A Little Dose of Inspiration

Photo from the lexicon of sustainability

For those of us who have been struggling through a long and difficult winter, and I think that is most of us, a little dose of inspiration sounds pretty good. I came across a great video on YouTube this morning that I will share with you. I also got an email from Hubby with a link to a Mother Earth News article about urban community gardens. I know you've heard urban community garden before, but this one is different. For those of you who are actually living in an urban setting this article is definitely a good read, but those of you living in the burbs or in the country should not disdain to read it as well. I live in what might be termed burban country (lol, yes you read that correctly,) and what really impressed me about this article was how much stronger the community ties became as a result of this project and how much more content and secure the people involved felt. They were actually building community where there had been one in name only, but not in reality. 

Click here to read the Mother Earth News Article

In the video "Permaculture, a Quiet Revolution" we are taken on a journey to the 8th International Permaculture Convergence in Brazil, where over 200 permaculture design course graduates and their mentors from over 43 countries have gathered to learn and to share their experience in order to prepare for and mitigate the looming global crisis. Their goal, to create sustainability now through self reliance. The only way this goal succeeds is if we all join the (r)evolution and share the message with as many people as possible as often as possible. I hope that you will be inspired and that you will catch the permaculture bug and spread it wherever you go.

Live light! 

Waste Not Want Not - Made Pet Food Today

I said I was going to do it and I did. This evening in about a half an hour and with some leftover items that might otherwise have gone to waste I made enough pet food to feed these two little darlings for about a week. I had this half eaten duck that we had tossed in the freezer after Christmas dinner.  We figured we would do something with it before long. We had boiled the duck yesterday thinking we were going to make soup, but just weren't feeling like it last night and ended up making a simple vegetarian dinner. And then we had this casserole dish full of couscous that was a bit overcooked and mushy. So this evening I picked all the meat off the duck and pureed it in the food processor. I mixed this with the couscous and made a nice thick meat paste which I taste tested on both the cat and the dog. They lapped it up! Literally. So I figured it was a winner and proceeded to package it up in 1/4 cup servings using an ice cream scoop and some squares of wax paper. When I was all done I had about 32 patties in a gallon zip lock. 

Now I can just take a couple of patties out in the evening and put them in the refrigerator to defrost. They should be ready to go by the next morning. It will be a nice treat for the pets and will reduce my pet food bill while reducing my waste. I wouldn't give this to them every day, because I'm not sure that it would provide 100% balanced nutrition. I would recommend looking into well researched and recommended recipes on line or check with your vet, if you are planning to start providing all of your pet's food. 

This experiment just reminded me that when we use our creativity and think outside the box we can help to reduce waste and supply our own needs while saving money. I think I will probably try this again in the future with other leftovers.

Another great thing about this. Since we eat local meat and organic foods, I know that what I'm feeding my pets is just as healthy as what I'm eating myself, and that is something I can 't be assured of when I am feeding them pet food from the store or even from a local feed store for animals. 

Saving the Soul of the Earth

The magical work of artist Bruno Torfs is featured in the film. Please visit his website. 

Today I would like to share with you  a great independent film "Anima Mundi; peak oil, climate change, permaculture and Gaia theory."  "Anima Mundi" is an artistic, spiritual and hard hitting look at the current state of the spirit of the world and an introductory instruction manual for saving the soul of the Earth. 

Please watch this movie, please listen to the lesson and please, please, share this post with as many people as you can. We need to wake up. I speak to myself as well as to all of you. Americans especially need to wake up and realize that we can not go on using resources at our current levels. The message that we need to share is that we can live completely full, happy and satisfied lives without destroying the world (and we are destroying the world). In fact we can live much happier lives with fewer things. We need to stop listening to the voices in the system that tell us that happiness is found in more and more things. We need to start listening to the voices that remind us that we had a story before cheap energy permitted the growth of our current bloated consumer economy. It was a story that was full of imagination, that created some of the greatest art, and the greatest minds, knowledge and logic the world has known. A story that was peopled with families who lived full, contented lives that did not destroy their environment.  

The fact of the matter is that we cannot continue to live a good life if we do not make changes now. This isn't the first time in human history that we have tapped out our resource base leading to desertification, massive human migration and wars of conquest. The fertile crescent was after all once a fertile region filled with cities and farms until the combination of human activity and climate changed tipped it over the edge turning it into a desolate moonscape incapable of supporting human life.  Today there are probably more than 10 times as many people on the planet as there were then and we have already expanded into all the habitable regions of the world. The world is already tipping into the area of peak resources. Not just peak oil, but gold, copper, silver and other ores and resources. As these resources become more scarce we are going to have to learn how to utilize the resources that we have already mined by much higher levels of recycling. But we will not solve the problem of peak resources just by recycling. We are also going to have to reduce our overall demand on Earth's resources. If you agree, please join the (r)evolution. 

