Sustainable Living in Durham

Please Don't Share Your Garbage

Someone decided that they’d share their garbage with us since we only had one can out.  Two boxes of  old farm stuff , rusty cans and dirty bottles. The town was good enough to pick up the rust cans but my wife had to collect the rest and stuff it in a garbage bag to go out next week.  She was very NOT impressed.  It is just rude and laziness in her opinion.

This reminds me of when we lived in Germany in a six plex apartment in a tiny village called Beggendorf.  We didn't have a clue how the garbage system worked there.  For the first few weeks I would just leave my garbage bag by the curb beside everyone's large roll away bins.  I remember an older gentleman watching me and shaking his head and saying something I couldn't understand, probably that I was rude and lazy.  Later we got the key to our storage bin and started putting our bin out properly.  Several weeks later one of our neighbours was all upset as we were using their bin.  Within a few minutes everyone in the building was out sorting out all the bins as they were all mixed up.  We just stood to the side and waited for them to figure it all out and let us know which one was ours.  It turns out each bin had a bar code and each apartment had to pay for the removal based on the weight of their garbage.  They take their garbage pretty seriously over there.  I'm sure we will some day too.

Our Sustainable Home

With the completion of the much needed attic insulation and sealing; cutting, splitting and hoarding of wood and our switch to Bullfrog power, I think we are technically a sustainable home now, assuming I can keep up with harvesting all the wood around here.  All our basic needs for warmth, light and pumping water can be met sustainably.  We still have a way to go to be self sufficient for water heating and electricity but we've got the basics covered now.  The insulation cost us just over 3K and we should get over a thousand of that back from the ecoenergy program.  It probably won't pay us back in money but it should save me a lot of cutting and splitting over the years!

Now I can concentrate the next few months on sustainable food, aka my garden!  I have everything planted with the exception of some of the hot season crops.  That said, I've had some Zucchini under a cold frame for at least two weeks now.  I have 10 cold frames in total now which should take care of the rest of the spring.  I'll make a few more in the fall for overwintering the cold season crops.

Tree Spree

Today we picked up our trees and shrubs from the Durham Land Stewardship Council (contact carole.seysmith@ontario.ca ).  They offer tree and shrub seedlings at a very inexpensive price to help land owners re-forest their land.  You have to have at least 2 acres which is exactly what we have.  The trees cost under a dollar each (38 to 70 cents) and we got an additional 50% off as we live within the Oak Ridges Moraine.   Of course they are pretty tiny for that price.  The total for our 100 trees and shrubs was $26.60.  We got all native species as follows:

20 White Pine

20 White Spruce

10 Red Oak

10 Butternut

Hickory

10 Bitternut

10 poplar

10 Service

Berry

10 Elder

Berry

It took about 2 hours to plant all the trees.  We’ll tackle the bushes tonight or tomorrow.  We planted the conifers around the border of our property and the hardwoods along the driveway and down by the road but back far enough not to get any salt damage.  In 20 years it ought to be pretty impressive.

Green Living Show

The show was really impressive this year.  It was bigger and better although I don't think quite as well attended as last year although it may be that people were just spread out more. 

We caught a little of Robert Kennedy Jr's talk; got all of Ed Begely Jr's and the Managing Director of Toyota Canada's (who's name escapes me).  All were very good talks on the environment.  Ed's was more down to earth and amusing and dare I say he makes living a green life style a fun hobby.  He has a reality show called Life with Ed or something like that were they follow his green life style.  I haven't seen it myself but would like to hear from someone who has.  The Toyota dude made some interesting points about the challenges of the future of transportation but you can tell that even they are being dragged into a sustainable future.  After all they are in business to make money and business doesn't like to change what has worked for them in the past.  One thing I liked what he had to say was that they were looking at solar as a potential.  Solar panels on the top surfaces of an electric, plug-in hybrid just seems to make good sense to me.  Most people's cars just sit at work all day long in a big parking lot that just screams for solar panels.

The trade show portion was probably 30% larger than last year.  There was a lot of organic food booths (we basically had free samples for lunch) and personal care products as well as your standard hard ware stuff like solar panels, wind mills, lights etc, etc.  We bought a few LED lights at a really good price of 2 for $10 for 18 LED's and $15 for a 64 LED light.  The light is very blue from these and not too strong.  We will by bigger ones (more LED's) for the rest of our fixtures at some point in the future.  www.sonuonline.com

There were a lot of green cleaning products and we got some good size samples for free from the Loblaws booth.  It's great to finally see so many environmentally friendly cleaning product available and the prices are coming down with this much competition.  It seems so wrong to pollute the environment to clean our homes... www.qwatro.com   www.grassrootsstore.com   www.simplyclean.ca   www.naturecleanliving.com   www.greenbeaver.com

I got lots of leads on solar hot water heating and solar and wind electricity generation.  Apparently there is a $1,000 rebate for solar hot water available that I'll want to take advantage of this year.  It was interesting to see that home depot had solar systems available now.  I'd prefer to keep my business with a small local enterprise though.  I've read that 70% of money spent locally stays in the local area while only 10% of money spent with a multinational like Home Depot stays in the area.  I think its important to keep local people well employed and don't mind paying a little extra for this privilege and usually better service.

We got several free re-usable shopping bags and some small white pine seedlings too.  I planted them in pots yesterday and buried the pots into my vegetable garden.  They can grow for a couple of years there before I transplant them out to their final home along the border of my property. 

All in all it was a great way to spend a day and will help us to become more sustainable.

