Category Archives: sustainability

New Plantings

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in home, Independence Days, sustainability

This isn’t my comfrey plant, but I ordered seeds and plants this year.  From what I’ve researched, it is a good livestock feed with enough protein to keep animals healthy; I got Bocking 14 cultivars for plants, which are sterile and can be reproduced only by separating the roots and replanting.  I also got true comfrey seeds which I sincerely hope grow.  I have to make sure I follow the directions on that exactly and be patient.  This is for herbal purposes.  This site tells you all you ever wanted to know about comfrey.

I planted eggplant (long purple and white), sweet peppers,Aanaheim chiles, pomodoro tomatoes, and Thai hots earlier this month.  As usual, I got zero germination from the Thai hots, but since this is the third year I’ve had the seed and tried, I guess I didn’t expect anything so I’m not really terribly disappointed.  I did get heating mats though, so I was hoping my germination would be a little better. As usual, I have to give a salute with my trowel to Seeds from Italy because I had 100% germination with both the eggplant and the tomatoes.

Tragedy!!  I put the tray outside so they could get the breeze blowing on them and not get leggy — and I had the bunny poop tray in my hands and forgot it was on the step — and I STEPPED ON MY PLANTS!!!  I killed at least four eggplants from stepping on them….I’m glad I have more seed and it’s early in the season though!  Last year I couldn’t get any germination until rather late in the season, and I didn’t get the harvest I was hoping for with eggplant.

I planted peas out front; I planted sugar snap peas in one bed and Tohono O’Odham peas in another.  The Odham peas are old so I don’t know how well they’ll germinate; the snap peas are already sprouting I think.  Did you know that the first six inches of pea shoots are edible?  You can eat them like spinach or lettuce.  I can’t wait to try them.

I bought borage seed this year too, and hope it does well.    I am trying to expand my garden into more perennials and into herbs other than oregano, rosemary, and thyme; I love those and we use them a lot, but I also would like fenugreek, sage (I plant it every year and manage to kill it every year), more lavender, hyssop, calendula, chamomile, dill, and I can’t think of what else now…and I actually bought seeds for all of those.  So now, the front yard will be mostly herbs and perennials, and the back yard will be the veggies. Now to get the back yard into shape and situated for rotational gardening!

I am so excited!  I found a lilac that will grow in my climate!  I couldn’t get it this time at the nursery, but I will buy one next payday.  I love the smell of lilacs, and they have a bonus in that it is also a dye plant.  But not lavender colors; the leaves and flowers give a sagey green, and the bark and twigs give orange.  Surprising, huh?  I can’t wait to have a tree large enough to play with.

I actually want to end up with a living hedge around the front yard, so am playing with different ideas for temporary fences to keep the javelina out of the front yard and out of my plants.  The fence would only need to stay until the plants were established and tangled enough to keep them out, however long that might take. I told Mr. Tin Foil I was going to buy bright orange electric fencing tape to keep them out and he wasn’t pleased.  It’s still a possibility though…if the county tries to give me a hard time that’s what I’m going with — it’s temporary and they can’t fine me or make me pay a permit fee for a temporary fence.  They do make green though.  I only said bright orange because I knew he would both believe I would do it out of spite (I would) and to get his goat.

I bought more thyme and rosemary at the nursery today; the wacky winter weather we had along with some pretty hard freezes (26 degrees) killed my three year old rosemary bush as well as all my thyme plants; we use entirely too much of those herbs to be without so the purchase was needed.  Mr. Tin Foil helped me re-pot them into large pots tonight.  It made me so very happy to have my hands in loamy sweet smelling dirt.  He keeps telling me I’m a lady, but I think I’m just a peasant farmer at heart.

That’s my gardening progress so far; pictures will come when everything’s a little more organized.  Thank the Gods school is coming to a close for a while.  I need the time for the yard!

Ugh. I hate technology sometimes.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, home, sustainability

We have two laptops; one is a gateway that’s nearly ten years old — Mr. Tin Foil bought it for me when I first went back to school. The other is a Vaio, which he bought to take with him to Hawaii when he worked there, as well as going with him all over the Western Hemisphere when he worked for a company that sent him out weekly. It’s about five years old.

