The Story of Stuff: Bottled water

I really love the story of stuff and they've done it again, the story of bottled water.

Roaring wind

Today we had wind, maybe I should type it WIND. Sustained 25-30 with gusts 45+ mph. All day. I really mean all day! It got so bad mom's fence collapsed, I am sure she's not the only one. I am surprised we didn't loose power. I am sure many people tonight are out of power due to power lines getting knocked down from trees. The roar has been so constant all day, now that it's gone it seems eerily quiet. The joys of April weather!

Spring Plantings

I am pretty proud of myself this year. I've gotten my potatoes in the ground a full month earlier than I did last year. Much of the delay last year was due to the seed potatoes unwillingness to sprout! This year I ordered them much earlier in order to give them time to sprout before I got them in the ground. We're trying out some new varieties this year. Carola, All Blue and Russian Banana. I've also decided to try planting them in tires and similarly to last year add another tire each time the potato out grows it. Potato Tire Tower! I was disappointed with the amount I got last year. However that bed was huge and difficult to keep watered, which added to the smaller amount we got. I got the tires for free at the local tire shop, which is nice! I like free materials.

Jacob built me some super awesome trellises to support our peas! All the other beds need them too, since I plan to be drowning in tomatoes by the end of the summer... but those can wait to be built. Today I planted our two types of peas, two lettuces, spinage and some green bunching onions. I need to do succession planting for the spinage that way they don't all ripen at once. I plan to do that with the lettuces too.

Our weather has been typical April, snow, rain, hail, sun, wind, warm, frost. It's like a light switch rave, on and off with the only constant being inconsistency. I hope it's nice when we get our bee's I don't want them to suffer in the rain when we dump them into there new home. 11 days until they arrive. I have some extra stuff to get at the Millers so I am heading out there thursday morning. Getting excited for the new addition to the farm!

Bee Hive's painted and prettied

I burned some pretty designs in the bee hives, just for fun. But I noticed that the native bee hives that I did this for last year, the wood burning design as faded and is almost invisible. Sad. But at least I'll get to enjoy it for a while.

Bee's when you have more than one hive can 'drift' into another hive and sometimes one hive will end up stronger than another, simply because it has more bee's in it. But drifting isn't as big an issue if you give the girls an address. That's what I originally meant the burned designs to be. But Jim our master beekeeper said they look for colors rather than designs. But since I had painted the bee hives in linseed oil and beeswax mix no paint was getting into them. We improvised and nailed an untreated piece of wood to the front of the hive to paint, that way the paint would have something to stick to.

Yellow and green. We had green left over from painting our house, the yellow we had to purchase though.
Here's the hive's pretty burned design side for us and the colored painted wood side for the bees.

Seed Starting Room

I've taken over the downstairs bedroom as the seed starting room. But come June it will be our bedroom, we move downstairs in the summer so we don't suffer as much when it gets in the 90* range. So far I have onions and leeks, celery, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, and some herbs that aren't up yet. This week I have to start a bunch more stuff. WOOT! Mini grocery store starting in the basement!  I am hoping to have more than I could possibly need incase anything dies when it get's transplanted outside. I don't think I have enough onions though, I might get some sets at the hardware store.

Onions, Leeks and celery!

Tomatoes!!

Yes that's a pallet, with random wood legs.... we're cheep and the seeds don't care! LOL!

This was once a lovely shelf that we used in our food storage area (laundry room). We didn't want to buy a new shelf yet so we just used this one and put everything on the floor. The laundry room looks rather chaotic now!

Flooring Pictures

Please excuse the 'flooring porn' that is to follow. I found a good 'before' picture at Yule that shows the living room to dining room transition. Oh and it showcase's Jake being my Jake... that's balsamic vinegar he's "chugging."

Ok here we go!

Entry stairs.

Living room, kitchen, dining room.

Master.

Computer.

We still have the little bathroom to do and some finishing work like trim and stuff. Once the whole project is done I'll post a video of the sexyness.

Frame starter strips

After much deliberation about what type of hive we've decided to stick with the Langstroth hive. Our plans for Top Bar Hives fell through, mostly because of weather. TBH's don't do that well in really cold weather because the bees have a hard time moving horizontally though the hive for food rather than vertically. That might not make sense but take my word for it. Plus with a box of bee's costing $80 in our area, it seemed a risky leap to take concerning those lovely buzzers. So our original goal was to use a Langstroth (typical hive) but no frame foundation. The foundation for the frames is usually made of plastic and is a set size usually worker bee (girl) size. No drone (boy) size. Which can freak out the hive and some have theorized that it adds to CCD (bad bee disease in the news lately).

