Budgeting

Fred and I have recently been going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Part of our push towards self-sufficiency is attempting to become completely debt free. True independence means not being slave to a financial institution. We have given up lots of material things over the last two years and frankly we do not miss them but what we have not managed to do is learn to save for purchases versus buying them on credit. I admit I was leery of even taking the class but since the first class was free we decided to at least check it out.

The program works but it is extremely difficult. Of course I guess that explains why so few Americans are debt free. It is hard to decided exactly how much money you will spend on what and then stick to that regardless of changing circumstances and it is hard to budget out ever cent you make before you make it and then hold fast to that commitment, forgoing the extra wants and temptations that pop up through the month.

But here is what is really difficult: realizing that, if you are going to pay down debt than you only have “x” amount of dollars left to spend on groceries and let me tell you fresh produce, organic dairy and soy products are not cheap. This has been the biggest struggle. How do you fix healthy wholesome food and do so cheaply in the dead of winter when getting a fresh veggie is like looking for a Baptist preacher at the local juke joint. Not to mention buying organic is like trying to buy gold or gasoline or Faberge eggs.

In the past I paid all the bills that were immediately due in that pay cycle, I would ignore the few extra that were not covered and whatever was left in the bank was food and gas money. Although we were not bouncing checks this was not a very efficient way to balance the checkbook. Sure, it allowed me to generally spend with impunity at the grocery store but it was doing nothing to get us out of debt and big purchases (and emergencies) were still made on credit. We do not want to live like that forever and we both agreed it was time for a change.

I found the Dave Ramsey class on line after talking with several people and listening to their testimonies about how they had successfully paid of staggering debts and were living their lives with a whole new lease on freedom instead of a new Lexus (or in our case a tractor). After hearing these things and talking about it with Fred, our folks and even our pastor I thought God was really pushing us into the class and so far it has been a success and a very helpful tool.

What I cannot get past though is the utter disappointment with the food budget. I am sick of eating beans, potatoes, oats, cabbage, apples and pasta. Those few staples are cheap and fit within our budget. Asparagus, squash, fancy lettuce, fresh tofu, pears, pineapples, soy milk and the other pricey items that have, in the past, been staples are now things that have to be picked between and done so sparingly. Curries, basmati, quinoa and other things that I used to make several times a week are now treats. I have cut our grocery bill almost in half but I have done so at the expense of our palates. Well, my palate.

It is frustrating. I know that for the most part I am still feeding my family relatively healthily but we are eating many more carbohydrates and far fewer colorful vegetables than I like. I know that this is a temporary situation. Spring is coming soon and with spring will come a garden of those vegetables I crave without the colossal price tag of the supermarket. Also, at some point (hopefully), we will be out of debt and the money that is now geared towards making us financially free can once again, in part, be earmarked for our bellies.

Here is the other problem and I can see now how easily it is to fall into the trap of low income families everywhere: It is cheap to eat CRAP. If I took my family to McDonald’s every night and everyone ordered dinner off the dollar menu and skipped soda I could easily cut our food bill in half again. Likewise if I went to the grocery store and shopped only in the middle isles of boxed corn and fake cheese I could save a bundle too. This is so depressing.

When my dad was growing up, with eight brothers and sisters, they were poor. Back then poor meant you ate what you raised and grew, not that you went to McDonald’s or ate Spaghettos and EasyMac every night. But now, for most people, it is the path of least resistance. So not only are the poor financially oppressed but they are malnourished as well. Our government hands out food stamps but instead of subsidizing the price of fruits and veggies we subsidize the bastardization of the corn industry so it is cheaper to buy a bunch of boxed corn products and feed America’s children powdered mystery chemicals. Then we are all stupefied as to the reason kid’s grades are atrocious and things like ADD, autism and behavioral problems are rampant.

I am frustrated. I know that doing the whole budget thing now will lead us to a better future and so far it has not been awful but I admit, the place I feel it the most is at the grocery and I also admit to being tempted to skip the produce all together and stretch our food dollars a little more by buying boxed poison. It is a tough and narrow path. There is a balance somewhere but it is not easy to find.

Much love, thanks for reading,
Autumn

Neglect , Blogs, Stores and Stuff

Well, Christmas is over and once again we are left with the aftermath of plastic wrappers and gluttonous appetites. In our family we really do endeavor to focus on the meaning of the Christmas season every year but somehow we too get caught up in the materialistic aspects of giving more. There is nothing like hearing your child say “THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!” unfortunately that statement is rarely prompted by copious amounts of time spent with family and is, instead, usually expounded upon after opening a more expensive and more lavish gift than last year.

We really did par down this year, Fred and I put a limit on each other’s gifts and did use the gift money wisely, to buy things we could use but that were still somewhat luxuries. I bought Fred the new pocket knife he had wanted and he bought me a starter kit for harvesting our beeswax into bath and body products. Fred also made me a lovely braided copper bracelet from copper wire he repurposed. The bracelet is especially meaningful to me because he did not wait until the last minute and rush to the store trying to figure out how much to spend to prove his love. I look at my bracelet as a token of how the lessons learned in our greener lifestyle are actually beginning to sink into our daily lives, much like “devotions” sink into the spiritual realm of a person who daily studies the Word.

When I was a child I never understood the purpose of the ten or fifteen minutes my dad spent in the mornings studying the scriptures and talking to God. I was haphazard in my study and prayed when I needed something or felt guilty. I did not realize those few precious and deliberate minutes my dad spends in study of God’s word and in communion with God every day actually arm him to face the trials and tribulations of daily life. Instead of scrambling for scriptures and hastily praying from a fox-hole, my dad has made the Bible part of the fiber of his existence. As I got older I began to see the merit in his behavior, as Fred and I push our way into a changed lifestyle I not only see the merit in it, I see the necessity.

It is the same with homesteading and green living. One must daily practice what one preaches or we quickly find ourselves slipping off into the drive-thru lane or the take-out line of life. I will not lie. In this hectic season of Christmas, rushing from practice to play, from house to house, throwing decorations and wrapping in every available space, we found ourselves standing in the line at Taco Bell on several occasions and I believe I personally financed the new Abercrombie jacket my favorite waitress at the local Chinese restaurant was spotted wearing. Being green and doing things from scratch takes time and, unfortunately, that is something in our culture we always seem to lack.

All I can say is: we did better this year than last and with our eyes to the future we will only continue to improve. As you can see by the scarcity of blog entries some things just had to be cut in this hectic season. In the interest of time and of finishing handmade Christmas presents the blog just kind of got lost in the tide. I am not really into New Year’s resolutions, mainly because we have been resolving things in our life all year, but I will say that as we look forward into 2011 we are happier, healthier, more wholly satisfied people as we have shaved off the unnecessary clutter of our lives, focused in on what is important and done more for ourselves. We as a family intend to continue on along this path expanding our endeavors at self-sufficiency and improving our homestead.

As many of you know, I stay home and Fred works a factory job to finance our lives. Although the chickens, bees and other homestead duties keep me busy I do find time to crochet, knit, quilt and create other crafty extras. As I slammed through the creation of my last few Christmas gifts this year it was commented upon several times that people would pay for the hats/scarves/tree-skirts etc. that I create. I actually had several people request to purchase hats just based on photos I had taken of gifts I made and posted on Facebook.

Fred and I have talked many times of opening an Ebay store to sell the extra stuff we make or no longer use but Ebay is expensive with lots of fees and commissions and whatnot. Similarly, we have purchased things on Etsy and had fantasized about putting up our own craft goods to earn a little extra. Etsy, like Ebay, has per piece fees and listing costs. Then a friend suggested Artfire. I perused the Artfire site on several occasions and finally was enticed to open a store when they offered a fixed low monthly fee. If you look at the top widget on the right side of the blog you will see a link to my Artfire store.

Please do not read this and think the blog is going to become one giant marketing tool for my merchandise. It is not. I may occasionally mention if we add a new type of product but for now I just want to make blog readers aware of it and that it is there if you are interested. For now, it is small and only contains a couple of my handmade hats but my vision for the future will include beeswax based products and maybe even artisan soaps, jams or jellies. Who knows? For now, like everything in this adventure, we are starting small. Baby steps. Two little hats may lead to great things or two little hats may fizzle out and leave us back at square one. Either way, we are trying to leave ourselves open for God’s direction and do not want to find ourselves caught back up in the materialism that consumes so much of today’s society.

I want to thank everyone for supporting us in prayer, in kind words of encouragement and by silently clicking on this blog to read our adventures. If we have disappointed you or let you down, I am truly sorry. We do not mean for this blog or our lives to be a stumbling block for anyone. Instead we wish to encourage and to be encouraged to commune with our fellow homesteaders (if only on the internet) and to share our joys and struggles. We are making progress and we are sure you are too! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and may peace and joy abound in your life.

With our heartfelt thanks & much love,

Autumn

Soap Suds

Last Thursday, Veteran’s Day, I officially ran out of homemade laundry detergent. I made the first six gallon bucket of laundry detergent on April twenty-fourth of this year. Being as this was one of our first forays into homesteading I am happy to report it was a success. I think seven months worth of laundry on an initial investment of $18.01 is pretty economical.

You can go on to cut that price in half because I had enough of every ingredient (excluding an additional bar of soap) to make an entire additional batch. I will never have to buy the bucket again and I think I probably could have gotten a third batch of the detergent out of my original ingredients except I used some of the washing soda for other household cleaning and craft projects. So from here on out I estimate my investment in detergent every seven months, assuming I get three batches out of the initial ingredients, to be roughly $3.70 (and that is rounding up)!

I am taking up another whole blog about this because I want to tell you some of the things I learned from my first batch as well as share my pleasure at a completely successful, heart-ache free venture! First and foremost, it takes some time and is a messy endeavor to make laundry detergent, so if you are pressed for time, or you have run out of detergent and waited till the night before work to wash your uniforms, you are out of luck. It takes about an hour, maybe a little more, to make the detergent and then the concoction needs to be left to sit overnight before using. I waited till I was completely without detergent before make more because I wanted to see exactly how long one bucket would last (and it was a good excuse not to do laundry for an entire day).

Secondly, scooping detergent out of a six gallon bucket for every load is messy and impractical. I saved an “All” liquid detergent container, submerge it in the bucket to fill it up and then just use the lid as a measuring device like normal. Any liquid laundry detergent bottle that you have on hand would work. This way I can continue to store my product like normal detergent, above the washer, and it does not add an additional step to doing the laundry. I just push the bucket off to the side of the laundry room and only fool with it when the bottle is empty.

Finally, here are a couple of tips for the actual making of the detergent: The first time I made it I ran the bar of soap through my food processor, mistake. It was glommy and I like to NEVER got the food processor washed or the “mountain fresh” scent out of the plastic. Ick. I cook with that! Lesson learned. So this time around I just chopped the soap up with a stainless steel kitchen knife, much easier to clean but it did leave me with coarser chunks of soap to dissolve on the stove which took longer. I will chop it up in even smaller bits next time.

I also thought, last time I made it, I did not get the bar soap entirely dissolved and so my finished product was kind of gloppy and had a chunky consistency. Initially, I worried that is would leave residue on the clothes. That was not the case. It dissolved completely it just was not aesthetically pleasing.

This time around I took the extra time and care to dissolve the bar soap completely so when I put my finished product in the bucket it was entirely liquid and the consistency of a thin syrup. Unfortunately, on Friday morning when I opened the bucket, it too had unattractively congealed. It is not a thick smooth get like a commercial detergent. Instead, it is lumpy, like the consistency of oatmeal. The plus of completely dissolving the bar soap this time was there are no white soap chunks in it, it is clear, just lumpy.

The consistency of the detergent does not seem in any way to affect the way it cleans. Our clothes, even Fred’s uniforms, come out fresh and clean and smelling great. We have not had any problems with skin allergies or clothes not getting completely clean. Also, there is never any residue on the clothes like with a powder detergent. There is also no soap scum, which was a personal concern of mine at the onset. So overall my verdict is I will continue to make our detergent at home, saving a fortune on the commercial alternatives and making a little baby step towards being a more responsible consumer.

~

In the same vein of getting things clean here is something else we have realized in the past two months. Dishwasher not only save time and alleviate a tiresome chore, they actually use less electricity and water than doing dishes by hand. Knock me over with a feather.

Our dishwasher finally gave up the ghost about two months ago and we decided to forgo the expense of a new one. I would wash the dishes by hand. I do not mind washing the dishes. I put on some music or use the time to day dream and plan, but let me point out, I cook, a lot, several times a day. I make at least two breakfasts in the mornings, sometimes three. I make lunch for myself and whoever else is home and I make dinner most nights, in addition to anything I bake throughout the week and any extra treats I may make. In short, I dirty a LOT of dishes.

In the past I would load the dishes into the dish washer as the day went on and then run the dish washer when we all went to bed. I would unload it in the morning and start all over again. I ran the dishwasher almost every day and occasionally twice a day. Well when the dishwasher went on to the great kitchen in the sky I was left piling dirty dishes in the sink. The sink basin is small and usually breakfast dishes alone filled it up and spilled over onto my limited counter space. This make for some technical difficulties when it came time to make lunch and dinner and I was left with no space. So I would at least have to washes dishes once in the morning and once in the afternoon and usually at least once in between to clear up enough space to turn around in.

You can imagine my shock and horror after putting in all this additional work only to find out that both our water and electric bills had gone up significantly! That did it. It was like adding insult to injury. Not only did I have at least an hour or two of extra work every day but I was paying for the privilege! GRRRR! We bit the bullet and went dishwasher shopping this past Saturday.

We settled on a lower price point whirlpool with an extended warranty. No, we are not crazy about buying one more plastic and metal thing that will eventually find its way to a landfill but we also are not in love with pumping scads more water into the sewage/waste water plant or using tons of fossil fuel to heat that water just to wash our dishes. Buying the new dishwasher seemed like the lesser of two evils, the greener of two brown choices. We bought an energy efficient model that supposedly only cost thirty-three dollars per year to run and we will install it ourselves this afternoon.

The recyclable parts of our old dish washer will go into the scrap pile and we will try and determine if we can come up with a use for any of the skeletal remains of plastic. HEY! Maybe I have finally found my backdoor composter?! We will see. In the meanwhile we are still learning and taking our small steps although this one was quite the eye opener. Who knew washing dishes by hand was really so costly. Of course if you live alone or do not cook very often it might be much more cost effect, just a thought.

Thanks for reading,
Much love,

Autumn

Festival Season and an Anniversary

As the activities of beekeeping wind down for the year the educational aspects begin to gear up. The season of Fall Festivals and Fairs is a great time to get out and educate the general public about the importance of bees in food production and to recruit new bee keepers. I am looking forward to being an active participant in this year’s educational process since last year I was one of the unsuspecting masses. It will all start the weekend after next at the Kanawha County State Fair September 9-12th in Sissonville where the Kanawha Valley Beekeepers Association will set up an educational booth fully equipped with a demonstration hive.

If you have ever had any interest in beekeeping this is a great place to come and check it out. You can get lots of free and useful information about how to get started and why beekeeping is so important. In fact, this is where Fred and I got our first symptoms of beekeeping fever almost a year ago. We were trying to decide how to spend a lazy weekend and I had been debating entering some baking contests so we agreed that the fair was close and I could check out some of the possible competition. I was still in a medicated flux at the time, on leave from the FD, fighting depression and just generally at loose ends, desperate for something to give me a little direction.

I wandered around the fairgrounds in a medicated hazy when I happened upon the beekeeping demo. I had actually gone over there to look at the bunnies, goats and other 4-H displays as a way to waste time while Sarah rode the dangerous fair contraptions sure to induce a seizure in my already muddled state. I like to wander around and fantasize about farm life. Little did I know, a year from that fair visit Fred and I would be deeply immersed in the push towards green. The bees would merely be the tip of our iceberg.

It was while staring, transfixed, at the bees swarming about the comb through their Plexiglas walls that I was approached by the president of the KVBA. He asked me if I had any interest in keeping bees and on a pure whim I said yes. Sure I loved honey, and Fred and I had talked since we met about self-sufficiency, I found bees naturally fascinating but becoming a beekeeper had only ever been a fleeting fancy of my imagination. He told me how they could really use some young beekeepers in the association (and since Fred and I are both solidly in our thirties this should indicate to you the general age of the association) and provided me with lots of pamphlets, cookbooks and additional literature on bees. I thanked him and meandered away from the stall in search of Fred and Sarah.

When I found them the bees were already half forgotten in my dazed condition. When Fred asked me why I had all those papers, I told him about the beekeepers and the live bees and that piqued his interest enough that we turned around and headed back to the booth. Fred and the association president became instant cohorts and he promptly invited us to the next KVBA meeting. Fred and I went to the meeting I do not exactly remember when it was but it was sometime later that fall. Although we still had not acquired any bees at that point we were interested enough to pay the ten dollar fee and join the association for one year. This entitled us, also, to a membership in the state association as well as put us on the mailing list and updated us with any special information that may be made available.

We still were not entirely sure that we had the time or money to invest in beekeeping. Often setting up an initial hive or two from scratch can be very expensive. The bees themselves are relatively inexpensive but by the time you have built the hives and bought the necessary protective equipment you have made quite the initial investment. As we calculated we assumed just to get started with two hives (which is the minimum recommended in case of loss or disease) that we would have to invest between eight hundred and a thousand dollars.

Remember, I was out of work and unsure at that point if I would be able to return. Money was tight and that was a lot to invest in the potential failure of what we still deemed a hobby, however, while we were at the meeting we met the elderly gentleman who in due course would sell us his bees and hives and ultimately allow us to get into bee keeping at a much more affordable price. (If you are interested in the drama of how we came about actually acquiring our bees you can go back to the April entries of this blog and check out the details.)

Now, almost a year later, here we are, full-fledged beekeeper with three hives (no honey to speak of) out corrupting the youth of America, petitioning the local government and participating in all aspects of the social beekeepers network. I hope to see some of you at the fair, if not at Kanawha County’s fair then later on at some of the other fairs and festivals in which we will participate. I will try to update the blog as we nail down other dates. Please, if you read this blog and are at a fair, come introduce yourself. I would really love to meet you.

~

If you had asked me last September what my life would look like a year from that date I would never have guessed it would involve bees and chickens and homemade laundry detergent, green living or staying at home. I would have probably told you that I would be back to work at the FD within a matter of weeks if not months. God’s plans are not always the same as ours. I spent a good part of last year in a serious state of depression questioning every aspect of my life. Ir really never occurred to me, on any serious level, that I could be happy living a much simpler existence.

One thing I have come to realize is that I must be able to define myself outside of what I do to make money. I think this was one of the hardest things I had to come to grips with. I had a lot of pride in my career, I had accomplished something that few women before me had accomplished and I relished in the pride that went with that. This year has been humbling for me. It has been a year struggling to redefine our lives and our priorities. We have made lots of material sacrifices but we have gained a wealth of strength and knowledge and the contentment of knowing that we have struggled together and with God’s ever present guidance we have persevered.

Life is not easy. Life is not predictable, you can set a course and be blown off it in a heartbeat by death or illness or loss of a job or a car accident or anything. These worldly possessions that we put so much stock in can fall by the wayside in an instant. What do you have when they are gone?

In our family we had built a false sense of security with our things buying more stuff, going more places as filler, lacking any real satisfaction or contentment. I am not saying it was not tough. It was a serious lifestyle adjustment going from two salaries to one, having medical bill stream in and realizing that eating every meal out became a luxury instead of an everyday option. Being forced to budget when I went to the grocery store was especially humbling. We did not do it without heartache, arguments or tears but we did do it. Yes, we have fought, said mean things, questioned ourselves and God’s plan but ultimately we have grown. We have grown closer as a family and we have grown in our spiritual lives too.

As I have said before, this is a process for us, we are learning. We still hit stumbling blocks we still make mistakes ( I still can only remember my recycled grocery bags about fifty percent of the time) sometimes we still fight or argue but we have seen how small changes, baby steps, can make huge leaps in improving our quality of life. By slowly paring down our existence we have gained immeasurable wealth in our satisfaction with life and our general happiness. We take joy in the quiet moments and the little victories: fresh eggs from our hens, a successful hive split, clean clothes off the line.

I consider the words of Paul as he wrote to the Philippians about considering everything of this world a loss to gain Christ and I think about Christ talking to potential disciples and telling them to leave their worldly possessions behind and follow him. No, we have not given up all our worldly possession, but we have significantly reduced them and our gluttonous consumerism. Some of our reduction was by choice some by necessity, some of it was willfully and some of it was by painful pruning but ultimately the result has improved us as individuals and as a family and for the most part we are happier and healthier for it.

These are just some of the things that have been on my mind as we approach the first anniversary of the birth of our greener lifestyle. We are still in transition and in all actuality it will probably be a lifelong process. I want to thank everyone who has encouraged us with thoughtful reflection, as silent prayer warriors, with a kind word or a helpful piece of advice. I also want to thank everyone who takes a minute out of their own busy lives to immerse themselves in this blog and spend a few moments empathizing with us. Thank you for celebrating in our victories and mourning with us in our trials. We appreciate you.


Thank you for reading,
Much love on this journey to greener life,

Autumn

LOCAVORE! Um, bless you?

I have been reading Barbra Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and I have to say I am intrigued and overwhelmed. I have watched Food, Inc., King Corn, Capitalism: A Love Story and a myriad of other movies that depict what our gluttony (and sadly corn based diets) are doing to American and Americans. Both physically and economically we are slowly (or in some cases rapidly) become bankrupt on a system of unrealistic, unsustainable food wants, however, I do not think I realized just how detrimental shipping our food across state lines, across the country and across the world really is to the environment and ultimately our own heath.

I am intrigued because I love the thought of green living. I want to grow and make more of our own food. I want to support other local farmers in their fight to sustain a variety of plants and animals not just commodity crops. I want to conserve natural resources. I want to use less fossil fuel. I want to live what I preach.

I am overwhelmed because, well simply put, I love bananas.

I know that probably sounds like a random statement out of left field but think about it. When have you ever (excluding the Huntington Museum of Art’s Tropical Greenhouse) seen a banana growing in WV? Well? I am waiting…yeah, me either. I too have succumb to the I want it, I want it now, and I want it all year long mentality of a prosperous society where fresh fruits and vegetables out of season (and out of their natural region) are not a novelty but a way of life. My family eats bananas every day we have for years and not once in that entire time, did I stop to think from where those bananas originated nor did I ever consider the monumental undertaking and expense it took to get them to my kitchen. The little tiny drop of good I do by riding my bicycle to the grocery store is completely annihilated by the gallons and gallons of fuel need to get them to the market in the first place.

We do not buy watermelons out of season because (as my daughter would say) DUH, they do not taste good. We do buy tomatoes all year round and although we delight in the fresh summer ones from friends and neighbors gardens and complain mightily about the tasteless reddish blobs from the grocery the rest of the year, it still does not stop us from plopping them in the cart almost every trip. I cook a lot of tomato sauced entrees all year long. What am I supposed to do without “fresh” tomatoes?

Which really brings me to the title of the blog: what is a “locavore”? It sounds like a bad allergic reaction to me, something that obviously needs a polite acknowledgment and maybe a tissue. I am sure that many of you reading this blog are much savvier than myself and are practicing locavores as I type but up until I started reading this book I do not think I had even heard the term before. According to Kingsolver a locavore is someone who tries only to eat locally grown/raised/produced produce/meat/grain from within their immediate region. Sounds great, until I realized I love bananas and bananas do not grow in WV.

I usually embrace everything green with a willing spirit and open arms but this is even hard for me. I cannot imagine the reaction I would receive from Fred and Sarah if I suggested that we could no longer eat bananas. Kingsolver makes a valid argument for eating only local food and right now, at the height of summer, it is not too hard to get on board. Giving up my grocery bought bananas for fresh melons, peaches and plums from the farmer's market does not seem horrendous, but ask me in six months when I am sitting in the deep freeze of January fantasizing about a lush piece of fruit that is still half a year away from our table.

My family has made a great deal of changes this year in everything we do from the way we use electricity to a commitment to raising some of our own food but I think asking them to give up all food not produced locally (at least at this point in time) is not wise. I admire Kingsolver and her family and they have inspired me to more diligently think about where my food originated but I do not think that we can completely abandon the banana yet. Maybe we will eat them more sparingly, maybe this time next year, when our garden is in full flourish and I have canning and pickling down to an exact science, instead of a wavering hobby, it will be easier to give up our imported luxuries. I do not know.

I do know that it is an unending battle to get (especially Sarah) to give up prepackaged crap for real food, to shun the “nugget” and all it represents is like trying to swim against the tide. If I take away the “healthy” treats because of their environmental impact I think I would send her screaming back in the corn and soybean embrace of McDonald’s. So this is something that as a family we will try to incorporate slowly. Instead of deprivation I think it must be done by inclusion. If we can learn to grow variety and to introduce new and exciting local foods, then as the more exotic things slide away maybe their absence will not be such a blow.

