Timothy Elliott’s nose runs steadily in the cool fall breeze as he toddles between the straw bales and rebars that will become part of his family’s home.
His parents, Tom and Carole-Anne Elliott, plan to move their four children into their 2,800-sq-foot octagon dream home by winter. Built with straw bales and powered by wind turbines, the building features a cupola loft that will one day overlook a circular home next door, a thin young forest and a red-roofed private school.
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All these buildings are distinguished by where they are located – off the power grid and within walking distance of Craik’s Eco Centre, a housing development model that promotes sustainable living.
“Anything a person does will make an impact on something else,” Tom Elliott said.
“We’re trying to do it with as little impact as we can.”
The town and rural municipality launched the Craik Sustainable Living Project (CSLP) in 2001 to revitalize a rural community that faced population and service declines and to address the effects of climate change.
At the golf course, the greens are being covered with sand and straw instead of tarpaulins for winter as part of a sustainability plan to reduce the need for chemicals in the spring.
Between the new housing development, the centre and the golf course is an agro-forestry site where trees will be grown without chemicals, harvested for lumber or biomass and then replaced with new trees.
The eco centre restaurant, club house and meeting centre were built to demonstrate what can be done using compostable toilets, solar heating and recycled kitchen wastes.
They provide the backdrop for numerous outreach activities that project committee members undertake, such as straw building workshops, challenges to eat more locally grown food, an annual solar fair and an eco fair.
Environmental stewardship and sustainability are the cornerstones of the project, said project volunteer Glenn Hymers, who spoke about the benefits of sustainable living at a health region meeting last fall.
“It keeps the community going,” he said of CSLP’s value to his community. The idea is to reduce the reliance on non-renewable resources.
“If we can contribute to the reduction of our ecological footprint, it’s a good thing,” he said.
“We have to be a little smarter in what we’re doing.”
Hymers is convinced Craik is moving in the right direction to ensure a healthy future.
“I like to think our chances are better now than if we’d done nothing,” he said.
Hymers said young families have moved to Craik and the community has successfully retained core services that include a doctor, school and bank.
The project is also part of the Saskatchewan regional centre of expertise for sustainable development.
Outside the centre, deer and a blue heron emerge from a ravine as a large flock of snow geese rise in unison at the sound of an approaching golf cart.
Golf course superintendent Austin Eade said the course avoids the chemicals commonly used on other courses by using composted waste from the centre’s kitchen and toilets as fertilizer.
As well, it uses bird boxes to attract species that act as bug catchers.
Those efforts, combined with maintaining habitat for wildlife and recreation for humans, have earned the golf course a certification with the National Audubon Society, which seeks to conserve and restore natural ecosystems.
It is the only golf course to have that designation, earned through its management of water, outreach and education and pesticide reduction and storage.
Eade predicted a big turnaround in the next decade as such practices become commonplace.
“More people are becoming aware that we can’t keep going the way we’ve been going,” he said.
“Every time you get one or two people involved or interested, it’s progress.”
He said there is interest but many resist change because of increased labour and cost.
“It’s a little more work,” he said.
“People don’t see the financial benefit from it.”
Eade and his wife, Shirley, try to live sustainably, using compact fluorescent light bulbs and an efficient wood burning fireplace. They compost grass clippings and added extra insulation to their home.
“That’s how individuals can do it,” he said.
Crystal and Paul Stinson moved a log home onto a lot just across the reservoir from the golf course, where they are learning to live off the grid and provide a modern life for their young children. Paul grew up on a farm that produced much of the food the family ate.
They have eliminated high energy wasters such as toasters and managed to use one-quarter of the power they once did, Crystal Stinson said.
They built a garage of straw bales, use the sun to power their home and have started an orchard that one day may help provide them with a living.
Stinson said alternative energy comes with a big up-front investment, but the payback is long-term.
“We felt it was the right thing to do,” she said.
“We wanted to set a good example for our kids.”
Funding continues to be a challenge for the project, which relied heavily on volunteer labour and scrap materials to build the eco centre.
It keeps costs down with insulated blinds that must be drawn when the sun disappears and opened to let the sun in by morning. Waste from compostable toilets and kitchen bins is removed and used as compost and fertilizer on the centre grounds.
Aaron Obrigewitsch, one of the volunteers who helped build the centre, called it an example of learning to do by doing.
“We don’t have money for feasibility studies, so we just do it.”
Obrigewitsch said the project serves as a good model of what a determined small rural community can do.
