Seperate Directions

I’ve decided to keep A Day Closer to Fate up and running, sparodically. If I ever feel inspired in the whole hippie range of topics, you’ll know! I will keep posting the food storage and riot updates. (I think I shall do the riot halfway through the month, or when I get my utilities bill, and the food storage updates at the end of the month.)

Personal musings have been moved to the, currently nameless, blog here.

Thank you!

Riot for Austerity – January

To find out more about the Riot fo Austerity clicky clicky! This is really, really late, sorry folks!

1. Gasoline: 2 gallons, or 4.8% of the American Average

I went home twice, no carpooling (oops) for a total of 4 litres (1  gallon) of gas. I asked my dad about the mileage and we figured out the distance, so it’s accurate this month (he gets 9kms/L and the round trip is 16kms. I rounded up, partially out of laziness and partially because we were moving furniture and that probably had a negative effect on his mileage). I also travelled 17 five mile round trips by transit. (100mpg, 17*5 = 85 miles, or .85  gallons.) So two gallons to account of errors.

2. Electricity: 58.4% of the American Average

We got a new roomate and, well, the electricity bill doubled. 526kWh for our household this month. Sigh. We talked to him though, and we’re going to work out a compromise. Let’s see if it helps. I still haven’t found out what the “Green Electricity” means on my bill.

3. Heating/Gas: No idea what went wonky. Some calculation somewheres wasn’t right. Maybe I’ll look into it eventually…

229.7 Therms (24.231 Gj). That’s 114.85 Therms for our household.  Technically (remember my weird math from the last RfA post I made?) I have to reduce this to 9.4 for a winter month. This is even higher than last month. Ouch.

4. Garbage: ??

Still haven’t weighed any of my bags. Heh. It’s on my to-do list. Honest.

5. Water: ??

Just trying to reduce. See my water conservation posts.

6. Consumer Goods: 8% of American Average

$7.48 (first hand goods) + $56.69 (toiletries) + $2.13 (second hand books) = $66.30

7. Food: Should be 70/25/5. Is more like 20/35/45

Again, guesstimating from my pantry. Last month was 15/25/60. At least I’m shifting more towards dry, in bulk items. Again, the local and organic portion should be higher once the farmer’s market opens up. I have been favouring items made/grown in Alberta as best I can though.

Eating Seasonally Research

(This is going to be a play by play of me attempting to be a more seasonal and living in-the-world (rather than bending it to my will) human being.

Step one: Figure out when the nearest farmer’s market is open.

The only one I could reasonably get to* is open from June 10th to September 23rd, 3:30-7pm on Tuesdays. I should double check that sometime in May.

Step two: Research what can be grown here (kinda more a gardening slant but meh). What, exactly, is local and in season?

Links:

http://www.calhort.org/gardening/community.aspx - general site

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/gardening/caab0049 – weather with gardening info

I’ve also checked out a couple of gardening books. I’ll keep notes.

*That I could find on google. If anyone knows any farmer’s markets open in Calgary, year round or more often, which are easily accesible by train, drop me a comment! Or if anyone knows how to get to the big one by transit in less than an hour from the U of C, lemme know that too. It looks kinda close to the second stampede lrt station?

Procrastination and Homemaking…

I got sucked into a vortex of homemaking sites, and noticed some common advice:

Do something imperfectly  or do one small thing really well. Either method helps you to overcome procrastination.

They wrote about housework and the like, but it can be applied to “greenifying” your life too.

I find myself overwhelmed quite often. And my tendency to procrastinate has made it onto every list I’ve ever made about my faults.

So, how does one overcome that? In housework the advice is to shine your sink. Or clean out one shelve/cupboard at a time. In becoming more sustainable the advice could become bring your own bags, or to research one area exclusively – for as long as it takes.

