Wild Plum Harvest

I found some wild plums, a blushing golden treasure hanging drooping under the trees near a small lake. I have been watching this thicket for three years, and have missed their ripening, or been beaten to it. I now know one does not see plums and come back next week! I was so excited to finally get a few. When I found them, I didn't delay, but filled my skirt. They were enough to can a small batch of jam! Funny how once I finally find a fruit, I find it everywhere; I found another thicket in a park we frequent, also ripe. Seeing the spot where they grow, what kind of a place with what companions, how the plants actually look, touching the branches, is so much more instructive than the field guides! Having seen, I can think of many similar spots to check next year around Labor Day.
Even with a fully laden tree, from twenty feet it mostly just looked green. The one visible plum I had taken for a stray yellow leaf, and all the rest were hiding, back under the leaves. I once was blind to wild plums; but now I see.

Biking Together Again--Gibbie Helping!

So, after a long hiatus, prompted by Gibbie's new found ability to ride behind an adult on his "tagalong" (meaning he hated the old trailer and I didn't know how to carry Ezra with the tagalong) I finally mustered up the courage to just try something. Lo and behold, it worked!I just tie Ezra, who is is now four years old, on my back. I don't do this much anymore, as he walks everywhere, but it worked just like always, and doesn't hurt when I'm leaning over biking, as it tends to now if I tried to wear him while walking any distance. It's similar to biking with a heavy backpack, which I am used to. Ezra loves looking over my shoulder, and we can all three of us can talk much better than when I was hauling them in the trailer because they are closer. I think it's quite safe and feel more comfortable in traffic than I did with the trailer. Plus, Gibbie is contributing to the ride! He can pedal along, and push hard on hills. He's really helping now!

We have biked like this to several places including our church, which is about five miles from home and up quite a hill! Another disadvantage which kept me from doing it for so long is the lack of storage space--I can't wear my backpack. This should be easily resolved with a generous handlebar basket and a rack over my back tire to support panniers. Maybe we could even put a rack on Gibbie's tagalong? I can't use a rack with a crate on it, because the tagalong runs in that space over the wheel.

Libby Jane's Rough Guide to Simple Living

This post is from a brief presentation I've been asked to give at our church on simple living. I volunteered to bring my solar oven and talk about it for a class on "creation care," and Jack Oughton, the teacher, asked me to prepare a little list of things our family does to live more gently on this earth. So, here goes:

Principles:
1. Enjoy the gifts of creation.
-We savor good, fresh food
-We relish being outdoors
-We enjoy using handmade and lasting things in our daily life rather than disposable and mass-produced stuff.
-We find enjoyment is often a good path "greening."
2. Biblical. Our desire to take care of the earth springs out of our driving commitment to follow God, and is completely concurrent with the teachings of the Christ, (as well as running throughout the Old and New Testaments.)
3. When I notice a wasteful area of our life, I often am able to find a better solution simply by pondering, "what would an Amish person do to meet this need?" I also read a ton of books, which is how I love to learn. All these practices have been put in place slowly in our lives, as we notice and change one thing at a time. Once we get used to doing something, it is no longer difficult. This list has not been a big undertaking, but rather a summary of the pleasurable path we've walked as we seek to follow God in our daily life. We make changes gradually, phasing out or up; instead of throwing away a perfectly useful plastic thing, use it as long as possible, but plan to replace with a more sustainably made and repairable alternative when it's useful life is over.

Food
-bake our own bread. Everyone I know seems to wish they could bake bread. It's really not that hard, and there's nothing like fresh bread!
-cook from scratch. saves a lot of money! There is a learning curve to cooking, but it's so worth it!
-drink tap water! totally healthy and green
-joined our local coop (everything at the coop is largely local and sustainably raised, so we don't have to worry about reading labels all the time)
-buy in bulk (cheaper, no waste of packaging, fresher grains than prepackaged)
-buying organic and local as much as possible (we started with animal products. being high on the food chain, meat and dairy carry heavier toxin loads. buying expensive meat helps us to use it carefully, and after the expense of that, buying organic veg was easier! with veg, we first started org. on the "dirty dozen", which are the fruits and veg that carry the most pesticide residues: berries, grapes, peaches,etc.)
-eating seasonally and locally. (not buying strawberries in January from New Zealand--this is costly in terms of the fuel used for refrigerated transportation around the world and leads to craziness in all kinds of ways) for seasonal fruits, we try to buy a lot when they're in season here in Minnesota and freeze, can, or dry them. Freezing is sooo easy; not as hard as one might think.
-I love wild foods and incorporate the unused produce of our city's boulevards and waste lands as much as possible into our diet.
-Fermentation Wild Fermentation by Sandor Elix Katz or The Country Kitchen by Jocasta Innes. We enjoy eating homemade: -pickles, bread, yogurt, simple cheeses, saurkraut, vinegar, cordials, all made and preserved via simple fermentation.

Transportation
-bike: in the winter, with kids, with cargo, plan trips
-bus: plan ahead, bring a book, work, water, snack to redeem the time
-a great time to pray
-a great way to meet neighbors. you can't love them if you don't know them
-an excuse to to walk a little more
-no worries about parking
-walk
-carpool
-carshare
-live by places we need to go: we are grateful we have been able to live close enough to bike to work, school, church, and most stores and places we go. This has in part been possible by turning down some possibilities which would preclude biking. Biking a lot is so enjoyable, great for our health as a family, and saves a ton of money. Even with two children, in the summer, we have sometimes only used our car a few times a month. This is easier in urban areas

Gardening
-for food
-let the garden take over the lawn
-plant perennials and fruit trees
-compost
-Wendell Berry says that growing food, and eating it is the single biggest positive thing a person can do for the earth, farmers, ourselves, and the economy.
-outdoor living

Don't Buy Stuff- if we buy used, we don't contribute to the demand for more mass production.
-lots of stuff we want we don't need, and many things actually don't contribute to happiness or the good of others
-as an artist, I make planners and notebooks out of discarded paper, rugs from rags, clothing, repair discarded furniture--lots of this stuff is simple and anyone could learn how.
-plan ahead for gifts -with planning we can make good choices about gifts, and find the "perfect gift". Often this is homemade, or even bought new. I find, if we haven't planned ahead, we may over-give and over-spend to compensate for a gift that feels like it's not "enough" because we think it's not just right for the recipient.

Community
-learn from others
-share resources
-know neighbors
-support one another

Laundry and Cleaning
-homemade cleaning products. Most household- things can be cleaned with household items: baking soda, soap, vinegar. If there's interest, I could share some recipes. All very simple and cheap. For us, these have entirely replaced brand-name glass cleaners, toilet scrub, etc.
-buy dish soap in bulk at the coop
-we don't use the clothes dryer. Weather permitting, we line dry our clothes outside. In the winter, we use a wooden drying rack indoors, which helps to humidify our dry air. "Delicates" and "unmentionables" are dried inside for privacy. Diapers get white again out in the sun, without bleach. We use non-chlorine bleach, when necessary.

Clothing
-we try to buy used or fair trade or locally made.
-we repair clothing to make it last longer.
-favorite clothing thrift stores in St. Paul: Unique Thrift on Rice Street, St. Vincent de Paul on W. 7th, Salvation Army on University. Thrift stores actually have a much wider selection of clothes than conventional ones because every item is unique. Most of the clothes at these stores, I find, are in great condition. also saves a ton of money.
-new, but more ethically made: Zimmerman's on Grand sells sweatshop-free clothes.
-we use clothing until it wears out, or give it to thrift stores or friends who can use it.
-we've been delighted to find that everyone at church passes clothes around all the time! We hardly had to buy baby, toddler, or maternity clothes.

Reducing Consumption
-we have gradually eliminated lots of disposable products from our lives, as follows:
-paper towels: rag bin (use for clothing worn beyond use or giving, wash separately from clothing, as for cloth diapers. this is a small amount of laundry. Our rags are not bought, t-shirts and towels make the best rags. Bathroom cleaning rags can be kept separate from kitchen rags by marking)
-paper napkins: cloth napkins. homemade or thrifted. cheap, beautiful, just toss in the laundry as needed.
-Kleenex: handkerchiefs. make sure to get soft ones! (all cotton or linen)
-feminine hygiene: The Keeper, Glad Rags, homemade. Cheaper and less toxic. My youth leader tipped me off to these in response to my query in high school! wash with bathroom rags or diapers.
-finding alternatives to battery operated items.
-deodorant, shampoo, lotions: Lush (at Macy's in the Mall of America, or online makes these products in solid form, without plastic packaging. They are more expensive, but last long enough to make up the cost and more.)
-bring our own tap water in water bottles when we go out, to avoid the cost and waste of buying drinks in disposable containers
-bring a travel mug for coffee drinks to go. some places may even give a little discount when you don't get the throw-away cup
-we bring silverware and cloth napkins with us when appropriate to avoid throwing away disposable cutlery. To-go Ware, glass jars, Tupperware is widely available at thrift stores and garage sales

Kids
-cloth diapers. not as hard as you think. saves a lot of money. If washed at home and line dried, no more waste than flushing a toilet. also, re-usable wipes, tossed in with dipes.
-forgo battery powered toys
-plan ahead to bring a picnic lunch or snacks
-use the bike trailer, weather permitting. our family mini-van
-lasting, versatile toys, rather than plastic
-home-made toys
-go to the library a lot, read aloud instead of tv.
-teach kids to play and live in the outdoors, thus to care for and love it.
-help with/ have their own gardens
-teach them to care for our things so they last

Culture
-use library, buying only books we know we will read again and again
-digital music or LPs, live music
-watch tv less (tv makes us want more stuff.)
-spend time outside instead of at the mall/ in stores, shopping online
-vacation locally
-support local businesses, coffee shops, restaurants, instead of big chains. (great way to make friends too!)
-invest in non-material treasures (maybe even eternal ones)

Zero Driving Days

After Gibbie and I finished fixing the car as shown in the previous post, our family didn't drive again for six days. We biked everywhere. This was extremely gratifying and probably one of the longest stretches of Zero Driving Days we've had.

Since I bike to both of my jobs, weekdays are easy Zero Driving Days. The weekend is the challenge. So far we've successfully biked to church only once. It's uphill most of the way and we need to leave home early enough to give me plenty of time to be early. (I can't be late for church if I'm supposed to play the opening hymn!)

We pull the kids in our Cannondale trailer which Libby has equipped with a milk crate "trunk" for our stuff. We can trade off who pulls the kids for the different legs of our travel in a given day. Unlike driving in the car, we can split off in different directions whenever we want to and both have a vehicle.

I'd say the biggest drawback is how hard it is to hold a conversation while traveling like this. We often read in the car, which is of course completely impossible on bikes. Thus our current book Paradise Lost is not going quite as quickly as others have, but ah well.

All this and I haven't mentioned gas prices... but I guess that's obvious.

Little Dreams and Supercool Bikes

Can I share some little dreams with you? I am dreaming of:
-going out on the porch to wake up in the mornings when it's warm enough!
-reading with the kids in a hammock
-finally building my dream compost bin: a 2- or 3-bin system with front panels that slide out, in the backyard
-finding some way for myself to bike around town safely with both the kids!
-growing more herbs and flowers in the garden this year
-canning and drying more wild, garden, and farmer's market foods, so we can head into next winter with a beautiful, well-stocked pantry!

So, lets talk about the biking dream a bit more. Warning! None of the pictures in this post are our own. I snagged them off of the websites of people who sell alternative bikes, and will try to give credit for each one. I hope they don't mind as they all look like great companies.
My goal is to be able to bike with the kids. We rejected the bike trailer pretty early in our search. They seem to be the preferred method of cycling with children, but they are heavy and kids are behind me and out of view. I think I would still go for the trailer except that our biking is primarily on city streets, and there are busy ones all around us. To cross a big, fast, four-lane road on a bike, bikers often stop on the median but this wouldn't be practical with a big trailer hanging off your back end. To cross at a light, I would either need to ride alone the busy road for at least a block, right in the middle of traffic, or go on the sidewalk. The sidewalks are rightfully full of pedestrians here in the hood, and I just don't feel good about biking in a traffic lane with my precious children behind me.
That brings us to child seats that can be mounted right on the bike. A great option for one kid. Maybe even two. There are front-mounted child seats that go either in front of or just behind the handle bars. They are popular in other countries, where family biking is more common. Bobike has a child seat that goes in front of the adult, but looks like it wouldn't interfere with pedalling. There are some other nice ones out there as well. But with one of these in front as well as a seat in back might make a lot of extra weight up at the top of the bike. It might work great--check out the sturdy-looking setup I found onthis blog, which showed this picture by Bala Nallama of a mother with three kids on her bike! I love the way those Scandanavians make everything look so easy. It also makes me wonder if a bike designed for extra riders wouldn't be more stable than a conventional American bike with after-market seats. Even better would be a setup with the child lower to give a more stable center of gravity. I would also like a place to put our backpack or whatnot. We always need our water bottles and diapers other sundries when we are out and about.
Well, leave it to those wonderful bikers and designers, Scandanavians, to have figured this all out long ago. I found plenty of Dutch and Danish manufacturers of cargo bicycles called Bakfiet as well as cargo tricycles!
This fancy version of the bakfiet is pictured on the
CargoCycle site, which is a good resource for all kinds of things related to alternative biking.
It was also atCargocycle that I discovered the Christiania.
As far as I can tell, and this is all new to me, the Christiania is the essence a cargo trike, and were designed to carry all kinds of things, and people, around the town after which they are named, where cars are not allowed. Both of these designs seem to fit all my saftey requirements, plus room for gear.
One company imports the classic Dutch bakfiet, and their website displays this picture of Princess Marilene biking with her two small children. Isn't that just lovely? At their site, I also found a video describing how bicycles can be used by ordinary families as transport for people or large cargo. I particularly appreciated their explanation that in many countries, regular families travel this way and it is completely accepted as a safe mode of transport, even safer than cars, whereas here in the states it is still really a fringe thing. I realize that it may be safer there because of the way roads are designed and bikes are respected. Hopefully we too can learn.
I feel like we're getting close to a workable solution; low center of gravity, secure places for children, children ride in front of the adult, small bicycle road footprint. And, imported from Europe, quite expensive!

On the other end of the spectrum,
WorldBike , whose slogan is "Bikes that Haul, for All," has programs for open-source bike designs to meet the practical needs of the world's poor. They have plans for bikes that carry stunning loads of cargo, and instructions to make them quite simply. While I do want to explore this site more, I didn't see plans for anything like the bakfiet or a front-loading cargo tricycle like the Christiania. I think the kids in the picture are just sitting on the cargo rack of an extracycle extension. Somehow I don't think this particular plan would work along University Avenue. All the same, WorldBike looks like a really neat organization doing exciting work.

Back to my Quest.

Looking for a company that makes a bakfiet or front-loading cargo tricycle domestically.
This company makes a sturdy cargo tricycle that looks good. I found a few start-ups trying to make something like the bakfiet, only better. (Isn't that just the American way? Trying to improve on what we haven't yet mastered?) These efforts didn't seem to be off the ground yet anyway.
I also discovered found a company in Eugine, OR, that makes this! Check out HumanPoweredMachines
Looks like the Bakfiet, no? Pretty exciting stuff. A girl can dream, can't she?

Book Review: North Country Spring

North Country Spring by Reeve Lindbergh, illustrated by Liz Sivertson is one of my favorite spring time picture books.
The text is lyrical, rhythmic verse in the vocative, calling each kind of animal to come out for spring. My favorite stanza, and a good example of the singing voice of this poem, reads,

Strut out, tall moose, from your stand of spruce.
Walk around, feel the ground, let your bones get loose.

