April 28, 2008
In Vitro Meat and a Food Crisis
Is it just me or does anyone else find it crazy that in a time when we are beginning to learn about how having our global economy and by proxy global food supply inextricably linked together may not in fact be an optimal situation. When the monoculture of our food supply in it's current state is not only not sustainable, but is a precariously balanced thing that could, at the least bit of blight or infestation, collapse and send not only us but the global populations into a further culinary tailspin. That at this time there would be people sitting down to have a serious discussion of how to "manufacture" the flesh of animals, in a petri dish for human consumption?! If companies like Monsanto are already being allowed to patent an organism (seeds and plants), then certainly you have to know that whatever company is able to meet the challenge being, at least in part, sponsored by PETA will be the patent holding, protein supplying, Soylentesque company that will be supplying most of our food. That is madness people!
We need to diversify and decentralize. We as consumers, and I mean that literally as in "we who consume food", need to begin to take responsibility for more of our own diet. If we are able to provide ourselves with even two or three meals a week from our own own land then not only will we be reducing our dependence of foreign oil and foreign foods, but we will be freeing up the foods that we were consuming for those in need of anything to eat. As for the In Vitro meat, it just can't be a good thing. We can't replicate an egg, how are we going to replicate a chicken? We need to consume less meat. That's really all I can say about it. Note: I did not say NONE, just LESS. We would not only be doing the environment and the food crisis some good, we would certainly be doing ourselves some good. I know my waistline agrees.
The more people we can get to at least begin to understand this the better. Share your passion for growing with your friends and associates. Help others to build their passion for it and learn from them, and you'll probably come away a better person not to mention gardener to boot.
P~
Organic pest control
There are approximately 1500 ladybugs in this package. It cost me $9.99 , and I feel will be worth every penny. These little guys were released at dusk (as per instructions on the package.) around our 4 fruit trees, near the raspberries and strawberries, and some in the flower beds. I look forward to having a lot of visits this year from lady bugs while I work in the yard.
I also picked up a cocoon of praying mantis that should carry in the neighborhood of three hundred manti. Between these two I should be able to make a pretty good dent in the aphid population around here. I've done this before in a previous home and loved the surprise of finding a mantis or lady bug every once and a while. This is really the type of gardening that I am enjoying lately. It's a little slower, and not 100% effective, but it will make a big difference, and makes a lot more sense to me, and it helps to build a healthy ecosystem in our yard. If you've not tried this before I encourage you to take a look around to see if you can find them where you are.
P~
April 24, 2008
Wal-Mart...walk the walk!

Last week, I found Green Beans post about the super heroes in our midst. I've been reading about BurbanMoms personal action in her child's school, and about Ms. Terry's crusade to get Clorox to take back their used filters and of course everyone knows there's the omnipresent and over-achieving activism of Crunchy Chicken and her, too many to name, challenges getting people, myself included (No Impact week '07), to get up and actually try something new. It's with this in mind that I've decided to try and get in touch with my inner activist as well.
As I said in the previous post, I like the fact that Wal-Mart is making the reusable bags available, and for a very reasonable price ($1.00 apiece). They also seem to be making a concerted effort toward making some more sustainable choices. However like so many things in the area of lifestyle change, and don't be mistaken it is a lifestyle change to get people to use reusable bags, unless it is relatively easy many people won't do it, more often than not myself included.
I've written a letter to Wal-Mart to try to draw attention to the fact that although they are providing the reusable bags, they are not actually facilitating the use of them. Unfortunately, I'm just one person, and no matter how much noise I make, I'm not going to be able to turn this ship alone. But I would like to be the trim tab, and see if I can start the rudder to moving.
Here is the letter that I've written:
Recently, the Wal-Mart Corporation has begun to take steps toward becoming a more sustainable member of the global retail community. As a conscientious consumer, I have noticed and appreciate this. One of the things that I have noticed along these lines is the availability of re-usable bags at Wal-Mart stores. The reason for this letter is to draw your attention to a problem with the use of these bags at many of your locations.
Because of the layout of the cashier’s island at many Wal-Mart stores, it is very impractical to use these bags with any convenience, let alone ease. The carousel style plastic bag dispenser that is in many of your stores does not allow for the cashier to fill the bag, and as customers there is no surface for us to place the items on while we bag them ourselves. Many of Wal-Mart’s competitors still have these options available, and some even offer a small discount to their customers that choose to use this option.
I hope that Wal-Mart Corporation is not being caught up in the green-washing movement sweeping the country or merely offering these items as another opportunity for a small impulse sale. I would like to see Wal-Mart continue to try to reduce their environmental impact, but would also like to see support for the things that they offer as solutions.
