Green Christmas Part 3 The Tree

The dilemma of the Christmas tree is one we faced this year and have yet to really decide what to do. Artificial Christmas trees are one of the most toxic things you can bring into your home. They are coated in fire retardant which off gases something horrible! Most are made of PVC which is another terrible thing to bring in doors. A great article from Ecotality Life further discusses the pro's and con's of artificial vs real.

Listed in that article is a link to an Ontario Christmas tree farm that has some wonderful Treecycling Ideas.

So this year we attempted to sell our 4' Artificial tree but no luck. Maybe better planning for next year will work better. We ended up purchasing a real tree from our local feed store. And I intend to utilize that tree for many things. One the branches make great bedding in the chicken coop. Also the stump will work well as a hanging suet holder. There is some discussion between my parents and I about jointly purchasing a shredder/grinder. Something that can handle up to 2' branch sizes would work well for the both of us. Not only for the Christmas tree shredding but for other tree pruning as well.

I will do some research into a live tree that gets brought in doors for Christmas, but I don't want to shock the poor thing to death.

The jury is still out as to what we will do next year. If we get a grinder we will probably go with a real tree again. I don't feel bad in cutting it down if every last bit of it gets used. For mulch, bedding, or what ever. As long as people are not trashing the perfectly good tree, many places accept trees for free or for a small fee.

Green Christmas Part 2 The Wrap

In our homemade pledge we also wanted to have gifts given in recyclable ways. Using recycled paper or craft paper. I know it doesn't have the shiny appeal and I am working on that. I think I may have found the solution to that but more about that later. This year we wrapped all our gifts in craft paper brown "paper bag" like paper and then adorned it with stamps and colored pencils. For the ribbon we used recycled twine and sometimes shiny ribbon as well. All of the bows were recycled from last year and we intend to do that again until we use the whole bag up that I got 2 years ago.

Mary Jo, Jacob's mom gave me a wonderful idea about old Christmas cards. Cut up the picture and use it as a gift tag! How wonderfully simple but still a great form of recycling. I really struggle with the gift tag because I don't want to purchase the self sticking kind and I don't want to use (fresh paper) for the tags when really that is such a small part of the gift. Really it is the most important part since it lets you know who it is for! I went to Value Village for a completely different reason but happened by there Christmas stuff. They had a bundle of miss matched beaten up Christmas cards for .50 cents. I bought it, and intend to utilize most of it for gift tags next year along with the Christmas cards I was given.

So about earlier comment on wrapping paper. I really like the idea of furoshiki a Japanese way of wrapping with cloth. Here is a video that demos some of the way's of wrapping gifts.

Another way I have just discovered is from this ingenious lady named Joell A. Jacob, I just happened to stumble upon her blog today. She makes cloth gift wrap with ribbon attached. Beautiful design and very crafty. This is the video she posted about her reusable giftwrap in action.



Some very wonderful ideas for birthdays and next Christmas. I will most certainly be making/buying these for gift giving in the future.

Green Christmas

Our goal this year was to make Christmas green. In order to do that we had some major thinking to do about what to get for family or what to make for family. Much of what we did this year was made, or purchased locally. The only thing we had to outsource was the flax seed (more on that later) that had to come from Iowa.

We asked that all our gifts be made, purchased second hand, traded for or internet based. This is the run down of what we got from others.

Mary Jo and Windy gave us some wickedly fun stuff! Jacob and I each got a green to the core scarf hand made, an earth friendly message sweatshirt that was traded for, a fabulous crystal (made by the earth thank you very much!) And an Eckhart Tolle 2 cd The Realization of Being. MJ gave me some great gift tag ideas that I'll post about later!

Jason, Jacob's brother gave us an Amazon gift card that is delivered electronically, no waste! Perfect!

My parents got me a tortilla kit for making home made tortillas! I have wanted to do this for a while now since I make my own bread I thought this would be a good venture to step into. Jacob got several jigsaw puzzles which help distract him during his upcoming surgery and recovery.

For each other we went with 1 want and the rest was home made or needed like gifts. For example Jacob's "want" gift was Tomb Raider Anniversary for Mac. I was a horrible to buy for girl because I couldn't come up with a want gift. I really didn't need or want anything. But I did get a new blanket that I now that I think about desperately needed. I was using 2 skinny wimpy blankets and my robe for a cover at night. Plus 2 new spatulas since mine had wimped out on me. Jacob made me a necklace holder and I made him a photo collage with updated pictures that he could take to work.

A pretty simple Christmas for us.

