Jiggity-Jig

To market, to market... The first farmer's market of the year, that is. This is the first year that I will be taking advantage of our local farmer's market. For at least a year I've seen the signs up advertising it and kept thinking that I should check it out. Well, since reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (see side bar websites), patronizing the farmer's market has become more than a passing thought.

Perhaps you want to ask, "But Cotton, why should I patronize my local farmer's market? What does that have to do with going green?"
Well, I am merely a new convert to all of this, so I probably won't be able to convince you with all the important facts involved in food politics, but here are some things you can consider:
1. Where does the food you eat come from?
Bananas? (My favorite indulgent food to talk about because it's so obvious.) Bananas come from tropical locales. I live in the Rocky Mountains. People around here go to Banana Republics when they're taking an expensive and exotic vacation. Many fossil fuels used to bring them to your table. (Incidentally, I love bananas. It has been a real sacrifice to give up bananas. So I make sure I eat them whenever someone else makes fruit kabobs. This sacrifice has had the added effect of making bananas extra tasty when I get them.)
Watermelon in January? Those came to you from somewhere where it's hot in January. (ie not the Rocky Mountains)
2. What kind of farming methods were used to cultivate and harvest your food?
Does your food come to you from a large agribuisiness corporation whose emphasis is on the bottom line and not on taste and sustainability? Is it a monoculture farm where crops are never rotated and therefore continually sucking all the nutrients out of the soil requiring ever increasing amounts of artificial fertilizer, chemical pest control, and gene manipulation?
3. Who does your purchasing dollar benefit?
Some CEO and a handful of stock holders? Migrant laborers working for pennies and living in Steinbeckian circumstances?

When you go to the farmer's market you will get:
Fresh food that's in season from right down the street grown on small(er) farms that are usually family owned. You can ask the farmer about his or her farming practices. Most are using organic methods though they probably won't be "certified." Your dollar will go to this farmer and his family who lives in your community. I even noticed a booth run by a couple of youths earning money for an educational trip to Washinton, D.C. next year. Another booth had a ten year old selling eggs. My grocery dollar is helping local youth learn responsibility and money management. Brilliant!
Another fun thing you'll get from the farmer's market is other cool items locally crafted like woodcarvings and jewelry.
I just really appreciate the sense of community I got from going to the farmer's market and feeling connected to the people who grew my food for the week.

Here's what I bought this week:
A bag of greens
Kale
Turnip greens (never tried these before--what an adventure!)
Carrots
Radishes
A strawberry plant
A lavender plant
Artisan bread

These were my indulgences:

Wild caught Alaskan King Salmon (not exactly local, but the guy gets it from his commercial fisherman dad. Also, not exactly cheap--it is, after all Wild caught Alaskan King Salmon)
Pain au chocolat (amazing!)
a dark chocolate truffle
necklace and two pair of earrings ($9-what a deal!)

Also saw:
The booth for the Co-housing or Eco-village that's starting to take shape in this county. (see the poll on the side bar)

Here are some websites I picked up:
hightideseafoods.net (the salmon)
diva-bella.com (the necklace)
utahvalleycommons.com (the eco-village)
grittypretty.blogspot.com (the blog of the founder of the Provo Farmer's Market-surprisingly, or not, my generation. Here's a photo of her husband Oliver (who is a permaculture activist--a subject for another blog, perhaps??).

To find your own farmer's market go here:
http://apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets/
Or try google-ing "farmers markets" and your town.
I can hardly wait until next week!


PS We ate the salmon last night for dinner. It was EXCELLENT!

Target Practice

Get out your darts. You're gonna need them.

I HATE FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS!! (throw darts or other projectiles now)

I know! I know! Going fluorescent is such an easy change to make. They save money and energy. "If every American family substituted 5 compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's) for incandescent, it would be equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road for a year." (quoted from Aimee Lee Ball's article in the Feb. 2008 edition of the Oprah Magazine). But I cannot tell a lie. I hate them.

No matter which fluorescent "color" I choose, their light seems unnatural and makes my eyes hurt. They make my rooms look like cold waiting rooms rather than warm, welcoming places. They give my husband a headache and don't fit in many of my vintage lamps. They take several minutes to "warm up" and because of their mercury content must be disposed of in a special way (which my recycle center does not offer*).

To ease my Guilty Green Conscience, I have put them in our porch lights and in the basement. I even put one in the bathroom for non-blinding, middle-of-the-night bathroom use, but my living room and bedroom lamps remain incandescent.

Oops! Gotta run! I can hear the Greeny lynch mob coming to tie me (with their fair-trade, hemp ropes) to the tree I hugged this morning.

*Green Note: IKEA has started a CFL return program for proper recycling if you happen to be in an area with an IKEA

It's Not Easy Being Green

You would never believe how long it takes for me to do the weekly grocery shopping. Waaaaay too long. I have friends with 4 kids under 10 who do it in less time.

The reason for this slow torture is that for someone like me--someone trying to "think global and eat local"--every aisle is a veritable mine field of moral and personal dilemmas.

"Silk" or milk for my tea? Blam! Sure the milk is local, and doesn't contain hormones or antibiotics, but it isn't organic (I can get regional organic milk, but Rhode Island has their own local brand. One of their dairies is right up the road from my house, so I can see my milk being made). And the "Silk" is made from soy products, doesn't cancel the antioxidant effects of my fair trade, organic tea (obviously not local), and asks nothing from Mama Moo. But sometimes the soy milk is made from genetically modified Frankenbeans grown, undoubtedly, on some huge corporate farm receiving heavy subsidies while squeezing my local, small, family farmer out of existence. Whimper...

Then--blam!--I am in the mine-laden produce section. Most days my family eats vegetarian (one night a week is "meat night" if we can get locally produced, grass-fed, grass-finished beef from a local farmer we met, but sometimes he is out of stock.) so I really depend on veggies and fruits in our diet. But we live in a place where the growing season is pretty short, the average last frost date is May 1st, and the last farmer's market is usually at the end of October. During the summer months we live in Fresh Food Nirvana, but after that nearly everything is imported and all I can see when I look at the "grown in California," and "grown in Guatemala" stickers on the produce is petroleum dollar signs. So what shall it be? "5 a day" or 5 days away? And unless I move to Mexico, Hawaii, or another tropical port of call, a pineapple or banana will never be local. Then there is the beauty contest. Organic and heirloom variety fruits and vegetables don't always travel well in refrigerated trucks, so while I stand at our grocery's small organic section which is only half filled with wimpy, sickly-looking choices, I find myself looking, longingly, at the woman over by the non-organic, out-of-season, gorgeous bell peppers and think how easy it would be to just step softly over next to her, and smile, as I filled my bags with those bright reds and greens and yellows. Sometimes I start to and then--blam! Aren't consciences a drag? Sigh...

I go ten rounds in my head over packaging, too. Anything packaged in plastic (read: nearly everything) gets serious thought from me because our local recycle center only allows us to recycle plastic #'s 1 and 2, which isn't very much (we have lived in places that take #'s 1-5 and I can hear a choir of angels in my head when I think of those places). So, do I buy the pre-washed salad greens in the non-recyclable plastic bag, or in the non-recyclable plastic box? Blam! Well, I can re-use the box, which is great, and I do, but one can only save so many for future use before having to add a wing onto the house (not sure my landlord would approve). Don't buy the pre-washed salad you say? True, but let's face it--sometimes even "greenies" need to be able to dump greens in a bowl and call it a day. And even if I buy the do-it-yourself lettuce brought home in a re-usable market bag, I'll have the same dilemma with a different product in the next 13 aisles...

(Cue scary Jaws-like music here) If I ever invite you to go grocery shopping with me--run!

One More Thing Checked Off!

Radio Shack recycles batteries. Even alkaline! I have kids with toys. So this is huge. I now have a plastic chocolate covered raisin's container from Costco that I'm repurposing as a Batteries Are Recyclable Holding Facility (or BARHF). When it gets full, I have an excuse to go to the mall.

By Way of Introduction II: The Other Half

True to form, my best friend and co-green blogger, figured out a simple way to start our Going Green blog: by simply starting. And she knew that the best way to start any new relationship is by introducing herself (if you only knew how good she is at that!).


