Tag Archives: it’s not easy being green

Canning: The Aftermath

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve begun posting my Farmers’ Markets adventures each Saturday in order to share with you my own locavore experience. Spell check still doesn’t recognize Locavore; must work on spreading the word, er, this word. Buying local produce is easy in June. After bringing home (reusable cloth) bags full of fresh goodies, what next?

Let’s see: What else?

A Very Happy Locavore's Kitchen

If it looks like a mess, well, it is – sort of. I do get it together eventually. My kitchen is too small to play host to this kind of pile-up for long.

The Aftermath, ready for next week

The carrots and lettuce ended up as bunny food and salads for the humans. Peas were delicious mixed with the last of the corn from the freezer, last year’s booty. Pea pods joined the lettuce and some of a local restaurant’s bacon dressing- yum. And finally, most of the berries became jams. The remainder were frozen or incorporated into ice cream or tossed on breakfast cereal. The jams are finding a home in the storage cupboard, and the tools are ready for next week’s market – whatever I might find.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Where to Keep the Canned Goods

Posted on by
1

There must be a better way.

This is the “before” picture. I’ve increased my repertoire of canned foods every year, and with that increase in recipes came an increased yield. Then comes the question: where do I keep all these provisions? And after we finish each jar of pickles or jam or applesauce, where will I keep the reusable jars? Above you see the dilemma in June: a partial shelf of pickles and jams and applesauce and rhubarb waiting for their day on the table, surrounded by empty canning jars and freezer containers.

Something here must go.

Step 1: I cleaned out half the books at the top.

Step 2: I gathered boxes for a thrift store donation (shelves out of sight on the left).

Step 3: I relocated the crockpot and reorganized the jars by size.

Step 4: Move in!!

Ah. That’s better.

Readers, this is the “after” shot – the “after” shot for June. After I’ve canned my way through June and July and even part of August, this cupboard will look very different. I’ll be sure to show you then. Remind me. Really. And while we’re at it, readers, tell me about your summer reorganization projects. Canning supplies? Books? Thrift donations? Leave a comment.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Notes on the First Farmers’ Market of the Season

Posted on by
3

Note to self: Go early. By 10:15 all the asparagus was gone, and strawberries supplies were selling like hotcakes. Not that hotcakes are a bad thing; Chuck turned 3 peaches into a fruity pancake lunch.

Note to self: hold wheeled bag close to self. Three other shoppers ran into or over the bag. One said, “Excuse me,” but the others glared at me. ?$@#!? I wasn’t the only one with a bag on wheels or a wagon – not by a long shot. I was run over by a toddler’s stroller and a fast walker. The women with a wheelchair was more polite than either of the others.

Note to self: Take time. Inhale. Egg rolls, roasted corn, strawberries, and more decorate the air. There are at least three coffee shops on the main drag, too. Mmm.

Note to self: Overrule Chuck when necessary. At first he wanted to buy strawberries, then he didn’t, and eventually I made the decision myself. Self, trust self’s opinion and experience.

Note to self: Make notes. Bring a list. Take inventory on Friday nights. Sorghum, honey, maple syrup, fresh cheeses – all are available downtown at the Farmers’ Market. Be ready to buy!

Note to self: Take time. Listen. Buskers, young violinists, and more musicians dot the avenue and provide entertainment.

Note to self: bring more bags. We came home with three plastic bags today in addition to using our own cloth. Where did that vinyl book bag go? It was perfect for berries because it washed so well.

Note to self: Enjoy. See below.

The take, spread out in the kitchen.

Note to self: View the afternoon to-do list – see below. Ah, it’s summertime.

Strawberries!

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Evergreen and the Refrigerator

Posted on by
Reply

To start the Evergreen Products blog tour, my instructions were simple: raid the refrigerator. Okay, not exactly. I was to take inventory of its contents.

Wisconsin Public Radio Magnet

My refrigerator likes Wisconsin Public Radio. Doesn’t everybody’s?

The Racing Sausages from Miller Park

Recipes and clippings stay up with the help of the racing sausages, of course. Doesn’t your refrigerator work this way?

Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to be looking in the refrigerator, not on it. Darn those prepositions. I need to look inside the refrigerator for packaging in general, specifically for paper cartons.

Open the refrigerator door, Hal.

Inside the refrigerator itself

I came to a conclusion quickly: I use too much plastic. Eggs are in a paper carton (recyclable or reusable), the cream for the homemade ice cream was in waxed paper cartons (biodegradable), but that was it. You see glass jars, including those from my own homemade jam and pickles and (the last batch of) salsa. Those are reusable. But overall, there’s room for improvement, and a lot of improvement.

To recycle cartons, first check to see if your community accepts cartons in their recycling collection. Mine doesn’t – yet – a disappointment, since my state considers itself a paper industry giant. I can still make a case for cartons, though. Paper, like that used in food cartons, is often made using renewable energy and recycled paper waste. Evergreen Packaging, the sponsors of this blog tour, use 50% biomass in making their packaging.

Evergreen also talks about responsible forestry. Wood for lumber, pulp, utility poles, and yes, food cartons, is a renewable resource. Taking care of the forests contributes to cleaning our air by removing carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. I liked the statistics Evergreen provided:

In the US, due to both increases in the total area of forest land and increases in the carbon stored per acre, an additional 192 million metric tons of carbon are sequestered each year through responsible forest management programs nationwide. This offsets roughly 11% of the country’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing almost 135 million passenger vehicles from the nation’s highways.

Wow. I couldn’t have said it better myself. To find out more, and to increase your own use of paper cartons and other recyclable packaging, look up Evergreen’s web page. I took their “carton checkout” activity and found out that I use eco-friendly packaging more often than I thought. Each time I clicked on a grocery item like milk or cream or goldfish crackers, I saw a fast fact about paper carton recycling.

Since paper recycling is limited in my area, I have placed paper cartons with or without waxy coating in my compost. I found some, like Chinese take-out containers, decompose beautifully. Juice cartons leave behind some of their colorful label; there must be a significant plastic content. Since my community isn’t ready to recycle these products quite yet, I’ll have to be satisfied following on Facebook and Twitter. You can, too:

https://www.facebook.com/ChooseCartons

https://twitter.com/#!/ChooseCartons

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Evergreen and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Soil Therapy and Moral Support

Posted on by
1

Remember how I planted too many seeds and ended up with lots and lots of tomato and pepper seedlings? I figured out a way to fit most of the little plants into the existing garden plots. Now I’m facing the challenge of supports.

My favorite spiral stakes are no longer available anywhere in my town. I had to settle for something else. I didn’t want to spend too much on the stakes at any store, especially since most were plastic. Plastic! Chuck tried to talk me into using a very narrow PVC pipe cut to the length I wanted. He thought I could paint them in polka dots like our deck chairs. I resisted. Cute in the end, maybe, but eco-friendly — not.

I bought True Value Hardware’s entire stock of straight, colorful stakes. I’ll use gentle ties made from tee-shirts to keep the stems aligned and attached to their supports. However, I still didn’t have enough. True Value also had bamboo stakes. They were long, at least five feet long, and they came six in a package instead of costing my a bundle just for one. Bamboo might not last more than one season, but it’s more pleasing to the eye and less toxic to the planet than any of the plastic options.

There you have it, readers. What do you think? Have you seen my favorite spiral stakes anywhere? I’ll make a road trip, within reason, if you find them.

Colorful - I call it Garden Art.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

I speak for (the health of) the trees!

Posted on by
3

Chuck and I attended several City Council meetings and committee meetings last fall and winter. We listened, we spoke, we discussed. Neighbors attended, too, and said their piece.

Last night as I pulled out of my driveway, a neighbor waved me over to her side of the road. “Did you hear?” she asked, her voice breaking. “We’re losing the trees!”

Let’s put it together. Our small street is up for replacement of sewer lines and utilities, followed by reconstructing and repaving. It’s time. It’ll be costly, but that’s part of home ownership in a decent neighborhood like this. The trees along the street are old and huge. Some stand higher than the two-story homes on the block. Others branch out or lean over the street.

