Here’s how it looked yesterday.
All the plots are looking really good.
Also, I went to the Forest Park Farmers Market today. I tried Flavour Cooking School‘s gazpacho, which was really tasty and created there at the market with ingredients purchased from various sellers there. I also bought cherries, blueberries (which will be preserved), golden plums, squash, and zucchini. Did you go? What did you get, and what are your plans for what you bought?
Preserving food was not a skill I was taught when I was young, so what little I currently know, I’ve had to learn myself. One of easiest method of preserving food, aside from freezing, is dehydrating.
I posted this image once on a Wordless Wednesday. It’s a jar of sundried (read: dehydrated) tomatoes. Exciting, I know. 😉 They remind me of Shrinky-Dinks, and I suppose the concept is the same. I put the date on the label, but they’ll be good indefinitely as long as no appreciable moisture gets in the jar. It’s airtight, so it should keep just fine.
I’ve done this also with apples from last fall. They were meant to go into things such as yogurt and oatmeal, but they never made it there. They were eaten by the humans in the house long before that ever occurred. I will admit, it’s hard to resist the chewy, tart goodness that are dehydrated slices of Granny Smith apples. I’ll try again this fall and maybe I can ration them out… or maybe I’m fooling myself. We’ll see.
Dehydration is not suitable for all foodstuffs, of course, as some are better canning or pickling candidates. I have images of someone attempting to make powdered spaghetti sauce and salad. That’s likely a no-no. But you can dehydrate lots of types of veggies and pretty much any kind of fruit. I use a Nesco brand food dehydrator, and the tomatoes were simply cored and dehydrated at about 140 deg F until they were the right consistency – dry but flexible. Too dry and they’d become powder. Too moist and they wouldn’t keep. If you’ve ever bought sundried tomatoes at the store that were not packed in olive oil, that’s about the consistency you’re going for. The apples I mentioned above were cored, sliced into slices about an inch thick, soaked in water and lemon juice (ascorbic acid is better, but I didn’t have any) to prevent them from turning oxidizing and turning brown, and dehydrated for a few hours at about 150 deg F.
I’ve got some strawberries in the freezer and those will likely go into ice cream, but I’d like to dehydrate some for oatmeal and yogurt before the season is done. Ditto blueberries, and I may do the same for mangoes. If I have herbs left over from my deck planter, I’ll do those too, and I hope it makes the kitchen smell wonderful. It will be a great way effectively to extend the growing season during our cold Midwestern winters, and as a bonus, dehydrated food doesn’t take up much space.
Using a food dehydrator is the easiest method, but it’s not at all the only method, and in certain cases not the cheapest. If you live in the right climate, you can literally sun dry foods if the humidity is low and the temperatures is over 95 deg F for about 3 days in a row, but here in Illinois, it’s too humid when it’s 95 deg F. You folks in Arizona probably have it made when it comes to cheap food dehydration methods. You can use your oven as well, but it’s more energy-efficient and quicker to use a food dehydrator. Of course you’d have to buy one if you don’t have one, so if you don’t you can still use the oven.
For more information on drying food, check out this primer from the University of Illinois’ agriculture extension.
Homeowners – are you interested to see how many solar panels you’d have to add to your roof to offset X% (up to 100%) of your electricity usage from your local utility? Here is a calculator that will estimate how much wattage via solar panels you’d need to add and about how much it would cost in your area. You’ll need your electricity usage to make good use of it – this should be on your bill. Locals, if you have an online ComEd account, two years worth of data is available on their site. The calculator’s results are about on par with my research for my own zip code, so I think it’s pretty accurate.
I know what you’re going to say – that it’s really expensive. It is, isn’t it? Who has $10,000 – $40,000 in liquid cash? Certainly some people do, but the average person or family does not. However, there are ways to mitigate and finance the cost. I hope to know more about this process soon, and I’ll share what I learn, but in the meantime, here are some thoughts about the cost of solar panels for both electricity and hot water/heat applications, based on my research of late.
1. If you’re interested in leasing, check out SolarCity. They have a program that allows you to lease the panels, and any money you’d get from your utility for electricity that you send back to the grid belongs to SolarCity. They aren’t operating in very many states yet, but it might be worth checking out. They don’t operate in or near Chicago yet, unfortunately, but hopefully they will someday and that will be a lower-cost option for local folks.
2. Don’t forget, your state may have a rebate program, and the federal government has tax rebate money set aside until 2016 for solar panels. Illinois has a 30% rebate program to match the federal rebate of 30%, so that’s 60% of the cost right there for those of us in the area. The Illinois program is limited and is first come, first served, however.
3. Banks may be willing to give you a loan for something that adds value to your house. Again, I hope to know more about this soon.
4. The cheapest option is solar hot water. Panels – which are different from the photovoltaic panels that generate electricity – collect heat from the sun and use a special tank to augment what your current hot water heater already does. The same sorts of panels can also augment your furnace for heat in the winter. With gas-forced air, this is done with a heating coil in a duct.
If anyone has done this in whole or in part, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
When I left to go camping last weekend, my Root Riot Oak Park community garden plot contained a bloom here and there on my squash and zucchini plants.
Today, after about 9 days, I came back and found one tiny squash growing and one GIANT zucchini.
Pictured here with a quarter for reference. A quarter doesn’t help, you say? Well, I’ll simply mention that it’s about as big as my forearm. To be honest, I regretted my lack of a camera when I stopped by as the entire Root Riot garden is just exploding with growth. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a good shot – and I’d love to see any community garden photos my readers would like to share, either of Root Riot’s or another community garden. For now, however, I’m happy with my first mini-harvest from my plot.
Sing with me, will you?
Attaaaack of the giant zucchini…attaaaack of the giant zucchini!
I was camping.
Thank whatever deity you do or don’t worship/talk to while walking down the street for this creek because it was about 95 degrees F with tons of humidity during the day in the Ozarks last week. Don’t get me wrong – I had a great time and I met a lot of people who are living very sustainably and have been for years. They had a figurative truckload of knowledge to share and I hope to follow up on a lot of it and share what I learn with my readers. I have to say, however, I was the only one in that group who had such a tiny amount of land to work with. Everyone else lived on at least 5 acres, so our resources and focus were different.
In that week of what amounts to living outside, I’m reminded of how important it is to reconnect with the land. As I look at that picture and remember how beautiful it is there, I don’t have to wonder why living the green life is important and I know deep down it’s not only for future generations. This planet is worth preserving in and of itself.
Does the Gulf oil spill mean living green is an exercise in futility? Lately I wonder.
But let me back up a bit.
Like many people, I’m trying hard to do my part and to reduce my footprint on this earth, so that it’s habitable, viable and – dare I say it – even good for future generations, both human and non-human. I wrote yesterday about how the most difficult and expensive changes make the biggest difference, and the truth is that I can’t afford most of the big changes.
It’s much too expensive for us, but we still want very much to power our house with solar and wind or some other renewable that isn’t natural gas and isn’t coal or nuclear powered electricity. The reasonable alternative is living in an apartment where we can’t ever put up solar panels or grow much of our own food, or on the less reasonable side, perhaps living in a tent or some other temporary housing situation where we also can’t put up solar panels or grow our own food. I drive a long way to work every day. I hate that I have to do this, but the alternative to driving every day is approximately 4 hours of commuting on public transit, some of which would be unreliable at best. That’s a big problem on the occasions when I have to stay late, and I can’t always anticipate when that will occur.
I try hard to reduce my consumption and to avoid buying items produced far away in bad working conditions. In other words, I try to buy items made in the USA. It can become very expensive, and sometimes the alternative is to do without.
I have to admit, we could do better, but we score pretty well at our house on reducing waste. Oak Park allows lots of types of recycling, I’m becoming better at re-purposing items and finding reusable items, and we now compost almost all of our food waste and some of our paper waste. It’s a small victory, but I’m taking them where I can get them.
In thinking about all of this, I wonder where to draw the line between what seems to be the right choice and what is reasonable and possible. I’m angry that our choices are so difficult and limited, that we as a nation are so dependent on petroleum. I intensely dislike getting in my car to drive to work, particularly as I watch oil spewing into the Atlantic Ocean; it weighs heavily on my heart and conscience. In many ways, we all have a share of blame, but our alternatives are expensive and very difficult. Some are completely out of reach for many people, so I wonder how much blame we really deserve to shoulder. The fact is, it’s in the interest of many wealthy and powerful people to keep us dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels, to encourage us to buy cheaply made items produced in terrible working conditions in other countries, and to keep up our consumption high.
What’s the solution? Should I give up? I don’t want to give up and I believe that even if we move slowly, we can create deep and lasting change, but awareness of just how difficult it is can wear me down. I wonder, readers, how you keep up your drive to live sustainably. I would love hear any inspiring stories or ideas you have in the comments.
Until then, I try to remember that we are all in this together. I try not to cling to the hope too much, but I do hope that this spill wakes us up and that public sentiment will sour on continued oil dependence. I don’t wish for the employees of oil and gas companies to lose their livelihoods, but I hope everyone can make a transition to an energy policy that can be sustained over a period longer than a few hundred years. Don’t our future generations deserve that?
Having a dog can be expensive and resource-heavy. Dogs are omnivores, but they are closer to true carnivores than humans are. Most animal nutritionists will say that dogs require about 75% meat and bone content to 25% vegetable content in their food, and meat is often not sustainably raised. Done in the factory farming way, it’s a huge contributor to pollution, to greenhouse gases, and to unclean waste production. Grains are a cheap filler, but many dogs are allergic. In my own experience, grain-free and low-carb is much better for dogs.
You won’t encounter these nutritional recommendations unless you feed commercial raw food or make your own dog food, whether it’s raw or cooked. Most people will continue to feed dried kibble, and many brands are made with some pretty yucky ingredients. There are some good brands of kibble out there (and in those, you’ll still find plenty of meat), but my own dog can’t handle any kind of kibble or any kind of grain. She’s a delicate flower with a highly sensitive stomach and allergies, you see.
Dog waste disposal is another green living pitfall. Most of us pick up waste in plastic bags, either because we want it out of our yards or because it’s required by law in our areas or some combination of the two, and those plastic bags never biodegrade. The poop stays in plastic bags in landfills for some undetermined amount of time. Perhaps forever. Millions of plastic bags full of poop – scary thought, isn’t it? On the other hand, dog poop isn’t the safest substance known to humans. They aren’t herbivores, so it can contain pathogens, and they can safely excrete some e. coli and salmonella-type bacteria that’s dangerous to humans.
And let’s not forget vet bills. Those are expensive and insurance isn’t always the solution.
So what can we do to raise green dogs – no matter what color their fur really is? In large part, that’s going to vary from family to family. It depends on where you live, how many and what kind of animals you have, and how much money you have to spend. In urban areas, our pet food needs may be the same, but our waste issues are different from those in ex-urban and rural areas. Herbivore waste can be composted in any compost bin, whether it goes on edible plants or not. The ease of our access to veterinary care and healthy, natural food varies as well – and the cost changes, depending on where you live.
We feed our dog a raw diet and I try to grow as many veggies for her as I can. The rest comes from as sustainable a method of farming as I can find, and I’m including veggies, meat/bone/organ meat, and eggs when I say that. Her favorite toy is extremely durable and made from recycled tires, and we use natural veterinary methods as much as possible. My current dilemma is dog waste, as I don’t have a good solution. But that will be a topic for a later post, and I’m going to ask my readers what they think. I’m hoping you have some innovative ideas for me.
What are some other green companion animal ideas? Readers, take it away in the comments.
