Catalyst

When I wrote my last post, to be quite honest, I was pretty down. It really just put a damper on everything I felt we were trying to do. Obviously I won't let anyone stop me from having a perfectly legal garden, and I had already worked to change the laws so that I could keep my chickens so they're not going anywhere. The thing is that our garden wasn't only so we could produce food for ourselves. We love the feeling we get when we're able to give a lot of it away. We try to make multiple donations to a local women's shelter and of course ”produce bomb” the neighbors (those we can stand). But it was more than that. I felt like I was trying to point out during conversations with people, and during the beginning gardening classes that I teach, that this is possible... Our society can begin to take back at least some part of our food security and we can do it in our own backyards. I guess I was just disheartened that what I was trying so hard to do not only fell on many deaf ears, it was actually seen in a negative way? I, whether I was well meaning or not, was considered that ”trashy” neighbor that no one wants to live by. My wife and I have talked a long time about leaving the area we currently live in and trying to find some place perhaps more “tuned in” to the same things as we are. Our kids go to school a few towns over and that's the area we've thought of going to. We just never really had the catalyst to get us moving on it. It's finally come...

Now before I start getting the emails saying that I should not back down to my stupid ass neighbors, let me reiterate... we've been thinking about moving for some time. To be honest, even after the whole stink with the sign in the yard, we were still not ready to take action; we’ve never been reactionary in any of our life altering decisions. In late November though, I was told that the contact I am currently working under looked like it will not be getting renewed. There was no problems with the work, and still plenty to do in fact, it's just one of those “we need to cut back somewhere” kind of deals. So there it was... the catalyst to get us going on a long deliberated decision. Our house was put on the Market on the first of February, it was time to move on.

I began to write this post a little over a week ago. I’ve been incredibly busy with kids school projects, work, showing our home and looking at what is available on the market so it’s taken me some time to complete it. We’ve had a wonderful reception to our home on the market with an average of one showing every three days. In fact, at the time I am completing this post, I can say that we’ve received a lot of news... Last week, I found out for sure that I’ve received a brief reprieve from the unemployment scare in that my contract has been renewed for one more year. In addition, just 24 hours after that, we received an offer on our home and have accepted it. Our home is currently under contract. It took exactly every day of February, from the 1st to the 29th, but we look to have sold it in one month exactly! Just a few more hurdles like inspections and appraisals to get over and it’s a done deal. Time to find a new “farm”. For some reason, I was telling A~ from the start that I just believed that it would all happen at one time, back to back, and it did. The power of positive thinking and belief cannot be underestimated!

In talking about what we wanted going forward, we’ve decided, for a number of reasons, that we are going to downsize. Not necessarily joining the “small house” masses quite yet, but still we are looking for a smaller home. One with space enough, but perhaps not empty space to fill. If there is one thing that we have found to be true in the last six years or so that we have been slowing becoming more in tune with our lifestyle it is that the value in where we live lies most in the people we share the space with and less with the space itself. We hope to relocate ourselves to a place where we may have a little more acceptance of our “Homescale Farming” ways, and maybe even a little more space to conduct it in. More than anything though, we want to be closer to our kids school and we want to reduce our debt as a hedge against future employment scares. Here’s to hoping. We’ve seen a number of good homes, and may know more soon. Either way, we both look forward to a new adventure.

If you’ve been a guest here for some time you know that of late I’ve been a bit out of the picture. I got to a point that I felt like I just wasn’t adding anything to the discussion and didn’t really know what to share that wasn’t just a rehash of things I’d written before. I look forward to the process of building a new homescale farm as a chance to get back into the swing of things, learn more and try some new techniques. A chance to breath a little new life into our garden and to learn new lessons along the way. If you’re new here, well, welcome and stay tuned. I’ve been planning some big changes for some time and just never managed to get around to them; I think this may just be my own catalyst.

Namaste, and thank you for hanging in there.

P~

Answer I - How I got here...

Q: Hiya Paul, have been reading your blog for a while and yes I am curious as to how you came to the life that you now have. A little info would satisfy my curiosity :-)
Best wishes
~Babs
Well Babs, here you go. (I'll get to the other questions in order if that's alright?) It's probably more information than you could ever have wanted, but it is a good intro to me and It's something that I'd like to have down in print for the future anyway. I hope you enjoy.

A: I have to admit first off, that while we do do a lot of things around our house that might/do raise some eyebrows when seen or mentioned; feeding my chickens first thing in the morning in my go to work casual dress clothes before I head out, making homemade cheese or yogurt, grinding wheat for flour etc. I don't really see ourselves our lives as all that different. We take our kids to a pretty normal school (Charter school though...LOVE IT!), I work at a normal 40/hr week job and we live in a very suburban area just north of Salt Lake City UT. But on the other hand, unlike our neighbors, we don't have dogs barking in our backyard, we have chickens clucking and announcing the arrival of fresh eggs, I come home from a full time job and work many days until the sun is down to accomplish the things at home that I feel are just as important to our family as my going to work outside the home. We are a little different, and evolving all the time. But that's the root of the question isn't it? How did we get where we are today?

I have to take most of the credit for initially steering our ship toward this harbor. I've always been a little bit different like that. Growing up in Southern California I had two great parents that really let me explore a lot. My dad taught me to use hand tools at a young age and my mom taught me to sew....err, fabric weld. We had a family bookshelf and I remember my favorite books being the Do-It-Yourself books by Time-Life or something like that. I've always had a passion for creating, doing, learning and experimenting. I wasn't a great student, but absorbed what I wanted. Around high-school, I started dreaming of building my own "RV". You know, the old hippy renovated school bus kind with the sweet barn wood walls and recycled everything. What can I say, there were a lot of them at the beach and I lived at the beach!

I've also had the opportunity to see much of the world and it's helped a great deal in shaping who I am. I was born in Sweden you see, and although I moved here as a baby, half of my family was still there. I took my first oversees flight by myself at 9 yrs to go visit family in Sweden, had the chance to travel Europe with my family as a 12 yr old (11 or 12...Mom, help me out here?) and went through checkpoint charlie in Berlin before the wall came down. After high school I studied art locally in San Diego but then had the opportunity to spend a semester studying (and I use that term loosely.) at the University of London, it was one of the greatest times of my life. A couple of years later I enlisted in the US ARMY. I needed some direction, and more than a little discipline. I got both in spades. I also got to spend two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia where I got to learn about the culture of the mid east in person. My last big adventure was almost ten years ago when my oldest son and I went to Singapore and Bali to visit my parents who were then living there. I bring up travel for one reason. Seeing other cultures, talking with people from different circumstances cannot help but shape a persons outlook on the world. I know it did mine.

Recently, if nearly ten years is recently, I met and fell in love with a woman that can only be described as my soul mate and while today we are living a pretty comfortable life, that wasn't always the case. When we met, we were both going through very messy divorces. It wasn't the best timing, but like I mentioned in my last post, it's hard to go wrong following your heart. The first few years we were together we were basically broke. We got help from others, did what we could, and just kept plugging along. We have known what it is to want, to be burdened with debt and to feel helpless. That is not a feeling either of us wants again.

A couple of years ago, we began a process of "cleaning house". Two of our sons had been diagnosed with asthma, and one had missed nearly three weeks of school from it. We didn't know where it had come from. No one on either side of their family tree had it and we didn't know what to do. We learned about how pathogens and chemicals in our homes and food were so common, and how many experts believed that they were a great deal of the reason for many children's illnesses. We made a decision to start small and added on over time as we learned things. We made changes to our home like removing carpet and sealing our walls will zero VOC paints. One thing lead to another and food was the next logical step in our evolution. I began to see what I believed, still believe, was a threat to our future food security in the industrialization of it and it's reliance on fossil fuels that are reaching their peak. I got to a point where I was getting depressed because I wanted so badly to move to a place with some land. To have a small but productive acreage where we could do more for ourselves but couldn't make it happen. It was then that I found the Path to Freedom site, and my eyes were open to a whole new world of possibilities. A~ and I began to change our focus toward producing as much sustainable, healthy and secure food sources as we could right here on our 1/4 acre property. We expanded the garden, worked towards making keeping hens legal in our town and have been actively encouraging others to do the same.

It's been a long strange trip, to quote "The Dead", but I couldn't be happier with how it's going so far. A~ and I often work side by side. We have a common goal and faith in our future. We feel secure in our ability to provide food for our family and live in a healthy home. Our oldest son, the one who missed so much school, has hardly missed a day in the last two years. He still has triggers, but it's controlled 90% without medication. The future looks like it'll be a interesting one...but that, is a topic for another post.
Till then.
P~

Democracy Works!!! (or does it?)

Well, to a point I think it does, but you know that old saying "All politics is local"? It held true tonight as I witnessed first hand the inequities of the political process.

First off, let me start on a positive note. THE GIRLS ARE LEGAL!!! That's right, the outlaw birds in my back yard are LEGAL. I started working toward getting the restrictive ordinance pertaining to chickens, and in particular egg laying hens, changed back in February. Can you believe it's been that long? I should of course for the record point out that I personally did not initiate the ordinance change. Our city planning commission was actually in the middle of revising the ordinance when I showed up on the scene, but I made it just in time to have input into the revision, and was able to get to know the commission chair Robert Whiteley that actually sponsored the change that dealt with the chickens. A very good guy! The process was very time consuming, and took a lot of emails and some public speaking, but we've gotten it finished and tonight it passed the city council by unanimous consent. So you see, don't just let your fear of the process keep you from your goals. In fact this turned out even better than hoped for. Tonight before the vote, the council proposed to up the number of legal birds to 6 rather than the proposed 5. I think this was a great move for the city, and now I'm thinking, hmmm...how about a class in (sub)urban hennery? (sorry Laura, had to steal your term.)


So now you're wondering about the (or does it?) aren't you. I you remember yesterday, I asked for you to wish me luck. That wasn't for the chicken law to pass, it was for me. I went before the city council and a nearly packed auditorium tonight, to enter my name as a candidate for a seat on the Syracuse (UT) City Council that had been prematurely vacated by one of our elected members. The laws of our city show that when a vacancy becomes available mid term, that the existing city council will hold public hearings to review potential replacement and then vote on the candidates to get a replacement. I put my hat in the ring, and didn't get it, and you know what, it's really not a big deal to me. I hoped for it, buy didn't expect it. What I didn't expect however, was that the process was rigged.


Seriously, this is not a sour grapes issue. The gentleman that got the position, I felt, was far more qualified than me or many of the other candidates so not a big deal there. The problem arose when the council was making their vote and councilman Doug Peterson, after making his vote, Made a declaration that rocked the room. He stated that when he originally ran for council he lost. Then, the same type of thing happened and he applied to the council for the position. He didn't get it, and felt that since he had been the first runner up in the election that the position should have been his. Tonight he went clearly in the face of the established process and declared that that was the reason he voted for the winner; because he was in fact the first runner up in the last election. Another councilman, Doug Hammond, agreed and went on to state that the voters had spoken and had voted for the winner in the last election. (But not in enough number for him to win.)


On the face of it, it sounds logical right? But myself and the other 20 candidates walked into a council meeting tonight, expecting to be heard and to have a fair chance at being considered for the position. That was, in point of fact, no the case. If two of the remaining 4 chairman came to the meeting already having in mind who they were going to vote for and why, (and yes, I do know that that is the case in at least one person, but cannot get into how for a couple of reasons.)
then what was the purpose of me spending my first night alone with my boys, cooped up in a stuffy city hall for no reason. Oh, I was mad!


After the election, you could here the vocal murmurings of the audience, and then the utterly ridiculous. The city council completed the city managers report and called for a motion to adjourn, with was seconded and agreed on. Only one problem, the first order of business for the night was to approve the agenda, an agenda that allowed for a period of public comment before the adjournment. Two councilman had already gotten up and started to leave and I just popped up. Not a lot of thinking, just popped up and yelled over the room "Mr. Mayor!" (ask my kids, I'm loud when I need to be.) When I got his attention, myself and the other gentleman pointed out that they cannot adjourn legally, they are breaking the agreed upon agenda. We got them back in there seats and they spent the next 20 minutes hearing from me and the other guy about how they had just committed a farce of a political proceeding and should be ashamed. It was pointed out that at the last election half the previous city council was removed for similar actions. Both myself and the other man received many handshakes and thank you's afterward for calling them on this. I guess it may be time for the other half to go too.


Let me finish this off on a positive note just so I don't come off too PO'd. I think that the process does work by in large. Look at my chooks after all, their free to roam now. The key however, as in national politics, is to be involved. Make your voice heard. We are a democratic republic and inasmuch we are required by duty to be a part of our governments process. I encourage you to participate, to debate and to be activist in the things you believe in. I ask though that we keep a level of civility, look for commonalities and work for the type of change that will benefit us all.
Be well...
P~

The Times are Changin' Tuesday

Well here we are again, my little glimmer of sunshine... err, well, maybe there's a few clouds forming on the horizon.

This week we found an interesting news story from our local news that again illustrates the changing habits of my fellow Utahans. As the gas prices further reach for the stratosphere, some have been choosing to try to push their luck and see how far they can manage to go before filling up? The source for the report was one of the managers at the UDOT incident management team and what I find the most interesting is that not only does the report show that more people have been running out of gas on the freeways, but it's been happening with nearly 25% less calls. That's a big deal. According to an Allstate spokesperson, the rate of Utah drivers running out of gas is up 94% from last year. As we headed up to Logan this weekend for our outing, I actually saw someone exiting the freeway in their shiny new Ford Mustang GT at a full coast, flashers on and all. I suspect yet another "fumer". Isn't that a great name for them, the folks coasting around on fumes? Of course I can't say I haven't done it from time to time between the odd paycheck but generally we have our kids in the car so we try to keep at least a modicum of fuel in the tank.

So what do we do about it? As I said in the post that started this whole series, we change. We change our habits, we change our routines, and perhaps most importantly we change our expectations. Is it still prudent, or even for that matter logical, to expect that we can tool around endlessly in the biggest SUV that we can afford? I don't think so. Heck, just because we can make the payment no longer means that we can afford it. I don't have solutions for the issue, nor will I pretend to. I know what helps us; planning our trips, riding a bike to work, taking local "day-cations" instead of long road trips. For many, some of these things aren't possible yet. Perhaps they will be in the future, maybe not, the point is to look at what is possible and make the changes that you can. And mark my words, it'll be a lot less painful to make those changes sooner as a choice, rather than later as a mandate.

Just food for thought folks. Any thoughts from you?

P~

Welcome and Action

Hey all, just wanted to take a second to say welcome to all the visitors that seem to be dropping in from Farm Mom's Blog, and to thank her for her support with my "Walk the Walk" campaign. I've been really starting to feel more and more that I need to get involved with the things that I want to see around me. I'm sure most of us have heard the famous quote from Gandhi that goes:

"Be the change that you want to see in the world."

If not, well you heard it here first. When you really think about it though, it is no less than a call to action, of some sort anyway. It don't think it necessarily means to go out and protest, or to be an activist. In fact to some degree that would almost be the antithesis of what he was saying. "Be the change..." not "affect the change..." was the call wasn't it? Yet then again, if we don't begin to take the actions that we believe should be taken, they may never be taken at all. (The "Someone else will do it" syndrome.) One of the reasons that I decided to try to get others involved in the issue that I have with Walmart is because it is a change that I would like to see happen. That and the fact that I know no matter how many letters I write to them, without many other voices, I will not be loud enough to be heard. I guess I am, to some degree, trying to "Be the catalyst of the change that I want to see..."