The Department of Public Works (DPW) considered narrowing the street in order to salvage the trees nearest the road. They would narrow the road by one foot on each side, and the elderly trees could stay.

Readers, you know me well. I’m Daisy, the dirt-loving tree-hugging organic gardener on this block. I’ve taught science at four different grade levels. I own two rain barrels and two backyard compost bins. I am environmentalist: hear me roar!

But this is no time for the Lorax to make an appearance. I respect the Dr. Seuss character as I do all of the good Doc’s compassionate critters. This time, however, the emotions and the practical reality oppose each other.

The trees in question are common species. There are a few red maples, a beech, an ash, and a silver maple or two. We’re not destroying the biodiversity of the neighborhood by taking these beasts down. These trees already exist in abundance in the park two blocks away. Most neighbors have at least one other tree to shade their backyards.

Trees along roads don’t live as long as other trees. They ingest the fumes of car exhaust. Their root systems are damaged by sidewalk construction and repair. As our impending summer of the sewer goes on, another side of the tree’s root systems will suffer and weaken. Add in the potential construction of lateral sewer lines from at least two homes, and the arboreal beauties are getting undercut (literally) on three sides.

Remember last September? A short but powerful windstorm destroyed a considerable number of large, old trees in the center of our city. Now imagine the scenario. Old trees, significantly weakened by construction, remain, towering over the picturesque Victorian homes on the street. Then a storm comes. 

This is not an emotional decision. It’s practical. I taught elementary and middle school science long enough to recognize that trees, like any other living being, have a finite life cycle. Making the road smaller in order to salvage trees that are weakened on three sides does not make sense – even to this eco-green groundskeeper.

So bring it on, utility crews. Quickly, before the wealthy & influential  neighbors decide to open the issue again.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Soil vs dirt dilemma

Posted on by
3

Two seasons ago, we built a second garden plot. Built, that is, as in started from the ground up. With a barrier layer of corrugated cardboard and newspaper covered by a layer of compost and autumn’s fallen leaves, we left that patch of lawn to die during the winter. Spring came, and we covered it with a layer of topsoil trucked in from a local nursery.

It wasn’t the best decision. The large load of soil was handy and inexpensive, but the quality left a lot to be desired. The soil was full of weed seeds, so I spent much of the summer pulling weeds I’d never seen outside of the edges of farm fields. The soil was just like my yard’s native soil: hard, thanks to heavy content of red clay. Living near a river has its charms, but the soil quality isn’t one of them. I’d paid for more of the same. How hard was it, you ask? Look what that soil did to my trowel.

Throw in the Trowel

The second year the weeds were better – I mean, there were fewer weeds. I planted each tomato and pepper plant with a handful of shredded paper and a shovel of potting soil to improve the drainage factor. It was okay, but not great. When major rainfall creates Lake Okaybyme in the backyard, the gardens, both of them, drain better than the lawn. It still wasn’t the greatest quality soil, though. The shallots were an utter failure. The soil was just too thick to let any root crops grow. Talk about onions making people cry….What next?

This is the year of Too Many Tomatoes and Peppers. I planted the pepper plants with the usual layer of shred and a batch of topsoil.from a local hardware store. So far, they’re doing well. The tomatoes, however, presented a challenge. Okay, a number of challenges.

1. I ran out of topsoil and potting soil, both. It took three stores before I found what I wanted because one was closed, one was out of what I wanted, and the third, finally, had plenty of the plain stuff.

2. I have too many tomato plants. Even with careful planning, they will not all fit in the garden.

3. The soil, even after turning with a layer of homemade compost, is still full of big chunks of red clay.

Solutions:

1. Ace Hardware is my friend. their topsoil contains sand and peat – no phosphates. Their potting soil is a little fancier (see below), but it suits my needs just fine.

2. A few stray tomato plants will go behind the pepper plants in the big garden. If I still have leftovers, they’ll live… well, they’ll live. I’ll find a place.