Well, in the last probably six months or so, the Gateway (which is the backup laptop) and the Vaio both have been getting QUITE cranky. The poor gateway is just old and slow; the Vaio keeps doing things like refusing to recognize the printer, insisting we have no internet (which we do), refusing to recognize our home network, crashing in the middle of important things, and so on.

Since he uses the desktop now that he doesn’t travel any more, and I use the laptop since I stand up and take it around the house with me frequently, this has been a huge issue — we’re both going to school, both our classes are on line, and we both need to have access to a computer to get our stuff done, often at the same time.

I gave up today when I could no longer download any podcasts, and it took restarting the computer three times to be able to access my online class, which ate up nearly an hour and a half. We broke down and bought a new laptop. I am NOT happy about the price, but I would be much more unhappy not to graduate in May.

I am pretty unhappy about the fact that laptops don’t last very long. I’m told that ours had a long life though, so maybe I just am expecting too much. I was pretty upset when my Ipod started crapping out too, but the people at the store were absolutely incredulous that it’s lasted me eight years. Guess it’s a matter of relativity.

I’m getting a wood stove for sure now, though. I gotta balance this out with a low tech option or it will make me crazy.

My (belated) Christmas present

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Crafts, Independence Days, sustainability

I got a little cash for Christmas.  That cash went into my overtime fund; I get extras that I want by working overtime or selling craft stuff so that I don’t take anything out of our household budget.  When I got enough, and International Fleeces had their first anniversary sale, I purchased some two row mini combs.  What, you say?  I already have a comb and hackle set?  Yes, well, different products for different uses.  The Blue Mountain Handcrafts set is incredibly useful for wools over 3 inches long.  The mini combs are incredibly useful for fine fibers and for fibers less than 3 inches long.  On the larger comb and hackle set, I would have waste in the combs if the fiber was less than 3 inches.  On the mini combs I have waste that is about 1 inch.  This I can card into other wools for a tweedy blend on my drum carder.  Waste not, want not.

So here is a picture diary of my combs and the absolutely filthy merino wool I washed, dried, and then combed with these new mini combs.

As you can sort of see from this picture, the water is brown from all the mud and the wool looks tan to brown.  What you don’t see are all the manure tags and the vegetable matter (VM) that is stuck into the wool.  Merino, being an especially fine wool, has lots of crimp and therefore EVERYTHING sticks to the fleece when the sheep is out and about.  Everything.

This is the same wool soaking in its second bath.  I heat the water to 150 degrees, squirt enough Dawn detergent (the original, without enzymes) to make the water blue, and soak for 20 minutes.  As you can see, the wool is floating on the water because there’s no longer any dirt, oil, or manure to weight it down.  It expands to at least double its starting dirty size after the second wash.  You can still see all the VM in the wool though.

It gets wrung out in a towel, carefully, after three rinses; each rinse gets a little cooler and the wool soaks in each for at least 10 minutes to allow the scales to slowly close and prevent felting — sticking together.  Then it gets put outside to dry.

That’s where my new mini combs by Valkyrie Supply come in.  I load the combs with fiber, and comb from the ends to the tines.  I make at least two passes; each pass means that the fiber is transferred from the loaded comb to the empty comb.  This leaves the short fibers on the empty comb, and allows the fibers to be all in alignment on the combs, and all of the vegetable matter simply falls to the floor.  Then I diz the combed fibers into a bird’s nest — basically a long piece of the combed fibers that I twist slightly as I wrap into a spiral shape.

These are a bunch of bird’s nests that were combed out of that dirty wool.  Next comes the spinning, and I’ll ultimately end up with something like this:

This is superwash merino that I bought already washed, combed, and ready to spin.  Which feels like cheating :)   But you get the idea.

I’m dying up little 3 and 4 ounce batches of the wool in different colors.  So far I have Kermit the Frog green (it said Leaf Green on the bottle!) and Royal Blue which seems to be coming out more like a cobalt blue.  These may be spun on their own, or may be spun in concert for a varigated self striping yarn.

Some will be carded and combed with my angora fiber and possibly dyed after that.  I’m still thinking of a project for that.

