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Am not.

But I dare say I might become one.

I do enjoy a good cup of coffee, but caffeine makes me edgy and gives me heart flutters.  I have been known to indulge in a white chocolate mocha at Second Cup, or a French Vanilla at Tim Horton’s… and don’t get me started about the Iced Cappucino!!

Then the other day I read a post at Eco Child’s Play on 5 Ways to Green Your Coffee and I got the itch.

So on Friday I bought myself a french press and some fresh-ground, organic, fair trade coffee.  Not wishing to spoil my organic coffee with hormone-laden cream and chlorine-drenched white sugar, I also got organic cream and fair trade evaporated cane sugar.  Right now I can’t justify the expense of organic sugar for ALL my baking, but just for the coffee?  I think I can swing it.

My justification is that I won’t spend any more money at Tim’s.  Plus, this stuff is better for me, no artificial flavours or additives.  Tastes better too.

And I just love the company — Just Us.  Get it?  Justice, just-us, very clever.  Apparently they are Canada’s first Fair Trade coffee roaster.  The sugar comes from them too.  And they’re located in Wolfville, where I lived for 6 years as an undergrad student and I still think it’s the most glorious place in the world.  In fact, apparently they started up just a year before I moved away… pity I didn’t know about it then!  They buy from co-ops and the company itself is run as a co-op, with employees owning shares.  They have cafes around Nova Scotia.

And they’ve got the greatest phone number… 1-888-not-them.

I’ve started myself off with a bag of French Roast, dark and potent.  I think I’ll experiment with other blends as well.  What I’d really love?  I’d love to figure out how to make my own french vanilla, or white mocha, or mmmmm hazelnut latte… but do it in a ‘green’ way.

It’s been two days, the coffee is delish, and Tim’s is not beckoning.

And I am not an addict.

Yet.

I’ve taken the brew-my-coffee-at-home pledge… have you?

Photo credit: papalars via Creative Commons

We strive to be eco-conscious in all things, to live in harmony with nature and each other. We endeavour to nourish our bodies with whole foods, locally grown, rich in the nutrients nature gave them, clear of artificial processing and toxic additives. We aim to nourish our children with strong family bonds, freedom, integrity and perceptive discretion, away from the influence of rampant consumerism, peer-orientation and pressure, the wastefulness and shallowness of contemporary western society.

We don’t always quite live up to these ideals.

I was contemplating this at lunchtime today, as I was eagerly pouring from our jug of whole, organic milk — it’s the only milk I ever buy. I’d get raw milk if I could find any. We don’t drink much milk as a rule, but I use it in baking and how can you possibly have chocolate chip cookies without a glass of cold milk? It costs a fair bit more than “regular” milk, but it’s worth it.

I was eagerly pouring that precious white gold into a pot of Kraft Dinner. What more sublime example could there be of “processed convenience food”? Is there real cheese in there? Maybe it used to be cheese in some former incarnation of itself…

And I couldn’t decide… was the milk enriching the macaroni, turning a processed junk lunch into something at least moderately healthy? Or was the mac ‘n cheese ruining the milk?

This got me thinking about the other contradictions in our day to day lives. We are active supporters of the Green Party, participants in the local riding association, very involved in the campaign in the recent federal election. Our cars are the most fuel-efficient ones we could afford. But… we do drive. In fact, we live outside of town and have to drive in almost every day. We own two cars. And there’s no bus service out here. I suppose this isn’t our fault, necessarily, but a true radical could say we always could have chosen to live in town… or for my husband not to have taken a job in town… or to not allow my son to be involved in any activities that would necessitate our driving… or we could ride our bicycles into town (which would likely be an hour’s trip), even in the depths of winter and with a 2-year-old tagging along. We feel like we don’t have much choice about the driving we do, but we still can’t help feeling a little guilty about it.

Then there are our toys. Little Pomme’s toys are mostly wooden, natural, simple. We don’t own much noisy electronic plastic garbage. We don’t buy Flipper every single fad product that comes along. We strictly limit “licenced” products, like Hannah Montana jewelry boxes or Barbie hair clips or Elmo dolls. We’d much rather our children play with their imaginations, make forts out of boxes and blankets and run around outside in the yard and in the trees and on the swings. We don’t have cable TV. But — we have a Playstation II, and a Wii, and not one but two PC’s running all kinds of games. And did I mention there are two televisions? One for the Wii and for DVD’s, the other for the PS2. And we play on them. A lot.

