Tips
Tips, tools and hints for green living making thriving on green fun.
Laundry
How much laundry do you have? How many times do you do laundry? What a boring subject, getting our clothes, sheets and all sorts of fabrics cleaned. But wait, its something we all in one way or another are dealing with and doing this greener has a big impact on our energy consumption. I remember several years ago reading an article that went into quite some details how to do your laundry by and. Not that I am advocating that. The article was so amazing in describing exactly how to do this with not more work involved than when using […]
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 […]
Free Notes Paper
I have figured out how to reduce the use of white paper and even how to have plenty of note taking paper, some of it free. Here are some of my thoughts about it, what I am doing and how to get the free notes paper: Even though we are using computers for more and more things in our day to day lives, at work and for entertainment, to store information, paying our bills, conducting business, staying in touch and many, many more things, one of the promises of this technology was to reduce the amount of paper we will […]
Short Green Study on Candle Jars
Here we are, after Christmas, after New Years, after many other holidays one might have been celebrating. I hope you enjoyed it all! I did. Nevertheless, I have been looking for a solution to one particular recycle problem. We use candles. For some of our workshops, my wife has found candles she likes most, for various reasons: The don’t smell and are unscented, they develop hardly any smoke, almost all the wax is burnt and they burn for 100 hours. Moreover they are made from palm wax, which is, potentially, a renewable resource. Of course, to be a sustainable or […]
Singing Connects
Currently I am working with a friend on a workshop that is designed to dive into the process of building community. This is an experiential class on how to form and work within a group that is combining the task orientation with the heart orientation and make those two aspects work together in a synergistic way. One element that we have found is really helping to connect with each other in a group setting is singing and music. There are many of melodies around that are just wonderful. Today I want to share with you one that is build around […]
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 […]
Getting Around
In today’s life for many it is unthinkable to not have transportation available at will at any time. This wasn’t always like that and certainly isn’t like that for the population in many places. Once the automobile was becoming the center of fulfilling our transportation needs, our city and land use plans were designed around the need of the car. Eventually this has contributed a lot to the fragmentation in our lives. We live at a different place where we shop, where we work and where we meet with friends or where we learn. The distances are often so far […]
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? […]
