We hosted our inaugural workshop this week – Introduction to Fermentation with the talented Rebekka Hutton from Alchemy Pickle Company. Good, hands-on work – what better way to spend a Tuesday night?
Workshops are Starting at Little House in the City!
Little House in the City is offering a wide range of urban homesteading workshops and classes! Our workshops are facilitated by some amazing local talent, who are ready to get your do-it-yourself spirits up. Come out for some handmade fun!Call (416) 413-9993 to register – sign up for more than one workshop and get 10% off!
WORKSHOP CALENDAR
Intro to Fermentation: Sauerkraut and Brined Vegetables
Thurs Nov 6, 7-9pm
Kids’ Yoga for 6-9 year olds
Saturdays from 11-11:45, beginning Nov 8 for 6 weeks
Kids’ Yoga for 3-5 year olds
Saturdays from 12-12:30, beginning Nov 8 for 6 weeks
Cold Pressed Soapmaking
Tues Nov 11, 6:30-9:30pm
Hot Water Bath Canning
Tues Nov 18, 7-9:30pm
Kombucha Brewing
Thurs Nov 27, 7-9pm
Advanced Fermentation: Kimchi and Experimentations
Thurs Dec 4, 7-9pm
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS
Introduction to Fermentation: Sauerkraut and Brined Vegetables
Fermented foods are an original slow food – you can’t hurry them, or create those flavours any other way. Learn the basics of lacto-fermentation as a preservation method for vegetables, and build flavours without heat, vinegar, or additives. Taste a wide range of vegetable ferments and condiments, all made with local, seasonal, organic produce. We’ll make at least one ferment to take home. Recipes included.
Instructor: Rebekka Hutton from Alchemy Pickle Company
When: Thursday November 6, 7-9pm
Cost: $50
Kids’ Yoga
Children learn best through play and movement! Children can explore and create in a positive, supportive, nurturing and non-competitive environment. Trunk to Tail encourages kids to become the co-creators of each class, drawing on their ideas, movements, and excitement so each class changes based on the dynamic of the group and the creative minds of each participant. We honour a child’s development and nourishes their body, mind and soul through, play, movement, relaxation and creativity.
Instructor: Brittany Lodgson from Trunk to Tail Kids & Family Yoga
Date: Saturdays, starting November 8
Time: 11-11:45am (6-9 years) and 12-12:30pm (3-5 years)
Cost: $70 (6-9 years), $65 (3-5 years). Drop-in rates available.
Cold Process Soapmaking
Learn the science of cold process soap-making, and how you can push your culinary skills to apply this process safely at home. Colour and scent can be added with essential oils and natural ingredients from the kitchen. This hands-on workshop lets you take control of the ingredients in your soap – and leave with a few bars of delightful, handmade gifts ready for the holidays! Recipes included.
Instructor: Rebekka Hutton from Alchemy Pickle Company
When: Tuesday November 11, 6:30-9:30pm
Cost: $55
Hot Water Bath Canning
From pickles to tomatoes to jam and everything in between, learn how easy it is to preserve foods in your own kitchen in this interactive workshop. We’ll discuss equipment and food safety issues of high acid canning so you can confidently produce your own preserves. Discover the possibilities that exist year-round, even in the depths of winter. Taste a diversity of hot-water bath canned foods, help create two different items, and take home a sample of what we make. Recipes included.
Instructor: Rebekka Hutton from Alchemy Pickle Company
When: Tuesday November 18, 7-9:30pm
Cost: $50
Kombucha Brewing Workshop
Kombucha has been hailed as an ‘elixir of life’. This ancient tea has beneficial nutrients, improves digestion, increases energy, and boosts immunity. If you can brew a cup of tea, you can make kombucha! We’ll discuss fermentation and demonstrate the full brewing process, including a double fermentation to add yummy flavours. Participants take home a SCOBY, starter liquid, and brewing instructions.
Instructor: Manjit Bumrah, Holistic Nutritionist and Physiotherapist
When: Thursday November 27, 7-9pm
Cost: $50
Advanced Fermentation: Kimchi and Experimentations
Once you’ve mastered the basics of sauerkraut, join us to take your fermentation to the next level. Bring questions, or even a sample of some of your ferments to share. We’ll make a traditional kimchi in class to take home, and discuss variations using similar techniques. We’ll also make at least one other ferment, as determined by season and folks in the class. Understanding of the basics of lacto-fermentation preferred.
Instructor: Rebekka Hutton from Alchemy Pickle Company
When: Thursday December 4, 7-9pm
Cost: $50
Our First Employee?
Apple Picking
It’s the season of the apple and with children, apple picking is always good fun. We picked at Organics Family Farm in Markham, a nearby organic apple farm (if you know of any others, please tell us!). It was a gorgeous day, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that I bought as many apples as I could carry (and could load into my little kids’ sacs).
