This Week's Challenge - CONTAINER GARDENING

Yesterday was glorious.  The sun was shining, the air was warming, and we were out and about.  Nevermind that the temperature didn't bother to reach 40, but thumbed its nose at us, sitting teasingly at 39 degrees.  Yes, I know that spring isn't here yet, and that it will probably snow again in April, but to us wind-chilled Chicagoans, yesterday was a promise of warmer days to come.

Which of course led me to thinking about gardens.

Mostly because we don't have one.

I figured out why so many people are grumpy in the city.  It's because there are too many people living on too little land.  I think that if everyone had access to a garden, even a small 10' x 10' plot, we'd all be much happier.  Even drivers would be nicer, simply because, in all likelihood, they would be driving to or from their garden.  Although, I think gardens should be a walkable distance from your house...

I've mentioned in earlier posts about the dark cave that is our back stairwell.  And probably also about the annoyance of lugging groceries up three flights of stairs.  But living where we do has its benefits.  First of all, we don't have any traffic running past us, being the end of the line for the stairs, so no one comes by to trip on the numerous pots and whatnots I leave on the stairs.  Secondly, we have two bits of landings - one right outside out back door, which extends to the opposite end of the stairwell and at this very moment contains an assortment of last year's potting soil, a pack'n'play, some painting supplies I left out there, and a drying rack which is broken but which we still use when we do too much laundry to hang dry.  Our downstairs neighbors don't have this luxury, having to share their space with our potential feet.  So that's nice.  We also have a laundry line which (ineffective though it may be in the winter), gives our pants and blankets that fresh outside smell.

But it's the other landing which has the most potential.  We have a huge "window," which is basically just an unbricked bit of wall, which faces south.  Although it's hung over by our neighbor's lovely tall maple tree, and it mostly shaded in the summer, it still affords us access to light, and that's what we're going to use this year to grow some tasty things.

I've decided upon a two-fold method of gardening.  First, we will have a community garden plot.  I'm still trying to figure out how and where, but I'm determined to find some earth somewhere in which we can plant all manner of tasty vegetables, most notably Miss Olivia's Daucus carota var sativus, a.k.a. carrots.  She picked this kind after several choice changes, and she's very excited about purple carrots.  Who wouldn't be?

That being said, I'm not going to rest on any sort of laurels, even if I had any.  We are going to start planning and planting our (drumroll, please)... CONTAINER GARDEN!!!

Here's the list of players:

1.  Pots.  You can't grow anything in a container until you have a container in the first place.  We prefer good old earthenware pots, but this year, I'm thinking about upwards movement, and trying to see if I can rig some sort of trellis to hang some plastic pots from...  We will start with 6" clay pots.

2.  Soil.  Dirt, earth, you name it.  Whole Foods sells something called "Coast of Maine" potting soil, which looks cool, but is $10 for an eight pound bag...  We will probably get some organic mix from Lowes or Home Depot.

3.  Sun.  Thank goodness, I'm not in charge of this one...  Go, sun, go!

4.  Water.  I can help with this, but I'll appreciate any assistance from Mother Nature...  There's this great little watering can from The Hunger Site.

5.  SEEDS!!  We ransacked Whole Food's supply yesterday and came home toting these beauties:

Yum and yum!  Tomorrow, I will start seeding, once I get my hands on some soil!

Exciting!!

Reduce, Reuse...

RECYCLE.

Good lord, there are so many bags of recyclables on our back porch, it's crazy.  Don't tell our landlord.

Jumbled as it may look, there IS a rhyme and reason to this mess - each recyclable is sorted by type - each number of plastic even has its own bag.

Our trash experiment went really well.  By simply sorting our waste into three basic categories: recyclable, biodegradable, and none of the above (a.k.a. trash), we were actually able to not take the trash out for three weeks.  Imagine that.

We stored our compost in a bucket between our back and screen door - out of the house so not to stink, and away from animals (as if any would even want to come up the three flights of stairs to eat anything in the first place).  It didn't even really smell, and the only nasty bit was emptying the bucket afterwards.

So many things are biodegradable!!

The largest pile by far was the recyclable one.  The compost was the heaviest (most of it was inedible things, like peels - don't be thrown off by the left-out squash sautee on top...) and the trash trash the least in volume and mass.

I challenge you to try this for a week and see what you come up with.  You may get a little more hands-on with your waste, but you dealt it, so smelt it.

This Week's Challenge - TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF

So I'm sick.

And not just "oh, sniffly nose" sick.  My body is out to let me know, it seems, that I need to lay back for a while.

