ReSkilling Expo to be held at Vets Hall on November 9

Want to use that laundry water to water your garden instead of watching it go down the drain? Like to get some ideas on how to redesign your old clothes or ones you pick up at the thrift store? Want to learn how to preserve your garden’s bounty by canning, freezing, or dehydrating it? Then come to the SLO Vets Hall on November 9 for a day of over 30 hands-on workshops where you can learn those things and many more.

SLO Transition Towns is putting on a ReSkilling Expo during which local “guides” will show you many practical skills that can make you more self-sufficient. “ReSkilling is reclaiming sustainable living skills we may have lost due to mechanization and industrialization, such as growing our own food; knitting, crocheting, and quilting; and making things we need from discarded items,” says Program Chair Liana Forest. “It allows us to relearn handicrafts and learn practical ways of doing things.”

Other topics that will be covered are cooking with only the sun, raising chickens, keeping bees, firemaking without matches, and knot tying. Many topics related to home gardening will be offered: seed saving, plant repotting, fruit tree propagation, pruning, soil and the soil food web, and composting.

Being more self-sufficient means being less dependent on services provided by others, especially those who live outside of our community. It also means that in case of a crisis that affects transportation of goods that we can rely on local sources of food and energy and maintain the goods we already own. Plus a reskilling event provides an opportunity to build community connections: we learn from one another and get to know one another.

Cost is $5 for individuals and $10 for families. Registration begins at 9:15 AM. Event runs from 10 to 5.

About SLO Transition Towns: Transition is a grassroots movement designed to enable communities to come together to develop local sustainability and economic stability and promote local renewable energy.