Within our business and at home, we strive to close the loop.
We are a family business. Our work and life reflect the seasons: growing, preserving, and preparing good food. We encourage healthy living and sustainable working habits in a respectful, flexible, and compassionate workplace. We aim to constantly learn more and perfect our craft.
Wood becomes tools, sawdust and wood shavings. Sawdust and wood shavings are used in the garden and for making mushroom-growing medium. Spent mycelium medium becomes part of permaculture. The harvest is used fresh in season and preserved for meals throughout winter.
In 2010, we became the largest solar energy producer in Quebec among small businesses.
At the time of launching Leading Edge Designs, we committed ourselves to using Nature gently. We use eco-friendly procedures whenever possible, and enlist corporate partners who share a similar world view. In our daily lives, we provoke conversations about ways we can all live respectfully with Nature. We donate a percentage of our time and profit to several earth-friendly organizations.
Biomimicry
Every Littledeer design has its roots in Nature. Inspiration leads to evolution: improving upon a canoe paddle becomes a Pot Scoop — a cooking spoon that will not break when you need it; pondering a bird’s beak becomes the Tines — an eating utensil that extends your fingers’ dexterity.
Permaculture
In our garden, we seek to develop systems that are sustainable and self-sufficient. Outside our garden, we strive to use Nature’s given gifts: we make sumac wine (rhus) from the trees’ red berries, we gather wild mushrooms that are a year-round staple in our kitchen. Having a symbiotic relationship with Nature means giving back by building soil and taking care of the living Earth.
Carbon Dove
An ecological outreach to promote the appropriate use of the current carbon cycle, Carbon Dove is our expression for sustainable living. This includes: buying durable goods, foraging, growing a garden, using renewable energy, minimizing waste, recycling, and in our case, making biochar.
Biochar sequesters organic matter by burning it, to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and return it to the earth as terra preta.
Biochar Art, like the dove you see, is the transient artistic expression of the beauty of pieces of biochar, which can be arranged in infinite patterns.