Why Yes, That Is A Garbage Bag In My Freezer

As much as I've enjoyed getting the weekly vegetable bundles from the CSA farmers, I don't think I'll be signing up again next year.

In terms of flavor and quality, it's been worth the $16 a week fee. Although I have to drive to another part of the city (approx. 12 miles each way), I've been able to work in my other errands to save on gasoline, or even do a mystery shop on the way to pay for gas. So it's not really the cost of driving that bothers me. It's the time involved. Pickup times are during the afternoon rush hour, so by the time I drive there, choose my veggies, and drive home, and hour or more of my day is gone.

Next year, I plan to take advantage of our local farmers' market on Thursday evenings. I (finally, after two years) checked it out last week and was very pleasantly surprised at how many people participate. Not everything there is organically grown. (In fact, not everything there is food; there are some crafts sold there as well.) However, the produce that is there is locally grown, looks wonderful, and seems to be selling at a slightly better price than the CSA farmers charge.

Although we don't especially enjoy gardening, Shane and I have also decided to grow a few vegetables next year. Our past attempts at gardening have been semi-successful, depending on what we planted and where we lived at the time. Next year, we're going to start small, growing only three or four things, and see how it goes.

Which explains why I have a big, suspicious-looking garbage bag in my freezer. I've been saving all our fruit and veggie scraps for compost. The compost bin is part of the current fence project that Shane's working on.

While the idea of composting isn't new to us, the practice is. Anyone have any composting tips or recommendations for a good composting book?

Elbow Grease, Anyone?

I've been wondering lately how many things find their way to the landfill for no reason other than the owner didn't want to clean them or otherwise care for them.

When our neighbor moved recently, he put his deep fryer out with the trash. Having seen him use the fryer not long ago, Shane knew the fryer worked, so he asked Zach why he was throwing it out. Zach said he'd spilled some oil down into the compartment where the heating element is, and didn't want to clean it. He said he'd just get a new one instead.

Shane brought it home and cleaned it up. We tried it out a few days later and it worked just fine.

Last week, Shane's foreman Steve bought a new HD television. He wanted one, and that's fine. But his "excuse" was that the picture on their 46" projection screen TV was "getting dark". He thought about selling it, but decided to just give it away instead. Shane said he'd be glad to take off Steve's hands. He brought it home last night and while it worked fine, the picture seemed a little hazy rather than dark. Shane took the back panels off and just as he suspected, the projection bulbs were covered with a thick layer of dust. After cleaning them (and vacuuming out other accessible areas inside the television for good measure) the picture is clear and bright. A projection TV isn't the latest in technology, but it's an upgrade for us; we've been using a mid-90s 28" console TV for about eight years now. And the price was definitely right.

These and countless other examples have been food for thought for me lately. I wonder when we begin equating dirtiness with uselessness. When did we decide that buying a new whatever was easier than tightening a loose screw in the old one? When did we decide that throwing something away makes more sense than taking care of it?

These castoffs turn out to be a good deal for us and others like us who are willing to do a little work to make something useful again. In addition to personal savings, keeping useful things in use not only keeps them out of the landfill, but also reduces the demand that new ones be made. That might make our carbon footprint just a little bit smaller. Unfortunately we can't "rescue" everything. I wish we could, both for our sake and the sake of the environment.

Subscription Farming

It's no secret that vegetable gardening is beneficial for both our health and our wallets. Unfortunately, gardening just isn't my thing. I do well with house plants, and I often have good intentions when planting season comes around, but the reality is that I don't enjoy gardening and I'm not very good at it as a result.

This year, I've decided to take a different approach. I've signed up for a farm "subscription". In a nutshell, subscription farming is an arrangement where a farm (or several farms) sells "shares" of the produce grown there. The proceeds from the shares are used to pay administrative costs (seeds, tools, greenhouses, compost or organic fertilizer, etc.) and, ideally, yield the growers a bit of profit. For their money, subscribers get a variety of fresh (usually organically-grown) produce on a weekly basis.

Subscription farming and community sustainable agriculture (or community supported agriculture) are terms that are often used interchangeably. Although this will be my first year buying a subscription, the idea of subscription farming is not entirely new to me. My sister and brother-in-law ran a CSA farm for a few years and were quite successful at it. (For personal reasons, they no longer operate the farm as a CSA farm.) You can read more about CSA here and here.

Today I sent in my application for Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance, a CSA operation I found on the LocalHarvest website. Because Rolling Prairie enrolls current subscribers first, I may be placed on a waiting list until there is an opening. Of course, I'm hoping I can become a member this season.

Naturally, our weather this growing season will also determine the quality, quantity and variety of the produce we receive each week. Part of the reason I chose Rolling Prairie is that it's a group of several growers and not just an individual farm. There is strength in numbers when it comes to battling nature, and with luck, even if one farm sustains damage from weather, there will still be produce available from the others.

I'm looking forward to this year's bounty. For me, much of the fun will be in trying vegetables I haven't tried in the past, either because I wasn't quite sure what to do with them or didn't want to buy them when I wasn't sure anyone in the family would like them. Now I'll be inspired to find recipes for them since I'll have them on hand and won't want them to go to waste

I'm not sure, until I start getting weekly shares and see how much food I'll get for my money, how this will affect the bottom line of our food budget. Of course, the value of the share shouldn't be measured in terms of quantity alone. Quality will need to be considered as well, and I expect the quality to exceed what I'm able to buy at most of the local grocery stores.

I'm looking forward to getting my shares. I'll keep you posted once I know whether or not I'm able to get a membership this season.

A Small Step In The Right Direction

I rarely buy any of our groceries at Wal-Mart, but picked up a handful of things when we were there yesterday for another reason. I noticed something pretty cool. Their glass-door freezer section is now equipped with motion sensor lighting. The coolers are dark until someone approaches, then they darken again once the shopper has moved on.

This probably isn't news for some of you, but it was to me. I don't believe our store is one of their "environmentally sustainable" stores, so I was surprised to see this feature.

No doubt that Wal-Mart will benefit monetarily from this step, but think of the resources that could be saved if all Wal-Mart stores do this (as well as some of the other steps they are taking to save energy). Further, think of the energy that could be saved if other stores follow their lead and adopt similar habits?

I'm not in the habit of praising Wal-Mart, but I think in this case, they've made a step in the right direction.