For now I am a stay-at-home parent to a 9-year-old girl which affords me the time to be "greener" than some. I have the time to read labels scrupulously, and make trips to the transfer center with all of our carefully organized recyclables. I have the time to research, find, then shop, co-op's and farmer's markets, or spend time dithering in the grocery store aisles (will write more about this habit at another time) and online, debating in my head the merit of the products I buy. I have the time to wash those still-dirty carrots from the local farmer, and wash what seems like an endless stream of Ziploc baggies and hang them to dry. But I know that not every one's life is like this, and mine won't always be (headed back to school this coming fall to obtain a master's degree, then off to work with said degree--I hope.) I hope if I can establish green habits now, that those can follow us into our future, no matter who is at home, and can follow my daughter into her future when she leaves our nest (sniff!).

For now we live in Rhode Island, but perhaps not for long. It is just another stop on my spouse's Navy career journey. We have been interested to see the many ways different people from different places (both stateside and overseas) deal with "Green." Some places do more recycling. Some places make that easy, some difficult. In some places litter blows in the wind past our feet, and in some we can drop a picnic blanket nearly anywhere and have a meal. In some places we are "tree huggers" or "granolas," and in others we are not nearly as green as our neighbors.

For now, we can afford to be, and buy, greener. It is criminal how much we spend on grocery/food items each month but we know that we are eating healthier foods, using more Earth-friendly products, and supporting those who produce those products so that they can continue to do so. We know that not everyone can buy the way we do, and we understand that we might not always be able to either (you just never know), but for now we are putting our green into Green (hmmm...a good advertising slogan? Or maybe it already is and I haven't been paying attention.).

For now we are doing what we can to be as green as we can. We can always do more, of course, and each year instead of New Year's resolutions we try, as a family, to think of ways we can be greener that year. On New Years 2006 we decided to use fabric napkins rather than paper (by the way, do the simple math with your older kids on that. We figured out how many paper napkins a family of three would use a year if we each used one napkin a piece for three meals a day. It was a good math lesson for our girl, and a shocking number. We tried to research how many napkins one tree can make, but were unable to find that information, so if anyone knows, I'd love to hear!). For New Years 2007 we decided to eat as locally and as organically as possible, start our own organic garden (which we are doing right now), and support as many local farmers and food "creators" (dairy farmers, bee keepers, maple syrup makers, hen keepers, etc.) as possible by buying their products (this idea was given a huge boost by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, the new "localvore" bible, which my dear friend mentions in her first blog entry). My daughter has decided to plant a tree for her birthday, and we organized a neighborhood clean-up walk for Earth Day. We have done these things and many more, meeting with varying degrees of success. I am eager to add more green changes to our lives.

Come with me, , and our families on this journey. Add your two cents, give us ideas, help us think outside the box. Let's see where we end up...

By Way of Introduction: Cotton In The Medicine Bottles

I am somewhat new to the Green Scene. About two and a half years ago, I visited Green-ga and she introduced me to recycling. It was something that I thought I should do but into which I never really put any effort. After our visit, I signed up for my city's curbside recycling (turns out it's cheaper to have one solid waste container, one recyclables container, and one yard waste container than to have two solid waste containers) and started washing and reusing my ziplock baggies. But I didn't truly catch the vision until I had read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Wow! That was a life changing book. I felt so stupid for all the things I didn't know.
My change over to a greener way of life is happening step by step and I am by no means perfect. But I am now aware and making an effort. This blog is to document our journey as run-of-the-mill haus fraus in reducing our environmental footprint.
I live in Utah and have three children. I mostly am a stay at home mom, but occassionally get out and work for money. I am in my mid thirties and we enjoy an average income. I'm giving this bit of exposition so that maybe others who are trying to "Go Green" will hopefully not find it hard to try what I'm doing.

To Reduce My Environmental Impact I:
Use City Curbside Recycling (all paper and paper products, aluminum, metal cans(like soup), plastics 1-5)
Reuse plastic grocery bags, but making the change over to totally reusable bags
Reuse ziplock baggies
Grow an organic garden (just starting that actually)
Use cloth napkins
Buy organic foods (sometimes)
Patronize a local dairy
Look forward to patronizing the local farmer's market

I Am Going To:
Start Composting (once I build a bin!)
Find a local place to recycle batteries
Find a local place to recycle glass
Get new energy efficient windows

Need To Try Harder At:
Reusing the ziplock baggies (I sometimes get lazy)
Using fewer paper towels
Reusing paper

So, I am by no means Queen Environmentalist, but I'm making progress. In making the lifestyle changes I already have, it's been an adjustment, but after a while it gets to be the norm. It's my hope that anyone reading this blog might think maybe there's something he or she can do to make a change, even a small one, for the better.