It all started this summer with a surprise attack of appendicitis during a weekend camping trip in northern Wisconsin.  Thankfully, there was a hospital nearby.  Also thankfully, there was an extended family nearby, who was able to help with the girls - playing with the big girl and nursing the baby when she wouldn't take formula.

The result:  emergency appendectomy.

So I "took it easy" for about a week, and then was back to the run of the mill.  But I'm still tired from all this, and my tummy is not quite the same yet.

Then, right before my brother's wedding, I get sick.  A fever, a runny nose, and an annoying tight cough that doesn't go away.  Or produce anything, either.  It subsides in time for a four hour-long overnight trip to Ohio, a mad quick set-up for the *wonderful* wedding, and then the ceremony.  But right after the ceremony, when setting up for the reception, it comes again, this time with a ferocity.

I am dizzy, lightheaded, a bit delirious, and weak in the knees.  My left breast feels like someone jammed me with his/her elbow, only that hasn't happened, and I can't stand up.  We leave the reception early and I lay in the hotel bed, feeling like you could fry an egg on my body.

I turned out that I had developed (completely unannounced) mastitis, or, in layman's terms, a breast infection.

Now, under the influence of antibiotics, I'm feeling somewhat better, but am still woozy and a bit delirious (my husband may have his own explanation of that, something about "too much time on the computer").  I went yesterday to the chiropractor to get an adjustment and get my immune system working at its best.  And today, I'm in the bed, trying to cough and rest up.

So my mission this week:  TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.

This applies to all aspects.  My only rule is that I cannot overexert myself and that I must only do things that are GOOD for me.  This precludes things that I THINK are good for me (like eating sweets).

We shall see how it goes.

Bags, bags, everywhere!

I realised this morning that, as I'm still figuring out the schematics of this blog, I haven't been able to make the postings that exciting.  Hmm...  Bear with me, here, as I am certain that things will work themselves out over time.  I hope! :)

***

I used to go walking in the woods, and remember coming across interesting things that reminded me that I was not the first person to come this way - a stray beer can or wrapper of some sort - and even old trash piles that someone had started when s/he lived nearby long ago.  I even remember coming across an old Radio Flyer wagon, which was not too worse for wear, and which, after much laughter from my friend Nate Brown, I successfully lugged over hill and dale to my car and took it home.

In fact, in Archaeology, we love old trash piles - it tells us so much about historical people - probably more than they would have liked, although we can't rightly ask them now, can we?

This was sort of the prompting for this week's project - I wanted to limit the waste coming out of our house and going into the landfill.  I remember learning that there are no longer any active landfills in the Chicagoland area - that all of our waste - and what a lot there is - is hauled up to Wisconsin.  What a big mess!

And, frankly, I don't really want people to know that much about me.  We shred important documents, so this is a sort of garbage shredding, I suppose.

Yesterday, Olivia and I got out the Whole Foods bags (which are very useful for sorting recyclables) and started sorting.  We ended up with quite a few:

We have three types of "paper" bags - newsprint, slick/junk mail, and office paper.  There is one bag for metal & glass, but the majority is plastics!  Olivia especially enjoyed finding the little recycle triangle and determining the number nested within.  She would then find the appropriately-labeled bag, and drop the item in.

The fullest bag so far (and by far) is the "?" bag, which has all of those plastics not labeled with a recycling number.  One of them even has a little note which encourages recycling, but no number - hmm...

We've also begun our "compost" bucket, which, in reality, is full of anything that is biodegradable.  In a true compost pile, there would be no meat products, but we've got some bits in there now.  I've also chucked in tissues and paper things that can't be truly recycled - like tea bag packages - the plastic on those can't be composted, but most of the paper can:

Don't look to closely, or you'll see the kale that I bought but neglected to remember to cook until it was too yellow to eat.  Sorry, kale.

So far, our non-biodegradable waste (recycling & the waste bin, which includes everything we can't stick anywhere else) has much more volume than our biodegradable waste.  Which, in a way, is good, as we are wasting less food than we could be.  However, it also brings into focus how much packaging we use.  In thinking back to those rubbish piles I encountered in the woods, I rarely recall seeing plastic yogurt cups or wrappers from 100-calorie packs of cookies.  There were maybe a few broken glass bottles of some sort of tonic and some broken dishes, but not much else.  Of course, this didn't encompass an entire life's rubbish, but my weekly throw-out is much MUCH more than it would have been one hundred or even fifty years ago!

How does this relate to food?  Well, I think I'll talk about that a bit more tomorrow.  I hear little feet.

