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OUR BLOG - INFORMATIONS & CONTEMPLATIONS

The Transformation of our Urban Home
In August 2008, my wife Michelle and I returned to Calgary, Canada, after spending one year travelling abroad in search of sustainability solutions. With backgrounds in mechanical engineering, our “sabbatical” started off in Denmark – we were drawn there by the lure of technological solutions to energy issues. After several months of volunteering and filling our brains with information (wind energy, solar applications, passive buildings, biogas, plant oil engines... and more) we ended up back in North America prepared to explore the U.S. and Mexico in our plant-oil...
January 15, 2010
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Food not Lawns, Green Buildings
2009 Gull Lake PDC

Ravis Sustainable teamed up with Pacific Permaculture to offer our...

August 26, 2009
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Food not Lawns, Permaculture Courses
2009 Clean Calgary Intro Course

We are very excited about our new partnership with Clean Calgary and the first Introduction to Permaculture course that Rob facilitated for their organization.

Clean Calgary is an urban environmental organization with a mission to empower Calgarians to create healthy homes and communities through environmental education, products, and services.

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July 22, 2009
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Food not Lawns, Permaculture Courses
Grass is sooo 80's!

Another food forest installation in Calgary - yipee!

The group of students from our Springtime Introduction to Permaculture class taught through Clean Calgary got together one beautiful Saturday and helped turned fellow classmate, Barry Clements, front yard grass into an ecological and permaculture inspired garden.

The goal - replicate, as much as possible, the forest ecology. Forest ecologies are robust, self reinforcing, non-polluting and sustainable. Lawns are a highly inefficient use of space, water & money and significantly contribute to the degradation of our...

July 21, 2009
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Food not Lawns
Wildcrafting with Blaine Andrusek

Wildcrafting is the fusion between an indigenous survival skill and modern botany. Southern Alberta boasts hundreds of wild edible and medicinal plants right outside our front door that we all take for granted. Some of these plants are on the verge of extinction while other plants have just been forgotten. The indigenous people of southern Alberta not only survived in Southern Alberta - they thrived.

Rob and I took an Introduction to Botany course at Wild Rose College here in in Calgary in the Fall of 2008. We enjoyed the course and the...

July 13, 2009
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Gardening and Wildcrafting, Permaculture Courses
The Bownesian Urban Permaculture Project

This past week-end, we set out to help Rob Sinclair & Lauren Mangion transform their urban Bowness lot into a permaculture-inspired oasis & garden. Lauren took my “Intro to Permaculture” course in January and was inspired to take some next steps….. I offered to help them out with the design and implementation.

With some basic principles in mind we wanted to create a place where conscious garden design has been melded while respecting nature’s most basic principles. 

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May 28, 2009
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Food not Lawns