Variations on a Theme and The No Waste Home

Thanks to: http://www.newphilaoh.com/html/recycling_program.htm

Waste is an excess output of a system which has not been put to beneficial use. When waste reaches extreme levels it becomes pollution. Let's look at one scenario. If you have 2 acres and you have a cow or two, those cows will produce manure adequate to fertilize the soil. Now if you put 20 cows on those same two acres you are going to have way more manure than you will use as fertilizer. The manure will pile up and rot and create methane gas and when it rains the water that runs off  your property and into the nearest stream can lead to excessive algae growth and low oxygen conditions in the water. This same principle of waste becoming pollution applies to far more than just manure. 

Permaculture attempts to design integrated systems in which the output of one element of the system becomes the input of another element ultimately creating closed loops which feedback on themselves and generate no waste. The goal of eliminating waste from our systems is one of the primary goals of the One Earth Revolution. With this in mind I would like to suggest that you have a look at the blog of a family who have been living the no waste life in spades. They've done it and they are doing a great job sharing the message, so there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel. I'm just going to share their link here. 

Enjoy. I hope it will inspire you to embark on a no waste adventure of your own. Whether it be your home, your office, your home school group or girl or boy scout troop. No attempt is too small and certainly none is too large. Your church, your school, your neighborhood, your village....... Take it as far as you like, as far as you can. 

First Earth - Earth First

Greetings all. Sorry I missed you on Wednesday. But as revolutions can not be stopped by the flu, we are coming to you today from the couch. Very grateful for Hubby who has kept me supplied with plenty of fluids to help keep me hydrated and get me on the mend that much quicker. It is such a blessing to have a warm comfortable home in which to recouperate. There are many people in the world who do not have that. In addition to my warm comfortable home I am fortunate enough to be able to afford this computer on which I communicate with you and the electricity and internet connection with which to operate it. I am truly blessed.

Thinking about how blessed I am makes me think of the many people in the world who are not, and the future generations who certainly will not be blessed if we don't rein in our rampant resource destruction and develop gentler more sustainable methods of living on this planet. 

The embedded video. "First Earth" takes you on a journey around the world to meet people who are learning and teaching such methods. It also delves in the the very deep, personal and spiritual reasons for the importance of adopting natural building practices. In the interest of blogging etiquette, I will warn you that one person drops the f-bomb early on, but other than that I don't recall any explicit language. 

I hope you will enjoy and be impressed and inspired.

It's Time for a New Economy

So I have been thinking for some time now about doing a post on alternative exchange methods and a "New Economy." I  started to write something up about the need to return to more traditional methods of exchange. I'd even purchased a URL and taken other steps in order to start setting up Hour Exchange of the Berwicks.  In light of the recent data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus, the constant fear of identity theft and concerns over financial insecurity, the time for this article seemed more than ripe. And then I saw this graphic! It bares a startling resemblance to my own list. Which got me thinking the time must be even more ripe than I thought. So.... here it is....

Source - https://www.facebook.com/foodisfree

Let's take it from the top:

Grow your own food or support a local CSA. Growing your own food is a great way to reduce food cost and increase the healthiness of  your diet. It is also one more way of bringing the production of our needs closer to home and increasing our security and sustainability in an uncertain world.

Make it yourself. If we make it ourselves, be it clothing or food or whatever, we have taken a big step toward local sourcing. Local sourcing helps to balance costs, prices and wages and reduces the impacts of production and distribution on the environment. Making things ourselves from local materials and ingredients also helps to build the LOCAL economy.  There are those who will use the argument that you shouldn't stop buying clothes from Bangladesh or coffee from Africa (etc and so on), because after all the countries that export those goods depend on selling to you for their economy. This is a justification on the part of the corporations who make their money on importing these goods at cut rate prices and selling them at huge mark ups. One of the first ways that we can help improve income equality and fair distribution of wealth is to advocate for higher wages for people who work in these factories. And one way to do that is to refuse to buy the products until the workers are paid a fare wage. 

