What we’re doing.
We’re building a greenhouse in our backyard! Yes, that’s right – we made the decision to level our deck and are in the process of building a greenhouse to grow food all year round.

Prepping the foundation, click to visit Flickr for more

Why are we doing this?
We’ve got some pretty strong reasons for retiring a perfectly usable deck – part professional, part personal. As professional film and video producers working with local B.C. farmers, we’ve learned a lot about the challenges that they face. And as part of our journey in becoming experts in this subject matter, we’ve really immersed ourselves in adopting a more environmentally sustainable life style. Building a greenhouse to grow some of our food is a way for us to put our beliefs into practice.

On a personal level, we are undertaking this project as a husband and wife couple to grow our lives together and also to grow a community of neighborhood hobbyist farmers. Using this project as a focal point, we can learn about our own neighbours and bring our block closer together for the purpose of growing food. With any luck, we could even spur a movement of backyard farms across the North Shore and beyond!

Most importantly, we are doing this to learn about growing organic food and respecting it for what it is and where it comes from – NOT just a cheap and easily accessible commodity as its seen as at the grocery store.

Why should we all care?
Because we all live in a society that is constantly focused on growth, we continue to put a heavy burden on our food supplies. In many ways, you (the reader) and I indirectly contribute to the unsustainable farming practices that have come about over time in response to population growth.

If we are able to grow natural, pesticide-free food for ourselves in a more sustainable way, we can become a part of the solution and become less of a contributor to unsustainable practices in our food supply chains.

Please contact us if you run a greenhouse project or do your own farming in your backyard. We’d love to hear and learn from you and share what we discover along the way as well. Check our pictures on Flickr and feel free to comment!