3. I prepped the tomato garden soil in a big way. Instead of prepping each spot, I dug trenches and prepped the trenches with shred followed by a wheelbarrow full of Ace’s soil. The top layer was still native, complete with heavy clay, but it was much, much better for planting.

Heck. Maybe with this good stuff, I’ll even try growing carrots!

Potting Soil Ingredients - perfect

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Daisy’s Garden Takes Shape: Planting Peppers

Posted on by
1

Episode Two in The Garden Takes Shape took place Saturday evening. I was busy in an air conditioned office during the afternoon shift, entering data from canvassing volunteers. It was unseasonably warm in Wisconsin with a recall race heating up, so I waited until I could work in the shade. Clever, eh? Worked in the election reference right away. If you’re alert, you’ll notice a few more references cleverly hidden in the context of the post.

Performance art or garden sculpture?

This corner , mainly inhabited by “walking” green onions, needed work. It offered cages to be removed & grass roots to pull, and you know the strength of grass-roots organizing. I took care of the space around the onions, and I was ready. Well, almost ready.

I use a variation on Square Foot Gardening. I plan my space, block off the squares, and then figure out how many plants or seeds can fit in the space according to the number of squares in the grid.

What grid, you ask? I’ll show you.

This grid.

My grids are not faithful to the trademarked Square Foot Gardening technique. My grid is fairly accurate (I measure), but it’s not permanent. It’s made of masking tape. By the time I’m done planting and I no longer need the guidelines, it’ll be stuck to my shoes or tangled in the topsoil. That’s all fine with me, since it’s biodegradable.

Saturday night, while the guys in the family shopped for groceries, I dug into the soil and placed my pepper plants in their places. Squared, cubed, or otherwise multiplied, these little seedlings have the power to produce the ingredients for many jars of salsa next August.

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

A chair can hold flowers, too.

Posted on by
3
curbside find #1

Curbside Find #1

Here’s the chair we adopted and converted two years ago.

Curbside Find #2

Here’s the chair we found last week.

Below: behold Chuck creating a hole in the “new” chair.

Chuck, hard at work

 And finally, the completed project.

Chair completed!

The story told in pictures above is the story of Petunia’s gift for Mother’s Day. We found the chair earlier this week. It reminded us of one we’d already converted to a planter (see first photo), so we brought it home and cleaned it up. Chuck cut the hole in the center (no easy feat; this chair was sturdy) and I planted petunias in it. Done!

 

 

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Pure Matters –

Posted on by
Reply

Early last week, a package was on the porch: a product review sample left by FedEx. While overnight shipping has a significant carbon footprint, I understand the need for marketers to get their products out to their bloggers quickly. Within its protective packaging, I found small samples, a cloth shopping bag, and two full-sized bottles of product.

I sampled the combination pro- and pre-biotic for digestive health. I gave the kids’ multi-vitamins to La Petite. She’s 25, but she’s still my kid.

I grumbled about the over-packaging, and then I settled down to read the enclosed information in order to write a review. When I stopped grumbling and actually read the information, I decided that the combination pre-biotic and pro-biotic was safe for me to take and might just counteract the, um, er, stomach distress I’d been feeling lately. Replacing Wisconsin’s rogue governor will make my stomach feel better, too, but our chance to do that is still 22 days off. I’ll stick to Pure Matters to regulate my digestive health.

This product is a Complete Biotic, meaning it’s both prebiotic and probiotic. Probiotics replenish the good bacteria in the digestive tract. One commonly known probiotic is lactobacillus sporogenes, or the live bacteria that makes yogurt, well, yogurt. Prebiotics are supplements that help support the growth of probiotics. Pure Matters’ product is shelf stable, too.

Pure Matters also sent a few sample packs. Their gummi-style vitamins for kids are delicious. I did not try the sleep formula or the green tea extract yet.

Pure Matters sent me samples in order to facilitate my review. I had reservations about their over-packaging, but I liked the product in the box. In the end, I guess that’s what matters. 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares