To the Editor:

The Sustainable Living Project (SLP) and Local Living Festival would like to offer an opportunity for readers to become a sponsor or volunteer to help reach our goals in the North Country in 2011. This could be in support of our year-round “Skills-Building Workshops for Resourceful Living”, and/or our second annual Local Living Festival to be held September 24 and 25, at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Learning Farm in Canton.

The first annual Local Living Festival had an attendance of 1,200 people, which accounts for more than 1 percent of the population of the entire County and nearly 7 percent of the greater Canton-Potsdam area. Our year-round programs reach thousands more when you include event participants as well a those reached through our extensive media campaigns, bulk e-mailings, website presentation and Facebook coverage. Our 2011 community presence is only growing!

There is a large and growing constituency for our work and the SLP is the only educational program of its kind in the North Country. We promote environmental impact reduction through practical rural and simple living skills. Our constituents are often “do-it-yourself-ers” and are drawn to the revival of old-time skills blended with appropriate modern technologies that the SLP offers.

A brief sampling of our programs includes: Off-Grid Living, Pumping Water Without Electricity, How We Saved 60 percent on our Energy Bills, Rainwater Catchment, Food Preservation, Bread-making, Raising Family Livestock and Poultry, Bicycle Repair, Orcharding, Forest Management, The Solar Greenhouse, Mowing with a Scythe, and Beekeeping among hundreds of others.

The SLP helps people in the North Country to implement a path toward more earth-friendly living and works to inspire self-reliant, local, and healthy lifestyles, all within the context of helping building a vibrant local community and economy -- because we cannot really do it alone. We all must work together, which is why we have written this letter.

Long-term goals readers may wish to support include a Community Resource Center and Agricultural Depot as well as an eventual Homesteading College in the St. Lawrence River Valley, with a core curriculum based on growing, eating and preserving food, renewable energy systems, and “green” building as well as traditional rural skills of all sorts. Please see the Future Plans page of our website for more details about these hugely exciting projects!

The SLP enjoys oversight by Seedcorn, Inc., a Potsdam -based 501(c)3 organization whose mission is to help incubate new organizations without having to “reinvent the wheel”. SLP helpers include over 15 committed core volunteers, one part-time staff person, and over 50 volunteers for the annual Festival, without which the Project would not be possible. More volunteers are always welcome!

We sincerely hope you will join in supporting the work of the SLP and Local Living Festival. Small gifts of your valuable time, in-kind donations from businesses, major donations -- every bit helps us achieve our goals. With your help we can inspire awareness to reduce our local ecological footprint, one step at a time. Exhibitors and Workshop Presenters are also sought. For information or to be added to our emailing list please write to SustLivingProject@gmail.com or call 315-347-4223.

Chelle Lindahl & Melinda Ely, Co-Coordinators, Rajiv Narula, Project Organizer, Paul Pickens, Major Donor Coordinator, Jacki DeGraw, Festival Exhibit Coordinator