Some things that Wal-Mart could do to further facilitate the use of reusable bags would be to provide a table style checkout area similar to traditional style grocery stores where baggers are present, perhaps limit a couple of lanes to reusable bags at least during peak shopping periods and offer a small discount for recyclable bag users.
Wal-Mart is talking the talk. What I would like to see is for them to walk the walk by taking these suggestions under advisement and looking for ways to improve their shoppers experience while also improving their over all sustainability and reducing their environmental footprint.
Feel free to link to this post if you like and use the banner at the top. In fact I will follow this post with the code needed to link to it, should anyone want it.
link files.

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April 22, 2008
Earth Day 2008 (post II)
We also got to enjoy some local musicians and a group of kids that have a Celtic dance troupe. We've seen them before and their always fun. Plus we all love the Celtic music.
It was a great day and a lot of fun. I hope that through events like this that we can help to get our kids motivated to learn more about being more sustainable. While I was there I was able to hook up with the volunteer coordinator and learned more about being a volunteer at the Center. We may "adopt an area" of the center and make it our own to care for, or even help with some of the projects there. I also offered to share my knowledge and experiences, for what that means, with others. I am certainly passionate about the things I am doing, and think that being involved with a place like this would certainly be a blessing.
Earth Day (post I)
Happy Earth Day everyone!
I actually have another post that I’ll be putting up this evening with a report about the earth day activities that my family and I participated in on Saturday but it was such a full weekend, and I hadn’t posted anything at all so I felt a little out of touch. I Had to get on here to encourage everyone to enjoy and at least have an open mind toward Earth Day. Like my family was in years past, I know there are a lot of others out there that are just running on auto-pilot from day to day and really not giving much thought to the world around them or how they impact it. While I’m not necessarily your iconic, poster-child greenie or anything, I have to admit that my crunchiness has certainly increased of late. For those of you reading that may just be beginning to take stock of your impact on the world, or beginning to increase your sustainability be warned, this type of lifestyle change may be habit forming and can in fact permeate every part of your life; let me elaborate:
HOME: When my wife and I decided last year, after some health related concerns were brought to light (asthma and related allergies), that we needed to make some changes in our home to help create a healthier environment for our children, we began with a move over to all natural/organic cleaners. We learned that a clean house doesn’t have to smell like a pine forest of a grove of lemons, it just has to smell “clean” (i.e. no smell at all). If we do add scents it’s through natural herbs and oils, and used sparingly. We also had some home renovations that we had planned on for some time that were not only pushed up, but were looked at in a new light. We removed the carpet from our home in all but the bedrooms, and replaced it with hardwood. On the front end, using red oak was not the most sustainable choice because of the time it takes to grow, but over the years, never having to replace the carpet and throw the old in the landfill, not to mention the air quality improvements to our home make it a much better choice. We chose a low VOC, water soluble sealant for the floors and have made use of the scrap for various other home projects in order to reduce our waste. We’ve also re-painted almost the entire interior of our home with ZERO VOC green seal certified paint. Using this type of paint will not only add no off-gassing chemical particulates to our interior air quality, but will also help to seal in any of them from the original paints and building supplies that were used or applied when building the home.
FOOD: One of my goals last year was also to lose some weight, and to generally get myself into better shape. As I began to watch what I ate and exercise more, I read and learned about what it was exactly that I was eating. I wanted to find out about my food chain, and my place in it. I read Michael Pollan’s “Omnivores Dilemma” and was shocked. My wife and I began to slowly move our family towards more healthful eating. We, or more to the point, she began to make many of our foods from scratch and we tried our hands at canning and preserving some of the foods from our modest garden. Today, we have nearly doubled the total growing area of our garden, planned to grow crops that we use as staples and that we can easily preserve for use later in the year. We’re raising chickens at home to provide us with organic eggs and meat and are continually learning about ways to improve our diet by eating less meats, more plant and locally produced foods when we can.
Outdoors: As I said, we’ve significantly increased the scope of our home food production through our garden and livestock keeping. Our yard too has begun to find a balance between the natural world and the cultivated one. Last year, for instance, we made the decision to not treat our lawn with any weed control other than picking them, and used no pesticides at all. We noticed a marked increase in not only the number of beneficial insects but in the balance between them and the nuisance insects; this year I’ve already seen a larger number of bees than from this time last year. We made some landscaping improvements last year too and rather than buying a bunch of new items, tried to make use of recycled and re-purposed materials whenever possible.
So you can see, even for a family that wasn’t making the decision necessarily to “go-green”, once you start really looking into the way you live, and how your choices are really impacting your family and the world around you, it’s hard not to let that way of thinking creep into all facets of your life. Was it hard? That’s really the question isn’t it? We’re so conditioned for ease and quickness in our modern world that sometimes it seems like making changes would take away from our quality of life. I admit to you that yes, sometimes it is a little harder. It would be easier to buy my produce than to grow it myself. It would certainly be easier for A~ to run out and buy bread every couple of days than it is for her to make it. But I submit that the benefits so much outweigh the inconvenience that the net gain is substantial. I lost over 20 lbs last year without dieting, my kids have discovered the pleasure of warm bread straight from the oven and our family health has never been better.
If this your first year paying attention to Earth Day, don’t get too caught up in the hype. By that I mean not to get depressed or nervous by the reports of all the crises in the environment and what you need to do to fix the world; that’s a lot to take on by yourself! Take a look at your home and your lifestyle; “Think globally, act locally”. It’s a cliché now to some degree, but it still holds true, make the changes in your home and in your life and take things a step at a time. You’ll be surprised at how much better and more “in tune” you feel with yourself and the world and what a difference individual action can have. If you’re a seasoned greenie, crunchy to the core, let me know what you’re planning for the year. Where did you come from and what are the lessons you’ve learned? I have so much more to learn, and enjoy the global community we’ve all contributed to building here online.
Be well…Namaste
P~
April 19, 2008
Feeling Cocky (when good birds go bad.)
April 18, 2008
you call it...
April 17, 2008
Thought for Today
I’m a man of the past
and I’m living in the present
and I’m walking in the future, stepping in the future.
~Peter Tosh - Mystic Man
Could I have said it any better?
Some days I feel like I was placed in the wrong century. I find my interests piqued far more often by an investigation of the ancient methods and practices than by promises of a shining new day through new technologies.
I wrote last year (Almost to the day) that I have found “Happiness is being where you are” (living in the present, enjoying our blessings, and wanting for naught), to be a great truth.
While at the same time trying to prepare myself for an uncertain future and being more mindful of my decisions and their future repercussions.
Thoughts anyone?
P~
April 16, 2008
GOOD NEWS!!
I just received an email from our cities Planning Commission Chairman to let me know that the Land Use ordinance with the amendment in it to allow the birds passed last night and is now on to the City Counsel. The chairman was a supporter of the amendment all along, and in fact was the person to initiate it. Having been an active proponent of the change, and having corresponded with the commission a number of times on the subject, he assumed that since I could not be at the meeting last night that I would want to know the answer, which I of course did, and am very happy about.
Now…where are those email addresses for the city counsel??? Time to start this wheel squeaking again.
April 15, 2008
A thousand words.
This is the back of the hen-house, just below the nesting box. It's the area that was designed to be able to be pulled out for cleaning as well as for increased ventilation. I'm leaving it in for a couple of days, at least until the birds get used to walking on the wire.
Speaking of the wire floor. In the picture above you can see that half of the floor is covered with 1/2 inch hardware wire cloth. Actually it's all covered, but I have a piece of wood in there to get them used to it slowly. There's also two roosting bars. One of them is about 4 inches in front of the nests to try to encourage the hens to not roost on the nests, but on the bars instead. This should limit the amount of manure in the nests, and on the eggs in the future.
I told you I gave them a little clue later on. I helped a couple of them onto the ramp, and a couple came down on their own.
A couple of them just decided to hang out on the roosting bars. Here you can see the configuration of the two roosting bars.
Hope you all like! We are very happy with it. I will be adding the ability to put some old bike tires onto the heavy side of the coop so that I can pick up and move them if I want to. This should after all be more or less a very large chicken tractor. A~ is very pleased as well, and has said that she will let it go in the yard. :) Tonight was the vote at the planning commission too, perfect timing, so we'll see if it was able to go on to the next level or not. (fingers crossed.) I'll let you all know tomorrow.
P~
April 14, 2008
Bags-O-Flour and food storage
One of the primary things that goes hand in hand with having food storage is eating it. If you store a basement full of whole wheat, beans, rice, oats, etc. but you

Another component to this food storage formula will be a our 100ft diet. That's right, the garden! What better activity can we all incorporate in our homes than some sort of freedom garden. Grow things that you know your family will eat through the year, and preserve what you can for later. Try a couple of new plants too, but in limited quantities. Biodiversity is a necessity in a healthy garden, but you don't want to take up a lot of your growing space with something that you may not like. Particularly if your on a small suburban lot such as ours. Next year you can expand if you like it enough.
Food Storage guide. - A fairly comprehensive guide to starting a family food storage program.
The boys are back in town...Spring is wonderful
One of the first of the 150 onion sets that were planted last weekend to poke it's head up.
The peas are popping up too. If you look at the background, you can see some mesclun mix that I plated under the trellising start to poke up as well. My hope is that by the time our temps here get too hot for the greens, maybe the peas will shade them... it could work?
Here we have a couple of sprouts from the same bed. Radishes that are growing along the front of the bed, and some spinach sprouts that are in rows inside the bed
I also managed to get a couple of the "leggy" sprouts from the peat pellets into some larger planters. Those are mostly tomatoes; Brandywine, Hamson and San Marzano, and a couple of butternut squash that my uncle sent to me.
I love spring... such promise for the future, life springing up all over... I hope you all had a great weekend and that your gardens are waking up as well.
P~
April 11, 2008
Oh...OK then?
The last company to stop by had a couple of people walking around the sidewalk in front of our house looking and pointing at our yard when A~ saw them. She went outside and asked if she could help them with anything. After they gave her generally the same pitch, she and they exchanged much the same conversation as the previous ones. This company, to their credit, was not ready to give up just yet and made a final attempt to win our business by adding "Well you know if you don't like to use fertilizers, we do have some organic products that will kill those dandelions for you." What do you think she said? She tells me she looked them dead in the face and matter-of-factly said "We eat the dandelions, so we don't want any chemicals on them either." Oh man, I wish I could have been there to see the look they gave her when they finally said, "Oh... OK then... well, have a nice day...?!" Priceless! I love that woman!
You know I understand why their in business, it is nice to have a lush green lawn. It's nice to have large sweet tomatoes in the winter too, but are they really worth the price? God made the earth to run in cycles. The ground needs to have some down time too. People burn out and get sick when they run too long, getting up early and working till late, gleaning ever more and more production from themselves. I shouldn't think that the ground is any different. Is feeding it fertilizers to increase production and pesticides and weed killers to keep the diseases and pests as bay really much different than a person working too many hours and taking stimulants to "Stay alert", and vitamins and medicines to stay "healthy"? No. What happens to the people that do that? They get sick, tired, unhealthy and miserable, and over all their time and effort may increase, but their true production and quality level decreases. It's just not a sustainable way to live. Just the same, I may be able to grow things faster and longer with the help of some of today's finest NPK wonder drugs for the garden. But over time the ground will suffer, quality will suffer and the health of myself, my family and my friends will suffer. It's not sustainable. At some point, something has to give.
As A~ and I began to change a lot of the things in our daily lives last year, there came a natural point where one thing led to another. Does it make sense to try to have a healthier home environment if your not going to eat healthier? Why bother to eat healthier if everything you buy is just full of tons of chemicals and growth hormones? Why grow your own food if your just going to mimic all the unsustainable practices that you're trying to get away from to begin with? And on it goes. This is why I refer very often to these changes as "the journey" that we're on. It really is a journey from one place, of relative ignorance of our actions and their effects, to another of greater participation in the process and connection to the world around us. Thanks for peeking in once and a while and traveling with us on it.
Thought for Today
It’s been a while since I’ve shared a thought for today. I heard this song the other day and thought it would be a nice one to share.
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our mind.
~Robert Nesta Marley (Bob Marley) – Redemption Song
Remember, we are only ones in control of our state of mind. “They” cannot make us angry unless “We” give them permission.
Own your happiness and Be The Change.
P~
Sprouting progress
I do have a plan however. A~ and I were talking the other day and I said how much I wish I could have a green house; both to grow food through the bulk of the winter, as well as being able to sprout lots of sprouts in the spring. We are NOT the type to run out and buy a greenhouse, regardless of how well we can justify it. But we are the type
Never too early to start thinking ahead... now, if I can only remember to rotate my sprouts tomorrow to keep them from getting any more slanted.
P~
April 10, 2008
Goings on.
Hope you're all having a great week. Till tomorrow.
P~
April 7, 2008
Chickens 101 - pasting up

The issue that I did want to take a minute to cover is called "pasting up"; you can see a picture of it below. It's a rather poorly named condition I think, as it really gives you no idea what it's all about. The reason I mentioned the Living with Chickens book was because it was in it's pages that I first heard about this problem. Chickens will have a tendency, I have found, to hunker down and not do anything when they are stressed. This is particularly true with your chicks, especially after transporting them, but really whenever their schedule is changed.
