Sourdough Bread

The pioneers that populated Canada were resilient and self-sufficient people. They had to make all their own bread at a time before dehydrated fast acting commercial yeast was available, so they took a small quantity of starter with them. This would have been a sourdough starter so all their bread would have been sourdough, which is now considered to be supreme and is highly sought after.

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A New Homestead Act

A few weeks ago in this column, Eric Rempel challenged us to think about what a Homestead Act for the 21st century would look like. The first Homestead Act, called the Dominion Lands Act in Canada offered to give (for a $10 administration fee) every person over 18 years old, including women who were leaders of a household, 160 acres of land with an additional 160 acres available for another $10 fee. In order to get a title of ownership you had to “prove” the land which meant live there for at least three years, plow up at least 40 acres of the 160 and build a permanent dwelling on the land.

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Resilience is a Strange Word

Resilience is a strange word and when you look it up in the dictionary it is described as springing back or resuming original form after stretching. Another meaning is readily recovering after a setback, and that is what I want to write about today.

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How about a Homestead Act for the 21st Century

Wherever we humans live together we inevitably make and accept rules that govern how we relate to one another. Such rules are necessary. Some are very simple and have little bearing on how we live and relate to one another. An example is the rule that we drive on the right hand side of the street. Provided we all agree on which side of the road we should drive on, this rule affects little else. But not all of the rules we accept as “normal” are as innocuous as that.

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Easing the Pain of a Resource Tax

In my last column I suggested that a tax on fertilizer would serve us all well. Specifically I suggested that such a tax would effectively increase the value of manure fertilizer, thereby creating an incentive for farmers to place a greater value of the plant nutrients in their manure. Also, I suggested that extracting resources from the earth impoverishes the planet. Reasonably, we should not think we have the right to do this without considering the impact such impoverishment has on future generations.

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