All of this is time consuming, but very satisfying.  I get exactly the fiber I want.  And I learn something new every time I do it!  And then of course there is the fact that when the apocalypse comes, I’ll be able to spin my own fibers and clothe my family with weaving, knitting, crocheting, and sewing.  :)

I loves me a man who will get in the shit.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in home, Independence Days, sustainability

IMAG0020

Originally uploaded by susancoyotesfan

He’s so irritated that I want to take his picture. Even more irritated than he was when I asked him if he would help me; hauling horse manure in rubbermaid tubs and buckets from the local stables to our garden would have taken me all day without his help.

We made I think four loads of three rubbermaid tubs (the large ones) and five buckets in our Prius, and then we were both ready for lunch. I still don’t have enough, but we pretty well cleaned out the aged manure and I don’t want to burn any plants taking the newer.

I tried to talk him into peeing in the garden but no luck….still. Maybe if I tell him it’s a fertility rite and it’s sexy? (it is)

It was a good day. I’ll think of this day when we’re enjoying our luscious tomatoes this summer. And babaganoush.

My favorite kitchen tool

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, Independence Days, peak oil, preparedness, survivalist, sustainability

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Originally uploaded by susancoyotesfan

This is one of my favorite kitchen items. It is my Presto pressure cooker, circa sometime mid twentieth century. It belonged to my husband’s grandmother, and we inherited it when Oscar, my husband’s grandfather died at the ripe age of 97. Yes, it’s dirty on the top because it’s cooking our dinner.

This is a life saver for days like today, when we both were busy studying and taking tests for our on line classes. Neither of us came up for air or remembered about dinner until 6 pm; so, there’s a ham hock with veggies and rice in there cooking. In less than an hour we’ll have dinner (plus prep time, about 45 min).

Wow, you say. Nearly two hours to make dinner??? Well, it beats the hell out of a frozen meal, made with God only knows what for ingredient sources, and preservatives to boot. Everything came from our freezer or our storage. And it surely beats the hell out of spending money on a take out meal.

Believe it or not, a pressure cooker can use less power than a crockpot or regular cooking. That’s because the pressure makes the food cook faster. I could make it even more efficient by cooking on my rocket stove, or by bringing it to pressure and then putting it into my haybox cooker to finish coming back down to atmospheric pressure. In the summer this may well be cooking on my firepit outside, or on my campstove.

My haybox cooker is a wine case with styrofoam glued to the outside, and nested in a cardboard box.  I use an old felted wool blanket folded in it as the ‘hay’ because it’s neater and holds heat really well.

All in all, this has been a lifesaver for two college students trying to maintain honors gpa’s while still working. If only I could find a lifesaver that would help us out that much with laundry and housekeeping.

Turkey Day debrief

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, home, Independence Days, sustainability

What a strange holiday this year.  I worked on the actual day, was lucky enough to get sent home about an hour and a half early, but then I had to work on a paper.  Fun.

We had Mr. TF’s dad, two of the three sons, the all-but-daughter in law, the grand baby, and a friend. Our holiday was Friday, because I worked.  Everyone (except Mr. TF) spent the holiday with friends elsewhere.

We had a Diestel Farms turkey as usual; this has become a new tradition for us and this makes the fourth year (?) we’ve gotten a pasture fed small farm turkey.  Delicious as usual.

For the first time, we had home grown yams.  I didn’t  make nearly enough — the entire casserole dish was eaten at the feast, with no leftovers at all.

We also had home grown potatoes for the first time, mixed in with a couple of organic potatoes.  I didn’t have good luck with my potato plants this year; they died before August was over so there was a small harvest.  I still got about a 10 to one ratio of potatoes though.  Not bad.

I made a pumpkin pie from pie pumpkins as usual; the major problem this year was I used a new recipe.  Which omitted sugar as one of the ingredients.  Yes, I made a wonderful pie that had no sugar.  I figured out after about my third bite; I spent the first two trying to figure out why it didn’t taste right.  I rechecked the recipe to see if I had missed it or it really wasn’t there…nope, no sugar listed.  Won’t be making that one again!

Every year I learn more about growing root vegetables, as well as the rest of what we grow.  Every year I get better, and refine my technique.  I’m definitely going back to container growing for potatoes and yams; the soil is deeper and the soil stays moister.  I just won’t do any more of the tower type growing; I have decided that the plants expend so much energy making more green growth that they don’t make any tuber growth.  I didn’t do any of that this year, and even though the plants died prematurely, I still got quite a few decent sized potatoes from 5 plants. And a fairly decent harvest of yams from four plants.  More manure!  I need more manure!

I hadn’t planned on making green bean casserole, since my beans did so poorly, but DH insisted (as did the kids when they learned I wasn’t going to make it) so I had my FIL stop at the store on the way to buy fresh green beans.  He of course had no problem doing it, but he’s used to my weirdness after all.  Then I had a ‘fight’ between DIL and DH over who gets the (very small amount of)  leftovers.  Kind of weird that the dish that gets the most requests, after stuffing, is a 50′s dish cooked up by Campbell’s kitchen cooks as a marketing tool for cream of mushroom soup.

I vary from what I assume is the standard recipe by using fresh green beans.  I chop finely a half onion, about six slices bacon (which in our case came from Windy View Acres, my friend’s farm) cut into small pieces, and saute the onion and bacon until the bacon is browned and the onions are transluscent.  Then I add the green beans and saute until bright green and a little tender.  This all gets a couple cans of cream of mushroom soup mixed in, a couple of splashes of Worcestershire sauce, some chopped mushrooms, and gets topped with deep fried onions (the ones from a can).  Bake for 30 min or so, then take the cover off and let the onions brown.  Whenever I learn to make my own cream of mushroom soup, I’ll use that instead, but I’m not going to ever make deep fried onions I’m afraid.

The best part of the holiday was when our friend, my FIL, and DH were watching grand daughter’s TV program (some weird cartoon one) with the sound turned off, listening to Arlo Guthrie sing Alice’s Restaurant.  They were mesmerized.  Crazy.  DIL says that program is like that, you get hypnotized by the colors…not sure if that’s a good thing for anyone to be watching, you know?

Garden’s pretty well done except for collard greens for the chickens.  I’m shocked that they are doing so amazingly well even with nightly frosts!  I thought they were a cold weather vegetable.  Apparently not.  Also doing well is the swiss chard.  And the basil, believe it or not.

On my next days off it will be time to start hauling manure home from the local stables to put into the garden beds and mulch with straw, in preparation for spring.  No winter gardening for me this year, I’m too tired from the toll school is taking.  Five more classes.  Twenty five weeks.  I feel like I’m pregnant, counting the weeks til I’m done.  I’m on  a time pressure to get it done and not take any more breaks if I want to get into a nurse practitioner program before they make it a doctoral level program in 2012 though.  So this fall is my last chance to get in.  Unless financial collapse hits before then.  Happy thought.

We woke up to a dead chicken yesterday morning.  Murdered and half eaten, actually.  My neighbor thinks it was a fox; I think it may have been a skunk, since I surprised one at the doorway to their cage in front of the coop last night when I went to shut them in.  We have gotten lax about making sure they’re safely shut in at night since we’ve never had any problems.  So now I feel guilty that my biggest, gentlest girl paid the price for her trust in us and our laxness in ensuring their safety.  Next project along with manuring the garden beds:  more stones along the fence line.  Big ones.

My husband doesn’t buy me flowers.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, home, sustainability

Which is one of the things I really appreciate about him.  You see, he is a hopeless romantic and would happily waste hundreds of hard earned dollars buying me flowers monthly, weekly, daily if he thought it would make me happy for him to do so.  I, however, think the cost versus benefit ratio is too small for extravagances like that.  They last, at most, 10 days and don’t look very good for the last three or four anyway.  So way back when we first got together, I explained to him that I am not a flowers person.  It was very hard for him to understand, and it took a few instances of disappointments and hard feelings on both our parts for him to truly understand my position.

I am a very practical person.  When I see something, I look at it in terms of usefulness.  Does it save time?  Does it use minimal, or no, energy compared to its usefulness?  Is it something I will actually use often enough to justify the purchase?  Or, in the case of many of my seasonal gadgets, is it something that saves so very much time and energy on the occasions it IS used that it justifies the purchase?  Or is it just a space hogger, a dust collector?  Is it just one more thing to clean and take care of?  I know this sounds very narrow, but these are the questions burned into my mind over a lifetime of being ummm…not middle class.  Poor.  And the child of parents who also asked these questions of us when we wanted things as children.