Swap it! Borrowing and sharing really go together. How many of us have tools and other things that we use only very rarely? How many of us buy something because we need it today and we might only need it once or twice a year and perhaps not even that often. If we will share those things, we could reduce the demand for them. (Now watch how this dominoes.)  Neighbors begin sharing shovels and snow blowers and other tools. Fewer shovels and snow blowers and other tools are needed, fewer are produced. Environmental impact decreases. More people are sharing. They purchase fewer things. They need less space. They move to smaller homes. They need less money.  They work fewer hours or work from home. They commute less, the environmental impact decreases and decreases again.... and so on.  

Exchanging time for time (hour for hour) is one way of reducing income inequality and working toward a new economy.  Isn't it true that all of us are equally valuable and that all of our labor is equally valuable? But the monetary system that we have established leads people to feel that their worth is based on their income. Hogwash! Exchanging time for time allows us all to be on a level playing field, builds confidence and self worth, and eliminates roadblocks to success and improvement.

Reduce, Reuse, Repair, and Recycle I've already covered these here and here, and I will reiterate here that one of the primary and most important of these is reduce. Reduce, Simplify, Right-Size, work toward sustainability. 

What it all boils down to though is that we all need to learn a little something from the folks who have learned to do with less and not just 'make do' but live abundantly and be truly happy, happier perhaps than many of those who think they can only be happy if they have wealth, possessions and power.

Remember life is not in things but in experiences. So experience it and live light. 

Coffee, Tea or the Environment?

Just brewing up a cup of  "Not Coffee" as I sit down to write this blog

I've finally done it. After almost 2 years of trying and failing I have finally given up coffee. I've been coffee free for 2 whole days! And to be honest I don't really feel tired. I think that after a few more days I will be sleeping better and I will feel better than ever. 

I have often thought that giving up coffee would be a good idea for health reasons, but then after reading Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel and learning just how many acres it takes to produce the coffee I drink, I was determined that I needed to give it up for environmental reasons. It was still  hard though. I would wake up in the morning exhausted after a long night of tossing and turning and say to myself  "I'm just so tired, I've got to have just one cup", then 3PM rolled around and I HAD to have a cup to get my through until 5PM and keep me alert on the long drive home. It was a vicious circle! 

This week, after a couple more sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and yet another article on the impact of coffee production and distribution on the environment I knew the time had finally come. I got up in the morning and brewed a cup of herbal tea. I'm not looking back. When I'm really in a pinch I can brew up a cup on my friend Dawnie's famous "not coffee" tea. If you'd like to get your hands on some, you can reach Dawn via her Facebook page Sun Moon Stars Herbals.

For those of you who say, "well that's all well and good for you, but I just can't give up my coffee and/or tea." Fret not! There is  a way that you can have your coffee and tea and reduce your impact on the environment. This article has some information about the impact and the options. And this one from the National Resource Defense Council has a more in depth discussion of the topic. And remember, every step you take, even the little ones, make an impact. If everyone who reads this reduces their coffee consumption by even 10% that will be positive impact for the planet. And the more you reduce the more positive the impact. 

I hope that you will find these resources informative and helpful. And until next time.... Travel Light!

Time for Tiny Houses

The Bodega from Tumbleweed Tiny Houses

My whole adventure in sustainability began with an article on tiny houses. Pictured first was one of the earliest and smallest of the tiny houses built by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Given that I might not have been here today writing this blog, if it had not been for that article, it seems appropriate that I should touch on the subject of tiny houses. In fact, it seems like I should have touched on it a lot sooner. 

For those of you who are curious, that article lead me to do a search on tiny houses and then I found "We the Tiny House People" a documentary about tiny homes and sustainable living. From there it just snowballed. About the same time I read "Midnights with the Mystic" by Cheryl Simone and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. Somehow the synergy of these two experiences close together launched me into my research on sustainability and permaculture.  But I digress. On to the tiny houses!

As we face a world that has less and less to offer in the way of resources to more and more people, we are all going to have to reevaluate the line between wants and needs. One of the major areas of discrepancy between want and need is in our choices of shelter. Here in the US, most of us live in homes that are far larger than what we need. And these homes contain far more stuff than can strictly (or perhaps even loosely) be described as needs. When we begin to really look at the energy that we put into purchasing and maintaining our homes we start to see that many of us have become wage slaves in order to maintain a standard of living that is far above what is necessary or sustainable. In so doing we have also shackled ourselves to a way of living that is neither ecologically friendly nor truly fulfilling for we have traded a life rich in experience for one that is full of crap (you thought I was going to say rich in stuff didn't you? Well, I'm just calling it like it is folks). 