*Gift Spoilers ahead.... if you haven't gotten your gifts yet*

We made therapy bean bags, pieced together from multiple websites. Our chosen "bean" of bean bag is actually flax seed. Apparently flax keeps it's heat for longer there for less microwaving. We referenced these sites:Sew mama sew and, And sew it is.

Other gifts included the bees wax candles from Tahuya River Apiaries plus votives made by Mary Jo at Raven Rocks Studio. We also gave out our home made suet, see earlier post about how to make that. We also sent out dried fruit (that we dried this summer), cookies, breads and russian tea.

I know there is a ton of links in there, but I wanted to document where we got the ideas from. Thanks to everyone for a wonderful Christmas. Thanks for making it green and homemade with and for us.

Teddy bear toss 2008

Considering it has been forever since I posted something I figured I should get my act in gear. I've been really busy lately making our christmas gifts. My goal was to not purchase anything, I failed however because I couldn't come up with anything to make Jacob so I settled for something that would take his mind of the up coming surgery. Much crafty has been going on in the Oxrieder household, plus wrapping, boxing and shipping gifts has been a project, and of course I can't post any of it here because the family will see what they are getting. Do you see my dilemma? Still no excuse not to post something heh?

Last night we went out and had Thai food (first time for the parents). They did splendidly, according to dad's friend Ron, dad "grew tits and pussied out".... ( he had sweet and sour chicken ). He was told to have Thai Peanut noodle by Ron's wife..... ah he was ribbed for that one. Anyway, after our Thai food adventures we went to a hockey game. My parents being season ticket holders they let us know when the "teddy bear toss" was. Everyone brings teddy's/ stuffed animals of some sort, when the Chiefs score a goal everyone throws the "teddy's" onto the ice. They toys are then collected by toys for tots and given to kids and hospitals etc... I forgot my camera but some lovely person remembered there's and I am going to use there video to show you what it looks like. It really is very cool, and inspiring that so many people donate toys.

Bird Suet

Mom and I decided to make our own bird suet to experiment and see what we get. Also we are thinking of "homemade" gifts too. We are going to get crafty later today (if mom's sewing machine will work)... I digress. Bird Suet!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 C. Peanut Butter (cheep kind because it has more fat)
1 1/2 C. Lard or Suet ( I haven't found a source for true raw suet yet... still looking)
1 C. Flour ( I used buckwheat as I had WAY to much of it)
1 C. Cornmeal
1 C. Rolled Oats
We used 3 types of bird seed to add to this mixture, Thistle, Porch mix (bigger seeds like sunflower etc...) , and a Millet "finch" mix.
1 C. of each type of Seed mix

Then somehow a second cup of oats got added to the mixture somewhere, so our suet is a little crumbly. So above is the recipe we intended to make.

Ingredients not pictured are flour and cornmeal.



1. Melt lard and peanut butter together on LOW! Once they are fully melted and mixed you add flour, cornmeal, and oats. Mix well and take off the stove.


2. Add the seed mixes to the hot goup, Stir well, the flour has a tendency to clump.

3. Pour into a Baking Pan. We bought a disposable 12x8 because we weren't sure what this was going to do to our pans. I let mine sit out on the counter for about 15 minutes to let it cool before I stuck it into the refrigerator.



4. Let cool for a few hours. I forgot about mine until late in the evening, when I pulled it out of the fridge it had set up really nice and firm. I sliced it into 4" cubes that should fit into a standard suet feeder. If not we'll improvise. (or feed it to the chickens..)



So thats it. It wasn't difficult at all. I think it could be a money saver from the purchased suet cakes that are store purchased. If I could find a source for raw beef suet. If I do find that, it has to be processed so I'll have a post about that too.

Hybrid UPS

So my lovely husband found this article on CNN about UPS. Apparently they are in the works converting the big delivery vans to hybrid. However in isn't a hybrid like the prius, they aren't using battery storage. Here is a video that explains it.



Here is the link to the article if you are intrigued.


Brown... gone green!

Pumpkins are good eating!

Pumpkin mix is SO easy to make why did I never do this before? From what I've found out canning just pumpkin guts is bad. I haven't done too much digging but what I have found out is it freezes really well if it is protected correctly. I purchased a few pumpkins from a local grower and decided to give it a shot.

Opened but not seeded pumpkin.


Guts taken out seeds saved for later roasting.


I cut the pumpkin into quarters to fit on the baking sheet better.


After roasting them for about an hour I took it out and checked to see if it was done. The test fork should slide into the pumpkin flesh like warm butter and a hot knife. Then take the pumpkins out and I ran mine through the food processor so that it isn't stringy.


