Transition Bay St Margarets

Transition Bay St Margarets, Nova Scotia, Canada, is a non-profit organization established in 2011 dedicated to following the Transition Town model started in England in 2005 which now includes hundreds of transition towns in dozens of countries (visit: www.transitionnetwork.org). Transition Initiatives promote ways to build resilience in a community in order to address the many possible global changes in energy supply, unstable economies and environmental depletion in the years ahead.  This process aims to create stronger, happier communities through actively building resilience at the community level to these significant global risks.

Transition Bay St. Margarets is exploring several projects for resilience, such as local gardening, other food production and distribution, transportation and energy options and a local currency.  Thank you for visiting, and please look around.  This is a new website, and additional information and resources will be added regularly.

The Transition Movement

The next ten years will not be the same as the last ten years.  Peak oil. Climate change. Increasing energy costs. Economic instability. Resource depletion. These are just a few of the most pressing issues of our time. The Transition Initiative movement, which is spreading quickly around the world, provides a foundation upon which to build a promising future together that is more fulfilling, creative and sustainable. Transition is a process for strengthening community resilience and building sustainability in a post-peak oil world that is uniquely designed by each community based on their local needs and resources. The Transition Initiative movement began in Totnes in Devon, England in 2005 and has now spread to hundreds of initiatives in 30 countries around the world. These initiatives are based on the premise that we are moving into an increasingly uncertain future, whether because of the exploding debt accumulation in the global economy, the impending peak in world oil production or the impacts of climate change that we are already seeing around us. The Transition movement argues that our communities have become alarmingly dependent on fragile supply chains for most of its basic and essential needs such as food and energy; that is, they are less resilient, and have lost the ability to respond to shock from the outside at exactly the time when we need them to be more resilient.

Tags: 

The Neighborhood Cooperative Greenhouse Model

A Model for Neighborhood Garden Transplant Production

Transition Bay St Margarets has been developing a unique model for Spring vegetable transplant production - using a neighborhood cooperative greenhouse model.   We are promoting this model to many neighborhoods in St Margarets Bay, as well as other communities.  Creating and managing a neighborhood greenhouse cooperative for the production of vegetable and flower transplants for use in the gardens of the coop members is a fantastic and easily accomplished way to build local networks and resilience at the same time.  Managing a greenhouse cooperatively encourages community-building around the subject of local food production.  The seeding and transplanting work is relatively easy for the inexperienced, and the results are obtained within a few weeks – high quality transplants for the home garden.  Everyone learns, networks and cooperates.

The coop model uses a single greenhouse, owned by one of the coop members, or possibly in a jointly-owned or public location.  Generally in more Northern climates, greenhouses are important for early transplant production because of the heat and shelter afforded by a greenhouse.  Transplants must be started 1-2 months prior to setting out into the garden in the Spring.  Either heated or unheated greenhouses can be used. 

We have been managing the 'No Guilt Garden Coop' in St Margarets Bay for the past several years with outstanding success, and as many as 20 families participating.  We produced as many as 6,000 vegetable transplants from a small 125 sq ft greenhouse.

We are pleased to announce that this model is now expanding to other neighborhood groups in Halifax and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia!  Visit our project pages for updates.

 

Sister Transition Initiative

Transition Bay St Margarets has partnered with Transition Town Guildford, outside of Perth, Australia 

Transition Bay St. Margaret's is pleased to announce an informal twinning with Transition Town Guildford in Western Australia. Each Transition Initiative is a local group dealing with resilience issues in their area, but the Transition Movement as a whole is world-wide in scope. The twinning illustrates this wide scope as these two transition initiatives are very nearly on the opposite sides of the earth from each other.

 

The twinning came about when Cam Farnell, a member of Transition Bay St. Margaret's, was in Western Australia to attend the wedding of his daughter Kim Farnell, who lives near Perth and is a member of Transition Town Guildford. Informal discussion made it clear that, while geographically the two initiatives are about as far apart as it is possible to be, they share many, many goals and challenges in common.

 

Creating reciprocal links between the initiatives seemed like an obvious way to highlight the wide scope and common purpose of the Transition movement. We encourage people to check the out their web site http://transitiontownguildford.com to see what a similar group is doing on the other side of the earth. This twinning also helps to illustrate that we have but one earth and that it is quite finite. From Halifax if you were to go straight down, and just a touch north, you would pop out about 12,000 Km later at Perth, Australia. That's about 1/30th the distance to the moon and it's the only planet we have.

 

Subscribe to Transition Bay RSS