This Week's Challenge - RECYCLE IT

I'd like to say with perfect certainty that I create less waste than the average American.  According to some analysts, we produce over 4 pounds of garbage per person per day!  But while I do sort out my garbage when it's convenient (rinsing cans & flattening cereal boxes is easy), it's really a haphazard sort of recycling.  Anything that looks like it can be recycled gets chucked in the recycle bin, and hauled to our local Whole Foods Market, which offers recycling dumpsters. 

Where it goes after that, God only knows, because I know that there are things in there that can't be truly recycled.  In fact, I must also admit that I don't always rinse my cans.  So I feel a bit guilty about the poor souls who are employed to sort through the recycling mess, presuming that it even is sorted through!  In this way, I absolve myself of some of the guilt for using so much packaging in the first place.

Which brings us to this week's challenge.  The City of Chicago offers a recycling center - of the true kind, where you have to sort the colors of your glass and toss them in huge train car-sized receptacles - which we used to frequent when we lived in the City.  It's a bit out-of-the way of our usual habits, but I think we will be taking a trip there this week to see exactly what can be recycled - and what can't.

Here are our rules:

1.  Any waste that is intended to be tossed out must first go through a rigorous sorting process:

• Can it be reused?  (Glass jars are great to re-use for projects & painting & even as glasses.  We will not be reusing plastic containers, though.*)  If so, wash it out (if necessary), and put it away.
  
• If not, can it be recycled?  (Check list on 'fridge for those plastics - like #5 - that can't be recycled by local services.)  If so, chuck it in the recycling bin.
  
• If not, can it be composted?  (This includes paper like tissues that can't be recycled.  This does not include animal products, except egg shells.)  If so, chuck it in the compost bucket.**
• If not, then it has to be pitched.  So, pitch it in the wastebin. 

2.  We will be measuring at the end of the week (which is admittedly short, as we have a wedding out-of-state to attend on Friday) each waste bin and sharing the results.

3.  This also applies to larger objects - for instance, we have an infant car seat that we no longer need but don't want to sell - anyone need it?  Or know anyone who does?  We can't toss it, and we'd much rather give it to someone who will use it.

4.  We have one more - and maybe the most difficult - part of this challenge - that is to reduce the amount of packaging that enters our house in the first place.  While at the grocery, we will have to check to see what sort of packaging the food is coming in.  Although plastic is a miracle of science, it is derived from oil, which is becoming more of a limited resource (to which our petrol bill can attest), and it is not as stable as glass, and can leach exciting and unexpected things into the food it is containing.  If there are alternatives, such as bulk, we will try to take them!

Wish us luck!!

Mission: Accomplished

So we've spent this week abstaining from eating fast food - no quick trips anywhere, except once or twice to the grocery to pick up little bits.  It was actually a lot easier that I had anticipated, since we were doing it as a family.  I realised that much of my logic for eating out was that Nathan was doing it, too, so why couldn't I?  Not so mature, but that's where I was, nonetheless.

We will be trying it again this week to see how it works.  It really is simply a matter of planning - making sure that there will be enough left over from dinner for Nathan to take to work the next day, making sure that there are enough raw materials for breakfast (fast or slow, depending on how late we sleep), and enough snacks for the girls and I throughout the day (as we usually graze our way through to dinner).

We've also been able to consult on some of the other weekly challenges we want to try.  I thought I'd share them here, to see if anyone had any other ideas, or if you've tried any of these yourself:

1. Waste Not Week - we will be measuring our waste, both organic and inorganic, for one week.  We will see how much trash we produce, and how much we can recycle or compost or the like.  Any ideas about how we can compost without earth?
2. It's Electric (boogey woogie woogie) Week - We will be seeing how little electricity we can use.  We will try to have lights out at dusk, so that we can naturally fall asleep, and plan our days around this.  Also, we will try to limit our computer/television use during the day.
   
3. Water Water Everywhere Week - We will practice the art of washing dishes as frugally as possible (we don't have a dishwasher anyway), by not letting the water run (which is my usual method).  We may also dabble a bit into the method of washing popular in Japan, in which a little water is used to scrub and rinse, and after which one tub of hot water is used by the family to soak.

(photo courtesy of Cedric Sam on Flickr)

I had a few more ideas, but I can't remember them now.  Basically, the goal is to gradually make the life we want to be living by adopting new lifestyles one at a time.  We shall see how it goes!

This Week's Challenge - NOT EATING OUT

Budgeting $100 a week for food is tough.  Especially when, like our family, you can't imagine your week going by without at least one trip to Starbucks.  Or Panera.  Or a quick drive through Dunkin' Donuts.  Or just one milkshake at Steak'n'Shake.  Or (and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it) McDonalds.

Part of me thought that it would be an easy transition - $100/week, cold turkey.  No worries.  It actually worked for the first week I tried it.  I even had $5 left over.  Wow!

