The Local Harvest is in Full Swing

In addition to the Salem Farmer's Market being up and running every Thursday from 3pm to 7pm (just a mile walk from our house), our own garden has begun to produce harvest worthy items.

Okay, admittedly, our tomato plants are looking pretty pathetic. We started them very early and they became tall and leggy as they waited in our not quite south facing window for the evening temperatures to climb up to above 50º F. When we were finally able to get them in the ground... they were flopping over and generally looking sickly. Then the wild rabbits found them, and though tomato plants are supposedly toxic to eat, the rabbits appear to be immune. So, we may have to replant some new tomatoes.



On the other side of the spectrum, our spinach, arugula, and swiss chard plants are growing so fast that we almost can't keep up with them. I'm dining every evening on tasty salad mixes with slices of our radishes mixed in. Our herb garden is now three years old, and we've got an over abundance of sage, thyme, oregano, lemon balm, chives, garlic, tarragon, lavender, and rosemary. Our dinners-no matter what we're eating-are always seasoned with fresh picked herbs and life has gotten quite delicious.

I can't wait for the peas, beans, zucchini, carrots, beets, cucumbers, (hopefully) tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, acorn squash, buttercup squash, lakota squash, and sugar pumpkins to produce :)

In addition to what we've got growing in the garden, our red and black raspberry plants are about to bloom, our strawberries have finished flowering and are setting tiny green fruits, our lonely blueberry bush survived the winter, and the two peach trees we put in the ground at the beginning of April survived and have leafed out. They won't fruit for a few years, but when they do... OMG, there is nothing finer that a ripe peach plucked right off the tree.

Why are we homesteading at the Karch house? To sum it up, we care about our physical and mental health and we care about our environment. Home grown food is a known quantity. We know where it's coming from, how it's being grown, and what chemicals are or aren't being used on it. And we know how much fossil fuels are being used to grow it, water it, fertilize it, package and process it, transport it, and keep it cool until it gets to our plate. We could buy a share at a local CSA like Green Meadow Farm or Appleton Farm, but I and my husband feel that it's important for our children to see food growing and be involved in the process of getting it from seed to the dinner plate.

Disappointing News from Washington...

Gas prices are on the rise. That's not news to any of us. Have you changed your behavior at all in response to it? Are you carpooling? Are you trying to cut down on unnecessary trips to the store? Are you opting to drive the more fuel efficient car rather than the SUV? Or are you just kind of sitting and watching events play out around you? Different people have different reactions when fuel prices rise, as they seem to do every year. They invariably come back down but always settle at a new, slightly higher low rate.

In our house, we purchased an old fashioned "reel" push mower--they type that uses no gas at all. I love it; it's no more difficult to use than our gas powered push mower (which is not self propelled as some models are). We're also expanding our vegetable garden so that we can have access to fresh locally grown (and therefore fossil fuel free) vegetables. Our response is to try and opt out of the yearly cycle of fluctuating (and every increasing) fuel prices. Slowly but surely we'd like to wean our family off of fossil fuels as much as we can. We have both short term and long term goals for going green.

But how is our President responding to the rising gas prices? Is he vowing to invest more money into research and development of clean and green energy such as solar, wind, hydro, or geo? No.

Here's a clip from a Washington Post article, and the link for anyone interested in reading the full article. I could rant for pages, but I will leave you to form your own opinions of the situation. I hope that you will post comments and share your thoughts and engage in a discussion of the politics involved in the environmental challenge that is our country's consumption/dependence upon fossil fuels.

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"WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, under pressure from Republicans and the public to bring down gasoline prices, announced new measures on Saturday to expand domestic oil production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

High fuel prices have dented Obama's ratings in opinion polls and threaten to dampen the economic recovery that is critical to his re-election in 2012."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42706911/ns/politics/

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Green Grub

Check out this video that tells you 5 ways to be more sustainable (and delicious) in your kitchen!

Ecofriendly Eating

Green Cleaning Tips

I've already posted about the cleaning super powers of simple baking soda and regular white vinegar. Now I'd like to add a third cleaner to the list: diet coke.

Here's my experience with it this weekend. When the Karch family grills outside, we like to use our cast iron pans and skillets, but when we pulled our largest pan out this morning (we planned to have an outdoor barbecue lunch) we discovered that it had rusted badly. No idea how since we don't wash them after using them and the one in question was well seasoned. In any case, the thing was coated in rust. Yuck! It looked like a lost cause (wish I'd taken a before picture so I had visual proof to back up this story).

