Homesteading Workshops and Theme Potlucks

As part of the overarching Sustainabilty in Action program, G.A.L.A. hosts ongoing homesteading workshops and theme potlucks. The Homesteading Workshop Series is designed to make adopting a more sustainabile lifestyle fun, practical, and meangingful. The Theme-Potlucks are designed to integrate resource-sharing into this age-old tradition of coming together around food. Learn more and view the most current schedule of events by clicking the links above. For your reading pleasure, below is a short summary of how Homesteading Workshop Series is a fun, practical, and meaningful experience.

How is the Homesteading Workshop Series fun? The Homesteading Workshop Series remains fun, as well as educational, by allowing participants to be engaged in a creative and unique manner. For instance, a Wool-Spinning Workshop would not require everyone to use the same three colors of wool. Instead, participants would be allowed to pick and choose from a variety of vegetable or root dyed wools to make each spool of yarn unique. Likewise, a follow-up Knitting Workshop would not demand everyone to make a hat, but would offer diverse knitting techniques that accommodate the final product desire of everyone!

The Homesteading Workshop Series is also fun because it remains informal, learning-focused rather than accomplishment-focused, and held at a rotating venue. While the Sustainability Workshop Series serves as a chance to learn a new homesteading technique, it is also an opportunity for community members to socialize with people they may no otherwise spend time with. All workshops also place more emphasize on the learning process than the accomplishment aspect of the final product. Emphasis on process over product helps keep the atmosphere lighthearted and avoid disappointment if a product does not turn out exactly how the person expected. And finally, the Homesteading Workshop Series is fun because it takes place at a rotating venue to remain fresh and new!

How is the Homesteading Workshop Series practical? The Homesteading Workshop Series is practical because it uses only locally available resources and helps meet some type of basic human need. For instance, there would not be a Sustainability Workshop that teaches participants how to maneuver aero-freestyle tricks with remote control airplanes. First, chances are that the parts used to make the remote control airplane are not produced locally. And second, other than sharpening mere hand to eye coordination and simply enjoying the outdoors, this activity does not serve a practical human need. This is not to discredit those who enjoy leisurely time spent flying remote airplanes. To be more specific, G.A.L.A. will aim to have all “ingredients” for each workshop available within a one hundred mile radius. In addition, each workshop will develop skills to help meet a basic human need like food, shelter, warmth, health, and a sense of belonging.

How is the Homesteading Workshop Series meaningful? The Homesteading Workshop Series is made meaningful by deliberately connecting the skill being learned, with how that skill helps achieve sustainability. It is G.A.L.A.'s promise that each workshop will develop skills that when utilized, move us in a direction toward sustainable community.

G.A.L.A's goal behind the Homesteading Workshop Series is to help people develop skills that lower their impact on the earth, also commonly referred to as "ecological footprint," in a fun and practical manner. G.A.L.A. will make this experience meaningful by connecting each skill with information about the unsustainable trend it seeks to mitigate. For instance, the rate of soil erosion and loss of productive cropland is unsustainable. As Lester Brown highlights in his rigorously researched book, Eco-Economy, "the loss of topsoil from wind and water erosion now exceeds the natural formation of new soil, gradually draining the land of its fertility"(8). These are that facts that would be brought up in Homesteading Workshop on "Household Composting Methods." This contextual information shows that composting not only keeps organic matter out of landfills, but can also help restore nutrient-rich topsoil. Our goal is to help participants understand that their new skill is not simply a novelty or isolated action, but part of a larger movement to restore ecological integrity.

Inevitably, G.A.L.A's Homesteading Workshop Series will help strengthen the social fabric of community as well as restore the ecological integrity of our bioregion. Although G.A.L.A's Homesteading Workshops Series will take place in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, all course descriptions will be made available in a user-friendly template for community groups to adopt everywhere!