Plastic.....is for Credit Cards, not Produce!

OK, so how many of you are like me and actually had to train yourselves to remember to CARRY and USE your reusable bags? I mean we all purchased them with all the best intentions of putting them into use, and most of us are truly passionate about making real changes in our lives that will make a difference in the world…..but of course if you’re like me you may suffer from what I like to call “Momheimer’s disease”. It’s similar to Alzheimer’s, but it starts to happen about the time you become pregnant and I hear that there is no cure, not even after your children leave home! Truth or fiction??? Either way, that is my story and I’m sticking to it! However, I have gotten much better when it comes to the carrying and usage of my reusable bags. In fact my son usually winces only slightly these days when he sees me pop open the trunk of my car and drag out a myriad of mismatched bags from my collection. Ha! He’s come to understand that this is the way of the world, or at least the way of our household and is becoming much more comfortable when the clerks at the store give me the “stank eye” for being the one to mess up their rhythm and actually USE the bags. Oh well, it has to be someone doesn’t it.

Well, it occurred to me a few weeks back that even with all my grand intentions with my reusable bags for toting my groceries to and fro that I was still using plastic bags for my produce. It hit me that in America they do not look kindly to “loose” produce, unlike when I lived in Italy and it was not an issue. However, in Italy they looked unfavorably upon people actually touching the produce, so they provide plastic gloves for you to wear in order to pick out your produce there, but do not mind piling up loose oranges, or green beans to weigh them out. After thinking of a way to get around the plastic produce bags it hit me that I would like to have some sort of mesh bag similar to the bag I use when doing my laundry that I put my delicate “under things” in so that they do not get harmed. With that I set out to one of my favorite places, Jo-Ann Fabrics. I purchased some mesh fabric and got to work. I have added a few pictures of my mesh produce bags, so that you can all see what they look like. I made three sizes to fit the small, medium and large produce that I purchase and fitted them with a Velcro closure for easy open and closing. The sides I fashioned with some left over fabric I had from the holiday season when I went mad making aprons for the ladies in my family. I secured the sides with stitch witch and then sewed them for added strength. Therefore not only are they environmentally savvy, they are also just a little bit sassy as well, and I think we all deserve just a little bit of sassy when we’re lugging ourselves through yet another trip to the grocery store! I hope you find the bags a good tip and if anyone is interested in purchasing them please drop me a comment and I can tell you where you can go to purchase them.

Keeping Up With The Jonesin'

I guess as winter still has it’s firm grasp on us all that I should start out with things on the indoor front first. It’s not as if there is not more than enough inside work to keep us all busy forever and a day! I remember that when I was still working that I’d love to hear people say to one another on Friday evening as we’d all head home for the weekend “Have a good weekend,” or “I hope you enjoy your weekend.” I used to think to myself “Are you kidding me?!?! I don’t know about you, but my weekends are filled with the 40 hours worth of household work that I didn’t have time for because I was here all damn week! Yippie Skippy, Laundry! Dishes! Scrubbing my much needed dirty floors! Wow, sounds like a weekend in the Alps to me!” I always had some weird, twisted vision of them going home to houses with maids on Friday nights having all of their chores done for them and miraculously being able to settle in with a good book while some layperson fetched them a cup of hot tea. In the meantime I went home to a house that looked like pigmies had ravaged it, playing lacrosse from one room to the next in it without a care in the world. I’d put down my coat and work items and settle in to reclaiming my piece of the world I claimed by owing a mortgage the size of Texas on 

Recently however, I have been reminded on a dear friend of mine, Manuel. I refer to him as my Italian brother, as he was my neighbor when I lived in Italy and he taught me many things about the cultural differences between Americans and Italians. One of the most important lessons Manuel ever taught me came in a single word….”Simplexity”. To this day I remember his speech on the reasons why it seemed to him that so many Americans are on anti-depressants and have such troubles. He said to me very simply “Americans it seems to me live to work, where us Italians work to live.” He explained that in Italian culture that many of the most blessed things that they embrace and refuse to concede no matter what century or technology brings upon their culture are life’s simplest pleasures. Time with your family, good food, good wine, love, relaxation, vacation, spirituality, and simply taking time out of the rush to “be.” Manuel was right with so much of what he said about Italians. It's also sad how that we as Americans have conceded so much of those things in search for the huge house, 2.5 kids, nice car and high paying job…it’s always more, more and MORE with us…and for what? So that we can all be moving so fast that we fail to take the time to simply “be” and keep conceding the most important things in this world that make it worth living in order to chase things that none of us, no matter our stations in life, can't take with us to the grave. It’s just plain silly and I for one am more than willing to start living under Manuel’s Laws of Simplexity to see if there isn’t just a little something better on the Italian side of the fence. I'm gonna try to see if I can't just keep up with the Bussato's :)

