Garden Update

Just as I suspected, nearly a week of 30 degree Celsius weather has caused the garden to grow like crazy. I've been able to harvest a whole bunch of lettuce, some spinach, some beat greens, a few radishes and this morning, some cilantro. The oat grass just keeps on growing, almost faster than I can pick it. The rainbow chard is coming along, looking quite chard-y, just miniature yet. The one lonely pea plant keeps growing, but no peas for the time being.

The strawberry plants are still growing, but a berry predator (I strongly suspect the neighbor's cat) has eaten the few strawberries that were ripe. The wild raspberries are ripening as well, and should be ready in a couple more weeks. We are also lucky to have Saskatoon bushes all throughout our acreage, which are quite delicious. (The berries that is, not the bushes.)

Next year we'll probably expand by another 4X4 raised bed and plant some things we can store for the winter, like potatoes. Even though I made a few poor choices of things to plant, like the sweet peppers and the basil thyme, I'm considering this little garden a success!

Eat Local Challenge: Mid Month Report

We have been learning a lot about our local 'foodshed' in our efforts to eat more locally this month. I never knew there were so many delicious things to eat in our own backyard!

Literally speaking, our little backyard garden has really started to take off now that the weather is warm (hot, even). Our guinea pigs have probably been eating the most locally of all of us these days - they get lettuce, spinach and oatgrass from the garden, Italian and curly leaf parsely from the herb patch, and carrots and cucumbers from the farmer's market. They go crazy for the oat grass - I will be growing this indoors for them in the winter I think!

My sister and I shared a mostly local salad last weekend, with lettuce and tiny radishes from the garden, and carrots from the market. I threw some almonds and raisins in there that were not local, and the salad dressing wasn't local either. It makes for a neat experience going out and picking your own fresh salad greens though - I find I appreciate the food much more when I have been gleefully watching the little sprouts get big enough to pick. I appreciate it too, when I can chat with the farmers at the farmers markets who've grown food for me to eat. Two of my favorite producers so far have been the folks at Erdmann's Gardens and at Riverbend Gardens.

Our shopping trips to the grocery store have also been different experiences, now that we are checking to see where everything is made. We want to limit ourselves to buying produce grown in North America only, preferably Canada, and preferentially still, Alberta. The closer the better. We have made some good local finds, such as cucumbers and bell peppers grown in Lacombe, AB (Pic-n-Pac Produce), pea butter made in Legal, AB and organic honey from Three Hills, AB. We have also started buying So Nice soymilk made in BC, instead of its American made counterpart. There are also lots of BC apples available, but you have to be careful and look at the sticker to make sure you aren't getting the New Zealand equivalent. The stores are not very careful about labelling the country-of-origin on their bin signs, I've noticed.

There have been some things we have given up, like grapes from Mexico and bananas from Equador. So far we have not been able to give up grapefruit, which are currently supplied from South Africa, but we have at least reduced how often we eat these.

Another interesting thing I found out is about sugar. For a while now I've been buying Rogers Organic Sugar, and feeling a bit smug about it I suppose. It turns out that this sugar is cane sugar imported from Cuba, whereas the good old regular white granulated sugar comes from sugar beets in Taber, Alberta, and isn't whitened with bone char or anything! So, I'm going back to the white stuff. Although I am still trying to use less refined sugar and more honey overall.

We encourage everyone to check out their local farmer's markets!

We are Bullfrog Powered!

I received email notification today that as of this month, our house will be considered "Bullfrog Powered." Bullfrog Power is a Canadian company based in Ontario that recently started offering services in Alberta. Here is how Bullfrog explains how it works:

When you sign up with Bullfrog Power, you don’t need to switch electricity suppliers. Your electricity supplier tells us exactly how much power your home consumes. We then inject green electricity onto the grid on your behalf to match the amount of power you use. You continue to pay your local supplier for your basic electricity service, and receive a separate bill from Bullfrog for the greening of your power supply. And because you continue drawing power from the grid in the same way, there is no change in service reliability. It’s that simple.

Bullfrog uses the extra 2 cents per kilowatt hour we pay to ensure that an equivalent amount of Alberta-generated wind-powered energy is injected into the power grid on our behalf. The email they sent me today says this will cost us an extra $7.22 per month, based on our electricity consumption over the past 12 months. More wind power generation means less coal-fired power, which the Bullfrog People tell me will result in our household reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by this much per year:

• CO2: 1.24 tonnes
• NO: 2.08 kilograms
• SO2: 3.16 kilograms
  

This also reduces our consumption number for the 90% reduction project, since according to the project organizers, "Hydro and Wind are deemed to have a 4 to 1 payback over other methods - you get 4 times as many." According to our power company we used an average of 360.981 kWh per month over the previous 12 months. Since we get a 4:1 credit for wind power, this is the equivalent of 90.25 kWh per month. By the 90% rules we are permitted 91.6 kWh per month, which means we have slightly exceeded the 90% reduction target! The best part is, I know we can go even lower once we convert more bulbs to CFLs and keep our TV turned off.

I invite any Albertans or Ontarians reading this to check out Bullfrog Power for themselves and consider spending the extra 2 cents per kWh. You can probably offset the extra cost by taking some conservation measures, and do even more good that way!

Water

This is my most favorite Tao Te Ching chapter:

The highest goodness resembles water
Water greatly benefits myriad things without contention
It stays in places that people dislike
Therefore it is similar to the Tao

Dwelling with the right location
Feeling with great depth
Giving with great kindness
Speaking with great integrity
Governing with great administration
Handling with great capability
Moving with great timing

Because it does not contend
It is therefore beyond reproach

Chapter 8 - Translation by Derek Lin

Water is an amazing substance. Without it there would be no life on the planet. Water flows right where it's needed, accommodating itself to its surroundings without any fuss. As Derek Lin says in his commentary on this chapter, "water provides its benefits and moves on, without waiting for any benefits in return." It nourishes weeds and flowers alike.

It is not easy to emulate the characteristics of water. Too often we want things and people to accommodate to us instead of making some accommodation ourselves. Too often we try and nudge things along the way we want them to go. And by "we," I mean "me," of course.

I have a small water fountain near the front door of the house that is on a timer, set to come on for a while in the morning and several hours the evening. I can hear it make its nice trickling sound in the morning before work and in the evenings before bed. It is a good reminder for me to focus on the essential, fundamental aspects of life and to try and be less contentious.

90% Reduction: 2006 Baseline

Well, here it is. When you click on this link you will see our baseline consumption for 2006. I had hoped to be able to publish this directly here, but so far I can't make that work. So the link will have to suffice in the meantime.

I was able to update our garbage numbers today, when Gord went to the landfill to empty our two garbage cans. He has to make a garbage run about every two months, and today he went in to the landfill office to ask about our garbage numbers for 2006. People coming to the landfill have to go over a scale with their vehicle as they enter and exit the landfill, so the landfill people can tell how much garbage each vehicle leaves behind. Each household in our county is allowed to dump, get this, 8000 Kgs (17 600 lbs) of garbage per year! The scary part is that the Landfill Lady said that some people have already exceeded their limit for the year, and it's only July.

When I got home Gord was grinning when he asked me to guess how many kilos of garbage we dumped last year, so I figured it was either really good or really bad. It turned out to be really good! For all of 2006, we added just 75 kilos, or 165 lbs, of garbage into the landfill. This puts us really low on the garbage scale, generating just 5% of the North American average of 4.5 pounds of garbage, per person, per day! I have added 10% to that on the spreadsheet, to allow for the garbage we throw away when we are out or at other people's houses. We intend to reduce this as well, but don't really have any good way of measuring that.

I love lists and graphs and spreadsheets and such, so it is not surprising to me that I really enjoyed working up this spreadsheet. I've got an expanded version on the go to track our 2007 usage, and what we hope will be further reductions. We are doing quite well in the areas of natural gas and garbage reduction, but we have a long way to go when it comes to vehicle fuel consumption. And there are certainly gains to be made in terms of our electricity and water use and our consumer goods purchases. And our eating habits certainly have to change as well.

Garden update

Just a quick update with a picture of the garden. It should really start to take off now that we are getting some fairly warm weather. The spinach and beets are really coming along, and the carrots seem to be doing alright. The radishes are just going crazy, and the oat grass is a big hit with our guinea pigs. Even the peppers are sprouting, although they're very tiny still. The strawberries are still alive, which is an improvement over last year.

As for the Riot for Austerity spreadsheet -- it's finished but I can't seem to figure out how to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to publish it. I will keep trying.

Here goes....

This month we are officially starting two challenges:

1) The Eat Local Challenge, organized by Crunchy Chicken, and;

2) the Riot for Austerity/90% Carbon Emission Reduction challenge, organized by Miranda at
Simple Living and Sharon at Causabons Book.

Crunchy is encouraging people to eat as much local (i.e., within their 100 mile 'foodshed') food as possible for the month of July. It is a project designed for success, because each participant can choose just how involved they want to be in doing the 'locavore' thing for themselves. We have set some fairly modest goals for ourselves this month:

• To find out where our local farmers are located
  
• To buy as much produce as possible from these farmers either at their farms near us or at the Farmer's Market(s)
• To learn more about growing our own food, and keep good care of our little 4X4 garden.
• What ever fresh produce we do buy from the grocery store will be grown in Canada or the USA only.
• To check where every food product we buy comes from, and when we have a choice (which is most of the time) to buy the one that is produced closer to home.

We have been doing some of this already over the past couple shopping trips, and it has been quite the eye-opener to see how far our food has to be shipped to get to us. More about that another day.

The second challenge is a year-long project that the Austerity Rioters already began on June 1st. Here is how Miranda and Sharon outline the project:

The goal that Miranda, Sharon and other participants have set for themselves is to cut their emissions by 90% of what the average person in the US consumes - the approximate amount people in the rich world need to reduce by in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming. The eventual goal is to reach the 94% that George Monbiot calculates would represent a fair share of the world’s emissions for Americans, but we’re starting slow ;-).

George Monbiot is the author of the book, "Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning." I haven't read this book yet, but the essential premise is that the developed world has to drastically cut its emissions to prevent greenhouse gasses from reaching the tipping point after which we can't stop global warming anymore no matter what we do. Those of us in the US, Canada and Australia must cut our emissions by 90%; those in the E.U, by about 85%.

Here are the seven key areas of consumption in which we must make reductions:

1. Gasoline/Diesel
2. Electricity
3. Heating/Cooking energy
   
4. Garbage
5. Water
6. Consumer Goods
7. Food

The full set of "rules" are available here at the Simple Living blog.

This is a huge challenge, no doubt about it. I don't know if we can do it without radically changing our lifestyle. But we would like to try. It would be good to see just how low we can go by only making moderate changes. Then maybe if we have to make drastic changes one day [insert ominous music here], maybe they won't seem so drastic anymore.

I'm working on a spreadsheet that outlines our consumption in these 7 areas, and once I get it finished I will post it here, that is if I can figure out how to post a spreadsheet on a blog.