Chicken Butts and Busy Bugs

Lest you think I have a chicken foot fetish, I thought I'd share another view of chickens I enjoy.



I like chicken butts and I cannot lie. They're just so fluffy and out there.

You know what else I like?



Catching bugs in the act of making new bugs. Bring it on, ladybugs, though I know one of you isn't really a lady at all. Did you know ladybugs are toxic to some animals? Yes, indeed. My neighbors informed me of this fact last year after a field trip to our local eco-center, and this year we've confirmed it through observation. The chickens give the ladybugs a wide berth. The current ladybug population in our backyard is a very good sign - I expect we'll be swarming with them in a few months. Aphids, beware.

As I was planting peas this morning, using seeds I saved from my garden last year, Aidan asked me, "Mom, are we farmers?"



I'd hardly write it down as my occupation on our tax return, but I'd certainly count it as a hobby. We get to play farm, on a very small scale, for fun. If our seeds don't grow, we won't go hungry. If our chickens don't lay, we won't go belly up. Whether we fail or succeed, we enjoy ourselves, and boy, oh boy do we learn. Our garden is our classroom as well as our sanctuary. We derive immense joy from watching our chickens scratch. We hip-hip-hooray when our perennials come back, when our trees bud and blossom, and when our eight chickens give us eight eggs in one day. Nothing tastes quite so delicious as a snack from the garden. Yesterday I made egg salad with chimichurri sauce, using freshly picked cilantro, thyme and oregano from my front yard. Today I will harvest a handful of snow peas from a volunteer plant to snack on. Tomorrow I will plant a few hundred seeds that arrived in the mail today, including marshmallow, black cumin, bread seed poppy, caraway, dill, licorice, fennel and even henna. I lie awake at night planning where I'll plant what, excited to get up in the morning, take my coffee outside and get my hands dirty. It's just about the best life I could imagine for myself and my family.

Local Bounty

I imagine I was quite the sight riding my bike home from the farmer's market the other day. My backpack was bulging with 7 pounds of oranges and 3 pounds of apples. The basket attached to the front of my bike was overflowing with flowering kale and carrot tops. I couldn't have been happier.

In the book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan refers to a theory regarding the brain from Steven Pinker's book, How the Mind Works:

"...evolution has endowed the human brain with two (formerly) unrelated faculties: its superior problem-solving abilities and an internal system of chemical rewards, such that when a person does something especially useful or heroic the brain is washed in chemicals that make it feel good."

Well, my great brain has just figured out an easy, inexpensive and legal way to get high: riding my bike to the farmer's market and coming home with a load of fresh, local food. It is an act both useful and heroic.



I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all.
But I get a kick out of you.

Yes, I get a serious kick from all these locally grown goodies. The cabbage was divine - I never knew cabbage could be so sweet. So sweet, in fact, that a small piece left on a plate next to the sink was covered with ants when I went to do the dishes. The fifty cents worth of whole walnuts I brought home provided quite the entertainment for Aidan, and a tasty snack for me. The kale that has started to flower will be a lovely addition to my green smoothies this week. And the sweet potatoes? I think they will become fries, served alongside a pot of red beans and rice.

This week at the market I discussed time travel with an organic farmer, learned how to select an orange (go for the oranges that are heavy relative to their size), smelled a jar of freshly ground garam masala, and passed up the first of the asparagus to come to market this year - at five dollars per pound, it was slightly out of my budget.

Speaking of my budget, I think I'm going to shave a little from our grocery store budget and boost our farmer's market allotment by ten dollars. Stefani's comment on my last farmer's market post really struck a chord with me:

"I just feel like with times so tight, I want to hand my money to real people, you know?"

Yes, I know. I get a kick out of handing my money over to the real people who grow my real food. And I can't wait to see what I bring home next Saturday - hopefully my bounty will include some asparagus. It would look so pretty sticking out of my bike basket.

Deconstructing Molly

A girl raised with both fear and anticipation of Armageddon should not read the book The Road. She should also put down the book 6 Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet, and stay far away from National Geographic magazines. She should definitely avoid the new Pixar movie, or that cute little robot who picks up garbage will put her over the edge with worry about a world uninhabitable thanks to trash.

I'm standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the end of the world as we know it, and it's a scary place to be. There is so much beauty and joy in this ever changing world of ours and I'm trying desperately to focus on all that is good.



I'm trying to do my part to ebb the flow of garbage one article of ruined clothing at a time.
Rather than throwing away clothing that is beyond repair and not worthy of donation, I have pledged to salvage what I can. I cut one inch strips of fabric from a pair of Aidan's stained and torn shorts. Any other fabric scraps or ruined clothing will be cut into strips and added to the ball of "yarn", and perhaps one day I'll have enough to knit or crochet something useful (like a giant garbage bag).



I took it one step further (as I'm wont to do) and salvaged the zipper.



I cut out the pocket and decided it would make the perfect lining for a small zipper pouch.



Ah, I'm feeling better already. Finding beauty and functionality in trash. I know saving one piece of garbage won't change the world, but I'll take the peace of mind that doing something, even if it is small and insignificant, can give me. One small zipper pouch, one giant step back from the edge of despair.

Green Tip #3

Not only do I recycle Ziploc bags, I recycle headers. It was time to say goodbye to Little Miss Chirper (I think I'm finally over her - it no longer pains my heart to hear a bird song), so I brought back last summer's banner. I think it was the first banner I ever created, completely by trial and error. Boy have I learned a lot in the past year thanks to trial and error.

So on to this week's green tip, which may be a slight stretch, but it works for me and hopefully it will work for you too. It's really simple and easy: Spend time together in the evening.



It dawned on me a few weeks ago that our family had developed a nightly routine. After dinner we generally retreat to the family room, each doing our own thing or playing a game, putting together a puzzle, reading a book or watching a movie (which we always do in the dark). I realized that gathering together in one room, only having one light on, one ceiling fan whirring, one computer running, dramatically reduced the amount of electricity we were using. If we were in different rooms each evening, we'd have three fans, at least three lights, possibly two computers, and maybe even a radio drawing electricity.



Spending time together, in a softly lit room, is not only very enjoyable, it will save you quite a few kilowatt hours over the course of a month. It's good for the family, good for the checkbook, and good for the earth.

George is starting a new schedule today, so I anticipate our routines will shift a bit. To help ease the change I've decided to take a little break from the blog and the computer in general. I've set up some automatic posts while I'm gone, just a few pictures, a few anecdotes - things I want to document so I can remember them later. I'm thinking next Sunday morning I'll snuggle in bed with my laptop, a pot of coffee, and catch up with all my favorite blogs. It will be like Christmas in July (to borrow a phrase from all the craft stores right now). Hope you have lots of amazing adventures this week, and gather together each night in one room to share them with your family.

Green Tip #2

Are you receiving less junk mail yet? Are you ready for another small step towards sustainability? Perhaps some of you, maybe even most, take your own bags to the grocery store. Although I've been using my own grocery bags for almost two years, I still found myself with plastic bags from the grocery store - produce bags. These flimsy bags aren't reusable, except for perhaps a light load of kitchen rubbish. So it dawned on me one day to take a stack of Ziploc bags with me to the grocery store.



Do you ever have an idea that you are afraid to Google for fear you will find out your idea is far from original? I do, sometimes weekly. Mark Twain was right; there is no such thing as a new idea. But there are a lot of good ideas out there - and using and reusing Ziploc bags for produce and bulk foods is a very good one, even if I'm not the first to think so.

I had a woman stop me in the produce aisle last month and ask where I got my bags; I told her I brought them from home, but I should have sent her to aisle 22 to pick up her own box. That is just what I did the last time I went grocery shopping and forgot my Ziplocs. Using Ziploc bags makes putting groceries away much easier (and cleaner - I can't tell you how many times I've torn open a bag of bulk flour or sugar), and the bags can be used over and over again if you wash and dry the bags between uses. Here are directions for a fast, easy, repurposed baggie dryer.

So I think Monday will be my official "Green Tip" day. I promise this site won't turn into a green blog, because nothing makes you feel like your eco-footprint is hideously huge like reading an all-eco-all-the-time blog. I believe the road to sustainability is best traveled one simple and economical step at a time, and I'm glad we are all traveling together.

Green Tip #1

Wow! I have some really great traveling companions on the journey towards sustainability. Who knew there were so many blogging bohemians out there?

We'll start with an easy tip that is bound to have dramatic results in about thirty days. Are you tired of junk mail? Does most of your mail go from the mail box to the recycling bin (after spending a few days cluttering your kitchen counter)? Inspired by Amy at Diary of a Domestic Animal, I have debulked my mailbox. I called 1-888-5OPTOUT to remove my name from the mailing lists of the major credit reporting agencies. I created an account at http://www.catalogchoice.org/ to reduce the number of catalogs cluttering my counter top.



Taking the debulking process one step further, I search for phone numbers on incoming mail and make one or two phone calls a day to remove my address from mailing lists of repair shops, real estate agents, car dealerships, and other businesses that solicit by mail. It takes a few extra minutes, but down the road I will save time by not having to go through large stacks of unnecessary mail.

Of course I won't be able to stop the delivery of all junk mail, but I can always use paper for worm bedding, paper mache, or starting fires come winter. I look forward to the day when the mail box is empty more often than not. I can save a few trees and a few steps for our postman Randall, and there is the added benefit of not having to see a real estate agent in white pants. Someone really should tell her you can see right through them.