I have personally embarked on a path toward what I call right-sizing. For many folks, particularly here in the US this will likely involve some down-sizing. While it is not just about the size of the home, (there is also: the amount and type of clothing we wear, the amount and type of food we eat, the number of hours we work and the distance we commute, just for starters) the size of the home is greatly impacted and does greatly impact many of the other aspects of our lives. With this in mind I thought it appropriate to share with you several links to resources on tiny houses and tiny living. I hope you will find them as inspirational and motivational as I have. 

Mortgage Free Tiny House
Honey I Shrunk the House
The Tiny House Blog
Review of Tiny Homes Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
An article on tiny house bathrooms
Two articles from "The Tiny Life" one on tiny houses and sustainability here and another on the tiny house movement.
And finally one on "The Tiny House Film" in which you get to meet the characters that are featured in the film.

There are so many more great links that I could share with you, but I just have to leave it with these for now. 

Enjoy my friends and live small. Because living small is Living Large!

Population Growth - Bit of a Rant

I have spent a good deal of time over the last couple of years ranting to my family, and the few friends who will listen to me rant, about the issue of population growth and the unsustainable rate at which it continues. This one may get me in trouble with a few folks, and I do beg your indulgence, if it comes off a bit harsh. It is not my intention to second guess the decisions that families have made in the past with regards to their personal choice on family size. It is my intention to suggest that folks who are currently starting families or considering starting families should do just that... consider. Take the time to really think about the impact that bringing another life into the world will have on your future, the future of the child, the future of your community and the future of the planet. And now stop and consider what impact that same decision has when multiplied by all the women of childbearing age and their partners. You can find information on world population trends and projections here: http://www.jsk.gov.in/world_population.asp 

I'm frustrated when I see our media showcasing large families with shows like Jon and Kate Plus 8 and The Duggars. We've even got reality TV about teenage moms. There is way too much attention being paid to the drama of the American family and way too little attention being paid to the impact of the resource hungry American family upon the planet. And it's not just American families either. It's the whole world. The developing world is booming when it comes to population. They are also developing a taste for all those material possessions we in the developed world have become so fond of. Who can blame them? And what can be done?

We need to get active and get involved. We need to support organizations that bring the word about the need for population control and the tools to affect it to the world. And we need to realize that we can do more in this country as well. More of us can make the decision to have small families, or not to have families.  More of us can make the decision to curtail the rampant consumption of precious resources that we have taken for granted for most of our lives, but which we are now beginning to realize simply can't continue indefinitely. And more of us can start making these decisions NOW. We can't leave it for our children or our children's children. The impact of the decisions made by today's mothers (or women who choose not to be mothers) will be felt for generations to come. 

One last little rant. We need to stop listening to slanted government studies that predict gloom and doom for our economies if growth rates drop while the percentage of the population that is deemed 'old' continues to increase. We are going to pay for the population boom one way or the other. We'll either pay it in higher costs of elder care and perhaps higher taxes to pay for that care, or we'll pay it in attempts to repair damaged ecosystems. Attempts which may or may not succeed. In the end the ultimate price may be paid in a planet which can no longer support human life as we know it. 

Please give this some thought, check out the resources and do some further research on the subject on your own. And then, please, please get involved in solving the problem in any way that you can.

Resources:
https://www.unfpa.org/worldwide/family-planning-arab-countries-2.pdf
ttp://www.jsk.gov.in/world_population.asp 
http://www.billmckibben.com/maybe-one.html 
http://www.billmckibben.com/index.html
http://www.radicalsimplicity.org/

Until next time, Live Light

New Year's Cleaning and Reflection

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you are ready for a year filled with adventure, personal growth and achievement. I know I am. 

As I look to the new year I often spend the day cleaning up the house and getting things in order for what the year will bring. Today as I tidied up my kitchen I was pondering on sustainable decorating and cleaning. While a nice tidy house always brings a sense of satisfaction, I'm sure that none of us is deeply in love with the cleaning process that it takes to get it there. A few thoughts crossed my mind, so I thought I would share them with you today. I give you fare warning that this may ramble a bit. 

Avoid dust collectors. I've decided that it is much nicer to add warmth and character to my home with things that are also useful rather than just things that collect dust. Warm colorful afghans draped over the back of the couch and chair add a little flare and they're handy one those cool Maine evenings. Teapots and vintage pitchers on the shelves are attractive and get used often enough to keep them free of dust. A basket full of knitting adds a homey touch and provides entertainment, amusement and useful items. Keeping library books in a basket is another homey touch that also keeps them organized and helps to be sure they get back to the library on time. 