Then I remembered a friend back in college telling me that he'd once stripped clean a rusted bike chain by soaking it in diet coke for an hour. 'Yeah, right," I'd though to myself at the time. But here I was staring at this once beautiful and much loved cast iron pan and I thought to myself, 'It certainly couldn't hurt the situation.'

My husband ran out to Walgreens and picked up a 1 liter bottle of diet coke and a steel wool brillo pad. He got the big chunks of rust off the pan with the brillo first and then poured half of the bottle of diet coke into the pan. We let the coke sit for two minute and then started rubbing the pan with the brillo. Five minutes later you couldn't even tell that the pan had been rusty. It was sparkling clean! I'm not kidding.

I wondered if diet coke would work on the rust around the drain on our ancietnt bathtub. I went inside, stoppered up the tub and poured a quarter of the diet coke that we had left in the bottle into the tub where it settled around the drain. Again, I let it sit for two minutes and then (gently) scraped at it with the steel wool brillo. To my amazement (and repulsion) our drain looks 1000 times better.

I had to share this trick with the rest of you. And for the record, I don't think I'm ever going to drink diet coke again.

Fresh Veggies on the Back Porch

It's that magical time of year when certain members of the Pingree community start to get a gleam in their eye--planting season has begun. That's right! This past weekend was the first weekend for the dedicated gardeners among us to start planting our cool weather vegetable seeds. We sprout and raise them indoors for a few weeks so that they're ready to be put in the ground just as soon as it thaws.

There's nothing better than home grown vegetables. Not only are they YOURS (you're personally invested in their growth, which psychologically makes them taste better), but they're as local as you can get and they can be as organic (or not) as you want them to be. But for many of us, committing to a garden (even a very small one) isn't feasible (you might not have a yard or the soil in your yard is questionable) and it's inherently intimidating if you didn't grow up with a garden. So what's a wannabe gardener to do?

Enter "Bag Gardening." This is, hands down, the easiest way to grow your own delicious vegetables.

Here's what you need:
- One 40 lb plastic bag of topsoil ($1 to $5), and I know the bag is plastic but we've got to start somewhere, right?

- One packet of seeds (I recommend a nice salad greens mixture for your very first bag experiment).

- A 2 x 3 foot area of space that gets sunlight most of the day, such as your back porch (or front porch, whichever is sunnier).


Here's what you do. At the beginning of April put the bag outside where you want to grow your salad greens. Poke a bunch of small holes in one side of the bag with a screw driver (for drainage). Flip the bag over and cut the top portion of the bag off to expose the soil inside of it, effectively turning the bag into a container. Plant your lettuce seeds according to the instructions on the back of the seed pack. Water lightly (just enough for the soil to feel "damp" but not "wet." Fertilize if you like, but it's not really necessary.

Tah-Dah! In just a couple of weeks you will have a crop of delicious lettuce that was grown as local as local can get. Harvest at your whim, making sure to pinch off any flower spikes that try to grow. Yum!

Go on. Try it. Be the type of person who tries it out!

Ubran Farmer

Okay, there is officially no excuse left for not growing your own fresh vegetables! Maybe even have your own fresh eggs every morning. Check this out! She's a little bit... odd, I'll admit. Still, I bet I'd have such an interesting conversation with her over dinner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yYO4L2vegE&feature=player_embedded#at=260

Watch this video and then tell me what you think about it.

Ready to Go Electric?

Chevy has the Volt. Nissan has the Leaf. Several other manufacturers have electric cars developed but are awaiting consumer reaction to these two electric cars before rolling out their own electric cars. Invariably, some of our Pingree students will be getting new cars soon. My question to our community is: if you are in a position (or if you find yourself in a position) to purchase a new car for yourself, would you consider going electric?



The Volt starts at $32,800 MSRP, give or take. It gets 40 miles per charge. Like all electric cars, it has very low maintenance costs. The Leaf starts at $26,200 MSRP, give or take. It gets 62 to 138 miles per charge (depending on how you drive it), and it also has low maintenance costs.

I'm hoping for lots of student comments on this post. What do you think? Would you or wouldn't you, and why?