On with Simplexity and Indoor Chores; yes…I was going somewhere with that! Ha! During our family challenge I took the time to take a gander through all the crap I called “cleaning products” throughout the house and boy did I discover something! I discovered WMD’s!!!! I just knew I had to get rid of them…not only for the health of me and my family, but I’d heard of the “Bush Doctrine” and wasn’t about to go messing with the possibility of Dick Cheney launching a preemptive strike on my house if he only knew the junk I was stockading at my place! Gesh!!! Can’t take the risk! After all Dick’s still hangin around and I’m not taking chances with that crazy old man! Ha! Especially since after writing down the top 5 chemicals on the 5 common cleaners in my house and looking them up I found out that in order to “legally” dispose of them in my state I would have to basically take them to the nearest HazMat site! Of course no one actually does that in the real world, but I did take mine to the Solid Waste disposal facility in my county and ask them what the impact of these cleansers was on our ground water and soil. Needless to say I didn’t get a pretty picture painted for me, but I did get some nice EPA stats that showed me that if we all dumped them down the drain that the fish in Lake Erie should have 4 to 5 eyes and at least 2 heads by now! Thankfully that must mean that someone isn’t dumping their cleansers, or they are using alternative cleaners! From there on out I did the research and found that in order to clean my house to the same standard I only needed a few basic items and some recipes:
Borax Soap
Washing Soda
Baking Soda
Castile Soap
White Distilled Vinegar
Lemon Juice
Ivory Snowflakes (or grated castile or Ivory soap bars)
Bleach*** (Now, many people will say that bleach is still harmful, and if you have a greywater system it is! BUT I am a germaphobe, so I couldn’t let go of my Clorox Bleach…sorry!)

With these items I could make my Laundry soap, Dishwasher Detergent, Hand Soap, Dish Soap (for sink washing), and All Purpose Cleanser. I was amazed when I researched these items and found not one of them is damaging to the environment. Even Borax is found naturally in the environment and that was the one I was most worried about. With these in hand I started to follow some basic recipes for making my own household cleansers that I will now share with you. See…I told you I was going somewhere with this  It’s hard to keep up with the Jones’s 

Laundry Soap:

1/3 bar Ivory or Castile
½ cup washing soda
½ cup borax powder
**You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size**

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

Dishwasher Detergent:

1 Cup of Borax
1 Cup of Washing Soda
1 Mason Jar
Place the Washing soda and Borax in the Mason jar and shake. Now fill your dishwasher with the mixture where you would normally load your dishwashing powder. **Instead of using “Jet Dry” fill the dispenser with Distilled White Vinegar instead. This will work just as effectively to remove water spots from your dishes.

Dish Soap:

¼ cup Castile Soap
Essential Oil (5-8 drops of your fave scent)
Re-use an old Dish Soap bottle, or use a decorative bottle

Place the ¼ cup Castile Soap and Essential Oil in the bottle and SLOWLY fill the bottle up with room temp water. I say slowly because the foam will cause you troubles at first…so the slower you go the easier it will be to fill the bottle the first time. Once filled, cap….and mix together by gently shaking the bottle. Viola!

All Purpose Cleanser:

½ Cup Distilled White Vinegar
½ Cup Lemon Juice
¼ Cup Castile Soap
Spray Bottle

Combine the liquids in the bottle and fill the bottle the rest of the way with water. Once filled gently shake the bottle to combine. Strangely enough this cleanser was tested to be as effective on killing the virus that causes the common cold, and Ecoli as the commercial brand 409! The acidity in the lemon juice and vinegar is said to be what kills these viruses…so why do we mess with the chemicals in the other cleansers?!?!

Happy Cleaning!

Rose Colored Glasses

Anyone missed me? I know it’s been a very long time since I have posted anything here, but let me assure you that those reasons are no longer a factor in my life! Being that I am newly unemployed also means that I have once again reclaimed my 1st amendment rights! I am sorely dismayed that anyone in this day and age who has a blog, Facebook, My Space, or other social networking site is subject to the fear mongering put forth by employers, bankers, or any other pathetic corporate institution who wishes to stick their two cents further into the lives and freedoms of the average American, even if their blogs happen to be as benign as mine. It’s a very sick sign of our times. However, I no longer have to worry under the yoke of fear that I will be an HR concern should I post a recipe for homemade laundry soap, or support Urban Homesteading. Those days are far behind and I am now free to live my life as the Green Goddess I truly am In my new posts I will also show you not only how to live a “greener” lifestyle, but to do it on a budget! Anyone who knows me can tell you that I have been trying to pinch the hell out of old Abe for years! Luckily trying to turn one penny into two has made my family’s transition from a dual income household to a single income household much less turbulent. Like I’ve always said….We’ve never been offended by the word CHEAP! Ha!

You may be wondering how we did on our 6 month challenge to live locally and sustainably. Well, (drum roll please…) WE DID IT! We managed to spend more than 70% of our economical buying power locally!! It was a challenge at first, but with research and training ourselves to live life in a different light we managed to make some major changes. We also managed to make those changes fun! For instance, the holidays were turn into a “Homemade Holidays” which required us to make gifts for our family. This caused a lot of thinking and manual labor, but in the end the gifts we made I think were worth more than anything we could have bought! For situations such as birthdays, etc. we simply asked others to consider gifts cards from their fave local vendors, restaurants, shops. This helped us explore many new places that we’d not yet ventured!

Eating of course has been more than an adventure for us. The fact that we as a family have gone on a low fat diet, as well as living locavore really meant that we needed variety in recipes. I took that challenge on and with the exception of one or two dishes that we all agreed never to make again, we’ve enjoyed being creative! We’ve also learned a valuable lesson on how eating healthy and locally effects us in a very “immediate” way. When I say “immediate” I am referring to the few times we have dinned out and ordered food that sounded really good, but turned out to be way to rich for our systems. Ha! Each of us has learned this lesson the hard way  However, this was a very good lesson not only for my husband and I, but more so for our son who we pointed out that “clean living” has such a positive impact on your physical person that even one meal that isn’t at the same level of quality we are used to can make you feel like junk for a day! Think about how bad we’d feel if we still lived that way! He really took that to heart, and his father and I took it to heartburn 

I guess as George Jones once sang “These rose colored glasses that I’m looking through, show only the beauty, cause they hide all the truth.” It’s been so nice to be able to strip away a lot of unnecessary clutter, bad habits, and rat race mentality from our lives in pursuit of a much more simplified, greener, healthier lifestyle and home for my family. With February right around the corner I would have normally been found hiding in my house praying for winter to be over, but these days with the promise of spring right around the corner there is so much to do before it gets here that I am happy to be kept busy through each season! Living seasonally is also such a welcome feeling….the feeling of being connected once again to the cycles of life has brought me more than I can describe. I hope for all of my readers that we begin a movement to take back our right to be human, our right to belong to nature and re-connect to the land that we have seemed to have gotten so far away from. Not only for our health, but for our mental health and the longevity of our children and our grandchildren! We must reclaim the beauty of being.

