It’s Not Easy Being Green

But it is sweaty.

See, round these parts we exchange the joy of an eight month growing season for the sheer torture of 100+ degree summers. We are quite in the middle of one of those now. We have had 9 straight days of 100+ degree weather. That’s hot, y’all.

It also causes a problem. Air-conditioning is also a way of life around here. I hear tell that there are parts of the country where central air is not standard in home building. I think it must be a myth. Last week the local news went nuts because the electricity usage around here skyrocketed as the heat climbed. It nearly maxed out the system. We were warned that we needed to carefully watch our energy usage to avoid rolling black-outs, brown outs and just plain power outages. Sigh.

So, now, between the hours of 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. we turn our air up to 80 degrees. It’s never below 78 degrees in this house anyway. When the kids complain I make them stand on the back porch for a few minutes – it’s a change in perspective. We also close all of the curtains to block out the sun. We avoid running any major appliances – including the oven if I can help it.

I don’t know what the neighbors are doing, but we haven’t had any major power outages, and I figure it’s a small price to pay for the pleasure of having electricity.

What I wouldn’t give for a clothesline.

An Urban Homestead

Have you ever heard of homesteading? It was something that I was introduced to a couple of years ago. It is an idea that has been bumping around in my brain for awhile. There are parts of it that sound pretty appealing, and other parts that seem a little “out there.”

For the uninitiated homesteading is the idea of getting the most use out of your little plot of land as possible. Most people that I know of who are involved in this way of life have several acres of land that they are using to grow food and animals to feed their families. It was an idea that I had become accustomed to, the idea that homesteading needs a minimum of 5 acres to work. Until I visited Path to Freedom. It was then that I was shocked out of that belief.

What I find appealing about the idea of homesteading is the growing your own food idea. We’ve taken steps toward that here on our own little funny farm. We have a little vegetable garden that is producing quite well. It’s not to the point that we could live off of it, but it is helping to reduce our need for produce from the store. It’s a learning experience for sure!

I would love to have a few chickens (although my feed mill dealer store owner says that cleaning the coop is pretty uncool). Mainly for the eggs. Rabbits would be good. Maybe a few goats. Learn to make soap. But for that we need acreage. We can’t have goats or chickens in the “big” city. We could do rabbits, but we simply don’t have room for a hutch where they wouldn’t get cooked in the summer.

I’d love to compost, but Party Boy says no here. There’s nowhere to put the pile that wouldn’t be uncomfortably close to the house and somehow getting him to part with a couple of hundred dollars for a patio unit that we have no space for seems unlikely.

And yet, they’re doing in in Cali.

Somehow, since we do want to sell this house in a couple of years I can’t see him agreeing to let me tear up the front yard and expand the garden either.

So, while total urban homesteading is out for the time being, I am feeling inspired to make other changes, like possibly adding another garden bed and finding a way to be more energy conscious. We’ll see.

Greening Up

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Not a holiday we celebrate heavily around here. We all wear green, of course, but that’s about it. And that’s enough for us.

What I did love was the fact that the day brought my attention to the color green and how much of it is really present in our house. We really have a lot of green around. More than anything I love that the outside is greening up.

On that note, I wanted to let you know that while I’ll still post a few updates about the garden venture over here that the majority of detailed posts will be at my new garden site – Gardening at the Funny Farm. I did that because I didn’t want to drown this site in detailed observations about my attempts at organic gardening and interesting garden information. I did want a place to collect that info though and I figured that maybe someone, someday might be able to benefit from my experiences.