What pasting up is, in essence, is an unusually thick and "pasty" manure that gets stuck to the chicks feathers around the vent area. In and of itself, this isn't a problem. However, if left unchecked, it can build on itself throughout a matter of hours and eventually close off the chicks vent entirely. The bird, in this case, will not be able to expel waste properly, and will get basically backed up. When this happens, the chicks will stop eating or drinking, because they are filled up. Chicks that don't drink water at least, don't last long.
I know a couple of readers, and a some of the other blogs that I frequent, had had some problems with their chicks this spring. I don't know if this could have had anything to do with it, but since I know there are a couple of you that are looking into getting birds, I wanted to share the information and maybe save a chick sometime down the line. I would have liked to have heard about it sooner. Now that I do know about it, I was able to find it immediately in a couple of our new chicks, and so far no difficulties.
Weekend wrap-up
WOW, I got a lot done this weekend. Sorry for no pictures but I honestly didn’t have the time to stop and get the camera, an unusual thing for me, I assure you. Here’s the breakdown for what got done:
• Turned over and hoed all vegetable garden beds and parts of the front yard beds adding compost where needed.
• Planted 150 onion sets.
• Planted multiple rows of carrots.
• Planted Norland Red and Yukon Gold Potatoes in planter buckets.
• Pulled and transplanted four Italian flat-leaf parley plants from last years garden into the front-yard beds.
• Placed 2 recycled concrete Pavers into garden beds.
• Ripped recycled 2x4’s into 2x2’s for use with the chicken coop.
• Completed rough framing of the coop, and cut the purchased ¼” OSB sheets into size for the hen house.
• And of course never wanting to neglect the family time, we managed to squeeze in a Grizzlies Hockey game on Friday and a trip to the community center on Saturday for some swimming for the boys and a little workout for Mom and Dad. Good Times!
Geez, I got a little tired just writing that list. Needless to say it was a very busy and productive weekend. At least I get to come to work today for 9 hrs and relax a little. LOL. If the weather holds, which is questionable, I’ll try to get some pictures up of the progress for those of you who may be interested. Otherwise, I will definitely have a post tonight about a potential Chick killer that I learned about while raising my first batch of little ones and that has reared its head again. So check in tomorrow morning for that, particularly if you’re thinking of getting some chicks in the near future.
Have a great day all.
P~
April 5, 2008
Web Ringers.
For one reason or another, we've all started walking down an uncommon path. Let us be company to each other as we walk it and talk and share and see where we end up.
Ooops, I did it again.
It wasn't really as spontaneous as it sounds though. The ordinance that I have been pushing for, and that I am still imminently confident will pass (hopefully this month!) will allow us to keep up to 5 hens. Although we currently have 7, only three of those are confirmed pullets. The other four should be males; I am still questioning whether or not that's the case though, there's a couple that just look "feminine" for lack of a better description. So anyway, we've been planning on going to the local farm store today for their advertised "Chick Day" and I'm glad we did. It was absolute mayhem there this afternoon, I can only imagine a Saturday afternoon.
The new chicks are Brown Leghorns, and will grow up to be very nice additions to the others. I currently have them in the basement, in the same type of box brooder that I used for the older chickens that we have. Speaking of which, this weekend I'll be re-purposing some discarded 2x4's into a new home for the chooks. They need a bigger feeder,
As far as my other plans, there's prepping and planting potatoes, planting second beets, and prepping the other beds for future planting, weather permitting. I hope you all are expecting better weather than we are. I love the rain and the gloom, but it kills us when it always comes on Sat-Sun. Geez! Some people have to work all week you know?
April 3, 2008
2008 Garden Update - Potted Potatoes
Here you can see what I did at the bottom of the pots. I lined the drain holes with, and a placed a thin layer of straw at the bottom of the pot again to help with drainage. Soggy potato plants make for disease and poor harvest from what I've read.
April 2, 2008
Small-Scale Coop-Care

The one other thing that I do when maintaining the coop is to break up the mulch before adding a new layer. After the mulch gets a couple of inches thick, I find that the birds have scratched it up into corners or mounds and have compacted the rest to a certain degree. I break this up and redistribute it evenly around the coop before adding the thin layer of new dust.
2008 Garden update
Things aren't coming up as fast as I had hoped; some of the other trays we have aren't nearly as full of sprouts as these, but I do have some tomato's coming up and some of our annual flowers have sprouted as well.
As I was saying the other day about never mastering gardening... well there you go. We get a little better every year. I just keep waiting for the year to come when I don't have anything to do in the late winter / early spring besides plant sprouts. Next year right? Always next year!
Glad to see so many of you are doing well with your sprouts this year. Looking forward to more updates.
P~