My Big Pile

Every year around this time I unload the chicken manure out of the chicken coop.  This year I got 11 heaping wheel barrows full.  As you can see it made a nice big pile.  The pile is made up of manure and leaves that I use as bedding.  As I was unloading it, it was already steaming in some parts.  Now I can smell the pile working away.  I stuck my hand in a few inches (with a glove on of course!) and it felt quite warm.  I'll give it a couple or three more turns over the next 4 weeks or so and it should be ready to spread over the garden.  Half the reason I keep chickens is to make this beautiful black compost.

For additional mulch this year, I also got 50 bags of half decomposed leaves from my brother-inlaw.  We spread them around all the fruit trees and bushes and over the aisle ways in the garden.  Once the seeds sprout and the plants are of decent size, I'll move the leaves all around the plants to keep them from drying out so quickly and to add more organic matter into their root zones.  The worms take care of mixing it in.

Earth Day Everyday?

We try to think of the long term effects of everything we do everyday.  As Kermit said "it isn't easy being green" but it isn't very hard to do some of the right things.  They usually save you money in the long run and positively effect your health too.

To me earth day is a time to think about what the future will hold for our children and grandchildren and what we can do to positively affect their futures today and for the rest of the year.  I'd like to see as much of the natural world preserved as possible for them to enjoy.   This isn't going to happen unless we collectively change direction pretty soon as there isn't that much left to preserve compared to what there was even a hundred years ago.  We have all the knowledge, skills, wealth and insight to live sustainably; we just have to decide to live differently and place our values on longer term solutions rather than short term instant gratification.  Your journey can start with a small step today.

Taking in a Show

We've been so busy with the gardens and all the last week.  With this great weather we've been going a bit crazy trying to get everything ready and cleaned up.  But we still found some time to take in the Scugog Spring Garden Show on Saturday.  The high point was the two presentations on Great Ontario Gardens and Heritage Gardening.  First presented by Veronica Sliva a Whitby garden writer (she has her own web site too that is worth checking out) and the latter presented by Julie Oakes from Pickering Village Museum.  We took some notes, got some good information and inspiration.

Next week we are off to the Green Living show at the CNE grounds.  It is supposed to be bigger and better than last year and it was pretty good last year.  I'm really looking forward to this one, specifically to get some info on solar hot water systems that is on our list for sustainable living this year and buy some LED light bulbs.

Now I have to get back to making more cold frames; two done about 10 more to go!

Chicken Tractor

Getting a plough for my old 49 tractor has been on the list for several months now. I thought I needed it to break the sod on the better part of an acre for more gardens. After watching “Endless Feast” on PBS the other day, I’ve decided to forgo the plough and use a chicken tractor instead. On this episode they visited an organic farmer who used several chicken tractors on his pasture and they later enjoyed the chicken dinner from his ranged birds.

I’ve known of the chicken tractor concept for many years and even had one of sorts working at our old place in Pontypool although it was big and clunky. This time I decide to build a small unit and completed it last Tuesday. The idea is to have a movable pen/coop that the chickens can scratch down to dirt in a few days and fertilize at the same time. With 6 hens in the pen, they scratched down the test plot in 5 days. I’m going to try 8 birds in there to see if I can speed it up. It will probably take all summer to do the whole front lawn but I really didn’t want to plough it under and was just waiting for a better way. Tractor ploughing isn’t that great for making good soil; the tractor compacts the soil; it burns gas causing more air pollution and it was going to cost a few hundred dollars to buy a plough. This way everyone wins, especially the chickens who get to do what they do best; scratch in the dirt.

Granola Bars Part of a Zero Waste Lunch

We’ve been making our own low fat granola bars to put in the kids lunches.  They take about 10 minutes to make and the kids love them.  We send them in their lunch in a reusable container.

Here’s what goes in them

1 tbsp of butter

¼ cup of honey

¼ packed brown sugar

¼ tsp of cinnamon

Pinch of salt

1 cup dried fruit (raisons, apricots, cranberries, dates) the kids like it when we add organic chocolate chips too

1 ½ cups of cereal (rice or oaty O’s)

1 cup rolled oats

We also add ground things like flax seed and red river cereal if we have them.

Combine the first 5 ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil stirring often.  Boil for 1 minute and remove from heat.  Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.  Press into a pan (press fairly hard with a flat tool) and refrigerate for about an hour until they cool and get harder.  Cut into squares and enjoy in your lunch or as a snack. We can never get them to last more than two days though!

We bring re-usable lunch bags, reusable containers for sandwiches and leftovers (I use a ceramic container for heating my lunch up as you shouldn’t be using plastic for heating food in) and glass bottles or stainless steel bottles for the little ones.  We got some nice ones called Klean Kanteen and can be ordered from their web site www.momknowsbest.ca  All the left over compost come back home and is fed to the chickens.  Zero waste!

Free Range

Home, home on the range. Where the chickens and children play....

This is the time of the year when the chickens get to roam on the range.  There isn't much in the garden for them to scratch to pieces yet and they can cruise around eating anything green or moving that will fit down their gullets.  They sure are happy to be out of the pen after the long winter.  They had a few days out over the course of the winter but not too many since they don't like to walk on the snow or ice in their bare feet.

We purchased 12 more pullets two weeks ago and they haven't laid a single egg yet.  The pullets are supposed to be 20 weeks old and just starting to lay.  This is the longest it's taken them to get started in the 10 or so times we've bought them.  We get them through the Orono Co-op for about $8 each.