We got to work baking apple pies and making apple sauce (and eating a lot of apples). A huge appeal for the children (and me) is using the apple peeler, which makes such quick work of coring the apples and almost mesmerizingly peels the skins.
We checked out ways to use the heap of skins we had (some of them went in the pie and sauce but there was still a lot left). Apple tea and apple jelly were intriguing, but we opted for baking some apple skin crisps. We simply tossed cinnamon and sugar over the skins and baked them at 325 degrees for about 15 minutes (watching them to make sure they didn’t burn). I think I might have preferred frying them in a pan as opposed to baking, but the kids loved the crispy curls that emerged from the oven and ate them up.
What are you doing with your apples this season?
People
One of the best things about opening a shop like Little House in the City is getting to meet so many creative, supportive, and generous people along the way. Some of are the artisans making the beautiful and functional things that grace our store, and in time we hope to tell you more about them through profiles and interviews.
But there have been other interactions too, the proverbial random acts of kindness, except that they happen too often to really be random. Like when the Home Depot employee let us return our rented truck late one night, saving us hours of driving time the next day. Or whenever we work with the small business specialist at the bank, who seems to help us at every turn. Or when we told the woman who sold us her beautiful antique furniture that we intended to use them as display pieces for our homesteading store, and she spontaneously lowered her already reasonable prices just to help us get off the ground.
Magic happens in the store too sometimes. We were so delighted when a woman returned to our store with a gorgeous teacup candle she and her daughter made with our candlemaking supplies – it was an unexpected and perfect shopwarming gift. We placed it on our counter, and so many people asked to buy it that we’re now carrying a line of these gorgeous handmade candles in our shop.
And I was over the moon when a man who did some canning with our Weck jars returned to offer a precious jar to us. It’s filled with the bounty gotten from volunteering with Not Far from the Tree to boot – and Carla and I are not too proud to tell you that after careful negotiation we are going to split the small jar of jelly between us.
If we were looking for a “sign” that we’ve made the right decision in starting this homesteading and sustainability venture, I would call that sign “people”. Like-minded and open-minded people who are helping to make the connections we were hoping for and then some.
Thank You to Cabbagetown and Your Amazing Festival!
We just had to write down what’s been in our head, which is a giant thank you to Cabbagetown for the wonderfully warm welcome we’ve received since opening the doors of our urban homesteading and sustainability shop. It is so friendly here, with a strong sense of community, and we’re regularly greeted by neighbours dropping in to say hello. The vibe is at once down-to-earth and open-minded, and we feel right at home.
We also lucked into opening shop in time for the Cabbagetown festival, which was pretty much a major amplification of this welcome and just a flurry of fun for us. In front of the store is Lucy, our in-house letterpress artist, spotting me for a spell so I could grab some lunch (Malaysia murtabak – yum!). I love how Lucy’s hands are pressed together in front of her chest – it’s a heartfelt gesture, one of gratitude, which is how I feel a lot of the time.
Beginnings
Equipped with the maxim that you’ll regret more the things you didn’t try than the things you did, Carla and I went and opened an urban homesteading/sustainability shop and learning centre. This meant venturing into all sorts of unknown territory, like figuring out how to structure and then register a business, acquainting ourselves with commercial real estate, finding just the right suppliers, and refining for ourselves our precise vision for the space.
Oh – also, we had to drive this ginormous van through what suddenly became rather narrow city streets.
We needed to pick up furniture that would become display pieces for our store. Carla said something or other prevented her from driving, so I had to manoeuvre this beast. We emerged mostly unscathed (ahem).
I’m a patchy documentarian (lucky for you), so I don’t have many more photos recording some of the more banal parts of getting our shop off the ground. But it’s always good to have before and after photos, yes? Here we are on the much-anticipated day we got the space! Ta da!!
Seriously. That’s what it looked like. Which was so unexpected, because the place was spotless when we viewed it. It’s true the NDP were in before us, but a political party would seem a respectable enough tenant, no? Maybe don’t answer that.
At any rate, this spectacle on our very first day as shop lessors was, how shall we say… a letdown. I believe I laughed inappropriately at the scene, and Carla, well, didn’t. The bottle of sparkling organic juice that I trekked to the store in a picnic basket packed with champagne flutes got trekked right out again, unopened.
We later discovered the mess was the result a mistake on the lease – the previous tenants and we were given possession of the space on the same day (the last day of their lease and the first of ours). The drama was thus contained, and we soon got into our space. And noticed it didn’t look much better.
Then began the patient process of trying to pull it together. We kept at it and ultimately arrived at this, which is more or less what it looks like now.
I actually have a fancy camera and can usually take some good shots with it, although I can’t seem to get very far with it in our shop. Hopefully you can get a sense of it anyway. The little place is still in its infancy and there remains so much we want to do. But I think we can fairly say that our shop, which for a good while existed only in our minds, has become manifest.
ps. We may have been sitting on empty boxes or the floor, but we did eventually crack open the juice bottle and clink our glasses. All is well.
Little House in the City 