I measured out the pumpkin mush into 2 cup containers to freeze. This way I can take out 2 cups at a time to make pumpkin bread/pie... or whatever. Add seasonings and go.

Garlic Planting and raised bed prep

So we got stuck in the idea of "raised" beds for the garden.The Vegetable Gardner's Bible, by Edward C. Smith has such wonderful suggestions that we couldn't resist. So I am uploading some pictures of the garden just to give you the idea of what I am talking about. In his book he suggests mounding the dirt up and planting your garden in the "mounds" thus providing better protection and more control of the PH levels in the soil, thus yielding more food per square foot.

This is mom planting garlic.


Our garlic cloves all broken up and ready for planting. This lovely garlic is Lorz Itialian.


The garlic must be heavily mulched or it will get "winter kill" so this layer of stuff will protect the ground from freezing. This is 2+ inches of shredded paper followed buy about 4 inches of hay. We wanted to do leaves but have yet to get any.


The girls in the garden.


This is the final product. Two beautiful rows of planted and mulched garlic. See what I mean about mounding the soil up to create raised beds. I am sure it will make more sense when we have the whole garden finished. However that is ALOT of soil to move and we love our backs, so we're taking it slowly.


I found this little guy/girl when I was getting the hay out to cover the garlic. Aren't praying mantis's cool?

Fuzzy Blue bugs

Every fall in Spokane we get the explosion of little blue bugs. You can't go outside at all! Usually it happens during an autumn heat wave so the temps are in the upper 60's, nice enough that you would want to open the windows. But if you do the house will be crawling with these little guys. Not sure what they are but here is a video so you can get the sheer numbers of them.

Working on Garden Design

I thought this garden picture I found online looked lovely! So I had to include it in my garden design update. We need to get our garlic in the ground and our raspberry moved, but the garden is still "just dirt". Not sure where to put things it becomes a daunting task of designing the best location for the few things that get planted in the fall.

We have to level out the soil because right now it is lumpy from driving the car and trailer on it! Our fence is almost complete, we cemented the last gate post yesterday, and should be able to finish that today. Ok I know that isn't much but with things being as crazy as they are with the "tucking the garden in before winter" this is all the time I have to write.

License plate message

Jacob and I used to have the license plate Dog Mum. That was carried over from when we had 2 vehicles and went down to one, we of course put the personalized plate on our car. Well that plate doesn't send out a message for the both of us anymore, since we both drive the car around I just kept thinking it is bad that Jacob has to drive Dog Mum. We looked into getting a different personalized plate, and it is $16 more than just renewing. So we went for it... we talked over many ideas, some were taken but most were available and we settled on EcoLife.



So now we get to drive around and proclaim what we are all about. How fun!

Sustainable Art

I talked a few posts ago about our local artwork we got from our trip to Whidbey Island. I thought I would show you what we got in pictures and video and again provide links to "our artists."

This video contains almost everything we got. I forgot to put the Tapestry in here that we got from Windwalker.
Here is the video, The first picture of the Buddha is from Rob Schouten, he has some amazing art work. Here is his link Be Enlightened Here. Everything else is from Raven Rocks Studio.



The aforementioned Tapestry.


My favorite's are the two paintings. 'Sol' being the large many symbols of the sun! And sun blessings the smiling face sun at the end of the video.

Sol

Buckwheat progress

Well our soon to be garden is coming up strong. We planted buckwheat as a cover crop. If you are new to the idea of cover crops let me just explain that they are to grow and kill before they reach seed. For example, our buckwheat is nearing maturity, we must till it under before it can seed out, otherwise we will have more buckwheat that anyone knows what to do with. Cover crops are used as a soil amendment, to add more back than they take. So in about a week we will mow the buckwheat and get it all chopped up good, then get the rototiller and smoosh (technical term here) it into the ground, where by it will rot and give yummy's back to the soil. Sounds pretty good huh? Some call it "green manure" I like that idea because essentially that is what it is.

We plan on planting cereal rye next, which is more cold hardy and can grow into late November. Then the ground and the snow will take it so I highly doubt we will need to rototill it. But come this spring we will have to. But before we plant that we have to get our garlic, raspberries and other such "fall" plantings into the ground.

Our buckwheat is growing nicely on one side of the garden, there are two reasons for that. 1.) We didn't add as much compost to one side of garden, mainly because we ran out of time and wanted to get he buckwheat in the ground, and 2.) the freaking birds came and had a feast at our expense. I don't think we buried the seeds deep enough into the ground, we used more of a leaf rake to get it in the ground, next time we'll use a thatching rake!

Art

We recently went to Whidbey Island for a trip to visit family. Jacob and I went with the intention of purchasing some of Raven Rocks Studio's glorious artwork. Raven Rocks is run by Jacob's mother Mary Jo and her lovely mate Windwalker! We decided that art can be a sustainable practice too, by taking the "manufacture" out of store purchased artwork we are helping to decrease the amount of resources put into getting that art work home. Let me explain, store purchased art has to be "constructed" somewhere, shipped to a warehouse facility, then purchased by say Wal-mart. Then the consumer has to go to the store, purchase it and bring it home. Surely there are many other steps involved in that process but simplified... there it is. Now purchasing from local artists is a sustainable practice, let me explain my logic. All supplies are shipped to one location, the studio. That large roll of canvas will be used for many paintings but still only shipped once. The same with paint. So we decided it's going to be local art or regional art for us! Plus supporting creativity and artists just feels good!

A great website that Mary Jo turned me onto is called Etsy, this little gem is for artists who make things handmade! It can be broken down into artists from your local city to topics of interest.

Also I took the Handmade pledge, what this means is for the Holiday season, to buy me only gifts hand made by you or others. A website with wonderful links to different hand made sites is Buy Handmade.

Blessings and creativity to artists, so that I may buy from you!

Meditation

I have been saying for a while now that I would love to be "taught" to meditate. Sounds easy right, sit, relax, quiet your mind. NOPE. At least it hasn't been for me, so I happen to find this flyer at Huckleberries about Yoga Twist Studio. I have been toying with doing yoga again, this time at a studio instead of at the school. I think the experience would be much more full filling if I try the studio. Anyway back to meditation, on the back of the flyer they had a 7 week meditation class that starts this wednesday the 10th. I have emailed the instructor to see if there is any space left but I haven't heard back from her yet. I truly am hoping I can do this, I know Jacob might do this with me and I think that would be really good for his mind.

Baby Chick Update

These little girls are growing at such a rapid rate that it is astonishing. We have to double there brooding box because they can't go outside until they are past 6 weeks old. Right now they are almost 4 weeks old. The "dinosaur" chick stage is starting. The "big girl" feathers are coming in but they still have some downy around them, making them look like freaks. I have 2 brave girls that like to be held and 2 that want ab-so-fricking-lootly nothing to do with me. They will all eat out of my hands or anyones hands for that matter as they are ALL about food. No wonder because of the shear size growth they go through.

We still haven't named all of them yet, but we do call the 2 brave girls Alpha and Beta and the 1 that is most afraid we named her Daisy Faye Layamesmeggs. We've decided that to 2 sets are twins and they are related as cousins so the last names are McCluck and Layamesmeggs. Say that last one fast and you will get the joke, I thought jake was pretty funny with that one!








And the video of the Layamesmeggs and McClucks.

Butterfly/Bees Garden to Please

Well I finally got around to planting that Monarch Way Station. However it kinda turned into a bee garden in the process. I am missing one crucial element to the Way Station and that is milk weed, lots of butterfly larvae like milk weed and I don't have any yet. But none the less it is mostly planted.

This is after the 1st rototilling and basic grass removal. There are still some clumps of grass but it is generally smooth. I have added 1 cubic yard of compost from our recycle center to give the soil a boost.


The smoothed in compost and 2nd rototilling now this baby is ready for planting.


Now here is all the plants in the wheel barrow ready to get in the ground. It doesn't look like much but I do have a butterfly bush that will get much bigger than the 1 gallon pot it is in now, I like to buy things at the end of the season on sale and really needing some better soil and some love. I have nursed most plants back to glorious health that way.




Now those are the plants in the pots, but I also transplanted 2 moss's and 1 russian sage. I have to move my 2nd russian sage but I am afraid like the first one it will get witthery and die. I was un-aware that russian sage's roots are very woody and extremely thick! Much like a small bush's would be. I am not sure what to do about the other one... regardless the sage is looking sagy and overall not happy with life right now. I am hoping all it's efforts are going to its roots, and I will HEAVILY mulch it this winter as to protect it, hopefully with that it will come back. If not it's off to the nursery I will go.



Here is the plants list:

2 Lavender -Lavandula 'Munstead'
1 'Bicolor' Butterfly Bush- Buddleia
3 Gaura 'Pink Cloud' - Gaura Lindheimeri ( a weedy like plant with pink flowers... wild flower like)
1 Purple Sage - Salvia
2 Heliopsis 'Sommersonne'
2 Salvia 'Schneehugel' Snow Hill
2 Garden Aster 1 "puff" and 1 "hazy" in color
1 Gallardia 'Tokajer'
1 Liatris 'Floristan White'
1 Joe-pye Weed - Eupatorium 'Chocolate'
1 Pincushion Flower - Scabiosa columbaria 'Pink Mist'
1 Purple Coneflower 'Echinacea'
1 White Coneflower 'Echinacea'

To be added:

30 *ish Tulips
15+ Crocus's
2 Milkweeds
1-2 russian sage (if it doesn't survive)
pathway from driveway to gate we are thinking of doing moss to have a living walkway, plus the bees like the little flowers on the moss's so thats a bonus.