But then, the next week came, and the pantry supplies had dwindled and there were a lot of errands on my to-do list...  Not that I'm making excuses.  I'm simply sharing those hurdles which I am going to have to overcome, one by one.

SO - our challenge for this week is [drumroll...]:

NOT EATING OUT (out out out)!!!

We've made a pact as a family to not do it - to eat only food that we've prepared at home - no quick trips anywhere - coffee with cream from home.  Breakfast at home.  Lunch at home.  Snacks at home.  Dinners at home.

I'll be posting recipes to let you know how this goes!

So far, we've made a big pot of beans and a big pot of rice, which we've eaten whenever we get hungry.  We've a bag of frozen chicken in the freezer, and assorted greens in the fridge...  We'll see what creative things we come up with!

An Exercise in Sustainability

Sustainability is a hot word right now.  Rightly so, as it's a really cool concept:  make choices that consider not only your immediate circumstances but the long run as well.  It's like growing vegetables.  Or kids.  They're with you for at least a season (children even longer!), and so one must not only think about today's rain (or lack thereof) but also the weather tomorrow, and next week, and next month!  Holy cow, it's a lot of work.

In the Baha'i Writings, there are a few professions which are given special import.  Those working in the arts & sciences are praised, teachers and mothers are encouraged to give full appreciation of the work they provide, and farmers are recognised as providing a noble and vital service.

And yet only 1% of the population in the United States can profess to be a farmer!  Providing food for the rest of us!

This past weekend, we had the bounty of dropping in on an amazing family - Diana, Bryan & Rachel - owners of Nothing But Nature Farm in southwest Michigan.  I had researched online at Local Harvest [dot] org to find some localish places (one can only get so local in Chicagoland, where it takes a least an hour in any direction to find some dark sky at night) where we could go on our annual harvest trip that we take.  [Ever since before Olivia (our three year-old) was born, we would go out to Michigan and pick apples.  Once we had a baby, and became more aware of the import of knowing our food & thus our farmers, the trip became much more important.]

Sorry for all of the parentheses and brackets.  My grammar teacher would be appalled.

Where was I?  Oh, yes - Michigan.  I found this little farm online and the post invited any and all to come and check out their handiwork.  So we did.  Without calling.  We startled poor Diana & Bryan in the midst of putting up a greenhouse for their winter greens.  They told us that they had had a poor summer, with a drought in July and too much rain in August, and their poor little garden (which was at least an acre) had been sorely neglected.  What had grown was stunted and hidden amidst weeds.

However, valiant souls that they are, they hardly batted an eye and strode out with us to show us what they had.  Proud parents to dear Rachel (who was four years old and at school at the time), they knew just what to do with Olivia, and soon we were feeding the grass-fed cows by hand.  Diana and I chatted non-stop about minerals and plants and I learned some cool things about this little farm:

• Insects see in the infrared spectrum of light.  Whenever something is amiss in the natural world, particularly in plants, it glows infrared.  And the insects are drawn to it.  So if anything is out of balance in a crop, insects will be all over it.  Therefore, the role of the farmer is to provide the earth & plants what they need to come back into balance.  How, you may ask?
  

• Minerals.  Instead of pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, Diana and Bryan use minerals in the soil.  Mainly locally-mined calcium, but also unrefined sea salt, which is rich in at least 90 trace minerals.  The minerals are absorbed into the plants and we get to eat them.  Yum - talk about salt of the earth!
  

• Remember the feudal system and the three-crop rotation?  For some reason, that part of European History stuck with me.  In the same way, clever farmers are able to pair mutually beneficial plants, each which fixes different nutrients from the soil, to not only aid in growth but to also assist with pest prevention.  Apparently, onions are great at keeping rabbits away.  Brilliant!

My favorite part of this entire trip was the treasure hunt as Diana and I, with my eight month-old daughter Elsie tied on my back, tromped through their garden.  Heirloom vegetables, which have a greater genetic diversity and have not been bred into genetic corners, were peeking through the weeds.  We saw green lima beans and  pink okra, white zucchini and tiny purple peppers, orange winter squash and white tomatoes.  It was beautiful!!

And it's been tasty, too.  My favorite have been these yellow tomatoes that look a bit like lemons.

We petted free-range turkeys and chased chickens, and even stayed to dinner, where we ate burgers made out of last season's cow. :)  In the evening, loath to leave, we finally parted, after a quick but brief escape attempt by our three year-old:

Imagine if each of us had our own kitchen gardens...  But I'll talk about that later.  Right now, my fingers are freezing in the evening breeze - our internet's down and I'm at the local café.  So I'll leave with the thought of petting a free-range turkey: