What are we eating?
Posted: June 14, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security Comments Off on What are we eating?
I was recently reorganizing my workshop when I came across our stack of potato tower buckets that I scavenged from our local bakeries and delis.
One of the buckets for “cream cheese icing” caught my eye, specifically the laundry list of chemical ingredients. We’re literally killing ourselves with these food-like substances masquerading as real food. The only true purpose of these chemical compounds is to make corporations money; there is no effort made here for health, beauty, or taste. Ugh.
However, I do enjoy the irony of using the old containers of this chemical crap to grow hyperlocal organic food. 🙂
Overachieving chickens
Posted: May 31, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: day ranging, golden comets Comments Off on Overachieving chickens
I love our Golden Comet laying hens.
They lay an egg a day without pause and many of the eggs are huge (see eggs on left in photo). We keep these oversized ones ourselves rather than include them in the eggs we barter as they simply won’t fit in any egg carton.
Notice the blue Araucana egg is smaller than even the normal size Golden Comet eggs; the blue one is the same size as the eggs you buy in the store.
The Golden Comets are proving to be sweet-tempered with our children, small body weight requiring less feed, very healthy in a day-ranging scenario, and excellent egg producers. Love this breed. Highly recommended.
Turning over a new (Nissan) Leaf
Posted: May 28, 2011 Filed under: 5. Alt Transportation | Tags: electric bike, electric car, Nissan Leaf Comments Off on Turning over a new (Nissan) Leaf
I’m now heavily conflicted between using my electric bicycle for chores around town versus our new Nissan Leaf.
The only true 100% electric solution out there for folks who need a full-blown car, the Nissan Leaf has been great since we picked it up a few weeks ago.
It is our primary family car, doing daily duty around town with the rest of my family, but I find myself scheming for when I “need” to use it versus my bike. It is a blast to drive.
It has significantly better pickup than any other car I’ve ever owned; likely something to do with the direct transfer of power from the lightweight electric engine sitting above the front wheels. But who cares, it is seriously fun.
The touted 100 mile range is true, so long as you stay in “eco” mode which makes the car a bit more sluggish to respond. But even in the normal mode, we’re getting 80 MPC (miles per charge) every day. Some might think it a bit too small for them, but so far I’ve used it to haul 8′ bamboo poles (inside the car), tons of boxes for work, and our large monthly delivery of bulk foodstuffs. All that before I even put our roof rack on it.
Could this be the right car for you? Try tracking your daily driving for one month; you might just be surprised at how few days you drive over 80 miles total.
Thank goodness it’s Spring
Posted: May 20, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security Comments Off on Thank goodness it’s Spring
We’ve been waiting for the sun to return from it’s six month hiatus. Our grow lights and cold frames can only do so much food production work on there own.
Thank goodness it’s here!
The safety of energy
Posted: May 13, 2011 Filed under: 1. Philosophy, 4. Energy Security Comments Off on The safety of energy
Don’t you love it when people smarter than yourself say exactly what you are thinking?
Especially when they do it in just a handful of sentences. Seth Godin brilliantly summarizes the energy debate between nuclear versus oil versus coal while riffing on this interesting graphic.
Life lessons from Leo Babauta
Posted: May 1, 2011 Filed under: 1. Philosophy Comments Off on Life lessons from Leo BabautaWell said, sir.
Spring cleaning, for your food stores
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security Comments Off on Spring cleaning, for your food stores
My OCD tendencies come out each spring as I begin a systematic purge-and-organize of every room in our home.
Spring cleaning makes for a great time to rotate out short-term food stores like fruit and nuts, and check on long-term foods like wheat and rice. For our one-year supply of food, we’ve chosen to simply buy in bulk the items we normally eat, so that even in an emergency, at least we’ve got our familiar (and healthy) comfort foods. Freeze-dried foods are good for Ray Jardine-style lightweight backpacking and not much else.
I get bee with a little help from my friends
Posted: April 26, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: beekeeping, langstroth hives, master beekeeper, top bar hives Comments Off on I get bee with a little help from my friends
Pictured here is a buddy who happens to be a master beekeeper. While most of the hives around here, including ours, our Langstroth style, he also keeps a few interesting Top Bar style hives, which you can see to his left.
My friend generously took two beautiful honeycombs from an unused Kenyan style hive and dumped them into a five gallon bucket to send home to my family. It’s probably 6 months worth of honey!
He also gave our Langstroth hives a kick start from his own Langstroths by providing 10 full frames of comb + honey to slot into our new hives. Clearly generosity is a characteristic of master beekeepers.
Morels are back!
Posted: April 24, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security Comments Off on Morels are back!
Wow, has this turned into my favorite barter item. Our food forest is producing morels mushrooms again.
Hooray for spring sunshine!
No bump bee installation
Posted: April 23, 2011 Filed under: 3. Food Security | Tags: bee hives, beekeeping, installing new bees Comments Off on No bump bee installation
Following the general instructions from this wise fellow, I recently installed our two new colonies of bees.
The main (and important) distinction of this fellow’s method versus others is the lack of a “bump” to knock/pour the bees out of their delivery boxes (pictured nearby) into the hive. By avoiding this bump, you can also completely avoid much of the “required” protection gear. I installed our bees, messed around three times pulling frames in/out, and removed the queen boxes all without any more protection than a pair of gloves and long sleeve shirt.
The only modification I added to the video instructions was to slide a board across the opening as I pulled the feeding can out of the delivery box’s top. This kept the majority inside the box while I got the queen installed with her marshmallow. 24 hours later the marshmallow was gone. Great, low stress way to install a new colony!
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