I Have an Idea

March 28, 2011 by · 3 Comments

from green­hem via Flickr

 

If you’ve talked to me in per­son in the last year or so, it’s no sur­prise that help­ing peo­ple, sup­port­ing char­i­ties, and engag­ing in social jus­tice are con­cepts that I value.  So, when I was going through a pile of stuff that I have been accu­mu­lat­ing for at least a year and I found a brochure for the Hunger Free North Dakota Gar­den Project my mind started running.

Maybe I could donate some food from our garden.

Maybe I could plant some food specif­i­cally for donation.

Maybe I could get some friends to donate with me.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe I could get some friends to com­mit to tak­ing care of a com­mu­nity gar­den plot (20 feet x 40 feet) and donat­ing all of the veg­eta­bles we get to the Hunger Free Project.

That sounds AMAZING to me!  If I could com­bine two of my inter­ests and be able to pro­vide for peo­ple who might not have enough oth­er­wise, I would be so happy.  What could be better?

So, now I’m in the mak­ing con­tact and doing research phase of my idea.  I’ve con­tacted the Ag Depart­ment to get any updated infor­ma­tion they might have on the project.  I’ve con­tacted a local gar­den cen­ter that has com­mu­nity gar­den plots.  The next step would be to put this out there to friends and acquain­tances to see if any­one would be inter­ested in help­ing me.

I loved my gar­den last sum­mer, and at times I wished I could have had a big­ger space.  The thing that wor­ries me is time.  New gar­dens need a lot of care.  Our gar­den last year needed hours of weed­ing every day for 3–4 weeks.  Hours.  Every day.  I’m not sure that’s fair to my fam­ily.  That’s why I think I’ll need help.

And there’s the money.  The gar­dens cost either $125 or $150 to rent.  I can’t remem­ber which.  Of that money, either $25 or $50 goes toward a credit you can use for seeds or plants at the gar­den cen­ter.  That’s still $75 or $100.  That’s a lot for me to put up at once.

This is where my plan hits a standstill.

In my head, there’s some­thing about a spread­sheet assign­ing dif­fer­ent jobs or break­ing up the respon­si­bil­ity by assign­ing peo­ple respon­si­bil­ity for a few days at a time.  I can see a big sheet of graph paper with the gar­den all planned out.  I can see work days where we go and do a mass weed­ing or har­vest­ing.  I’m just not clear on what comes in between these things.

So, as I said in the title of this post.  I have an idea.  I’m off to obsess about it for a few days and see if I can move it for­ward to the next step.

Filed Under: Being Green, My Life Tagged With: , ,

CSA Weeks #2 & #3

July 20, 2010 by · 1 Comment

In a pre­vi­ous post, I wrote about our rea­sons for join­ing a CSA and how we were doing after the first week. Since then, we’ve received weeks two and three, and tomor­row we will pick up week four’s box.

Well, it turns out we did the best with our first box. Our sec­ond box was almost all greens (and LOTS of them). We ate the spinach and the romaine-like let­tuces. We didn’t even make a dent in the bag of leaf let­tuce we received. How­ever, I’m pretty sure the rasp­ber­ries we got were eaten as quickly as any that we’ve ever bought at the store. They were also enjoyed immensely. The radishes were not though. No one in our fam­ily eats radishes so we gave them to Jason’s par­ents so some­one would enjoy them.

Our third box was a lit­tle sur­pris­ing. I expected that it would just get fuller and fuller and more and more var­ied. When I went to pick the box up last week, I had made arrange­ments with a friend to leave some if not most of the pro­duce with her because we would be leav­ing town for a few days. I opened the box, and I was sur­prised to see a bag of let­tuce, sum­mer savory, beets, and rasp­ber­ries. As I write it, it sounds like plenty, but it didn’t even fill the box. We ate the rasp­ber­ries right off the bat again (as I’m sure we’ll do tomor­row when we get our next box), and we left the rest in the fridge while we were gone. Jason had a salad last night, and I’m plan­ning to roast the beets for sup­per one night. I’m not quite sure what to do with the sum­mer savory though. I’m also not sure if we’ll eat the let­tuce. I thought I liked sal­ads, but at this point I am strug­gling a lit­tle to find enough vari­ety in them to keep me inter­ested with­out mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount more work.

The more I think about the CSA, the more I real­ize that the prob­lem (if there is one) isn’t really that we are get­ting too many greens. The issue is more that I am not doing as much meal plan­ning, prep, and cook­ing as I have in the past. Dur­ing this preg­nancy, I have had morn­ing sick­ness since I was 3 weeks preg­nant, and in addi­tion to the morn­ing sick­ness, noth­ing has tasted very good to me. If you add that to cook­ing in an apart­ment that doesn’t cool down very well, it equals more con­ve­nience food. Unfor­tu­nately, sal­ads aren’t usu­ally the type of con­ve­nience food I’m talk­ing about. Usu­ally when it comes to sup­per time, I haven’t cleaned or cut the veg­gies. I am tired, and I can’t think of any­thing except the stan­dard salad of let­tuce, veg­gie, some cheese maybe, and dress­ing. It’s good, but it also has its lim­its. I’m pretty sure I should prob­a­bly make some sort of goal about this. Maybe I should aim to clean the veg­gies within a cou­ple days of get­ting the box or doing my meal plan­ning on Wednes­day. Right now, I’m not quite sure I can think straight enough to make those sorts of goals, so as of now, my goal is to have goals for next week.

Filed Under: Being Green Tagged With: , , ,

Taking Green Baby Steps

June 17, 2010 by · 2 Comments

I’m sure I don’t need to start by ask­ing some­thing like, “have you noticed how every­thing seems to be green or going green these days?”  Green is no longer just a color.  It’s a move­ment, belief sys­tem, and set of actions.  It’s every­where.  It’s on prod­ucts at the store, com­mer­cials, books, and blogs.

It really seems like a good idea.  Take bet­ter care of the earth.  Choose prod­ucts that are bet­ter for us.  Use fewer resources.  The thing that I’ve been notic­ing lately about going green is that there are a few “low hang­ing fruit” actions that my fam­ily can take, but after that I start to get con­fused and over­whelmed.  Bisphe­nol A, free rad­i­cals, hor­mone dis­rup­tors, nanopar­ti­cles, car­bon foot­print, methane, com­post­ing, sus­tain­able, loca­vore, and green wash­ing are all terms that come up often in my search for infor­ma­tion on green living.

We have made some changes which are a reflec­tion of our choice to become more con­scious of our impact on the envi­ron­ment, those around us, and even our own bod­ies.  We drink from water bot­tles instead of buy­ing bot­tled water.  We cloth dia­per.  We use cloth nap­kins.  We use some alter­na­tive clean­ing meth­ods.  We are start­ing to buy prod­ucts that are made by com­pa­nies with mis­sion state­ments (and prac­tices) that reflect our views.  Dur­ing the sum­mer grow­ing sea­son we attempt to buy as much local pro­duce as we can at our farmer’s mar­ket and by join­ing a CSA.  When we were home­own­ers we were com­post­ing.  Unfor­tu­nately, for as many earth-friendly choices as we make, I am sure there are 10 that are not very earth friendly.

What I would like is a 1–2-3 guide.  First, do this.  Then, get rid of that.  Finally, once you’ve fol­lowed our easy to under­stand 81-step pro­gram, you are green!  Some­thing like that any­way.  I asked about this on twit­ter a lit­tle while ago, and I got a cou­ple rec­om­men­da­tions for sites and a book.  There are some days where I feel like we do pretty well.  Then, there are some days when I feel like we are the un-greenest fam­ily in our town.

Lately, some of the things that have been on my mind are:

  • Is it bet­ter to buy a green-washed prod­uct than a reg­u­lar main­stream prod­uct if a more envi­ron­men­tally friendly option isn’t avail­able?  Is that let­ting the green wash­ing com­pany off the hook or is it pos­si­ble it’s slightly bet­ter than the “reg­u­lar” product?
  • If I buy a green prod­uct off a web­site because a bet­ter local option isn’t avail­able, how do I fac­tor in the resources and energy nec­es­sary to get that prod­uct to me?
  • Is an organic prod­uct from South Africa “bet­ter” (and how is bet­ter defined?) than buy­ing a non-organic prod­uct from Chile or Mexico?

My list goes on, but I think you get the idea.  I have been think­ing lately that it might just be best to pick one group of prod­ucts and one pri­or­ity and work on that.  For exam­ple, maybe I should focus on clean­ing prod­ucts and switch­ing our cur­rent prod­ucts to ones that are less harm­ful to us.  Another option would be to focus on what we eat and fig­ure out which foods and which com­pa­nies are both sus­tain­able and good choices for our fam­ily to con­sume.  I’m not sure though.  I sup­pose the idea is to con­tinue in the process what­ever deci­sion I make.  Choose some­thing to work on, learn about, etc. and keep on going.

Filed Under: Being Green Tagged With: , , , , ,