First Potatoe Harvest of the Year?
Yesterday, I harvested about 25 pounds of potatoes! Spring equinox has just arrived, the weather here is grey, rainy and mostly cold. There is still some snow on the ground and the top layer of the ground is still frozen in many places. So how, you might wonder, am I harvesting the first potatoes in 2012? I’ll tell you in a minute, but first let me share the general idea. In climates like here, one has maybe about 90 days of good growing season, June, July and August. Sometimes the weather is warm and soil temperatures high enough in May […]
Sustainable Smoothie (part 3)
2 Smoothie Recipes Well, here are my “secret” smoothie recipes. The first one is what we have been doing until recently. It has some major issues in regards to sustainability. For example the banana and orange are not grown here but transported from far. And then the special ingredients are not grown here either and besides the flax seed, couldn’t be grown here. The second one has also the green super food in it. It is not locally from here, but could be replaced with some green kale, cucumber, spinach, etc. During the winter, which is cold and snowy here, […]
Rain of Plums & Pears
Our plum trees have been pouring plums on us in the last few days. The moment we have finished picking the ones fallen down, the next ones are dropping. The squirrels feast on them and so do we. The trees are a little late this year to offer their bounty. Like all the years before, they have a wonderful flavor. We can’t eat them all, but figured out a great way to use them – as Christmas gifts! We dry them in a dehydrator and store them. When December comes we make little packages for family. They have been so […]
We have Green Tomatoes
Last night we had the first frost in town. Besides some squash plants the tomato plants were effected. Today it was sunny and nice during the day and I went out to harvest the tomatoes, most of them green. It seems they they have survived the cold temperature. Although they had a somewhat sticky surface made the ones I tried as they were red enough taste different. I have no idea what the stickiness is about. There are a number of things one can do with green tomatoes, one made famous by a movie – Fried Green Tomatoes. Another option […]
Zero Organic Kitchen Waste
In our kitchen we produce a fair amount of organic waste. When we make our smoothies there are peels and seeds. When we prepare for stir fries, there are always some cut offs. Be it the greens of carrots or beets, some wilted or brown leaves from salads. Sometimes we don’t use some veggies or fruits in time and they go a little bit moldy. Then there are tea bags or skins from nuts or the table flowers are passed their time. So, what to do with all this? Is there a way to make this waste into a resource? […]
Sustainable Smoothie (part 2)
Have you been enjoying smoothies recently? We are just past the peak of our fruit harvesting season – pears, plums and apples. In the previous post about smoothies, we posted several questions to consider, if wanting to have a healthy and although otherwise sustainable smoothie, a “green” smoothie. Not because of the color it might have, but in the sense of having considered ecological aspects for its whole life-cycle and its footprint. To which level of detail and level of interconnections to other elements in the chain of processes and events necessary to produce our smoothie one wants to take […]
Gardening without Garden
It is fall, the day starts getting shorter, there are some chillier mornings and I saw the first dew on the windshields of cars. Fall is arrived, well at least in my neck of the woods. Harvesting some ears of corn in the garden today, makes me think of the great significance of this very enjoyable activity. Growing healthy food has many benefits and is an important task for our times. It has been said that the problems of the world can be solved through gardening. There are many facets to this aspect of thriving on green. First question that […]
