Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Bikes fight back

I read about GM’s anti-bicycle (or is it pro-car?) ad in the LAB’s American Bicyclist newsletter a couple of weeks ago, and wow, just wow.

In the related blog post the LAB provided this great analysis:

If you are a student looking to add tens of thousands of dollars of long term debt, care little about the environment, and want to lump two tons of steel around campus while paying through the nose for insurance, gas, and parking…General Motors has got a perfect deal for you. Bonus: it’ll make you fat and unhealthy! All you have to do is give up that dorky bicycle that’s easy to use, practically free, gets you some exercise and is actually fun to ride.

Apparently, they’ve gotten a bit of flack (for some strange reason), and pulled the ad, but not before bicycle maker Giant had a little fun.

True that 🙂

Restuffed: The Sofa Saga

Less than a year ago, we welcomed home a new-to-us sofa.  The upholstery looked great, and it appeared to be a quality piece of furniture, all-in-all, a good Craigslist bargain.  I quickly bonded with our new sofa, enjoying many long, pregnancy-fatigue induced naps on its cushions.  Unfortunately, after several months of use, we noticed that the sofa was getting uncomfortable.  The stuffing in the back was suffering from the effects of age and gravity.

For a few months, we used strategically placed pillows to make up for the sofa’s shortcomings, but the possibility of getting it restuffed surfaced in conversations.  Then one day, we noticed a bright orange powdery substance oozing from one of the buttons.  Apparently, the used sofa that seemed to be in such good condition only seemed to be in good condition because the previous owner never used it.  With regular use, the really old foam stuffing showed its true colors, rapidly disintegrating, first the back of the couch, and then the cushions.

Green solution?  Don’t get rid of a perfectly good piece of furniture – repair it!  In this case, that meant restuffing.  It sounded like a good, simple plan, until Matthew started calling around to get quotes, and we started hearing amounts greater than one thousand dollars.  While we were pretty sure we could not get a new couch of similar quality for less than that (even if we wanted to take that route), it was hard to think about shelling out that much money for a sofa that we bought on Craigslist for a couple hundred dollars.

Most places wanted to restuff (which we wanted) AND reupholster (which we didn’t want).  One place said they might be able to restuff and use the existing upholstery (which would make it considerably cheaper), but they wouldn’t know until they actually started taking it apart and could see what condition the upholstery was in, and by then we could owe them at least a couple hundred dollars by the time we paid for pick-up and the initial labor.  Gulp.

To further complicate things, my in-laws were offering us a newer used sofa for free.  It lacked the charm and character of our sofa, as well as the length that allowed Matthew to actually lie down and stretch out, but compared to the potential expense of getting our sofa back in shape . . . .

Enter serious procrastinating on my part, all while sitting on an increasingly uncomfortable sofa.  I might still be on the fence right now, except the prospect of exposing my newborn baby to some mysterious orange powder demanded action.

I reluctantly agreed to try the place that was willing to try to reuse the current upholstery.  After some deliberation, we also decided to have them restuff the cushions, instead of attempting it ourselves.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.  We waved goodbye to our sofa the second Saturday in October.  That Monday, we got the good news that they could work with the current upholstery, and, five days later, we hoisted the sofa back up our stairs and into the front room, where we’ve been enjoying it ever since.  Though it was hardly the bargain we thought we were getting, we plan to enjoy it for many more years, and I feel like we made a decent investment.

Green baby — an oxymoron?

Before we had our own little one, my husband always accused me of being baby-crazy.  Despite the reality of the planet’s limited carrying capacity, I never really considered not having children, and I scaled back my plans from 3 kids to 2 kids, to stay below the 2.2 children/woman average for not increasing the world population.  (I’m pretty sure this 2.2 is a legit figure, but I can’t find a reliable source for it at the moment.)

Sure, I would use green practices, like cloth diapering, avoiding unnecessary baby/kid “stuff,” and buying used, and I would raise my child(ren) to respect the earth and its resources.  Still, the reality is that a baby born in the United States, no matter how “green,” has a big carbon footprint that will almost certainly persist throughout the lifetime.

When I was five months pregnant, I read Beth Terry’s “I’m an Environmentalist and I’m Not Having Kids” post, and, despite the fact that she explicitly states that she made her decision to not have kids because of personal goals rather than environmental concerns, I started feeling a little guilty.  And then there were the quotes she shared from others about not wanting to bring new life into this mess of a world.  Gulp.  Did I mention I was already five months pregnant at this point?  Perhaps not the best reading material.

So, here I am, seven months later, with a three-month-old son.  The last three months have certainly seen increased resource use — water and energy washing diapers, trips made in the car that would have otherwise been made by bicycle — but at this stage, his needs, and therefore his eco-impact, are relatively minimal.  We’ve managed to purchase almost all large items second-hand (as well as keeping total purchases to a minimum), and he’s clothed mostly in hand-me-downs.  But still, having a baby is not exactly green.

As the years pass, his resource consumption will increase, but in some areas it may decrease, at least for awhile.  Once he’s just a bit older, we plan to travel by bike more than by car, and he won’t be in diapers forever.  As he grows, we’ll do our best to foster an appreciation for sustainable living and respect for the earth and its resources, values that we hope he will carry with him.  While I don’t buy the argument that this approach justifies having large numbers of children, it does offer some middle ground for raising a child, and sometimes, that’s as good as it gets.

Planting garlic: Excitement and agony

A guest post by Farmer Matt

Who doesn’t get excited by growing gorgeous, flavorful bulbs of garlic with names like Music, Cherokee Red, Broadleaf Czech, Tochliavri, Inchelium Red, and Elephant Garlic?  Some people advocate planting around here in August, others in October after the first frost.  Last year I planted in August with good results, this year, due to the little one, I’m finally got it in on October 8 (no frost here yet), so we’ll see how it does.  For seed stock, I saved garlic from this year’s crop to replant and bought new varieties from Seed  Savers.  Time and conditions permitting, I may buy some Elephant garlic from Whole Foods and try to get that in as well.

Soil Prep
I definitely recommend planting garlic sometime in the fall for harvest early the following summer.  I plant it in well worked soil with good drainage and plant it in beds to avoid compacting the roots; this also makes it easier to apply a heavy layer of mulch.

Planting
Gently separate cloves, leaving as much of the paper wrapper on them as possible; plant 6-8” apart, or 12” apart for Elephant garlic.  Plant cloves pointed-end up, cover with ½-1” of soil, and then mulch with leaves, ideally chopped.

Harvesting
I cut off scapes in the spring when they’re about 12” long, and harvest when the plant’s leaves start to yellow, checking the bulbs for the cloves bulging through the wrappers to confirm that it’s time to harvest by gently digging the plants up from below.

The agonizing part is that with garlic the “seed” is exactly the same clove you want to eat.  Even worse, it’s one of the few plants where planting the largest cloves makes a big difference in the size of the bulb you’ll harvest next year, so you have to plant your most beautiful, gorgeous garlic to keep your quality high.  As I’m working on increasing my planting stock and my harvest, I had to plant most of my garlic.  I planted about 175 cloves, roughtly 30 bulbs.  My mother and my family have eaten maybe 8 bulbs each so far, and we both have 8 bulbs left, so we’ve used 32 of the smallest bulbs, and I’ve replanted half of this year’s harvest.

When baby’s away, Mama plays

I’m back to work this week, but off today, thanks to some guy who “discovered America.”  Or not.  Anyhow, I won’t really argue with a holiday, dubious origins or no.

Since my MIL will usually watch The Dude on Mondays, we went ahead with a test drive of that plan, so I am free 🙂  (And a little tear, a real tear.)  My to-do list included picking up a fifty pound bag of whole wheat pastry flour from Local Harvest — not exactly something I could toss in the milk crate on the back of my bike.  I was resigned to driving the car for the 1-mile trip when I remembered . . . the new bike trailer!

The trailer has been sitting in the basement since we bought it a few weeks ago, completely dissembled, as that was the only we managed to cram it (barely) into our car.  I pulled it out of the corner and got it all ready to go, everything locked into place, wheels on, air in the tires, flag ready to fly . . . and then I tried to carry it up the basement stairs, only to discover that I had to remove the wheels and trailer-pull piece for it to fit.  Oh, for the love of a garage . . . .

Finally ready to roll

Oh, wait.  What’s that in the background?  Could it be . . . a garage?  Why, yes, but only classic car owners willing to pay big bucks to park their toys there need apply, who cares if the apartment tenants would put it to good use on a daily basis.

After all the hassle of getting the trailer ready to go, I was feeling a bit negative, thinking the trailer was a big mistake and a waste of money, but that disappeared once I hit the open road.  I found biking with the trailer surprisingly easy, even fully loaded.

Someone call the cops; my bag of flour is NOT wearing a helmet!

Given the hassle of getting the thing in and out of the basement, and the dubiousness of biking with a 3-month-old, I don’t think the trailer will be getting much use until spring (older baby and a new apartment with garage space, we hope), but I enjoyed taking it out for a little test drive on this beautiful fall day.