I follow a blog called Backwards Beekeepers, Kirk demos how we can help them to draw there own comb with out any sort of foundation as a guide. This gives the bee's a --> build here <-- sign.

Frame with pre built foundation. Picture from here.

Now this is what we are doing. I've melted bee's wax from our local no chemicals group. Then I wetted a 16" piece of lumber ( the water makes the melted bee's wax not stick to the wood). I painted a thin layer of wax onto the board then peeled it off the wood and stuck it into the hive frame.

I wedge the thin wax strip into the top groove of the frame like so, then paint with melted wax in the groove to give the wax strip some extra grip so it won't fall out.

I did that with all 40 frames for our 4 hive body's This is the bee's build here sign and will "help" them build in a straight line. Because sometimes they don't like to build straight.... silly girls!

Our bee keeping class went really well, I forgot to update about that because we were doing our flooring project at the same time. Jake and I passed our beekeeping class and are now official State of Washington Apprentice Beekeepers!! Our 2 boxes of girls arrive on April 17, just a little over 2 weeks a way. Jake my engineer has to build the hive stands and we have to cap off a few sprinkler heads in the area we are putting them. Then Bee's!

Garden Seeds 2010

Sorry for the prolonged absence, with this flooring project and spring gardens stuff we're getting kinda crazy around here. This is my garden grow list for the 2010 season. I just wanted to document it before I lost my mind! LOL Happy growing everyone!

Peas
Green Arrow- shelling pea
Amish Snap- snap pea

Lettuces/greens 
Yugoslavian Red- butterhead
Sanguine Ameliore- butterhead
Red Romaine (garden volunteer last year and saved the seeds) - romaine
Monopa spinage
Five Color Silverbeet - swish chard

Broccoli/Cauliflower
DeCicco Broccoli- good keeper and freezer
Romanesco Broccoli- spiraling pattern, prized in Italy grows well in northern gardens
Early Snowball Cauliflower


Beans
Climbing French- stringless, purple seeds, pole habit
Black Valentine- snap bean or dried soup bean, bush habit
Provider- good freezer, canner, bush habit
Hutterite Soup- best soup bean, bush habit

Squash/Cucumber
Black Beauty Zucchini- summer
Yellow Crookneck- summer
Snow Fancy Pickling Cucumber
Delicata- winter
Table Queen-winter
Potimarron-winter
Queensland Blue-winter
Long Pie Pumpkin-winter

Tomato and Family
Green Tomatillo
Applegreen- Eggplant, mild white flesh, non acid , does well in cold areas
Long Keeper- tomato, won't ripen on vine bring inside and wrap in paper for fresh tomatoes into december.
Italian Heirloom- tomato, big slicer
Martinos Roma- paste tomato, heavy set
Cherry Roma- tomato, fresh, or dried
Sheboygan- paste tomato, pink, good canner
Silvery Fir Tree- tomato, slicer, heavy producer, carrot like foliage

Peppers
Wenks Yellow Hots- pepper #3, medium hot, orange --> red ripe.
Quadrato Asti Giallo- pepper #0, sweet pepper, large green bell
Fish- pepper- #3 medium hot, striped technicolor fruit
Joe's Long Cayenne- pepper #3, long skinny and hot
Sweet Chocolate- pepper #0 sweet, Dark brown outside, brick red inside

Root Veggies
Haris Model- parsnip
Detroit Dark Red- beet
St. Valery- carrot
Scarlet Nantes- carrot

Herbs
Triple Curled Parsley
Chives (in place already)
Hyssop
Cilantro
Globe Basil
Thyme (more for the bees than me)
Rosemary
Greek Oregano
Grandma Einck's Dill (again for bees)

Flowers
Ring of Fire Sunflower
Rostov Sunflower
Evening Sun Sunflower
Titan Sunflower
Azureus Sweet Pea
Borage ( should be in place already... but I've yet to see starts)
Jolly Jester Marigold
Sensation Mixture Cosmos
Benary's Giant Zinnia

Onion/Garlic
Yellow Borettana - fresh onion, good kabobs, sweet flesh
Yellow of Parma- late harvest, keeper
Evergreen Hardy- bunching onion
Inchelium Red Garlic- good medium flavor, mid season, softneck
Georgian Crystal- porcelain garlic, large bulbs, mild flavor
Asian Tempest - Fiery garlic, hot, early harvest
Blue Soliaze-leek
Giant Musselburgh- leek

Miscellaneous 
Tall Utah 52/70- Celery

Breast Cancer Portland Dancers

I ran across this video and I am a total sucker for dancing like an idiot for a cause. These guys are brilliant and the whole video just makes me smile! I was amazed at how many different people they got to participate, from all over the hospital.