One of my quirks is that I actually value things like good cookware, linens, and furniture.  So one of the most romantic things my husband has ever given me, in my opinion, is a dryer.  When we first got together, we had a washer but no dryer and as we were living in a rental we had nowhere to put up a line even were I willing at that point to hang our undies out along a main thoroughfare.  And with three smallish children to keep clothed, it was important to have that dryer.  It meant a lot to me, and I thought of his generosity every time I used it.

We inherited a house worth of items when my husband’s grandfather died; much of what we inherited is furniture, cookware, and various gadgets/appliances built before 1960 and in some cases before 1940.  I loved Oscar but I never met Ursula, who died in the early 80′s yet I use many of her pots and pans daily, and treasure the hand operated appliances/gadgets she had collected.  I think of her every time I use them and I’m grateful she and I obviously shared the desire to have reliable, quality tools.  I think she and I would have gotten along well, even though since Mr. TF is my second husband, it would have violated her Catholic and conservative views. One of the things I treasure the most is the mantel clock Oscar and Ursula were given when they married in 1929.  It’s electric, and no longer keeps proper time, but it’s a thing of beauty.  I plan to take it to the local clockmaker to see if it can be repaired.  If not, we will still keep it for the simple reason that it’s a family heirloom.  I know, if it’s broken and no longer useful it’s a space hog and a dust catcher….nobody can be perfectly consistent all the time.  Besides.  It really is a beautiful clock; it’s classic Craftsman type workmanship with clean lines and wonderful details.  Sometimes beauty is useful in itself.  Sometimes.

These are the things I value.  I like the sense of continuity in using things handed down.  I like and appreciate the quality apparent in things that are well over 50 years old and still fully functional.  And I love that my husband respects this in me, even though he’s still willing to waste his hard earned money to buy me frippery.

As Above, so Below

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in sustainability

How Mandelbrot/’s Fractals Changed the World

Mandelbrot was a visionary mathematician in the tradition of exploration of our world via math and science that dates back at least to Ur and probably earlier. He is very much in the tradition of those visionary wizards, healers, and holy men/women who, via their insights (some discovered via the use of mind altering drugs) assisted humanity to live better lives both spiritually and physically. He reminds me of a modern day ceremonial magician, the precursor of our modern scientist; although I’m pretty sure he didn’t draw protective circles on the floor of his workroom and conjure up spirits to give him assistance….Al Jibbr, Newton, and Copernicus would have been proud to see the development of their work in this way.

He brought back the essential understanding of the whole contained in each part, and each part expressing the whole. This understanding was forgotten during the Enlightenment period and is responsible for the progression of the Industrial Age. After all, if the world is merely an automaton, with no inherent life and no sacredness, exploitation by its very nature is no sin. Things only have value relative to their ability to be used, from people to land, to minerals and other species. This is why we’ve used up most of the value and have the mess we have now. Mandelbrot brought back the sense of the whole, the old time Pagan sensibility that the part is more than a piece of the whole, even if you don’t understand quite how, and that what affects one part affects the whole in ways you probably won’t understand for quite a while.  It reminds us that we are a part of the whole, and reflect the whole in our being, from cell up to organism.

Mandelbrot’s work makes the work of experimental and theoretical physicists possible in many ways, because it allows the ‘messiness’ of the real world to be mathematically accounted for.  This article about entanglement and the possibilities it raises about the nature of the whole to the parts, merely reminds us that those ancient pioneers were on to something, that they were paying better attention than many of our best scientists over the last 150 years.  It brings us back to an earlier time in the circle, or spiral if you like.  Same song, new verse.

He died earlier this week, and in the best tradition of our collective history of ancestor worship, deserves to become a demigod or at least a saint. I’ll be lighting a candle in his memory when we remember the ancestors later this month.

Thank you for the life work, and good journey to you, Mr. Mandelbrot.

Results of the Fair, fall garden update

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Crafts, Economy, Independence Days, sustainability

This is weeks late, I know, but I’ve been busy with other stuff taking over my life.