After all, we have given up/cut back on things that this time last year we could not live without. Soda has been relegated to the occasional treat, as has eating out. No longer mainstays of our existence these things are enjoyed minimally or in a pinch. We read labels now with a religious fervency of never before. We eschew all high fructose corn syrup (and let me tell you, it is ubiquitous and that is a mammoth undertaking in and of its self). I love to cook and now I cook more thoughtfully. We choose paper cups over plastic when out and we carry our recycled bags to the store (most days, sometimes we still forget).

So for now I think the locavore lifestyle must be relegated to that category, thoughtfulness. It is something to think about, something to which we can aspire, something to always keep in the forethought of our shopping expeditions. But at this moment it could easily send my family’s bumbling stumble towards green into a tail spin. Even Kingsolver jokingly states that her family’s journey began at the local convenience store buying junk food and bottled drinks. I think that to jump headlong into a locavore lifestyle might collapse the baby-step mentality on which we have based this journey.

Am I making excuses? Yes, probably. Is the irony of the fact that two generations ago things I think I need were unheard of luxuries, and that no special name was needed for people who ate local food because everyone ate local food? Absolutely not. Do I aspire to feed my family from things we have raised or that were raised here in our local area? Most certainly! But do I think I can sit everyone down this afternoon and tell them by royal decree “HENCEFORTH WE SHALL NOT EAT ANYTHING SHIPPED IN ON A TRUCK!” Um, no, I am not a moron (contrary to what some blog readers believe).

All that said I would highly recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for anyone interested in reading about another family's green and thoughtful adventures. I can wholeheartedly relate to Kingsolver and her family’s woes and triumphs. They too take baby steps and they too are interested in leaving the world a better place for generations to come. It is an interesting book and it is giving me lots to think about and opening up my eyes to the many opportunities to make a difference for the whole world with just our grocery dollar.


Thanks for reading,
Much love,

Autumn

Love Your neighbor as Yourself

This is one of the very first things I remember learning growing up in the Baptist church, it went hand in hand with the words to Jesus Loves Me. It is an easy thing to comprehend, it is an easy thing to learn by rote, it is an easy thing to give lip service to, however when the rubber meets the road it is not always an easy thing to do. We all know that God is not instructing us to love just the person who lives next door but that the word “neighbor” encompasses a much broader spectrum of people. I struggle with this. It is easy for me to love the people who are good to me, it is easy for me to love the people I deeply care about but it is also easy for me to write off all the people who irk me or who cross me.

Those of you who know me personally know I have a wicked hateful temper that sometimes gets the better of me (for those of you who do not know me personally I will readily admit this fact). At one point in my life I thought it was cute, a defining characteristic. Now, more often than not, it is an annoying trait I wish I had better learned to control at a much younger age. As I stood in my driveway last night literally fighting with my neighbor over the stupid triangle of land where we sit our garbage cans I realized just how idiotic I must look and sound and for once I had the wherewithal to momentarily step back and realize what I must be doing to my testimony.

I stood there, caught in the moment, and realized that I was viciously breaking the simplest instruction of God’s: to love your neighbor as yourself. After I made a complete imbecile of myself, stomped back into the house to get the deed and the map of our property, drug Fred into the whole mess and stomped back to their house I stepped on their porch and realized just how far away from God I was probably pushing them. Now do I think I am personally responsible for someone else’s relationship with God? No. Do I think that I am possibly (more frequently than I would like) a stumbling block to others? Yes.

Had I judged these people from the moment they moved in? Yes. Had I talked about them without ever talking to them? Yes. Had I been rude and uncommunicative? Absolutely. Am I completely ashamed of my behavior? Most certainly. It started with silly stuff. Their vehicle would be hanging partially in my driveway, not really obstructing our entrance but just annoy me or someone would move our trash can. Just little things that really have no bearing on the larger scheme of life and that most people would and should shrug off. Instead, I compiled them like a black list of sins, storing them up in my brain and holding them against my neighbor without ever talking to them or trying to amicably resolve anything. I bore a grudge like a piece of clothing, wielding it like the amour of righteous indignation. I had unwittingly and unconsciously become a nasty little neighborhood curmudgeon, shame on me.

You know if my Sunday school kids treated each other the way I had treated my actual physical neighbor I would have chewed their ear off with a scathing lecture. If Sarah treated a classmate that way I would have grounded her. I could not see the error of my own ways because I was standing smack dab in the middle of my slow boiling anger. I shudder to think the damage I have done and the poison I have spread by breaking this elementary commandment.

I am happy (and abashed) to say that as I was immediately convicted I promptly apologized for being hateful and nasty and for getting off on the wrong foot. I tried to explain where it began for me and how I had ended up in my present state of mind. I felt even worse as my neighbors began to explain how they felt unwelcome by the whole neighborhood and how it had been a constant struggle since they had moved in. I feel terrible. I think about not only what a horrible testimony I have with them but I consider what an example I set for Sarah and I am deeply sorrowful and ashamed.

I write these things this morning, not as a form of self-flagellation or as a way to say “oh look at me how righteous I am now that I’ve seen the error of my way” instead I write in hopes of deterring others from making the same mistakes. I write to show that I am human and although my blogs are usually thought out tales of how we are trying to make our small corner of the world better, that indeed we are not perfect, that we often make mistakes and sometimes we poison the well. We may be able to keep our physical trash out of the landfill but if we cannot keep out emotional trash out of our neighbors’ lives then what good have we really accomplished. I write also as a reminder to myself, to be kind to people and not just the environment. I write because if I really want the God-centered life I profess then I cannot put a giant barrier there by being cruel to his favorite creation.

Do I think that this epiphany will somehow save me from every getting angry again? No, I am only human. I am sure that I will get mad, that I will yell, that at some future date I with further embarrass myself. What I hope is that I will never again be deliberately mean to my neighbors. That I will stop and think and let the little and petty things go instead of harboring them like emotional poison ivy. Whether they be my actual physical neighbors or the people I see on the streets or the people I do business with in the world. I hope to be kind. I hope to be a good example to my child and to the people I come into contact with every day.

I have already apologized to my neighbor and asked God to forgive me and make me a better neighbor but I want to also take this opportunity to apologize to all of you. I am sorry for any bad example that I have set and for any seed of doubt that I planted. Please realize when you read this blog or look at me that I am human and flawed but I am trying everyday to be better. Like our move towards greener life our spiritual growth is also sometimes a bumbling and awkward path full of ruts and mistakes but we are learning and we hope to never stop growing into better people.

Thank you for reading,
Much love,

Autumn

Quiet Moments

I have found one thing to be true: The greener we go the more work it creates for all of us. I find I get up earlier in the morning to finish up predawn chores and then as daylight dawns I have a whole new list of things to tend. But these stolen moments in the morning between those two busy times are my quiet moments of peace and reflection. This is when I have some coffee, some time with God and have a few moments left over to work on the blog.

Somehow, the work, though copious, is not so tedious when you hold a finished product in your hands or when you sit down to a wholesome meal with your family, a meal that you have tended from its inception. It is unbelievable rewarding to see the beginning fruits of our somewhat meager and often misguided labors. We are doing this in baby steps, little chunks at a time, so to some it seems like we are not doing enough. To others it seems like we have gone off the deep end.

My grandma likes to tease me now and every time she sees me will ask me questions like “Are you doing your wash in the river yet?” To her our efforts seem crazy and silly I am sure. For her generation the invention of modern technologies saved them from a life of hunger and back breaking labor. Fred and I are in no way trying to return to a time where every bite of food was a struggle and nothing was certain. We simply want to take our lives back into a more balanced proportion.

Last night as a family we sat down and watched “King Corn” the documentary about two post-college guys who follow an acre of corn from seeding the ground to selling at market and beyond. This movie is eye opening in many ways and further convinced us of our need to seek a balance. I know that in the seventies when the government radically changed the way they subsidize farmers it was not with the intent of smashing the family farm or destroying the nutrition in our food. Instead those men could remember the pangs of depression era hunger that still haunted their bellies and they looked forward to a time when a surplus of affordable food would be on every table. This defined America to them, bounty, the land of plenty. Grow more!

I am sure that they never envisioned a land of an obese poverty stricken lower class glutting themselves on a diet made almost entirely of corn. Instead, they pictured farmers with easier lives and less heartache over small and ruined crops. They pictured every child going to bed with a full belly not every child going to bed with a gut hanging over their belts. But as with many good things they created a monster and now the monster runs the tractor. Thousands of acres of inedible crop are planted every year and subsidized by the government. When the farmer cannot consume his own product until it has been chemically treated and put into a soda can then the pendulum has swung too far. The corporate farmer today is no different than Fred standing on the assembly line everyday twisting 2 bolts in an engine for a car he will never see.

All that Fred and I really want is to bring that pendulum back into a smaller more centralized arc in our own lives. We no longer desire this vast gap between ourselves and the things we eat. We want to know our food and to have a hand in bringing it to the table. I do not want to order three things off the dollar menu only to find that ultimately they are all corn and I could have saved myself the trouble, the fat and the ensuing health problems. Instead of our meals regularly coming from a paper container our meals are now more thought out. Yes we still buy stuff at the grocery store but now we read the labels and consciously make better choices. Soda is a treat, not a beverage with every meal.

So what does this all mean for our work level and our green lifestyle you might wonder? Well frankly, like I implied before, it means a lot more work. But it also means a lot more satisfaction. I make all the bread we eat. It no longer comes from the store shelves in plastic bags with a list of ingredients as long as my arm. It is not filled with high fructose corn syrup, caramelizing color and “softeners” whatever those might be. Yes that means I get up in the night to put it on the cooling rack but I sleep more soundly knowing that my family is eating something wholesome from my kitchen and not poison from the shelf.

I get up every morning and make Fred’s lunches. I no longer fill them with convenient and easy to pack snack cakes (Have you ever read the ingredients on a pack of snack cakes?? High fructose corn syrup seems tame. Do you know they actually include beef tallow!?!? EWH! Not to mention a bazillion chemicals I could not pronounce on a bet.) or prepackaged lunch meats that have enough sodium to dry up a river basin. Instead I fill it with leftovers from our dinners or sandwiches made on fresh bread with natural peanut butter and honey, fresh fruit, wholesome granola (not the cereal box kind), homemade snacks and I make his breakfast from eggs we gathered the previous day.

Not only are we saving a small fortune because those are two less meals bought at a restaurant or cafeteria every day but I have the peace of mind of knowing that as he labors through a grueling day his belly is fully with wholesome foods that will give him sustainable energy and not make him sick, give him heart failure or diabetes.

I admit up until we watched the movie last night I did put soda in his lunch every day, two cans. Soda is so ubiquitous that I never really gave it much thought. The sugar (HFCS) and caffeine gave him the extra little jolt of energy to get through the day. I was always much more careful with the soda that Sarah and I drink limiting it to an occasional treat but I really never even gave much consideration to any alternative for Fred’s lunch. So this morning I got up even a hair earlier than normal and brewed him fresh herbal iced tea for his lunch.

Yes, this adds one more chore to my morning. Yes, it adds one more piece of paraphernalia Fred must tote off to work in the form of a thermos. But it provides me with the peace of mind that I am not poisoning my husband and it provides Fred with a refreshing and thirst quenching alternative to soda.

These are the kinds of things I am talking about when I say that going green entails a significantly greater amount of work that staying in a stagnant fast-food culture. Sure it would be easier to stay in bed hand Fred ten dollars from the ATM and tell him to have a great day. Sure he could hit the drive thru in the morning for a sausage McMuffins and a gargantuan latte then park his bottom in the cafeteria to eat unidentifiable steaming piles of carbs. He could slog his way through the rest of his work day in a veritable food coma and come home to gripe and be sick before he trudged off to bed. But this is not the life either of us wants.

We, like the Farm Bureau of the seventies, want a life of more and we want it more abundantly! But what we have realized over the years and through our recent struggles is that sometimes more means less and most time more means harder work. I am sure lots of people think we are crazy, or feel sorry for us because we live without air conditioning and do not shop at Walmart (insert eye roll), or do not have cable tv, but I will tell you this even the small changes we have made the tiny bits we have scaled back have proven to us that less is more. Yes sometimes it is more work but oftentimes it is more time spent with family, more meals of wholesome food shared around a dinner table. More time spent together tending the bees or the chickens, more peace of mind because my family is not eating poison. And I am content with my more.

Thank you for reading,
Much love (less junk),

Autumn

Wrapping Up Summer & Planning Ahead

Although we have neglected the blog as of late we have not neglected our slow tilt towards green. Sarah’s summer school has finally come to a close (astonishingly with straight A’s I might add!), the slew of summer birthdays is at an end and the final preparations for my best friend’s wedding are drawing to a close. I know some of you might question the title of this blog because it is only the end of July which, by the calendar, leaves a good 3rd of summer left, but school starts early this year and with it all of the fall things I always look forward too. So in our house summer is winding down even as we battle the beastly heat and drying sun of summer skies.

This has been a hot summer. Very Hot. Last summer our air conditioner went out. At first we dealt with a sorry window unit that sent our electric bill skyrocketing and only kept the house slightly under boiling. We met some very nice Heating & Cooling guys through some friends of ours and they came out and patched together our ailing system. They were reasonably priced and very honest. They came back twice at no cost to check different things and help us out. However, they did warn us that if the unit limped along through last summer that maybe all the life it had. Well it did quite fine last summer and was great through the winter.

Fred and I talk a lot about energy consumption and cutting our utility bills and we both agreed that we would go as long as possible without air conditioning this summer before turning on the unit. We recently receive a 16% hike in an already enormous bill and suffered electric bills through the winter that were sometimes equivalent of a house or car payment. That is a struggle. This year we will look into converting our bottle gas fireplace and seeking alternative heat sources, but that is another blog.

We went well into mid July without turning on the air and really as long as we keep the lights low and cook in the mornings and hang the laundry on the line instead of in the dryer our house is pretty comfortable. The real challenge came on a day when we were trying to get “dressed up” for something. Now, I do not even remember what the event was but it was special enough that I broke out some makeup and a hair dryer. As I stood in the bathroom sweltering and unsuccessfully trying to put makeup on my streaming face Fred had pity on me and switched on the air. As with many good intentions that was a mistake. The unit choked and sputtered and blew hot air for 20 minutes before we finally gave up and switched it off.

Up until this point we had been living without AC as a choice. Suddenly now we were stuck. We sat and talked about it and really discussed our commitment to a green lifestyle and finally decided AC is something we can live without, at least for now. To cool the house we open windows and place box fans in front of the screens. On really hot days the house is warm but not unbearable, we can always escape outside into the shade. We have drunk a great deal more ice water this summer than ever before but I am happy and proud to say that our electric bill was cut by more than half! And that is including running fans non-stop and cooking and washing and heating water with electricity. Last month our bill was around sixty dollars, (comparatively some electric bills last winter were almost three-hundred dollars).

I am very proud of our commitment to use less and to be more responsible consumers and I am equally proud that when the rubber met the road my family chose to live green and not just talk about it. Don’t get me wrong we are not saints we go to the movies and lavishly enjoy the freezing cold theaters like diabetics in the closet with chocolate truffles, but it is not an everyday thing for us. I will also admit, on the ninety-seven degree day of my best friend’s bridal shower, to going to my parents and putting on my makeup there. All that said that is probably our most intense and dramatic commitment to being green this summer.

Fred and I talk a great deal about how things, like air conditioning, that we think we “NEED” now are really luxuries. But you know even growing up we did not always have central air. We had fans and sometimes window units but people lived for centuries without AC and they probably lived much healthier than we do now. They were not constantly breathing recycled and chemically cooled air. There are lots of appliances and things that, although they make life easier or more comfortable temporarily, in the long run they are a financial drain on individuals and a global drain on natural resources.

Now that most of the summer dramatics are behind us I plan to devote more attention to the blog. The changes we have made and the struggles we have endured as we take this journey together. Lots of things have happened even just between the last blog and this one. I will not take time to detail them all here; the air conditioner was just an example. Instead, I write with my eye to the future and want to share with the readers some of the things we are planning for the upcoming year.

We did not plant a vegetable garden this year. We have relied heavily on our local farmers market and our friends and family who have shared their harvest abundance with us. We got a late start on our journey and had to pick and choose the few things we could manage without overwhelming ourselves to the point of giving up. We chose the bees because they provided us with a great opportunity to start something at an affordable price that always interested both of us, and we chose the chickens because they required a very small initial investment and provided us with an almost instant product.

We do plan to plant a vegetable garden next year although we have not yet decided where to place it. In looking towards that goal we have done some pre-planning and bought all our seeds at Green’s when they were reduced to half price recently. According to many of the books I read, seeds can be stored for up to several years if properly cared for. This saved us a considerable amount of money. It also gave us all winter to plan the placement and design of our garden without the buyer’s lust that ensues every spring when the new seed catalogues come and the bright and colorful seedlings are in the store.

