruit and nut trees, and exchanging produce for goods and services. People work together to build the infrastructure and social supports necessary to sustain these local food options.

At the workshop, there were more ideas like vans and distribution centers with refrigeration so that Nova Scotia farmers can broaden the reach of food deliveries to Nova Scotian communities. There are food rescuing apps like Too Good To Go, Flashfood (Loblaws), Feedback and Olio that connect people with good, edible food that would otherwise go to waste. Community kitchens could be used to give budget-friendly cooking classes. Pay-what-you-can produce markets can help to close the gap between food banks and grocery stores. There could be free healthy lunches for children and education for mothers (and fathers) on sourcing and cooking healthy foods. Commons grazing, commons banking, and cooperatives for bulk buying food also came up.

There are many benefits to supporting local food systems and we as communities have the knowledge we need to support them. Supporting local helps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions involved with transporting food. It also supports a system that has higher resiliency during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time we saw major inefficiencies and wastage in the globalized food system. We can influence local farmers to offer organic or pesticide-free produce. Local, whole foods inherently have less chemicals than processed, packaged food in the grocery store and are thus healthier for us to ingest. Organising around local food initiatives builds community and interconnectedness.

What can we do to support a more resilient, healthy food system? Shop local. Visit the farmer’s markets. Grow your own vegetables. Barter and trade for produce with friends and neighbors.
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The abundance of potential local initiatives for improving food resilience is astounding. All we need is people power: aware human beings ready to be in service of their community.
 
1 Canada’s Food Price Report 2023 https://www.dal.ca/sites/agri-food/research/canada-s-food-price-report-2023.html
2 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/food-insecurity-data-nova-scotia-2022-1.6833773

My husband and I recently moved into a one bedroom apartment in Digby. In fact, it was on the same weekend as our wedding! Amazingly it was a fairly low stress weekend. It is partly because we kept the wedding small and simple, and partly because we don’t own much stuff. We had no kitchen implements for example. The other thing that caused it to be low stress was the generous efforts of my parents. They  brought down a trailer load of my stuff from our family home. They made a significant contribution to keeping the move low stress.
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Ever since we moved, I have been reflecting on the possessions that we have and wondering if there is a way to simplify even more. I went to the library and found a book called “The More of Less” by Joshua Becker (www.becomingminimalist.com). It is full of tips, tricks, and encouragement for developing a minimalist lifestyle. It highlights the benefits which include having more time and energy, more money, more generosity, more freedom, less stress, less distraction, less environmental impact, higher quality belongings, and more.

The main idea is that the less possessions we own, the less burdened we are with organizing and maintaining them and the more time and freedom we have to focus on activities that bring us joy. We can still have all our necessities covered and even have toys, tools, and heirlooms. It’s just that we get rid of the clutter and the extras.

I’ve been reading the book while sitting cross legged at our coffee table which is currently our main eating table. We have one arm chair, two desks, two folding chairs, one tall table which I use as a standing desk, an air mattress, and a set of drawers. That is all of our furniture. We’d like to have a book shelf, but do we really need it?

I’ve been thinking about what we have as extras. We got three cutting boards for wedding presents, but they are all beautiful and needed. We have four sleeping bags of different sizes. We could probably get by with two. I recently got rid of a small rolling suitcase with corroded zippers. It seemed a shame to throw it out but it was not useful in its condition. I also threw out an old blanket, that was an easy one.

Joshua gives some helpful tips for purging unwanted items. He says start in the areas that are the easiest, like in the kitchen or in the clothing closet. Get a box and just throw everything you don’t want in there. Sort it later. For items that are harder to sort, he says do an experiment. Put the items you think you might not need into a box, label it, and hide it away for 29 days. If you forget about the items and don’t use them it’s a good sign you don’t need them.

It might be tempting to just haul things off to the garbage, but if we want to declutter in a green way we can consider donating, re-gifting, selling, and fixing.

Purging can also apply to larger items like cars and houses. Do you really need two vehicles? Try an experiment by just driving one vehicle. We currently don’t have a car and we are getting by fine because our apartment is walking distance to all the necessities like grocery stores, laundromat, and the library. We may need to buy one in the future for work but for now it isn’t necessary.

Sorting and purging is one thing but avoiding the accumulation of clutter is another. Joshua suggests dealing with paper clutter right away instead of letting it pile up. Tell family and friends about your minimalist lifestyle and give them a chance to get you gifts that you need instead of gifts that add to the clutter. Avoid shopping sprees for things you don’t really need, like new clothing. Be aware of ads on television and the internet that try to lure you into buying more by focusing on your insecurities.

Once you have a clutter-free household, it liberates your energy to focus on the things in life that have meaning and purpose and that make you happy. Miguel and I are far from having a clutter free space but we can strive to only buy things that we really need. Little by little we can pick away at the paper clutter, consolidate boxes, and organize what we do have into cupboards and onto future shelves.

Living a minimalist lifestyle is something to strive for that helps us to reduce our impact on the planet.