Have you seen a moose? Have you seen a gangly young bull after a long winter? She really uses the cadence of her verse to describe the specific gait of each animal. Compare the above lines with the following:

Lope out, wild wolves, come out and prowl.
It's a fine shiny night for a yip and a howl.

This combined with the painting of wolves, under a large moon, with long shadows on the yet-snowy ground, gives such an impression of the pace and gait of a pack of wolves. I love the way the sounds of the words used to describe the wolves are so wolfish themselves. A wolf wouldn't be a wolf without both doggy yips and detours in his path; and that wild, sustained lunar chorus.
The pictures fall right in line with this.; lush, pastiche-y and expressive paintings. They show just enough detail to paint a personality--the tumlbey-ness of bear cubs, the cupped form of fluffed up chickadees on a branch. These images are every bit as lyrical as the text.
I would like to emphasize that picture books are not only for children. Long before mine came along, I haunted the children's section of the bookstore. As an adult, a reader, and an artist I built my fine picture library book by book out of admiration for the fine work coming out of this genre. There is a lot of twaddle in kids' books, but discarding that, the best of writing and illustrating for children is of the highest quality. I wonder if this may not be because children read for the sheer joy of it, so those who write and illustrate best for them have not the pretensions that drag down much adult literature. Paul and I often still use children's non-fiction as a starting point for research, when we need an overview of a new topic. I often read young adult novels and children's stories for my own pleasure reading.
At the sustainable neighborhoods conference, I attended a most excellent workshop on community gardening with youth and one important point I absorbed was that our children need a sense of place. This articulates for me why we keep reading books that sing of our seasons, our plants, our woods and waters and animals, here in Minnesota. Ruth, a founder of my beloved Swede Hollow Cafe's wonderful community children's garden talked about how we must teach our children to read the land here, to know it's story and understand its ways. She said she has found in her work with Twin Cities children that they may know something about the rainforest, but almost never know anything about our own mighty Mississippi.
We're reading it as a clarion call to spring--come, come, wherever you are! Come out from the corners, come out of your lair!

Sustainable Communities!

I heard about a conference on sustainable communities, here in St. Paul, and I am just so excited about it!
The conferences topic tracks include:

• School, congregational and neighborhood organizing
• Watershed Education / Restoration
• Gardening / Greening / Urban Forestry
• Transportation—Walking / Biking / Transit Use / Active Living by Design
• Energy Conservation / Green Buildings / Renewable Energy
• Local & Sustainable Food Systems
• Zero Waste Initiatives, Greening Your Business, Green Careers
• Developing a Community-wide Sustainability Plan

Doesn't that sound great?! To be honest, I started to highlight the topics I was most interested in, but then most of them were highlighted!
I am especially interested in Gardening, Greening, and Urban Forestry. I've got our little food and flower garden in our neighbors' yard, but have been hoping and waiting and praying for more opportunities to work on this kind of stuff in our larger community, with other people, both more and less experienced than me!
Is anyone interested in going with me to this conference? It's March 8th, at Augsburg College, here in the Twin Cities, and it's free.
***I've fixed the link above for the conference; sorry it didn't work before***

Wild Rice Soup for a Minnesota Winter: a Tangential Recipe

Winter Wild Rice Soup
The key to wild rice is letting it blossom. I put several handfuls of wild rice (this is real wild-grown stuff, hand harvested by Ojibwe people on Mille Lacs Reservation! Just another local treat from the co-op!) into my little sauce pan, and a kettle of water on the hob. When the kettle whistles boiling, I pour the hot water over the rice, cover it and leave it. This can be done the day before, or hours in advance of the meal. Before cooking with it, I rinse the rice a couple of times. Then all the rice is softened and each grain opens up. Wild rice seems expensive, but expands a lot more than white rice, so it's not really more pricey. If I don't let it blossom, all the other veggies get mushy while I wait for my rice to soften. You then end up cooking the soup for four hours into flavorlessness, or having chewy wild rice soup.
Heat a jar of broth or stock in the bottom of a nice deep pot. I make stock from leftovers of all kinds. Lacking this, just use water.
Put into the pot chopped carrots, wild rice, chopped potatoes, or other firm winter veggies.*
In a saucepan or frying pan, saute in a few glugs of olive oil:
chopped onion, garlic, parsnips**
Have I yet mentioned my new love of parsnips? You can dig them out of the garden all winter (theoretically. this might take advance planning if you live in the frozen north, but if they can be extracted from that hard ground, they will be sure to please!) I love their tart sweetness. Roasted, they carmelize and become a snacky pleasure food. cooked, they are sweet, soft, and tangy.So, saute this high-flavor matter till it becomes fragrant. I let it brown a bit, and toss in a splash of water. For some reason, this makes it all the sweeter. Transfer to the soup pot. Here I also added a fistful of sweet farmer's market corn frozen from the summer bounty. Slosh in some white wine, if you've got it.
Saute some chopped fresh mushrooms and put in soup.