I have also been reading quite a lot about food preservation and the pluses and minuses of different methods. I plan to harvest the apples from the front yard this year and try my hand at canning. Although from everything I have read canning is the most difficult and time consuming method of preservation, it is also the cheapest and last the longest. I am still presently debating the virtues of pressure canning versus the boiling bath canning method. One of my friends, who reads this blog, has graciously offered to let me borrow her mother-in-laws pressure canner so that I can give it a try. I’m still about half afraid of blowing up the house or putting out an eye with it so I have not quite worked up the nerve yet! But many thanks to Joni!

Along the lines of food preservation one of the things that Fred and I are considering investing in (and using electricity for) is a deep freezer. The Encyclopedia of Country Living extols the value of freezing as the best way to get the most nutrients out of your crop and to keep the most food on hand in the smallest and closest amount of space. If we do decide to go with a freezer it probably will not be until next fall’s harvest and we are still researching and debating the merits of buying a freezer and running up the electric bill versus canning everything. Canning is so time consuming that I am not sure, if we were to have a bountiful harvest, I would be able to can it all. We may decide on a small chest freezer, can part and freeze the rest.

On my dream list for next year is an outdoor kitchen. I do not mean one of those elaborate things seen on the home and garden shows I simply mean a stove on which I can can stuff outside and possibly, if I really put my ingenuity to work an outdoor oven in which to bake. I could easily survive without AC forever if I had an outdoor kitchen. Several issues ago there was a really affordable and easy to follow do-it-yourself plan in Mother Earth News on how to build your own. Like I said this is on the wish list, although who knows if I really put my nose to the grind maybe I can build it this fall!

Some of the other things we have planned, in addition to a garden and food preservation is another addition to our menagerie, or maybe a few additions to our menagerie. Top on the list is a nanny goat. I intend to make some our own dairy products in an additional attempt to slice our food bill and become more self-sufficient. We are considering a couple of turkeys and maybe a goose. However, when all of the chickens begin to lay increasing our flock of bird may not be the best use of our fund. We will probably have more eggs than we can eat and use as is, but I am considering a roadside sign to offer fresh eggs for sale. We will see.

All of these things are just our loose plans as we look back on a successful first partially green summer and as we look forward to our green lives. God is so very good to us, and although we have struggled he has caught us and held us up and we praise his name.


Thanks for reading,
Much love,
Autumn

POST SCRIPT:

Here is an interesting note. While doing some research about greener energy alternatives Fred and I brought up our actual usage graph on AEPs website. Here is the breakdown:

7/6/2010
599 KWH
$52.91
6/4/2010
698 KWH
$59.22
5/5/2010
733 KWH
$61.67
4/6/2010
1,576 KWH
$120.99
3/5/2010
3,164 KWH
$232.73
2/4/2010
3,060 KWH
$225.41
1/6/2010
3,516 KWH
$257.50
12/3/2009
1,899 KWH
$143.73
11/2/2009
1,185 KWH
$93.48
10/2/2009
750 KWH
$57.66
9/2/2009
935 KWH
$68.95

As you can see "going green" and "baby steps" have added up to a real and tangible savings in our pockets! Now I am even happier! ~A

Wavering

Here is something I have realized in the short amount of time I have been writing this blog. “Going green” is a resolution, and like all best intentions (January diets and daily devotions), it is easy to get side tracked and fall back into lazy old patterns. We have become such a society of convenience and instant gratification that the concept of disciplining our personal lives is almost foreign, notice I said almost. Our family started out with the best of intentions, we still have those intentions, but I have observed all of us, on occasion, drifting back into old patterns.

I have actually found it easier to make the big changes, like making our own detergent and turning off the air conditioner, than to keep up with the little things; like turning off lights when we leave a room or using a hand towel to dry our hands instead of reaching for a paper towel. (It is the initial thrill of getting saved versus the daily grind of doing devotions.) When things are new and exciting and we can all still feel that sense of purpose it is easy to cheer each other on and keep our goal of greener living in the forefront of our minds. As these same things become mundane daily activities and the excitement of our initial purpose wears off it becomes easier to reach for the paper towel on the dispenser beside the sink than to walk to the cabinet and get a clean dish towel.

Two weekends ago, at the Sustainability Fair, we received lots of swag (and no the irony of giving away lots of free new stuff at a fair about recycling is not lost on me). In our loot haul we received close to a dozen grocery bags, you know the kind made from recycled plastic that are reusable over and over again so we do not have to bring home the flimsy plastic ones from the grocery store that almost instantaneously choke the landfill? I will be the first to admit, I had lots of uses for the flimsy bags, mainly it made litter box clean up super easy, but I also realize how detrimental they are to the environment and that they are an unnecessary step. I can just almost as easily move the garbage can to the litter box and skip the plastic middle man.

The first couple of conscious trips to the grocery store were easy. Recycled bags in tow, we got up on our morally superior high horse and gallivanted off to the market. (I have found that when using these bags it is easier to bag my own groceries than to let the bag-person do it, they will throw the first few things into the recycled bags and then quickly begin filling in the gap with plastic. Of course since they also like to use my three dollar tomatoes as hockey pucks I tend to bag myself or have Fred bag anyway.) We came home with our sense of purpose and moral superiority fully intact. Fred and I were very pleased with our eco-conscious grocery trips. We are taking lots of small steps towards smaller foot-prints in the market. For example we no longer put our fresh produce in those flimsy little extra plastic bags that are immediately tossed as soon as we get home and we try to purchase organic whenever possible.

After our first trip to the grocery store with our new reusable bags our cat Bettie quickly put us in our place and gave us a show-and-tell lesson about just what she really thought of our inept efforts at going green. As I was unloading the groceries in the kitchen she took a pee in one of the new reusable bags. Um, that one may now have been relegated to a one time use bag. Bettie has a great disdain for our meager attempts at a more sustainable existence as she made painfully and messily evident. I rinsed it out and put it on the back porch. I may try to put it in the laundry with the rags this week, but I think a cycle through the washing machine will probably destroy it.

All the grocery bag drama aside, the real point of this entry is how we need to constantly renew our motivation as a family to better planning and organization and our commitment to going green. You see after the initial thrill and newness of our grocery bags wore off I found myself falling right back into my old shopping patterns. We would make a big trip to the market once a week. On this trip we could remember to take our bags. Then through the week I would find myself running to the store to get one or two items, forgetting the bags at home and coming home through the week with several of those insidious plastic bags, stuffing them back into the closet to be used as cat poop receptacles.

Yesterday found our family in a mad rush all day trying to cram a weekends worth of activities, from church to birthday parties to grocery shopping, all into one twenty-four hour stretch. This left us at the market late yesterday evening without any of our recycled bags. It did not even cross my mind until we were standing at the car loading our groceries into the back. I admit when I realized what we had done I was more than a little ashamed of myself and embarrassed that I might be seen by someone who reads this blog and judged by my actions.

I could not help but draw the parallel between this and my spiritual life. In Sunday school yesterday morning we talked to the kids about the difference between being a Christian and being saved versus really having a relationship with God and knowing what his will for our lives is. We talked about the difficulty of having a relationship with someone to whom you never speak or to whom you never listen. Like my grocery bags that do me no good at home in the closet my Bible does me no good at home on the coffee table. Furthermore if I only pray when I am desperate or in need and only open my Bible sparingly, like a divining rod, how can I really expect to have a functioning relationship with God or to be a good example of Christ for others.

As we loaded our plastic bag shod groceries into the back of the car the shame I felt, the embarrassment and fear of someone seeing me was very much akin to the feelings I get when I do something I know to be outside of God’s perfect will. I wonder who is watching me and into whose life I may be throwing a stumbling block out of my own misstep. We all make mistakes and like I have said over and over we are making baby steps towards our more sustainable greener life but some things just take a little dollop of discipline. I need to be more prepared to face the challenges of greener life just like I need to be prepared everyday in my spiritual life.

If we keep a few of the recycled bags in the car or spend a little time planning our trips to the store then we will not find ourselves caught out without something we need, just like if we spend a few minutes reading the Bible in the mornings we will not find ourselves caught without the spiritual armor and reinforcements we need in a sticky situation. In Sunday school we talked about how hard it is to prove to other people you are related to someone that you never talk to or know nothing about. It is the same in our Christian lives, even though God may be our spiritual father, if we know nothing about him and never talk to him people may have a hard time believing us. All it takes is a little bit of discipline and a fervent desire to kindle something more in our lives.