Particleboard nightmares

By the way this is the particleboard on our staircase. This will be leaving our toxic house too!

New Flooring

6 years ago when Jacob and I had this house built our contractor used the shittiest carpet on the market. During the first year when I would vacuum, bags and bags of carpet would actually pull up. To the point where we had not much of the "nice looking" carpet that was installed. We also made the mistake of choosing WAY to light of a color, off white with brown/black flecks in it. Naturally it didn't say off white for long. Having and unfinished yard and a dog with off white flooring..... well we gave up quickly. In our quest for new flooring many eco-friendly questions came up. Off-gassing, material, processed, LEED requirements, etc. If we choose carpet should it be wool? Do they spray it? Is it dosed in spill proof chemicals? What about Marmoleum? Do we have to lay down a toxic sub floor? Glues? Formaldehyde?

You get the picture. We found a company based in our own state that sells bamboo wood flooring. Upon further checking them out we pounced. The company is called Bamboo Hardwoods. We chose this company because they offered FSC certified bamboo flooring with very low toxic off gassing levels. They are CARB and E-O compliant which means they are about the lowest toxic floor we could find. Accept for maybe real hardwood recycled from a barn or something.... 

Now the fun came, demolition! 

We ripped up the carpet on the in the two bedrooms, stairs and living room, and decided to get that nasty press board and vinyl out of the kitchen too. Our master bath room we are saving to tile later this year... maybe. 

Demolition pictures: Install pictures and stacked bamboo flooring (it has to acclimate) to come later.

Which box are you in?

I love this video, every time I watch it. It just makes sense to me. Act because "we only get to run this experiment once."

Plastic Waste Challenge February

Having stumbled upon Fakeplasticfish I decided I wanted to take the plastic challenge. Simply put I wanted to see what we throw away in plastic waste for a year. I started this in February. Some of the plastic (I am sure there'll be more) I wouldn't normally assemble. But since I am in the process of setting up an emergency kit I'll have a bit more in the way of unrecyclable plastic. The questions that follow are directly from fakeplasticfish's site.


Food
Ketchup bottle (not recyclable in my area, a #7)
cheese wrappers
frozen blueberry bag
flax meal bag
milk bottle tops
soba noodle bag
ziplock bag

Mail/shipping
Tape from a box
several plastic envelope windows
packing slip envelope
Chase fake gift card

Misc.
Empi bag for electrodes
 sunglasses containers clamshell packaging
9 plastic covers for things like toothbrush, sharpie pen, scissors (all for first aid kit)
 random plastic bags

Total weight: 7 3/4 oz or 220g
Total items: 40 (including all envelope windows)


What items can I replace with plastic free or less plastic? 

Ketchup bottle. I plan to make my own this summer when the tomatoes are rolling me over. The cheese and the blueberry bags I can do without. I am working on cheese making to supplement and reduce the plastic there. I can't seem to find any cheese that doesn't come in giant wheels that is wax wrapped. The soba noodles I can buy in bulk and have been. This bag was from my mother who didn't like the noodles.

What items would I be willing to give up if a plastic free alternative doesn't exist?

Most of what I have isn't from any product that comes in plastic. Just household essentials or stuff for the emergency kit.

How many of these items are from "convenience" foods that I could make from scratch?  


None, well if you count cheese as a convenience food then I guess one, but I am working on that.

What Items are essential and do not have a plastic alternative?

None.

What changes might be necessary to reduce my plastic consumption?

Really get on the junk mail delivery. I hate all the crap plastic windows that show up. I did the recent push to get off the junk mail lists, now I have to see what happens with that.

What one plastic item am I willing to give up or replace this week?


Since none of these items are essential I am going to say nothing here.

Are there any other conclusions I can draw? 


I'd say we did really well. Much room for improvement, I plan on going through preserve to get our toothbrushes that should eliminate at least 2 useless plastic pieces every 3 months. I need to make constant choices when out in public or purchasing things. I think knowing what I know about plastic now will keep me "awake" instead of a mindless shopper.