Lighter than an anorexic helium balloon and about as benign as a mine dump sized lung full of asbestos dust, my new agave blank has left the runaway train of my paranoid brain, seesawing on the edge of a cliff. On one hand Agave is the perfect local surfboard building material, as light as Balsa with beautiful colouring and freely available everywhere from Bellville to Ballitto. I’ve driven through parts of the Karoo, the old tequila plantations, where the gargantuan flowering stems of these Mexican immigrants stretch off ad infinitum, looking like nothing less than a B-movie sized army of asparagus, freshly escaped from the evil Monsanto’s lab and on the march, ready to take over the world and make all of our pee smell funny. By harvesting these flowering stems before the seed sets (as you must to obtain rot free, A grade wood) you slow the invaders progress, a happy side effect. But like every too-good-to-be-true story since Moses split the red sea, working with Agave has its drawbacks. The sawdust from the wood is a major irritant, on your skin it’s about as soothing as napalm infused aftersun lotion and in your lungs, well, I can feel my lungs composing their Dear John letter as I write. So it’s with shopping trolleys full of procrastination that I approach my new paipo project – Dr. Evil, the planing hell cometh.
By not knowing, and not demanding to know, we are trusting that what we are paying for has been produced fairly and safely, but we are in fact leaving this up to chance. As most products these days are imported, we are not only buying something ‘blindly’, but we also seem to forget that by importing we’re increasing our environmental impact, as well as effectively exporting our money. As consumers we have more control over what is available to us to buy than we might think. As consumers we collectively choose to keep products and services available on the market as we create the demand. However we often seem to forget this incredible power that we have. With this power we can control the economy and also create jobs, by the simple act of being a ‘localist’.
By buying locally we not only contribute to our own communities immediate economy, but we are also ensuring that our communities ‘spirits’ and unique qualities live on.
There’s something really nice about personally knowing the carpenter that made the chair that you sit on everyday, you know he took his time to create it with love and care, and these qualities matter. You also hope and are pretty sure that the money that went to him will be circulated back into the local community. For a sustainable future we need to start caring for our local community and that means supporting the businesses within it too.
Be proudly local, support local businesses and let’s grow our local community together.