I want to be a better Christian, a better person and a kinder steward of the environment. I want someday to stand before God not knowing that I am saved and have entered his kingdom by the “skin of my teeth” but I want to hear “well done my good and faithful servant.” Like the struggle towards a greener life, the daily battle with clutter that gets in the way of what I really want to do and be rages on. But I am taking a moment this morning to renew my commitment to my relationship with God and my desire to take better care of the planet he has given me. So if you see me at the store loading plastic bags in my car or you see me out and you think well she’s a Christian she should not do/say/be/wear whatever please forgive me for making you doubt, I am human and I struggle daily too.

I would like to leave this blog today with a passage of scripture we shared with the kids from a translation of the Bible called Seek and Find, remember it is always easier to hear God when the lines of communication are open:

“My child, remember my teachings and instructions and obey them completely. They will help you live a long and prosperous life. Let love and loyalty always show like a necklace, and write them in your mind. God and people will like you and hold you in high esteem. With all your heart you must trust the Lord and not your own judgment. Always let Him lead you, and He will clear the road for you to follow.” Proverbs 3:1-6


Much love,

Autumn

Trash Pile or Compost?

Composting has always kind of been a mystery to me. How do the slimy egg shells and the grainy coffee grind turn into that beautiful soft nourishing stuff you buy in the plastic bags every spring in Kmart’s garden center. I do not get it. I associate composting with the greasy nasty bucket my paternal grandmother kept beside the kitchen counter. I was really too young to remember what actually happened to the stuff in that bucket but what I do remember is that anything that was food scrap of any kind went in it and it was gross and dirty. I also remember that if you threw your pop can in there you were in trouble too. :)

In spite of these less than pleasant associations with composting Fred and I have realized that we, as a family, produce exorbitant amounts of trash every year. While we have managed to only put out one trash can full every two weeks or so, greatly cutting down on what we use to produce, we know that we are still throwing away some stuff that could be composted. Not only are we creating more trash in the landfill than is necessary, we are robbing ourselves of a valuable resource and we are spending more money than we need to every year in potting soil for our back porch garden and flower beds.

So how do we economically change? That is our big question. We have read several articles on composting and the best (and least stinky) ways to do so. We thought at first we would like to have one of those composting barrels that you see advertised in all the gardening magazines. You know the ones, they look like big green drums turned on their side and they are attached to a metal frame with a hand crank on one side and here is the kicker there is always a nice looking, smartly dressed young woman standing off to the side holding the handle, ready to give the barrel a crank. Or, my personal favorite is when her designer-garden-glove-clad hand is reaching in the barrel with a huge smile on her face and a velvety handful of dirt coating her glove with a caption like: “Less mess and no smell! Make your own nourishing top soil!”

Well let me tell you, those barrels are NOT cheap and they are way out of our already thin stretched budget for the year. (If you have been following this blog you know that we are making baby steps, trying to improve the quality of our lives and move towards a smaller ecological footprint in our little family. I wonder how people who want to be “green” all of a sudden just wake up and completely remodel their lives? It is expensive!) I will say this, I promise that my grandma, a school cook, and my grandpa, a mechanic, who raised nine children and most all of their own food, did most certainly NOT have a thousand dollar composting barrel. I am pretty sure the bucket that sat off beside the stove came from the feed store and had several other lives before it made it to grandma’s kitchen. As it becomes trendier to be “green” it also becomes more expensive and our consumer driven culture urges us to spend more and more on gadgets and tools, ultimately defeating the purpose of going green in the first place!

I find that as I try to curb my “gotta have it” mentality instead of wanting/needing to spend all kinds of money on new clothes, new shoes, new purses and new jewelry I have moved towards wanting to spend on new gadgets and “green” toys. All a company has to do is label something as “GREEN” and dress it up with a little slick eco-friendly looking packaging and in my zealousness to do-it-right-right-now I find myself drawn to it like a crow to something shiny, whether we need it or not. As I begin to recognize this trait in myself (and in Fred) this is something we have decided to work on together. We have to be able to curb that initial desire to buy it, get it, have it right now and discern what we actually need to further our goals versus what we think we need based on clever advertising or societal programming. We wonder, if we are constantly buying more stuff aren’t we just continuing the problem, just redirecting it into a different venue?

So back to my conundrum: How did grandma turn all that trash into top soil? Or did she even bother? They raised chickens and a small garden and at times other animals. Did those scraps even make it into some kind of compost or were there even more immediate needs for them? I do not know and I cannot ask grandma or grandpa they have both been gone for several years. For all I know those scraps may have just been fed to one of the many dogs who came and went through their yard. I don’t know. What I do know is that Fred and I would like to use the scraps from our own kitchen as compost, but how? We know for sure we are not spending a thousand dollars on a slick home compositing machine with all the bells and whistles. So what do we do?

For years, before his death, Fred’s dad installed car lifts in garages all around the state. The byproduct of that career is a building full of gadgets and supplies (aka junk) that sits on the creek bank of our property. That building used to be the Sandford & Son bane of my existence; however, as we try to build things ourselves and become more self-sufficient as a family, that building is quickly becoming the Aladdin’s cave of our world. In it we found almost all of the supplies to build our chicken coop, we only had to buy a few pressure treated landscape timbers, some hinges and a can of paint. We have found the paint for our beehives and the fuel for our smoker as well as a myriad of other treasures. So could we find the raw materials needed to build our own composting machine? Fred dove into the building to find out.

At first it looked promising, upon initial inspection Fred found a couple of fifty gallon drums that would be a good size not only for our dreamed of composting machine but also for a rain bucket that we hoped to use to catch run off for use in watering our plants and animals. Upon closer inspection though, the barrels had suspicious and unidentifiable smells. Not knowing what was previously stored in the barrels, and having no way to ask Fred’s dad, we are afraid to use them to house anything that will be consumed or that will be part of the chain of consumption by our family. After all, it would be pretty bad if we went to all this effort only to find out in the long run that we had poisoned ourselves and our whole family with the compost we had so diligently saved.

That left us back at square one, do we invest in the compost barrel or do we try something else? After more research and reading I came across the website of some local people living “off-grid.” Frankly, their idea of “off-grid” and my idea of “off-grid” are extremely different but what I learned while looking at their page and their pictures was: they composted without the aid of a barrel or any man-made equivalent in which to house their waste. Instead they buried the scraps and unused bio-degradables under a leaf pile on their property. The leaves acted as a natural thermal blanket to trap the heat and help speed the process along and also provided some barrier to the smell of rot emanating from the pile Eureka! That was it! We thought we had our answer.

We have a ready-made spot on the lower corner of our fence line where the leaves from all our trees seem to drift and settle. We thought we could merely lift the leaves and begin throwing all our bio-degradable waste underneath. The added bonus was: it would not change the look of our yard at all, no giant drum sitting off the back porch in constant need of cranking only some leaves to occasionally stir. Well this worked out for about five hot minutes or until we let Louie out to go to the restroom.

Our sweet dumb dog, who on a good day could not smell a cheese burger in front of his face, zeroed in on the compost pile like a fighter pilot. Thank heaven we had not put a bunch of trash out there or, not only would our yard look like a war zone, but we would probably also had been faced with huge vet bills from a sick dog. Needless to say, Louie hit the compost pile at ninety miles an hour, slinging trash and chicken poop all over himself and the lawn, yay. Compost pile in the corner? FAIL.

We may be back to the barrel idea out of sheer necessity. We cannot have Louie eating his weight in compost ever time we let him out and we obviously cannot trust him to resist the urge to roll in everything stinky in the yard. So we are back to the drawing board on the compost. The thousand dollar barrel is still out. We may try and make a cheaper version of it ourselves. Another option is to use some old sections of chain link fence to section off the leaf corner and stick with that plan. The problem there is if we fence off that corner the leaves may just gather on the outside of the fence instead of drifting into the corner like they have done in the past. We are not giving up on our dreams of velvety rich dirt made in our own backyard; we have just been kicked back to go. I do not want to spend hours picking up leaves and moving them into the fence every day because frankly, the more self-sufficient we become the more time consuming these activities are, at least for us in our novice state.

