Tara Rosling, TV and film actor best known locally for her huge body of work for the Shaw Festival, is turning her sights from the stage, to a small, online, community-oriented “green” business.
She is sourcing green goods that have been hand-crafted with awareness and care, are eco-friendly, some zero-waste, home and body products to sell locally — so locally she is promising delivery, in paper bags, either on foot or by bicycle where possible, and always contact-free.
The products she is offering through her Little Green Shop, she says, are those she herself loves to use: laundry soap strips; beeswax wraps; and bar soaps, lip butters, and bath salts hand-crafted, in St. Catharines, by Sarah of Sarah’s Soaps, who, Rosling says, “goes out into the woods to forage for natural items, such as sumac, and makes these into beautiful products.”
Refillable cleaning essentials, chemical-free household cleaners, all natural, zero waste mascara from Birch Babe, and “a lovely array of all natural lip and cheek tints from the same company” are some of the products she offers.
“Every product on the little green shelves is planet, human and heart friendly,” she says.”
And every order includes “some kind of handmade treasure — whether home baked goods or a handwritten poem tucked inside a hand-sewn envelope.”
Rosling describes her switch from the stage to a home business, while seemingly a huge leap from a very public to a much more private existence, as being an example of the paradox that is her nature.
“The world of the stage and performance is very public,” she says. “It’s flashy, adrenalin-charged and dynamic.”
And as much as Rosling loves it, she says, as an introvert, she also needs to spend time “quiet and alone,” and enjoys a slower-paced lifestyle in her cozy Chautauqua home to recharge. She will happily spend a day in the kitchen, baking healthy crackers for her daughter Eliana, and “loving that my daughter loves them,” she says.
“These are two diametrically opposed lives, polar existences,” Rosling says, and recently, she had been increasingly thinking about being ready to start a small eco business, “a seed that was planted a long time ago.”
It is perhaps a “crazy time to embark on a small business,” she adds, but “it feels like an important time to go small, local and green.”
All around us, the world is changing, Rosling says, including her “teeny, tiny world” of entertainment, whether TV, film or stage. She was not pursuing work at the Shaw this season, hoping a TV series she was working on would be continued. It was not. She had an audition in Toronto for other work this winter, only to learn that project, like so much else in her world, was shut down.
Her husband, Patrick McManus, was in rehearsal with the Stratford Festival, but early performances have been cancelled, with no way of knowing yet what will happen in the future.
“It’s a good thing I’ve got My Little Green Shop,” jokes Rosling, referring to her new endeavour, but on a serious note, adds, “nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether this is going to go on for a couple of months, six months or more. We’re all dealing with uncertainty.”
Before March break, she helped her daughter Eliana and her friends, who were part of a Crossroads Public School Eco Club, to source and gather eco-friendly products to sell at the school’s home show, which was held before schools were closed. That rekindled her interest in offering some of those products for sale in NOTL, she says.
And now, given our need to stay home, “there is no better time to go local,” she says.
Rosling can be emailed at tara@littlegreenshop.org, or visit her website at littlegreenshop.org.