Prairie’s Edge (River Hills, Manitoba)

Alternative Routes
Blog posting #12
BriarpatchMagazine.com

by Shayna Stock, with photography by Dominique Fenton

There is one community I had been postponing writing about. This group of people so embodies what we have been seeking on this trip that to put their story into a single posting seemed a daunting task.

Prairie’s Edge Eco-Village, in rural Manitoba, aims to live simply and co-operatively, in harmony with the natural world. They harness energy from the sun and wind to provide their electricity, grow most of their own food, and build their own homes out of mainly natural or recycled materials.

This might sound like a lot of work, and it is. But as we learned during our stay there, it can also be a lot of fun, not to mention incredibly fulfilling, to literally build your own life in tandem with your closest friends.

Of course, they are forced to earn a small income to cover the taxes on their land, whatever food they don’t grow, and other supplies. Most community members work outside of the farm just 1-2 months a year, usually doing odd-jobs, or finding some short-term work in Winnipeg. They charge themselves $50/month in rent, which covers all their food, taxes, and some communal supplies.

(Note: After some quick addition, in a shocking epiphany just moments ago, I realized that these people enjoy a full year of shelter and good wholesome food for the same amount of money I was paying per month for just one room in Toronto!!)

Because they live simply, and mostly outside of our society’s capitalist economic system, the people at Prairie’s Edge are able to focus most of their time and energy on the survival and well-being of themselves and their community.

In the summer, community members are busy almost from sunrise to sunset. Their energy goes towards feeding themselves, and building and maintaining their shelters.

When we were there, there were two straw bale houses that had recently been erected. We helped to plaster both of them, with an earth plaster (mixture of sand, clay and water), and then with a lime plaster, which is more weather-proof.

One of the community members was also just finishing a solar dehydrator, and we saw the first batch of apple leather, dill, and mullen go in to be dried. The design came from another, older, Manitoba eco-village, the Northern Sun Farm. About 15 years older than Prairie’s Edge, the Northern Sun Farm has acted as mentors to the younger group in a lot of ways.

Next to the dehydrator stands the impressively large solar oven in which some of our food was cooked — another design borrowed from the Northern Sun Farm.

In winter, apparently, most of the group’s energy is spent collecting and chopping firewood from the woods on their land for heating and cooking. They also take the opportunity to rest, read, dream, and plan for the upcoming growing/building season.

It is so difficult to express our experience at Prairie’s Edge in writing that I hesitated to do so. No words I share with you can express the sense of wholeness and self-assurance that these people exude, which seems to come from literally building their own life and community, with their own hands, from the ground up.

For a slightly larger fraction of an idea of who they are and what they do, you can visit their website: http://www.prairiesedge.tk/

Shayna and Dominique are traveling across Canada in search of community, and sharing what they find with Briarpatch readers. Read their introduction to the project here.