About Us
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The “annus horriblis” that has been 2020 has forced the human race to pause and take a deep breath. Some of us had felt that need before corona and lockdowns and had come up with the idea of THE SLOW LOCAL, a gourmet gifts and garden center in Mumbai.
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The philosophy or the story of THE SLOW LOCAL is about slowing down and taking the time to fully savor life in all its senses, however incongruous it may sound in these times of constant software updates, latest versions, and FOMO. Our mantra is about moving to a fulfilling and sustainable lifestyle, one that causes the least damage to an already fragile ecology, thus ensuring that we leave behind a healthier and happier planet for future generations. The two main principals that we wish to follow to achieve our goals are “the slow movement” and “permaculture”
The slow movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the slow food movement. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas, like the Cittaslow organization for "slow cities." The "slow" epithet has subsequently been applied to a variety of activities and aspects of culture.
"It is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail's pace. It's about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting." - Carl Honoré.
"The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection, and togetherness. There we will find real renewal." –Prof Guttorm Floistad
The
slow MovemenT
permAculTuRe
Permaculture is a holistic, living in harmony with nature's worldview, as well as a technical approach for how to do so. A closed-loop system that “Turns waste into resources” and "Problems into solutions"
Permaculture design emphasizes patterns of landscape, function, and species assemblies. It determines where these elements should be placed so they can provide maximum benefit to the local environment. Permaculture maximizes useful connections between components and the synergy of the final design. The focus of permaculture, therefore, is not on each separate element, but rather on the relationships created among elements by the way they are placed together; the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Permaculture design, therefore, seeks to minimize waste, human labor, and energy input by building systems and maximizes benefits between design elements to achieve a high level of synergy. Permaculture designs evolve over time by taking into account these relationships and elements and can evolve into extremely complex systems that produce a high density of food and materials with minimal input.
After operating as a niche organic store and garden in a leafy suburb of Mumbai, THE SLOW LOCAL has moved to its own permaculture farm in kumble village 75 kms south west of Pune city.
We are gifted with a forest full of ayurvedic trees like arjun and harad as well as wildly growing karaunda and kokum ..alongside the forest we are growing fruit trees vegetables, flowers and therapeutic herbs we are delighted to share the bounty with you.