I have also begun another project this week that I really can't give to many details on. Not so much because it is confidential as it is not set in stone yet and I really don't know what the finished project will end up looking like. What am I talking about? Teaching. Or more to the point, sharing what I have experienced and learned with others in an effort to educate and hopefully inspire them. As I have grown in my experience with my garden and food production and urban chicken raising, I have hoped to get others in my neighborhood inspired to do the same and have actually made some strides on that front as a matter of fact. I've had a couple of neighbors that have decided to expand or modify their garden or gardening techniques to match the ones that I am doing, I am regularly asked about what I'm planting right now, or when they can start their tomatoes. I've kind of started to become that "garden guy" on the corner. So I decided, since it's something I LOVE to talk about anyway, that I would work with the local city to offer some basic FREE classes about growing small scale food plots or "Freedom Gardens" in our suburban lots.

I think that the time is ripe for people want to learn more about how they can begin to become more self sufficient on their own land. The higher food prices are not going to go down drastically, and more and more people are beginning to be more aware of the things that they feed their families. This is the type of change I hope to see in the world. People being responsible for their own sustenance to the degree that they can. Neighborhoods growing food and friendships and becoming more sustainable and prepared for future changes. If you have stories about the things you've started to do, I want to hear about them. Have suggestions for me? Fire away.

Hope you all have a great Weekend. I'll just be sitting around getting older, but more on that later.

P~

Bags-O-Flour and food storage

I posted a while back about Food Storage. It's something that is very important to us. We are not yet to a point where we could go without commercial stores, but we are moving that direction. I'm not talking about being free of them for everyday needs, although we are certainly reducing our dependence on them, I'm talking instead about getting to a point where if there were a catastrophe, or food shortage, or monumental rise in food costs for a prolonged period we would be less impacted than we would if we were like every "normal" family out there. I don't want to scare anyone, and honestly I'm not scared myself, but I am cautiously pessimistic. That is to say I don't have enough faith in the current economy and global stability to not hedge my bets.

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 live daily on wonder bread, take-out and Big Gulps, your setting yourself up for failure in my opinion. We eat a lot of the foods that we store on or in our regular diet. Beans and rice are regular dishes around our house and many of the other foods like oats, flour, sugar and the like are of course regular additions to almost everything. We spent a little time with a borrowed wheat grinder this weekend grinding about 40 lbs of whole wheat flour that A~ will be starting to incorporate more into our diet as well. We placed it into 10 one-gallon zip lock bags and are going to store it in the chest freezer for later use. This is not the optimal way to use your flour just for the record. It will have some minor nutritive loss from sitting ground rather that grinding fresh, but it will be minor, and since we don't yet have our own grinder, we are at the mercy of the kindness of our neighbor.

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.

I began this post with a little bit of doom and gloom; a necessity, I thought, to make my point. I hope you get the point that yeah there may be some instability in the world, and yeah there's a good chance it'll get worse before it gets better. But this blog isn't about the bad things that might happen, it's about the possibilities that we CAN make happen. It's about making the possibilities...Realities. They won't happen overnight, but they will come if we decide that they will, and truly believe in them. One thing is certain though. Do nothing, and you will get exactly that in return.

Be well all. Tomorrow should be a very good post for you chicken lovers out there. Ooooo... the suspense...Till then.

P~

Food Storage guide. - A fairly comprehensive guide to starting a family food storage program.

Oh...OK then?

Well you know that Summers just around the corner, or at least that Spring is in full effect when you start getting the knocks on the door from the lawn "Care" specialists. A~ informed me this afternoon when I got home that we had had three different companies stop by to talk to her this week. Two of them knocked on the door and gave her the pitch. She informed them that we are an organic house and didn't like to put chemicals on the lawn. They countered, as a good salesman would, with "You do know that we do have fully organic fertilizers that we can use?" Never the one to be outmaneuvered by a slick salesman, A~ parried with "We like to know where everything that we use comes from, so we only buy from local farmers and suppliers." Well, this was enough to convince both of the first companies that we were some kind of strange suburban freaks and deter them. While generally speaking what she said was true, we do like to buy from local farmers and suppliers quite a bit, we have never bought any fertilizers from anyone like that. But nonetheless, if they can't take no for an answer, they need to expect some embellishment right?

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.

P~

Chemical Sensitivity

What a difference a year makes? Well, almost a year anyway since A~ and I decided to make the move from chemical based cleaners, paints and home accessories. I've mentioned before that I feel like our general health has been better because of this, and I think so even more today. Our oldest son C~ who had missed nearly 3 weeks of school last year from asthma and allergy related problems has missed approx 3 this year thus far and only one of those days was because of respiratory problems caused from a classmate spraying a chem-based air "freshener" in the classroom. This alone makes the changes worth it.

Yesterday I noticed an interesting thing though. I too have become used to living in a cleaner environment. I've worked as a military mechanic, a printer and in various service industries that use a lot of chemical cleaners so I've been exposed to a lot of chemicals in my day. I've never had any real reaction to them at all. Yesterday however, half of the building that I work in was being repainted and Ugh, the fumes! I had such a headache toward the end of the day that I left an hour early. It was the weirdest thing. I've never had that problem. After getting outside and breathing some fresh, albeit very cold, but fresh air, I felt much better.

I guess I've become spoiled by a clean environment. My challenge to you is to take the opportunity to make a few changes in your habits this year and see if you don't feel healthier too. I thought that in order to clean with non toxic products that we would need to buy a bunch of hard to get expensive organic cleaners and such. YOU DON'T! (Although I do really enjoy some of the green products that my sis sent to our family for Christmas. That was the most well thought out and thoughtful gifts I think she's ever given us.) We use a vinegar and lemon based cleaner for our everyday spray and wipe stuff, washing powder instead of bleach in the wash, baking soda with essential oils in our baths instead of chemical fragranced bath products, and a pot with a little water and fragrant herbs boiled to add a little scent to the house to name a few. The products are cheaper, they work as well or better, and are absolutely non-toxic.

Give your home a once over and see where you can make a change that won't impact you too terribly and give it a chance. Then when you get used to that one, take on another. Little by little you'll see that it's really not hard and you'll feel better in the long run.

P~

Call me "David"

No, I'm not changing my name, but I am challenging Goliath in a sense.
The other afternoon A~ picked up a couple of reusable bags at our local Wal-Mart store. She got them for me to use. I generally reuse one of the plastic bags that we get from shopping to carry my lunch and what not to work each day. She, being ever the considerate wife thought I could use these bags instead, which I am by the way. They, the bags that is, got me to thinking though. I think that it's great the a huge retail outlet like Wal-Mart is trying to make an effort to encourage their shoppers to re-use, and are providing us the ability to purchase the tools to do it with. But if you've ever taken your own bags into a Wal-Mart and tried to fill them without both backing the whole system up, and perplexing the poor girl behind the counter then you're better than us. The problem as I've found it, it that all the Wal-Marts use the carousel style bagging islands that allow them to expeditiously fill as many plastic bags as they can as fast as they can, while you load your cart. Basically, the system is not made to encourage the use of the reusables.
So what about this challenge?
I emailed Wal-Marts corporate headquarters the other day with my issue and explained what I thought would be a potential solution, after all you shouldn't complain without coming to the table with possible solutions right?

Here is the text of my mail:
I have noticed WalMart's efforts lately to reduce their environmental impact and appreciate it. I recently purchased a couple of their reusable bags for use in my local shopping. My problem with them is that there is nowhere I can load them at my local walmart store because of the carousel style plastic bag dispensers that all the stores have. I thought a unique way of encouraging people to use these low impact bags would be to one, provide a table style checkout area similar to older grocery stores that used to have a bagger. Two, would be to perhaps limit these lanes, during the peak hours at least, to people using the reusable bags or that have brought their own. I want to use these bags at walmart, but have really had a hard time because of this. Also, at stores like Smiths and Albertsons, I get a .05 cent discount per bag used. It really doesn't amount to much but again, it encourages the use of reusables. I am glad to see Walmart making some effort on this front, I'd just like to see the effort be complete, rather than just veneer.Thank you, I hope to hear something on this from you.

Today I received this response:
Dear P~, Sam Walton built Wal-Mart on a very simple belief--the customer is the boss. That means we are always looking for better ways to serve the people who shop at Wal-Mart. Each comment, concern and suggestion is very important because it gives us the opportunity to improve our overall service. Rest assured that your message has been forwarded to the proper division where it will be reviewed and carefully considered. Thank you for your observations. It is customers like you who help us continue to offer everyday low prices and friendly service. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Now I have no delusions that this was not a canned response; I'm sure it was. But I hold hope that maybe I will see a change. That maybe my challenge will not go unanswered. OK, so maybe the challenge isn't a huge one, but I'd like to see if there's a way to be the trim tab on this. And I'd like to encourage you too as well. I know there are a lot of you that view Wal-Mart as the evil empire and refuse to shop there yourselves. I can appreciate that, and it's your decision, but if a company with the kind of wide spread consumer base that they have can be steered into even a moderately sustainable direction, it could have a trickle down effect of huge proportions. I invite you to join me in this.; send them a letter. I thought about including a scripted letter in this post, but you know, honestly, I think they probably react the same to scripted spamming by action groups about the same way we respond to canned auto-responses, not at all. Use your own words. If you agree with me that it would be nice to see actions by them that would encourage consumers to use reusables tell them. If you have a better suggestion than mine, by all means tell them that. I think the most important thing is to let them know it is on our radar, and we are paying attention.

If you decide to take me up on this challenge, let me know about it, and by all means pass the word along. Link here, re-write it on your own blog, or email it if you like. I'm not trying to get people to read me by this, I just want to make a change.

I'll be sure to let you know if I hear more.

P~

link to Wal-Mart corporate contact us page.

Living Deliberately

I was led the other day by the hands of inspiration. A little deep huh? Don't you sometimes feel like the stars align and you know that you are supposed to do something? I do. For whatever reason, the other day I was struck with the idea of digging up and reading by copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I suppose that it was a culmination of a lot of things. As I began making incremental changes in the way that I live and what I want to focus my energies on, I have become more and more in tune with the choices that I make, and perhaps more to the point the choices that I don't make. The thing that brings me to Thoreau is a specific idea I took from it nearly 20 years ago when I first read it; an idea that I seem to just now be implementing, the idea that we could live deliberately.

What so I mean by this? Don't I get up deliberately? don't I choose what to wear? I make the choice to buy what I buy. Do we? To a certain degree of course we do. But there is, I believe a certain portion of our day that we just run on autopilot. How often do we just pick up something quick for lunch because we didn't think to make lunch the night before? Or perhaps we make two or three trips to the same store over a weekend because we just jump in the car and run out real quick when we need something? I know I do these things all the time. When I say we can live deliberately I think the biggest point that I want to make is that we are the only ones that can plan and live our lives on purpose. As I have begun to focus more and more on my choices and my actions in life, I notice more and more the times that I am not making conscious decisions. It takes time, and in a lot of ways slows me down. But you know what? it's nice to know when I do make a decision that I am making it not my reflex. Whenever I walk into the kitchen I flick on the light, even in the middle of the day, that's a relex. When I realize it and turn it back off, I am living deliberately. When I lay down at night and flick on the television, that's a reflex. When I turn it back off in favor of reading or writing, I am living deliberately.

I guess what I am really getting at is that although I am a long way from say, "No Impact Man", I can make a difference everyday by living deliberately and making choices. I can choose to eat a healthier diet, I can choose to ride my bike to work, I can choose to play a game of chess with my son rather than veg out to another cartoon with him. In short, I can choose to be the power that directs my life rather than simply floating along the river of life and enjoying the view. It will be a long course I think, but so far, it's been interesting.
I'd love to hear your opinions on this, and maybe some examples that you've seen in your life of the relex-vs-deliberate paradox.

A couple of quotes from Walden to round out the entry, if you've never read it, don't delay, go to the library and get one today. Or read some of it here.

•When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.
~The Economy (ch.1), Walden

•I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~Where I lived and what I lived for (ch.2), Walden

Thought for today

Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.

- Martha Beck