Yippee!
We won the grand prize of $5000 from the So Nice contest encouraging people to enter ideas for a better organic world. Many, many thanks to everyone who voted for us. I know we had lots of vote gathering going on in the Czech Republic, Japan, Ontario, parts of the U.S. and I’m sure in other countries around the world. (If you voted for us and I’ve missed you please leave a comment with your name and country so I can thank you properly!)
As many of you know, I proposed to use the money to create educational resources to help us explain the many sustainable aspects of our home. Our initial plans are to create some signs to do this. Chris and I think the first one will be a sign by the road access as our neighbours have been kind enough on many occasions to direct lost visitors to our construction site. After that we will figure out where to best spend the money. I am hopeful there will enough to build a few educational displays to show things like the greywater recovery system, and perhaps to illustrate passive solar heating and cooling. I’m eager to figure out if there is some way to host information evenings where we can show videos and other multi-media resources to groups of people who visit. It is simply a lot of fun to figure out how we can best provide visitors with helpful information.
Not knowing how the winner would be selected made the weeks following January 18th rather uncertain. I know I was not alone in this as many other entrants queried the process. Honestly, I had thought some other fantastic entry had scooped the grand prize.
On Wednesday, January 26th, Chris and I stopped for the mail while leaving Barriere for Salmon Arm, where we were meeting a fellow named Ed Beggs. From there, we were travelling with him to Kimberley in his VW Jetta which was running entirely on used cooking oil. (More on that in another post). Ed and Chris and I were one of many presenters at the Green Building Conference hosted by Wildsight.
When we stopped to fuel the car before leaving Barriere I urged Chris to toss the bulky envelope as I was sure it was one of those consumer surveys. It had a return address I did not recognize. Unbeknownst to me it was the company name of the independant judging organization! My lack of thoroughness obviously offfended Chris and after giving me an exasperated look, he opened the letter.
When he realized what it was, I had to pull the car to the side of the road. I couldn’t jump up and down and still drive! I immediately phoned the kids who were at their grandparents and Stephen and I had a very excited conversation (Stephen sweetly harassed anybody who showed up on his chat list on FB from mid November to end of December and asked for votes!)
We cautioned the kids to remain silent about our news as the formalities had to be observed. Along with a loony coin (to make it legal) I had to answer a skill testing question. It was relatively easy to do in my head, but I did it about 20 times to make sure. I had to get an unrelated witness to sign for my signature. New friend, Ed Beggs performed this duty well.
I asked to use the fax machine at the conference on Friday only to discover I’d left the fax number at our billets’ house! There was no benefit to faxing it from Kimberley on the weekend so I waited until we arrived home Sunday evening, well before the February 4th deadline for doing so. I apologize to other entrants for the delay, though. I know how hard it was to wait!
We really are very grateful for the prize. Although it was possible to be move into the final judging round with only one vote, I wanted to make some noise about us and alternative building styles. We have tremendous friends and family who voted each and every day. We have “FB friends” who we have come to know only through our Darfield Earthship page. So many people just kept voting and didn’t seem put off by my twice daily requests for votes. Thank you all for making this so much fun and giving me something different to do in my evenings for six weeks!
Many thanks to the judges, whose comments were very kind and made us feel very special. The congratulations we’ve received on the So Nice page by other entrants have classy and gracious. I do wish there was all the money in the world out there to achieve everyone’s goals. I was inspired by so many ideas, especially all of those that help community, whether food or health related, or with a focus on energy conservation. It’s amazing how many people think as we do.
A big thank you to So Nice for sponsoring a contest in line with its corporate philosophy. What a wonderful gift to make available to all of us who dream of something different for our children’s world.
Now it’s time to get back to the house. We hope to have an answer on the direction of our electrical in a few days. Tire pack-out awaits and we will start to look toward plumbing. We have a number of posts to share; the Kimberley conference, our cross country ski training as a family, the upcoming lambing season, some writing projects we’ve been involved in and our thoughts on vegetable oil cars…all neat stuff!