Miguel and I just celebrated our wedding on May 20th with a small group of family and friends. It was a beautiful, simple wedding in the historic gardens of Annapolis Royal. The tulips were blooming and the cardinals were singing! We managed to both enjoy the wedding and stay low stress. How did we do it? Here I will share some tips that I learned from my experience with organising our small, eco-friendly wedding. Hopefully they can help you or a friend in planning your own wedding.

Tip #1: Plan your own wedding.
Save yourself a pile of cash by doing your own wedding planning. The smaller and simpler you make the wedding, the easier and less stressful organizing will become. Keep track of expenses and guests in Excel spreadsheets. Make checklists that will be useful closer to the wedding.

Tip #2: Keep your wedding guest list to a minimum.
Sit down with your partner and make a list of the people who you absolutely need to have at your wedding. Consider keeping the number as low as possible so that it simplifies the organizing and reduces costs like catering. We had 15 people at our wedding. Miguel’s side of the family was not able to come since they live in Colombia. We invited people who live in Nova Scotia which helped to reduce travel, saving people money as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

Tip #3: Choose your ceremony venue and reception venue carefully.
Depending on if your wedding ceremony is outdoors or indoors, there can be a great difference in the effort and money required to decorate and set up. We opted for an outdoor wedding because we both love nature and it offered a simple and beautiful setting. We booked the historic gardens for $250 and they were able to provide chairs, a table, as well as two 10 ‘ X 10 ‘ tents in case of rain. Our reception was in a restaurant called Bistro East and they offered us a private rate of $500. We were so happy with both of these choices as they supported our values and they were also very close to each other.

Tip #4: Buy or borrow a gently used wedding dress or suit.
Wedding dresses can easily cost over $1000 and I didn’t have any desire to have a white dress in my closet that wouldn’t be used after the wedding. I opted to buy a gown-like dress with blue, red and black patterns over a white background that was elegant and non-traditional. I found it at Frenchy’s and paid $8. I love reusing clothes and so this dress really spoke to my values. I bought a white bolero for $50 to cover my shoulders. Miguel wore a purple blouse that matched my dress that he had been given. We both went with (mostly) non-traditional and used clothing.

Tip #5: Decorate with simplicity in mind.
It can be really beautiful having carefully thought-out centerpieces with flowers on tables and lights and ribbons hanging on the walls. But in order to reduce stress as well as unnecessary use of materials we can also opt to minimize decorations. We had no extra decorations at the ceremony besides the beautiful flowers in the gardens. There were two baskets full of rose petals which were tossed on Miguel and I as we left the ceremony. At the reception, we sprinkled rose petals around the cake and bouquet of flowers. There was a table for gifts for the guests consisting of beeswax candles and books that Miguel and I had made about our love story. I bought some LED lights to weave around the candles. It looked very pretty.

Tip #6: Invest in the little details that make the wedding special.
Every couple will have different priorities for the details that will make their wedding day special. For us, we really wanted to give our guests a special experience and show our gratitude. We invested a considerable amount of time and money into producing special books about our story as gifts for our guests. It had pictures from various points of time in our relationship and several stories about how we met and adventures we had together.

Tip #7: Stick to a budget (or almost).
Weddings can easily cost thousands of dollars so having a budget can help to keep your wedding simple and small. We decided to have a budget of roughly $1000 for our wedding. We ended up spending just under $1300. We saved a lot of money by opting out of several traditions. Instead of live music we used a Bluetooth speaker connected to a phone. I paid for a beautiful hairstyle but I did my own make-up. We couldn’t find a photographer so my uncle and other family members took pictures for us.

Tip #8: Involve your family in helping out with the wedding.
Weddings are about families coming together and celebrating love. Allowing one’s family to contribute to the wedding can be a great show of love. My parents were extremely generous in helping us out with the cost of the reception, including meals. Mom also bought the beautiful, delicious lemon raspberry buttercream cake. One of my uncles bought the bouquet of flowers and my other uncle took pictures. The wedding was a joint effort and it was made that much more beautiful by the show of support from family and friends.

Tip #9: Forgo traditions that don’t speak to your heart.
A wedding is meant to be a unique celebration of love, so why not tailor it to exactly what will make you happy? Leave out the traditions that don’t resonate with you. We didn’t have the means or the desire to have diamond wedding rings. We bought a beautiful moss-agate stone and silver ring for me and a silver ring for Miguel, both costing less than $70 each. We decided to not have bridesmaids or groomsmen. We also opted to not have those little flower arrangements that people sometimes wear at weddings.

Tip #10: Stay organized, stay relaxed, and enjoy!
A small, simple wedding can reduce one’s stress because there is less to organize. However, there are still a lot of little to dos that add up as you get closer to the wedding. I started to feel a little stressed three days before the wedding. I did what I usually do when I feel overwhelmed, make a list! The list included all the tasks I needed to do the three days leading up to the wedding. Once I had that list I felt in control and I could relax a bit. One of the things on that list was to confirm with people about their different roles. For example, the ring-bearer and the person to turn on the music. Once the wedding day arrived, my to do list was very small on purpose so that I could just focus on enjoying the special day.