I feel rather guilty as of late because I have been neglecting my web site but there is a very good reason for doing so! As many of you will have heard there are a number of forest fires burning in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. The skies are filled with smoke and there have been people evacuated from their homes. It has been a very trying time for many involved! I have been called in to help out at the Cariboo Fire Centre located in Williams Lake. You can go to bcwildfire.ca to find information on the current status of fires burning in BC. Or you can send a message of support to our fire fighters who are working so hard to deal with the situation at hand. I have met many of the people working on the front lines and they are giving everything they've got and are doing a great job, I can't say enough good things about them!! As for our web site, we'll be back to normal when things slow down and the Fire Centre no longer needs extra help. Hopefully for the fire fighters, their families and the people that have been effected or are in an area that could still be affected that will come soon!!!  

 Most of us have been making better choices in an effort to live better...live green. We have been bringing reusable bags to the grocery store and buying things with less packaging. Things like this are great and I think we are on our way but we all know there is still room for improvement. Sometimes we run out of ideas and that is what I am writing about today. I would like to take you on a journey through you cupboards. I know that sounds a little strange but have you really looked at what is in there? Martha Stewart has done the planet a great disservice by telling us we need a different set of dishes for every occasion! We do not NEED so much stuff! Take a page out of time when life was much less complicated when you made do with what you had and Quality not Quantity was the key to shopping.

This is the message I’d like to bring to you today. I like many of you have changed my thinking in the last few years and one thing I feel differently about is shopping locally. I’ve always shopped locally to some extent but now I really feel strongly about supporting the local economy. It just makes sense. I guess the last economic crises prompted some soul searching but also checking out handmade products available and finding that there are some really beautiful and well made things right on our door step. I’m not perfect by any means; I have 7 different roasting pans/casserole dishes in my cupboard. Why did I buy them in the first place? Well many of them came in sets and were inexpensive. They also travelled by land, sea and/or air thousands of miles to get to the store where I bought them. This realization made me sit back and think of the true cost of these products. Wow not really as inexpensive as I originally thought! I know the argument over buying handmade things like pottery and woodcrafts is often the price but I have come to realize that price and cost are two different things. When you buy something that is handmade there are many benefits. The obvious; you get a beautiful unique piece. The often not so obvious; the money you spend ends up supporting local economies and greatly reduces your carbon footprint. There is something else I feel should be pointed out as well. There have been so many scary recalls and health risks in connection with imported products. When you buy something that is handmade the artist puts there name on it, they stand behind the product and often use the items in their own kitchens. They want you to get many years of enjoyment out of what you buy and love it as much as they loved making it. So next time you feel you need to buy something for your kitchen or any other room in your house, or you need a gift for someone, think about buying something handmade. This is just one more way we can live green.

Part 2
 
How shopping locally for handmade goods effects the local economy. Coming soon.

First let us explain what face grain is. Face grain is the long view of the wood grain as seen in a hard wood floor or a table top. If you cut down a tree and saw the log in half from root to tree top you would be left with two halves of a log. The exposed part of the wood where the saw passed though is the face grain. If you looked down on the top of the stump of that same tree you would be looking at what is called the end grain.
When you have a face grain cutting board the surface that you are cutting on is comprised of long wood fibres. If you can picture for a moment what happens when you run a knife over the surface of those long fibres. The knife can cut those fibres eventually scoring, gouging and potentially splintering the surface of the board. Some of this damage can not be fixed by refinishing as it would simply be more work than most of us are willing to put into a cutting board. The second most common problem with face grain cutting boards is warping. Wood naturally wants to bend and twist when exposed to moisture and we all know we need to wash our cutting boards so what do we do? Theres nothing worse than trying to cut on a board that is tipping back and forth as you work.
Any professional chef will tell you they prefer end grain cutting boards because the end grain wood fibres absorb the impact of the knife blade by allowing it to go between the fibres. The fibres in end grain boards naturally move apart then back together as the knife crosses over them This in turn keeps knives sharper longer and if you have high quality knives you know how important this is. The end grain will also resist nicks, gouges and warping much much better than face grain. It would be very unusual for an end grain board to warp under normal use.  Overall an end grain cutting board is a much stronger and more durable choice. These boards can stand up to a lot of use before they start to show it, but they can be refinished easily by lightly sanding then applying a food safe mineral oil. Truthfully if you purchase an end grain cutting board you should never need to buy another board unless you
want to.  Now something to note if you buy a face grain or end grain wood cutting board. You should apply a food safe mineral oil to the surface of your board every once in a while to help protect it unless otherwise stated by the manufacturer. NEVER USE olive oil, vegetable oil or other similar oils as they have a tendency to go rancid and will give your board a sour smell and make your food taste bad. We want to provide you with the best value for your hard earned dollars and that is why at Back Country Artz we deal exclusively with end grain cutting boards. If you have any questions you can e-mail us at: questions@backcountryartz.com.

We sell handcrafted functional pottery but did you know that pottery has been around since the Neolithic Revolution? It’s amazing to think that something that mankind has been using since such early times is still very functional today, in our techno-savvy world. Where pottery was once placed in a hole in the ground then covered in dirt and a bon fire lit above it, now it is fired in electric kilns were temperature is more easily controlled, although some artist still use older methods like outdoor wood fired kilns. The potter’s wheel that many of us are familiar with today came to be, around 3000 BC, prior to that clay was moulded by hand into the desired shape. Glaze was developed in the 9th century BC for use with decorative  tiles but was not used for functional pottery like vesicles to hold water, until much later in the 1st century BC. The first glazed pots appear in the Middle East and in China during the Han Dynasty circa the 1st century BC. These are just a few interesting facts about pottery.

I find it fascinating that much of this ancient pottery still exists and sometimes is all that is left at archaeological sites. I love that we can learn so much from the remnants left behind, about the civilization that was there and how they used that pottery. Today we like pottery for very different reasons. We no longer rely on it as our only way to store water. Now we buy it because we love it, and for its beauty and decorative quality. Pottery allows us to have something made from a chunk of clay from the earth, shaped by an artist’s hand, glazed and fired so that the finished product is its own unique creation and is a little link to our past. When we buy local handcrafted pottery we reduce our carbon footprint by shopping local. We support local artists and we have a beautiful, unique and well made accessory to show for it!