Sustainability Workshop Series

The G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series is an effort to provide experiential learning of basic homesteading techniques like composting, sourdough baking, canning, utilizing renewable energy, biofuel production, wool spinning, wine making, native foraging, and bioregion education. The goal of the Sustainability Workshop Series is to empower individuals to become more locally self-reliant in a fun, practical, and meaningful way.

Tim Smith from the Jack Mountain Bush Craft & Guide Service on 267 Camp School Road in Wolfeboro, NH has spearheaded the 2007 workshop series. Smith has invited the community, once a month, to come learn about a different homesteading or survival skill like no-till gardening, composting toilet design and upkeep, edible and poisonous plant identification, sourdough baking, processing acorns into food, and wine-making. G.A.L.A. is very grateful for Smith's enthusiasm and generosity and hopes to continue the partnership with Jack Mountain. Visit the Jack Mountain website at www.jackmountainbushcraft.com

But we know there are more of you out there with homesteading skills to offer!! It is G.A.L.A.'s to expand the Sustainability Workshop Series so that it provides a forum for a diverse array of community members to share their homesteading skills and techniques. If you are someone with a basic homesteading skills to share like knitting, canning, wool-spinning, four-season gardening secrets, paper making, rope making, wood work, etc. please consider contributing to the Sustainability Workshop Series. G.A.L.A. will do all the outreach for the workshops so all you have to do is be present and willing to share your skill! Contact G.A.L.A. if you are interested.

Now, for more about the workshop series . . .

How is the G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series fun? The Sustainability 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 Sustainability 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 Sustainability Workshop Series is fun because it takes place at a rotating venue to remain fresh and new!

How is the G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series practical? The Sustainability 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 G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series meaningful? The Sustainability 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 if utilized will help increase the chances of a sustainable future.

But what is sustainability? A literal definition of sustainability is simple: capable of being sustained; the ability to withstand or uphold some type of weight (or pressure). Language around sustainability has evolved, however, as scientific advancements allow for a greater understanding of the earth's carrying capacity, or in other words, the ability of the earth to withstand pressure of human impact. Models used to illustrate the relationship between human impact and the earth's carrying capacity are grounded in a fundamental law of nature: natural systems have a limited capacity to assimilate waste and recover from the depletion of resources.

G.A.L.A's goal behind the Sustainability 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 Sustainability Workshop on "Household Composting Methods" to show that composting not only keeps organic matter out of landfills, but can also help restore nutrient-rich topsoil. Helping participants understand that their new skill is not simply a novelty or isolated action, but part of a movement to ensure an environmentally restorative existence, will make the workshop experience that much more meaningful.

Inevitably, G.A.L.A's Sustainability Workshop Series will help strengthen the social fabric of community as well as restore the ecological integrity of the given bioregion. Although G.A.L.A's Sustainability 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!