Not bad; a second place for my sweater, which is really pretty good for my first knitting WAG type project.  I have always taken patterns and altered them but never made one up based on a suggestion.  One of my skeins of yarn got first and another got second; ditto for my scarves.  The hand spun hand knit one got first, my first weaving project got second.

All in all, it gives me hope that I might be able to sell stuff here and there — at least, my work is quality is what I mean.  Whether I can actually sell stuff remains to be seen.  It would be nice to at least make it self sustaining; my goal is though to be able to reduce my hours working at my ‘real’ job so I could work more from home.  At first glance, it doesn’t seem very doable, BUT… when you factor in gas to and from work, buying drinks (even though I mostly drink the free coffee and water), and lunch purchases (because I’m not home enough to make all my lunches all the time) as well as wear and tear on uniforms and shoes, and laundry expenses it might end up breaking even.  For at least one or two days a month less.  And who knows, if the economy takes another nosedive as I suspect it might, working less might make me more attractive to my bosses and less likely to be forcibly cut.  I do know that part time people have access to all the hours they care to have.

And then again, if the economy takes another nosedive, nobody will have money to spend on quality anyway….

The garden has done very poorly so far this year.  I’ve put up about 20 lbs of tomatoes from the garden the whole of this year and have maybe another five that will be ripe before the first frost comes due at the end of the month.  No peppers, a few eggplants, one bunch of grapes from my own vines, and the raspberries are dying.

The one thing that has done very well are the lima beans.  From a 2 x 3 plot I got about a cup of beans.  I think that is a pretty good return from a little package!  Those are definitely keepers.  They’ll get planted again next year.

The swiss chard is finally doing well after suffering in the heat all summer long, and the collard greens are still thriving.  We don’t care for them much (the only recipe I’ve found for them involves cooking them for hours in a pork broth and serving with cornbread) but the chickens absolutely love them so I’ll grow them again just for them.

After two months with no eggs at least two are producing again.  It will be time for new chicks in the spring, I think.  Much as these hens have been pampered, if they’re past their prime and not giving us what we got them for, it’s time for them to go to the chicken retirement home in favor of some younger girls who will produce reliably for us.  After all, we’re supplying our home entirely from our eggs, and two relatives regularly from our girls.  We need the production!

My plan is to rip all the plants out of the beds after the first frost and to manure and mulch heavily with straw, and let it sit over the winter with no winter gardening at all.  Hopefully increasing the fertility and tilth will help counter any future wacky weather issues like we’ve had this year.  I also want to get rid of my trash container composters and to build an actual cinder block compost unit.  I think part of the reason I don’t get hot enough temps in my compost to kill seeds is because I don’t have a critical mass of compost in one spot at any given time.  If my three barrels were combined into one bin, I think it might be enough to get good compost faster.

That’s all the updates for now.  Off to cut out DH’s Halloween costume and hopefully to go to a birthday party later today.

Recycling old yarn

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Crafts, Economy, home, sustainability

This is a sample of Cascade 220, a 100% wool yarn, the first yarn commercially produced that gives a living wage to the sheep herders of Peru.  It’s lusciously soft, and Mr. TF and I picked up about 10 skeins of this yarn in the above ghastly color at a closeout sale for a killer price.  This yarn is NOT cheap, but I got it all for I think $30 or some ridiculously low price.  The color of course is the problem.  I kept thinking I would find a project I could live with the color in; I did end up making a shawl that I gave away but I still had multiple skeins of this left over.

Several months ago I got some Wilton’s cake dyes from another person on Ravelry; she was having a baby and wouldn’t have time to play with dyes for a while and didn’t want to see them go to waste.  I got like 20 colors for a very reasonable price and thought that if they didn’t work out, I wasn’t out very much money.  Last night I finally made the connection….ugly yarn, non-toxic dyes…why not?  I already hate it, it can’t get any worse.  So I over dyed it.

And above is the result.  Now this I can live with!  I used four colors and eye droppers to soak the yarn.  In places, it didn’t completely cover the grey, but instead of being ugly it looks like it’s part of the design of the yarn.  I can’t wait to make something with this!