We would happily live out in a cabin in the woods, grow our own food and raise our own livestock, build our own furniture from fallen logs… just so long as we still had a high-speed internet connection.

I bake all our bread from scratch. Even when I cook Indian meals, I make fried poori bread or baked naan myself. I cook large, vegetable-rich healthy meals and freeze portions for later. I make hearty, rich bone broth from free-range organic chickens and local vegetables. I buy lots of fresh local produce at harvest time (and next year will have my own garden) and spend weeks canning and freezing, preserving for the winter months. We buy a half-side of grass-fed pasture-raised beef for the freezer about twice a year. And I will supplement this wonderful diet with frozen lasagna from M&M Meat Shop, chicken nuggets, frozen pizzas, more than our fair share of Doritos and chocolate, and of course… Kraft Dinner.

How can we rationalize this? Are we hypocrites?

My husband simply says… we do what we can. Like it or not, we live in this society, in this paradigm, and it is very difficult to live a lifestyle very far removed from that. We make our priorities and sometimes, the need to fulfill a family obligation outweighs the desire to spend all day making soup. Or allowing my son the freedom to carve his own path in life necessitates driving into town everyday for the activities which he loves. We make compromises, balancing nutrition and fair trade and ecology with the need to stretch a budget to feed the family.

We have an ideal that we do not live up to. But if we did live up to our ideals, though, perhaps it would only be because the goal was set too low. An “ideal” is, by definition, something to ever be reaching for, to have as an ultimate dream. As long as you are continuing to reach for that ideal and not giving up, then you are making progress, you are trying, you are doing what you can.

My son used to have a poster in his room which said “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” And when we compare our lifestyle to the average, it becomes easier to see where we are succeeding, where we have made important steps in a positive direction. Rather than dwelling on what we’re still not doing ‘right’, we should be focussing on how far we have already come.

I have a vision of a perfect unschooling philosophy, but I can’t hold to it. I get lazy, and we all get lazy. I try to parent playfully and fairly and cooperatively, with love and attachment, unconditionally. But I do find myself, every so often, falling into bribery, threats, ultimatums, and rigid expectations of finishing however many worksheet pages I insist upon. Or I disconnect, withdraw into my own world and ignore the intense needs of my children. But little by little, we’re getting there, we’re finding our way. The enrichment of the whole, organic milk of our relationships and our joy is outweighing the Kraft Dinner of our self-centredness, our narcissism, our need for control. I need to remember to look at how far I have come, how far we have come, and see how far we still need to go as simply the next step, the next phase, and not as an insurmountable obstacle that signifies only my failure in not having already achieved it.

So I set out to come up with simple, affordable clothes for mom. And while we’re at it, what about baby too? We have been practicing EC with our daughter, and once again it’s quite difficult to find clothes suited for this. For instance, toddler pants are always cut with a huge diaper allowance, with the crotch seam down to their knees! When your toddler is wearing underwear or training pants, this is rather annoying!

The Mother By Nature name is meant to convey many things. I am a mother, by my very nature. Mother Nature is the source of our inspiration and our fabrics. And the processes of Nature have made me a Mother.

“Mother” has everything to do with us. I shared my dream with my mother, and we are becoming business partners. My mother is an exceptionally talented seamstress and designer, with experience in baby clothes and nursing wear (and everything else!)

In addition to clothing and toys, we also plan on producing green bags — reusable cloth bags for shopping, gift-wrapping, whatever you like! We will offer workshops in Fredericton on babywearing, and may in the near future carry slings as well. We’re looking into other green products that are difficult to find in Canada. And of course, my handmade jewelry will be available, all from natural materials such as hemp, leather, bone, wood, and semi-precious stones.

My husband and I, with my son and our daughter, are currently living in Ontario. We are moving to New Brunswick this summer, where I will be teaming up with my mother and by this fall, Mother By Nature will be launched!