Sustainability Fair

For those of you that have been with us all along, it will come as no surprise that we are not only involved with the Sustainability Fair, we are on the organizing committee, that means giving up a bit of our rare and precious free time every week to make sure this important event is a big success… For the rest of you, since this is Earth Day, I hope you don’t mind if we take a moment to share with you a bit of heart and soul… The Branch, from day zero, has been committed to the philosophy of sustainable living, we used to say environmentalism, but ‘environmentalism’ alone, without a philosophy of community and cultural resilience is only survival, not building a future.  So now we say Sustainable Living.  In case you were wondering. What does that mean to us?  It means that we always choose local foods, services and products, whenever possible to reduce our carbon footprint; we use organic foods for most of our pantry staples and almost everything we buy from abroad; we use biodegradable cleaners, compostable and/or recycled and/or recyclable containers and paper goods every time; we buy only small farm meat products, raised humanely and naturally, usually from someone we know… We seek out new ways to save energy, water and we do other things like minimize packaging, composting, making things from scratch to insure that it is clean and free of environmental toxins… But Why?  That’s a whole other question…  Nicole and I met at an organic restaurant in San Francisco, both of us far away from our homes.  It may seem strange that an Ottawa girl and a Texan would have much in common, but as we got to know each other, we realized that we did… We were both that weird kid in both of our families that insisted on reusing Christmas packaging, on teaching our parents to recycle, on finding better, healthier and cleaner food for ourselves and for the people we cared about… We both felt sad that a planet (and many of its inhabitants, come to think of it,) which we both felt such a strong affinity for was in such a sorry state with pollution, abuse, ill health and neglect… And perhaps MOST importantly, to our very cores, we both believed (and still believe) that with a little work and a little faith, that people could, that WE could fix that.  It is that belief and that optimistic set of core values that has sustained us (as the Branch) through 7 years of hard work, ups and downs, trials and tribulations, successes and failures (good and bad, sickness and health…)

So I guess that what I’m saying is this: we love cooking, serving, being a part of this wonderful community, being a part of the culture through supporting music and the arts… But those things are all just WHAT we do.  Come out this Sunday to the Sustainability Fair if you’d like to find out more about WHY.