Re-gift and give mathoms. You'd be surprised at how many folks would be just as happy with something of yours that they have often admired as with something you went out and bought. Anyone can spend money, but giving of your personal items takes a bit more sacrifice sometimes. Today isn't the first day that I've given thought to this. As I was getting the house ready for the holidays I noticed some decorative plates that were hanging on the wall. My mother has often admired these plates so, while they were quite attractive,  I took the plates down from the wall and gave them to my mother for Christmas. She was very happy to receive them and I was able to 'reuse' them. So it was a win for both of us and for the environment. In addition I have saved myself the chore of dusting them. Since Mom has a glass fronted hutch for her dishes she won't need to dust them either!

These musings lead me to thinking about other ways that we can make our decorating and house work more sustainable. For me this means; friendly to the environment and to the people who live in the home as well as the ones responsible for keeping the place clean. I'll  have more on this in a later post. Stay tuned and in the meantime live lightly.

Happy Holidays from the Homestead

Well folks, I'm sorry I missed you on Saturday the 21st and I'm a day late with this current post. I promise you that I have been a busy little sustainability bee in the mean time. On Saturday we had 23 friends old and new at the house for a Yuletide potluck. For fun we tore strips from some old shirts that were headed for the rag bag and we wrote New Year wishes on them and tied them to this giant wishing web that we constructed in the corner of our dining room. In the spring we will hang this garland from a tree or from the garden fence. 

 

I've also been very busy making posters for the Berwick Winter Farmers' Market! We are so thrilled that Berwick is going to finally have its own market. Markets will be held on Sundays from 10am to 2pm in the Berwick Town Hall Auditorium on January 19th, February 16th and March 16th. 

I was also busy making preparations for Christmas Eve dinner with the family featuring a local duck courtesy of our friend Tinuviel, and local veggies from our second winter CSA share. To round out my holiday celebration and preparations I made stockings for my son and homemade lavender and bay cologne for my husband and son with lavender from my own garden. We have right sized our Christmas so that we do only stockings and have set a $50 limit on total expense of stocking contents.  Home-made items help to fill up the stocking with more love at less expense. 

All in all it was a busy, friend and family filled, blessed and sustainable local holiday. I hope yours was blessed as well. 

Let's add a 4th R: Repair!

So a girl gets herself a pair of the most fabulous little black boots. 

image from http://emmalinabeauty.blogspot.com/2012/08/paying-homage-to-topshop-boots.html

(This girl is not a shoe junkie.) And she wares them almost every day. Well, they're fashionable and versatile. They go with just about everything and before you know it that little hard plastic cap on the heel is just shot. It's worn right through! I wish I had a picture to show you, but you'll just have to imagine it. There is the shoe with the black plastic all worn and ragged and this strange white plastic honeycomb showing through. Now I got these fabulous boots second hand, which is already reuse right? And so they wore out and I tossed them (well actually I think Hubby may have squirreled them away and partsed them out for the leather). But then this morning, as I was getting ready for work, I realized I didn't have any sturdy little black boots with chunky little heels that wouldn't make me feel like I was walking around on stilts all day like the ones I was wearing.  I suddenly thought, "gosh I wish I had those fabulous little black boots!" This thought was immediately followed by, "I probably could have repaired them." Which was followed by, "You know, we really need to add "repair" to that great list of: reduce, reuse, recycle."

I think that often times the excuse for new acquisitions is that something we currently own has become less efficient in its operation due to wear and tear or has become non-functional due to same or to mistreatment. Often these over-loved and utilized objects could be restored and or repaired for a fraction of the input of resources and money that replacing them would cost. So the next time you have some object that is worn down but not quite out - just grab your trusty electronic device and Google away to find great how to tips and videos on how to repair it or, if you prefer, search for local repair persons and support a local business. Perhaps you will learn some new skills, find a new interest or meet a new friend. They are all good things and you will be helping the environment and the local economy to boot. (No pun intended, no really....) It's a win, win, win!

As for this girl, I guess it's off to the thrift store to find me another pair of fabulous second hand boots. And the next time I'm feeling a bit down-at-the heel I'll just take my own advice and get a little knowledge on how to spruce up those tired old clod hoppers and get them ready for dancing again. 

Until next time, dance lightly...