Baby Chicks

Our girls are here! They definitely have a "pecking" order, one of the girls always comes and jumps into my hand before the others. She brings the others around, so I guess she is our "rooster" since we don't have one. We haven't named them yet, we're waiting on getting more personality before we do so... but we have some funny one's.

Cherry Picking plus some Raspberries

A blog in pictures of our Cherry Picking and Raspberry hunting adventure! Plus a video at the end. Enjoy.

Round-Up?

Jacob and I have really been giving thought and much discussion about GMO's (genetically modified organisms) and there role in our food shed. Most americans, myself included had NO idea that our food has been altered. GMO corn is bread to withstand being sprayed with round-up. Yes that's right, the herbicide that kills ALL broad leaf weeds. I think I have some in my garage in fact (better get rid of that, an organic urban farmer does not have round-up in there garage. In any case the corn is sprayed with round up to reduce the weeds growing in between the rows of corn. Not only is corn sprayed but many plants. I am going to try my best to get ahold of this documentary in titled "The World according to Monsanto." Monsanto is one of the leading seed producers in the world.

Imagine one company owning all the seeds in the world. No need for guns or bombs, starvation works just fine in controlling the world. I know I'm getting kinda dark so I'll leave it there. But here is a video clip from the documentary I mentioned. It is worth some thought.

Water Footprint

Inspired by a blog I read entitled Crunchy Chicken. Her most recent post discusses your water footprint. Intrigued I decided to see how we compare. First off I dug out our most recent water bill. For the month of 5/12 through 6/11 exactly 30 days we used 586 cubic feet of water. This includes watering our garden, lawn, and inside water usage. In Crunchy Chickens blog she states that the average american uses about 100 gallons of water per day. My first thought was YEAH! we only used 586 in a month! But that would be wrong, cubic feet is not the same as gallons. So I googled cubic feet to gallons, and google provided me with this: 1 cubic foot = 7.48051 gallons. Ok so I took my 586 cubic feet of water used in a month and divided it by the 30 days to get my daily average of cubic feet of water used. 586 / 30 = 19.533 but now according to google I have to multiply those lovely 19.533 cubic feet of water by 7.48051 to get gallons. So 19.533 x 7.48051 = 146 gallons per day. But that number should be divided by the 2 people who live here. So 146 gallons / 2 people = 73 gallons per person! WOO HOO below the average american of 100 gallons per day! That is exciting.

Now Jacob and I did this comparison about a week ago and were shocked to see what we have done. So Now let's figure out how wasteful we were last year at this exact time.

Ready for this....

2845 cubic feet of water used same number of days, same month in 2007! OMG!!! That is some green lawn we had! I wonder if thats why our lawn is brown?

Lets figure the gallons!!!

2845 / 30 = 94.8 cubic feet per day x 7.48051 to get gallons = 709 gallons per day / 2 people = 354.5 gallons per day per person!

That is a savings of 281.5 gallons per day per person from last year!




What have we done?

1. Water lawn 1" of water per week, that is usually about 40 minutes to an hour. ONLY once per week. Yes your lawn will turn brown, but it is going dormant it's not dead it will green up when it starts raining and cooling down. (Water your plants normally)

2. Flush your toilets less (yes it's kinda eww gross) but the as the rhyme goes "if it's yellow let it mellow if it's brown flush it down!"

3. Is that shirt really dirty? Wear again, it reduces the laundry by half! I'm not talking undies and sweaty socks but shirts, jeans, shorts and skirts do they really have to be one wear only?

4. Back to the toilets: Add 16 oz. or bigger glass if you have it, with rocks, water or a mixture of them, here is a picture of our toilet with 2 glass jars filled with small rocks and water. Thus reducing the volume of water with each flush of the toilet.

5. Build a rain barrel, ours are already constructed and in place. But we will be doing some at my parents house and we'll post the how-to when we do that.

6. Remember to turn off the water when: you brush your teeth, wash the dishes (don't have the rinse water on constantly), shaving in the shower or out. Be conscience of the water around you, it like gasoline is in limited supply.

For more information visit Water Footprint.