So, while I research and work on living more seasonally, here’s a list of simple things to do really well:

Really easy:

~Stop using plastic bags

~Buy a reusable water bottle and coffee mug

~Buy clothing second hand

~Make dinner at home (use oven for more than one meal at a time)

~Turn the heat down/up a couple of degrees

~Shave a minute or two off shower time

~Buy the item with the least new packaging (recycled or minimized)

~Keep the electronic (computers, cell phones, music players, etc.) for one more year. Give them away or recycle them when you’re done.

~Put all your entertainment center into a surge protector/power bar and turn off/unplug that overnight and when you go away on vacation

~Goto bed earlier

~Buy the one produce you eat most frequently either locally or organically

~Compost

Medium:

~Let it mellow

~Spend less time on the computer and/or in front of the TV

~Plant some food

~Buy everything organic/local

~Clean with organic cleaners

~Paperless banking/bill payment

~Canceling the newspaper subscription

~Washing clothes in cold water (for the germaphobic; the rest of you this one counts as an easy)

~Hanging clothes to dry

~Join the compact (for shorter times. Longer times or for shopaholics, this may be a hard)

Hard:

~Make your own

~Sew your own

~Go without electronics completely (no computer and/or no tv and/or no cellphone and/or etc.) (can also be moved to medium with a time limit:  One day a week, or one week a month, or for one month, etc.)

~Clean with baking soda, vinegar, tea tree oil, etc.

~Picking up litter

~Checking what can and cannot be recycled. Recycling what can, avoiding what can’t

~Replace all disposables with reusable items

~Reuse plastic baggies

~Stop using bags for produce and bulk items

Living Seasonally

There was one more thing I noticed while I was in BC, but didn’t mention in my New Perspectives series (1, 2, 3) : that by the end of five weeks, both of us were very good at predicting the weather.

Now, I’m not saying we knew it’d be 6 degrees with less than a centimeter of snow and cloudy with 5km/hr wind tomorrow, but we did know it’d be warmer (and a warm night because of the cloud cover), might snow and of course it’d be windy… it’s Keremeos!

I guess living in a tent reconnects you to the world around you.

Wait a minute. I’m so disconnected that that reconnects me? Five weeks. Just over a month, and not even fully in the environment (after all, we still had a tent and a bathroom)… not to mention the fact that we’re in different places every (couple of) week(s). That’s like saying I’m such a bad writer that being able to spell half my words right makes me infinitely better.

We need to start living within the world, rather than trying to force it to our will. Seasonally. Think about it: 100 years ago, spring and fall were busy times. Summer was busy too, but slower because of the heat. Winter was a quiet time, often boring and hungry.

People starved in early spring. When  was the last time you felt hunger for longer than the time it took the pizza to get here? Scratch that. When’s the last time you felt hunger and there wasn’t anything edible in the house? And no, not having anything  that you “wanna eat” doesn’t count. But nothing that you can put in your mouth to satisfy your tummy without risking illness. I bet that if you’ve actually experienced this, it wasn’t in early spring!

When’s the last time I moved slower in the summer heat? Not counting this past summer, when I didn’t have a choice (man, 40 degrees is HOT), I can’t even remember!

So, how do I fix this? My first step is going to be a move towards eating seasonally (with some localness thrown in for good measure).  Which will be easier once summer hits and I can simply goto the farmer’s market (there’s a smaller one just a short bus ride away but it’s only a couple days a week, and during the summerish…)

Essentially, I’m trying to live seasonally and starting from scratch. I have a vague notion of what seasonal is, what might be local (or maybe not… “cows and wheat” isn’t quite what I mean here), what’s probably not local (Bananas! Chocolate!) and that there’s a farmer’s market close by.  At some point in time. One or two afternoons a week, when it’s hot out? I don’t know what a 100 mile radius would include, or where to find things from within that radius. I don’t know how to tell if produce was kept from when it was harvested or if it is fresh. I don’t have my chores listed out in seasons. I don’t know when the frost danger passes here, nor when it comes back. And probably a million other things I can’t even fathom right now.

In summary: I have a lot to learn. Wanna watch? Stay tuned for missteps and triumphs in my journey! (Wow, that was cheesey!)