It is a little frustrating and a little funny. I have found that it helps to have a sense of humor about all of this. Yes, we are serious in our pursuit, but are we perfect? NO WAY! Are we bumbling klutzes who have no clue what they are doing and are stumbling about in the dark? ABSOLUTELY! Besides, who would not think it was funny to see a dog tearing around the yard in circles looking for all intent purposes like he just won the doggy lotto with a mouthful of day old chicken poop covered news paper?! I know, gross, but it was pretty funny. We keep plugging along, in the immortal words of my mother “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” (In my head I always added “or bitter” to the end of that quip!)

~

Here is a funny little update for all of you following the bee-drama:
Fred and I have been asked by the president of the KVBA to help this week with a presentation to a local Girl Scout troop. They must be desperate for speakers! Ha! He specifically told Fred that they would like me to say something because he thinks the Girl Scouts will be more responsive to information coming from a female. Um, ok? In my head I picture it going something like this:

“Uh, hi, I’m Autumn. Beekeeping is great. I’ve killed half my bees in less than four months and I’ve been stung repeatedly in bizarre places. I’ve managed to trap one queen, possibly kill another and murder an entire split. Doesn’t beekeeping sound like the career for you? Please don’t ask me any questions because I seriously doubt I can give you an answer that even remotely sounds believable.”

Yes, I am being dramatic, I know it probably will not be that bad. But I seriously doubt I have much critical knowledge to impart to a bunch of Girl Scouts about beekeeping. Come back to read about it, I will update if they do not burn me at the stake!

Much love and thanks for reading,

Autumn

Off-grid or Invisible?

Some of you know, some of you don’t, my first step toward a greener existence was not by choice. I was forced. In September of last year I learned I would not be able to drive for a year due to a medical condition. I was quickly stir-crazy trapped in my house with no way to get anywhere without first calling someone and inconveniencing them or waiting on their availability. I hate this. I had always been wildly independent and very much used to do what I want when I felt like it. No longer being able to drive was like having my wings clipped. I needed to be able to get from point A to point B not just for fun but for necessity, things like going to the doctor or the grocery had suddenly become a monumental undertaking. I whined, I cried, I mostly just stayed home.

When the weather was nice it was not as big an issue as when the weather was not. As long as it was relatively warm and the skies were clear, Louie (our dog) and I could walk almost anywhere we needed to go. The nice thing about where we live is it is rural enough to give you a little land and some privacy, but located centrally enough to put us with-in walking distance of everything essential, like the grocery, the library and the hardware store. I consoled myself with the fact that: not only was I saving fossil fuel by not tooling around in my gargantuan truck, but Louie and I were getting much needed exercise walking to all our errands. This was fine for several months. If I needed to go to a doctor appointment or there was some errand Fred could not run on his way home then my dad or mother-in-law would take me with them.

Then the snow came. This past winter was one of the worst I can remember. We had record snowfall amounts trapping us in the house without electricity (which in this house means without heat another green thing we hope to rectify by next winter) and limiting my transportation options from walking to exclusively bumming rides from family and friends. I was miserable. I decided to get a bus pass. Now for someone like me who had never even liked to ride the school bus this really sounded like a nightmare. City buses can be daunting things. They have terrible reputations of being filthy and filled with mentally unstable and dangerous people. I really, really debated even getting on the bus at all. Eventually though I had to claim back at least a small portion of my independence and I determined I would learn to ride the bus.

And that is just it. If you have never been in a position to depend upon public transportation it can be an extremely daunting task. It really is like learning a whole new skill. If you need to get, say, to the other side of town, you must coordinate the bus schedules to make the proper transfer or you will be left standing at the transit mall for possibly an hour plus while waiting on the next bus to arrive. Also, all of the bus schedules say you must have exact fare (although I have found this to be untrue and most bus drivers are friendly and will make change), and the fairs are different depending upon how far you are traveling on the bus, additionally you may also purchase a bus pass at the transit mall for ten dollars which gives you eleven dollars worth of riding time. A simple thing that no one told me, until I had ridden the bus for several weeks, was that if you need to get from one bus to another you may as the driver of the first bus for a transfer, this only adds ten cents to your original fair and saves you from paying an entire second fair on the next bus. These little nuances and tricks are things that are not clearly spelled out on the website or in the schedule, at least not that I could decipher. These are things I have picked up from other riders and from friendly bus drivers.

I did not choose to ride the bus willingly and had I not been forced by my situation it probably never would have even crossed my mind to ride a bus instead of drive myself. But if everyone took public transportation just one day we could each possibly cut our carbon emissions by twenty pounds per day per person (Capital Metro Website). Twenty pounds is a LOT. Now this is probably only true if you have lots of errands to run in lots of different places, and providing that the bus runs where you need to go. Even though the buses do create emissions and do use carbon fuels the thing is that it is only one vehicle versus the fifteen or twenty vehicles in uses if each person on the bus drove separately. So, really public transportation has not only given me back a measure of my freedom it has also helped push me towards a greener lifestyle.

Which brings me to my issue and my real problem that spurned today’s blog topic. How do we change the stigma attached to riding the bus? People (myself included) make assumptions about the kinds of people that ride the bus and rely on public transportation. We assume, foremost, that no one does it by choice. If you ride the bus you must be either too poor to afford a car, too crazy or impair to operate a car (I now fall into this category), or shiftless and without purpose which leaves you with unlimited time to wait on a bus. People who ride buses and wait for buses along the road are treated to deliberate splashing, hurled insults, pity, offers of rides from extremely creepy predators and generally abused or completely ignored and treated like they have suddenly developed the super power of invisibility. Why? Why are we as a society determined to look down our noses at people who are, in reality, taking a small part in saving our environment, whether willingly or not?

You know, if everyone who drives a car would take just one trip a month on the bus instead, think of all the fossil fuel we would save, and how far we would go to removing the stigma of riding the bus as something shameful or pitiable. Last night I spent the night at a friend’s house and instead of having her make and additional trip the opposite direction of her work this morning I told her not to worry about it. I would catch the bus home. Now to get from her house to my house I would need to walk about a mile and a half to the bus stop (no problem, pretty day) and then make a transfer from one bus to the next in town (not my favorite thing to do but I did not have any big plans for the day).

I left her house about 9:00AM and headed down the hill. Now here is what I do not understand. Why is it that a woman on foot, conservatively dressed, somehow becomes a target for every weirdo pervert in a vehicle? I got honked at, whistled at, and three separate men stopped to ask if I needed a ride. Do not get me wrong, I am all for people being good Samaritans. I will try to stop and help someone in a time of need, but I am also pretty sure that none of these men wanted to help me. Especially since one of them stopped after I was already seated at the bus stop and clearly in no distress.

This is the stigma that I am talking about. Now these were not lecherous looking men in beat up old vehicles with the license plates blacked out offering candy from seedy vans. These were men in nice pick-up trucks and normal sedans. What makes it ok to approach a woman waiting on the bus and offer her a ride? If I were sitting in my car beside the road, maybe it would be acceptable to offer help, but these same men would not approach me in parking lot of the grocery while I was loading my car and ask if I needed a ride. So why is it ok at the bus? I think this is why so many of us hesitate to take public transportation, like it somehow reflects on my morality or scruples because I ride the bus. I am not a hooker I am a housewife on her way home to do laundry. Yes, life put me in a position where I am dependent upon the bus to get from one place to another but, now that I realize it is not the equivalent of having bamboo slivers rammed under my toenails, I plan to continue utilizing the bus even after I am to drive again. I like being able to sit and read a book while someone else worries about the traffic and the other angry drivers and road conditions. Will I never drive my truck again? No. Will I consciously drive it less? Absolutely.

What I am asking for from myself and from everyone reading this blog is; please, have a little more consideration for the people utilizing public transportation. Instead of pitying them or looking down our noses at them, take a moment to admire them for their contribution to a greener planet, whether unwittingly or not. Women riding the bus have every much an entitlement to your respect as your mother does. Either by choice or by circumstance we are riding that bus to get from one place to another, not to meet men or to be propositioned. Think about it, how would you feel if you knew when you sent your daughter out to wait on the school bus she ran the risk, almost certainly, of having to fend off unwanted advances? If you would not offer a ride to the grandma working on her knitting, or the man reading a book, or the handicapped person talking to themselves, then do not offer it to anyone.
Respect. That is what it is ultimately all about. Respect for the planet, respect for each other and respect for basic human life. If we all just took a moment to think about it and have a little more respect, this world would be a greener, cleaner, safer place to live.

Thanks for read and thanks for thinking,
Much love,

Autumn