How to throw a Sustainable Birthday Party

It’s been a while since I last posted and we’ve been busy here on La Frattora Verdi! With our son just turning 11 years old we needed to do what every family does which is to plan a birthday party! Now, with our new lifestyle my husband looked at me and said “So just exactly what does this mean these days? Does this mean we frost a rice cake and throw it at the kid? Then there’s the question of what can we buy him? Do we have a family get together, a kid’s party? There are a lot of new dimensions to this thing with these new limitations honey.” I of course just laughed at him and he returned the laughter with a glare….apparently he didn’t find the humor in his statements as I had. Of course being “Green” doesn’t mean we have to frost a rice cake for the kid, or give him a hemp shirt and a wooden set of blocks for his birthday. He’s 11 years old for goodness sakes and this whole challenge isn’t about living on a commune. It’s about living locally and trying to make our carbon footprint on the planet smaller while making smarter choices both economically and environmentally. I felt this was the perfect time to bring everyone back to center, since I know there have been a lot of people basically watching over us asking us how we get “around” things, and “what about this and that…” to the point where we do feel like we have to watch everything we do to the letter. Then I told my husband we would be throwing a “Sustainable Birthday Party” for our son. That’s when he laughed back at me (oh now he finds humor!! Sure…when I say it, there’s something funny to laugh at. I get it.) He said “Ok, you let me know how we’re…I mean you’re gonna pull that one off, and I’ll go along with it.”

I didn’t think it was that hard to come up with a game plan. After all parents have been throwing birthday parties for their children since people have been having children! Actually that’s not really true…for centuries many people didn’t even really keep track of their birthday, or their birth year for the most part. It wasn’t until the 1700’s that people started to make celebrations of birth more of a social event and even at that it was typically a very small affair. If they would have only known what they started!!! Personally I’m good with going back to the old days when I wouldn’t have to record the slow march to my grave marked by the yearly passing’s etched into my face with wrinkles and into my hair with grey….I could be really good with that. Especially since the last Social Security letter I received assured me that I would be receiving the benefits that I’ve paid into the system just as soon as I retire, and announced my retirement date to be: DEATH. I thought “Yeah...looking forward to that birthday!”

Today, birthday parties are two fold I think. First they are celebrations held by the parents to show off to everyone else in the family and friends that yet another year has passed and as parents we’ve not beaten the child to death for the many events through out the year that warranted such beatings, or better yet we watched the child correctly and the child themselves were not the cause of their own mortal ending due to lack of parental supervision. Case in point: My son used to climb the walls for fun just to watch me have a heart attack, and he’s still alive because I just didn’t have the strength after self-administering the defibrillator to actually go and beat him to death myself, and that’s how he made it to the age of three! So, we threw a really big party that year  Secondly, they are thrown so kids can get “stuff”. Stuff they don’t need, stuff that will just lie around on the floor until mom cleans it up and stuff that will just end up donated to the Goodwill within a year’s time. Wow, bet you didn’t think birthday parties were such psychological events now did you?

For the purposes of throwing a truly sustainable birthday party I had to get down to the nitty gritty. First I threw out all party decorations, after all who needs those at the age of 11? We would however need food! My son is definitely a coinsurer when it comes to food, so I had to ask him what he thought we should serve and to keep in mind “The Challenge”. I was very impressed with our collaboration, so I will present to you below the menu for our event. After that we brain stormed on all the trash a party typically produces and tried to think of how to mitigate that issue. We had to decide on a guest list and ultimately a guideline for gifts because even though he stated that he didn’t want or need gifts we knew it would come up. My son is an only child and I am very blessed in the fact that he knows and is aware that he has everything he could possibly want, so when it came to this subject he said “I don’t need anything, so please ask them not to buy me any gifts. If they want to buy me something it’d be cool if they got me a gift card from one of their favorite local vendors, so that way I could go and try other peoples’ favorite places!”

Our son had decided he wanted to throw a party that mimicked the Italian “Agritorismo” where everything on the menu is produced on the farm, and it’s fresh and pure. I told him we couldn’t do that because we don’t have a “real” farm, so we decided on an old fashioned, down home southern feast typical of a summer picnic one would find in a small town. I agreed that would be the best bet and we would make sure that all the food was as fresh and unadulterated as possible! The menu was as follows:

BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches w/ Sweet Carolina Slaw
BBQ Chicken
Grilled Corn on the Cob (In the Husk)
Homemade Ice Cream
Sweet / Unsweet Tea

I created the invitations since buying them would create more waste, so I came up with a great theme (one you’ll find familiar I’m sure) and used the famous picture “American Gothic” which had been altered with a juicy slab of ribs atop the pitchfork and the woman wearing a bib  We asked only two things of our guests, which was to bring their own place settings in order that we could reduce the amount of trash that we’d have buy using disposable place ware, and to bring a side dish that was a favorite of theirs from picnics of their youth, so that we could all share in the memories. At the party we set out two bins (1 green and 1 blue) the green was for all things compostable, and the blue was for all things recyclable. We also had a trash bag available for the other unavoidable items. We served our drinks from “kegs” that my husband has for his homebrews, but for which we serve non-alcoholic beverages from. Before people left I had promised them for bringing their place ware I would have them washed to go in order to promote cleanliness, and everyone seemed to really enjoy that side benefit! For those who I knew might forget their place ware we did purchase some made from corn starch that will biodegrade in our compost within 6-8 months the manufacturer tells me. At the end of the evening it was very exciting to see that we had only ¼ of a regular kitchen trash bag of “trash” for a total of 15-20 guests. We had managed to recycle, or compost all of the remaining “trash” from the party. Well, with one caveat which was that once the children had eaten their corn from the cob I did let them in on a little secret….that my hens LOVE corn on the cob as much as they do. I let the children take the remainder of their cobs and throw them in to the run for the chickens to feast upon and that became instant entertainment as they all lined up outside the run and sat down to watch “Chicken Run” the live version.

Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Nutrient Dense Food Choices

For those of us with children it's "That time of year again...." The store ads seem a little shinier. We’re joyous in the thought of sending our little offspring on their way to their next year of academic achievement, yearning to fill their little minds with the wanderlust of knowledge that awaits them. Hallways filled with youngsters just bursting with energy, and mothers like me happy to hear the pitter patter of little feet heading onto school buses and out of our houses once again! Yes, it's Back to School Time!!! I don't know how the stay at home mothers feel, but even a working mom such as my self gets all giddy at the anticipation of sending my son back to school! Ahhhh yes, school is almost back in session and that means many things. Amongst them it means that I must prepare for the "Greening" of my son's 5th grade lunch experience. Why do I have the feeling that he's not going to be so enamored of me when it comes time to address this issue? With all the new found statistics running through my head I feel like I’ve just taken a Stats 300 level course all over again! I think this year may be a little different from the last few…this year it may be the school district running from me, rather than me running from them and all their “VOLUNTEER for this opportunity” flyers that come home the first week of school. Let them be warned…I’ve read the nutritional guidelines and the districts’ menus…and mamma ain’t happy! You know what that means…When Mamma Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy! Ha!

The lunches served to school children today are an atrocity and demonstrate exactly what is wrong with the way we eat in this country today. If there is to be a debate about Healthcare I think we should start off with a debate about the dietary health of our children. A large portion of Healthcare’s roots are truly formed in the foundation of childhood dietary patterns. What we learn to consume as children we will carry forward with us as adults, as we pattern our eating habits out of many different things we experience. It's as elemental as that. If we provided at least one meal a day to school children that were well balanced and nutrients dense as possible, we would be improving the health of that child in unimaginable ways. For many rural and urban children that may be the only nutritious meal they receive all day.

Of the children born in the year 2000, the CDC statistics show that 1 out of every 3 Caucasian and 1 out of every 2 African-American and Hispanic children are going to have diabetes sometime within their lifetime and most before they graduate high school. Those numbers are staggering! In this country where we have the space to grow and provide the kind of food that will nurture our children the Department of Agriculture sees fit to allow the following meal to pass as allowable under their current “Standards for Elementary School Nutrition Guidelines”: 4 Chicken Nuggets, ½ cup canned fruit cocktail, ½ cup tater tots, 1 6 oz container chocolate milk. Can you count the amount of high fructose corn syrup and Trans fats in this meal on one hand? I asked my son if this was considered a normal meal served at his school and he told me not only was it typical, but went on to tell me about other “really good” school lunches that the kids love. Needless to say I was not too thrilled with the excitement in his voice as he described the “Mac-Meals” to me as if he’d just pulled into a drive through.

It’s not that I was not aware that the school lunches were not unhealthy, or that I was under any suspicion that they were serving salads in elementary schools these days. I too live in the fast food corporate world of tasteless, pass it through the car window, I have to get back to the office, eat now taste it later convenience meals, that end up not being all that convenient in the end. I however have been well aware that the Department of Agriculture is the ruling body for oversight and regulation on such affairs and frankly was a little disturbed to see how they have slacked since I was in school many years ago. Knowing that the statistics show that nutrition is directly related to how a child learns and the more nutrient dense the food, the better the scores have been shown to improve. One would think that the Department of Agriculture wouldn’t be so influence by lobbyists at the cost of our children and our nation’s future. I guess I am not as surprised at their unbridled love of the almighty lobbying dollar as it would seem. I deal with lobbyists on a weekly basis and see what influence they have on regulation and the entities that our government has in place that are supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on industry and commerce to “keep the citizenry safe”.

Well, I feel no safer knowing that what passes for a meal at his school wouldn’t pass for one at a homeless shelter, so what I do plan to do is to tackle this cause head on with those on the front lines….PARENTS and CHILDREN. After all why not, us mothers carried their little bald headed butts for 9 months in the womb, then birthed them into this world only to keep after them and watch over them thus far…why not a few steps more. Why would we put in all that time, worry, effort and energy just to settle for inferior nutrition when we send them off to a place where we hope they are learning and growing to become the best the world has to offer in the future? We worry about what they are taught, so why wouldn’t we worry about what they are fed?

To that end I offer the parents and children some great resources that together we can use to help us stand together and change our school’s nutritional offerings. It’s not a magic bullet, or a secret formula. It’s easy as going back to the basics! Using local producers who offer fresh produce and reconsidering the choices of meals put together. What child doesn’t like a fresh tossed bowl of pasta with tomato sauce? Now let’s see if we can sneak in that side salad with it. In fact what if we incorporated a Garden Club into the school and the children grew their own salad? What if we took health class to the next level and taught real nutrition by giving kids front line life skills in “Healthy Prepared Snacks” and taught them how to cook for themselves, even if it was just a healthy after school snack. There is a revolution taking place with the next generation and I hope we as parent’s help these kids steer clear of the fateful facts the CDC has placed upon their heads! There is still time to save our children, but only if we provide them the tools and the opportunities to escape those dismal statistics. We must demand better of our schools, not more…..just better. It can be done and it can be done at an amenable price to how it is being run right now. Please take the time to visit the following websites to see how change is being made, and how you can either do it yourself with your child alone, or band together and change your district!

If you think school lunches have me ramped up, wait until you hear what I have to say about PVC in our kids school supplies!!! Why don’t we just give them a chunk of lead to chew on huh!!….ha! J/K I know we can easily mitigate that issue, but I do feel compelled to address some of these issues as the new school year draws closer, because only together can we as parents change things that we know damn well are wrong in our school systems. We can argue on matters of curriculum, but matters of health are a little clearer cut. I thank you for hearing me out.

Websites:
Chef Ann: http://www.chefann.com/

Green the Lunch Box: http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/6359

30 Ideas from Good House Keeping (Use your best Judgment and make substitutions): http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food/healthy/ideas-kids-school-lunches

Build a Better Lunch Box: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/wholedeal/lunchbox.php

Hi Hoe, Hi Hoe, a Gardening We Will Go!

Let me start off by clearly stating my disclaimer: I am by no means a Master Gardener! Take any advice I give you with a grain of salt and check it with someone who might actually have some education in this area. In my former life (college) I once kept a very lovely Easter Lilly alive for quiet sometime, until joining the Army and taking it home to live with my mother, who promptly killed it. So my brown thumb might run in my family. In many states calling myself a gardener may actually be a crime, but in the state of Ohio I am attempting to subvert the law anyhow by growing what I can on my little plot of heaven. It’s my attempt to buck the mega-food system even if it’s only seasonally, and doesn’t produce the full array of produce I’ll need to take us through winter.

Like a lot of people in my neighborhood I have space that is meant for actual landscaping, but unlike many of them I got fed up with spending adsorbent amounts of money on plants that didn’t produce anything for me other than more work! Working full time meant I didn’t exactly find spending my weekends pruning my flowers as relaxing and fulfilling as one might expect. Combine that with the fact that I have already stated that my family is one of the cheapest you will meet, I mean frugal (I have got to get that down!!) I decided anything I spent my hard earned money on and took the energy to plop in the ground must yield me an ROI (return on investment) In fact my new obsession with the ROI factor has lead me to believe that I may start a sorority for frugal grown up’s and those will be our Greek Letters! If you stop by the ROI house don’t expect wild parties, but do expect to be put to work and asked about your future investments and if they are yielding you the proper returns. So, back to my new obsession with my “Field of Dreams”. I took careful review of what had died over this last year’s rather difficult and hard winter. Quiet a few things had sauntered off this mortal coil, so my husband and I had a decent amount of yard “deconstruction” to do in the first place. This left me with a nice bit of space and no regrets on ripping anything out that didn’t have to be. My only fear was how badly the neighbor’s might take my new “landscaping” efforts!

I researched all the organic gardening sites which suggest copious amounts of fertilizer, all of course organic. I then priced out “organic” fertilizer. Now when something says “organic” on it…be weary…very, very weary. I’m still trying to find the definition that correctly defines “Organic” as “Something that uses methods utilized for centuries, but will cost you an arm and a leg…and maybe your first born, because you live in the 21st century!” Well, just by luck I happened upon a woman near my house with a sign in her front yard that answered my gardening dreams….”Free Manure”. I wondered how this lovely woman had read my mind and how could she possibly have known me so well to understand my most favorite thing in the world, “Free Shit!” My husband had roto-tilled the patches where I was going to plant, and now this angel was going to just give away precious manure, for which I had seen priced at the outrageous amount of $8.00 per square yard. I had been cringing of the thought of having to actually purchase “poop”. My farm roots just didn’t allow me to contemplate the thought of spending $8 bucks on crap….quiet literally. I was allowed to take as much as I wanted, and took the liberty in doing so and with a wheel barrel at a time I took full advantage of the 15 year old horse manure she offered. Along with the compost I keep from my family’s own kitchen scraps, I mixed the two together and had a magical soil mix ready for my crops.

We held a family meeting to decide what crops we wanted to grow. Only one rule to the process: We will only plant what we will eat! No crazy items that no one actually eats, because I know if we did that, then that crop will take off and sit around forever! My husband quickly chose corn, eggplant, okra, peppers and tomatoes. Our son followed with requests for carrots and sugar snap peas. I picked brussel sprouts, zucchini, yellow squash, onions, green beans, cherry tomatoes, collards and herbs. We had more on our list, but with the space we have we had to ration our wants with our space.

Space being an issue I looked up some really neat tricks that Urban Homesteaders use to take full advantage of their limited space. I found a great idea with plants that need trellising and took advantage of my front porch by grabbing two long planters from my not-so –local hardware store (it was BEFORE this challenge)! Then I placed them to the side of my porch and used sheet metal screws to screw into the “ceiling” of my porch. From there I drilled holes in the side of the containers and ran jute rope from them up to the screws in the ceiling. Once I had established the up and down pattern (aprox 12 of them lengthwise, spacing of 6 inches in between each rope) I went across the pattern the same way. Every 6 inches from ceiling to the containers, creating my own rope trellis. (See Picture on Right). Another great idea I snagged from the Urban Homesteaders was the “Green Bean Tee-Pee”. Using only bamboo sticks, also found at the hardware store, along with the same jute rope I created the Tee-Pee for the pole beans to grow up. I placed my Tee-Pee over an old tree stump that we have not been able to ground out of its place behind the hostas at the corner of our front yard. You can also see the Tee-Pee in a photo on the right.

I took a lot of care to be mindful of the space we have and consulted several people at my local gardening center “Bloomin’ Acres” here in Hudson as they have always been such a helpful bunch that I will never shop for my garden supplies anywhere else. I’ve been other places in the past, but none as helpful and knowledgeable as those at Bloomin’ Acres! They are the ones who give me such great hints as always throw a little bone meal in with your tomatoes when you plant. Another great source I have is our family’s good friend Kevin Horchy, who is lovingly referred to as our Horchycultorlist. Kevin has many years of experience in gardening, vermaculture (the practice of using worms to compost) and just all around green ideas that help keep a garden on the right track. I have to say that I am no master gardener, but learning to get back to the heart of growing my own food no matter the spatial issues surrounding me has made a huge difference in how my family looks at the food chain. My son has been heard saying “This gardening stuff is amazing mom!” I tell you that only because a year or so ago this child thought all things green were kryptonite and certainly not to be eaten! Now when I ask him to go pick the peas before they get too tough, I’ve caught him from my kitchen window “sneaking” a fresh sugar snap pea straight off the vine….what mother couldn’t feel her heart swell with pride a such a site!

Hunting & Foraging, OK so it was a trip to the grocery store!

In light of the fact that I do not have the time, nor the means to go and hunt down my daily rations I understand that our only option is to fully engage this challenge with the rational understanding that the days of hunting and gathering in the traditional sense are somewhat behind us suburbanites. This however does not mean that the frustration of gathering is over whatsoever! I took my first trip to my locally owned and operated supermarket with my shopping list in hand and my hopes naively high that this would be as easy as waltzing the aisles and selecting my options. I mean after all how hard could a simple shopping list for a family of three really be? I hadn’t planned anything extravagant, or out of the ordinary for our culinary delight. My plan was simple, I would shop for the local products and should there not be one I would attempt to find a sustainable choice. If that was not possible I must reconsider my need, or purchase something as local to me as possible if it was something I must have. I would use the following codes to help me track my items for future knowledge. L, would mean it was a local product, S, would mean I had to make a sustainable choice in place of local, and finally N, meant I had neither alternatives in the matter. I provide for your viewing pleasure the simple list I took with me:

Leeks – L
Tomatoes – L
Celery – L
Sour Cream – N
Creamed Corn – N
Cheddar Cheese – N
Ranch Dressing – S
Cream of Mushroom Soup – N
Beef Broth – L
Mushrooms (Button) – S
Lunch Meat (Chicken or Turkey) –N
Dried Corn Husks – Could not find them

Considering my son was up for the task and excitement to travel to the grocery store to try out our new buying habit, I felt obligated to try to make the experience enjoyable for him. That was at first, before the frustration set in. He quickly took to reading the labels for all sorts of demands we have now placed upon our food sources and much to his chagrin he found himself standing in the middle of the snack aisle muttering to himself at first, and then loudly exclaiming to all within ear shot “For smurf’s sake! I can’t even have tortilla chips now?!?! What are these freaks thinking marketing this junk to kids my age! Mom did you know how much junk is in this store?!? And to think you used to FEED this to me!!” I didn’t know whether to flee and hide, or smile and applaud his efforts. Either way I knew we probably should get out of there before Child Services showed up asking me some pretty deep questions that I no longer had the energy to explain! I also needed to figure out how smurf’s somehow became a scapegoat to blasphemy, but thought I’d save that one for a later date.

How could a simple shopping trip leave me asking myself “So just what am I going to do about the Cream of Mushroom Soup? It’s in EVERYTHING!!!” I’ve since re-grouped and I think I’ll find away around it. I have to give myself credit for all of the other areas I’ve made great strides in like where we source our meats from. We purchase all of our meats from Duma’s Meats & Farm Market in Magadore, OH. That was a great little gem given to me by my dear friend Linda Wendel. When you visit Duma’s you will see cattle grazing in their front yard and know that the next time you visit….voila, Ribeye! I’ve also longed for the taste of milk, no….the real taste of milk! The kind that you can only get fresh from the dairy, so during my research I came across a local creamery which is some of the best tasting milk I’ve had in years. They are both local and sustainable, so I get extra points on my dairy items. Then fruits and vegetables had to be sourced from the proper farmer’s markets and for the sake of fiscal responsibility I wanted to try to find a place that not only bought local, but that was large enough to be able to leverage their buying power to drive the price to a reasonable level. I’ve seen tomatoes at $2.99/Lb and as much as we eat tomatoes that was not going to fit into my budget! Here at the homestead we have the great joy of housing 4 beautiful Buff Orppington hens who provide us with fresh eggs and the return on that investment has been realized in so many ways other than their daily egg contribution. They take care of many of our kitchen scraps; give us hours of fun watching them in their flock, and serve as the neighborhood petting zoo on a regular basis. All in all I have to chalk up my first trip to the grocery store as a true learning experience, and with any luck I’ll learn to embrace the moments of frustration as another lesson learned and catalog it along with the many I have left to learn on this journey.