When the veggies are almost all cooked, add a chopped stalk of celery or two.
I don't bother to wash the saucepan before making the roux. This is to be a cream soup. The flavors from the carmelized parsnip and onions are so good I don't want to wash any away. To make the roux, I put two spatches of butter in the pan until melted. Turn off the heat and sprinkle in an equal amount of white flour. This is not the time to use whole wheat flour for this one! Stir with a fork or wooden spoon till smooth. Then I slowly mix in a cup of real (whole) milk, little by little so as not to get doughy lumps of buttery flour. Stir this white sauce into the soup and season to taste: salt, pepper, parsley***, maybe basil or thyme, as your fancy takes you.

*Winter Veggies
I'm thinking about what people who didn't have supermarkets, cheap gas, and cheap refrigeration would eat, here in Minnesota all year long? Think pioneer suppers, think long Lakota winters. It just doesn't make sense to eat food shipped from South America, Fuji, or California for so much of the year that we don't have a fresh harvest here. Oranges at Christmas are one thing, we don't need this kind of expense and consumption to get good food here. (Joan Gussow articulates the concept of local eating quite well in her readable book, This Organic Life: confessions of a suburban Homesteader. I recommend the book as an intro to the local, seasonal table)
There is so much we can grow when it's warm and keep through the winter right here in Minnesota! I'm hoping do do more and more food preservation myself in the coming years, but for now we're just enjoying the few foods we have put by in the last year, and trying to buy foods that come from good, small, concientious farms as close to us as possible. Shopping at the co-op makes this easier, as they label where each offering hails from. Paul does most of the shopping, so I just ask him to look for the closest state possible. I know he also considers cost. Who wants to pay for shipping refrigerated, gassed spinach and tomatoes from California when parsnips are dirt-cheap?
Another factor is food durability. As in, beets are more durable than spinach. Foods that have to be eaten within weeks of harvest, that bruise easily, or need refrigeration or chemical treatment to survive until they hit the store shelf, we just avoid in the winter. We can eat green salads April through November, right out of our backyards. We're not super strict about this--we're in no danger of scurvvy, but as I learn about the whole history of the foods we eat and its implications for us, our neighbors, farmers, and children, I find it very satisfying to plan our meals around real keeping crops. Not to mention, I don't know anyone who actually enjoys grocery store tomatoes in February. As our friend Liz Fleming says, they should have a different name from the tomatoes one grows and picks in the garden, as they are an entirely different and vastly less enjoyable vegetable.

This really isn't as limiting as it might sound:
Parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, winter squash, cabbage, kale. (I found a variety though Seed Savers that is hardy to ten below, Farenheit and then when picked keep forever in the fridge,)
Grains: Barley, oats, rice, wild rice, cornmeal, quinoa, amaranth, pastas, etc.
Legumes, dried
And for fresh foods: Sprouts! Alfalfa! Mung bean, wheat, fenugreek, etc. Mary Jane Butters has a fun section on growing sprouts in her Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook.
Mushrooms
Dried fruits: apples, cranberries, currants, raisins, etc.
Wine, hard ciders, vinegars
Dried Herbs, spices
Meat and Dairy: cheeses, cream, milk, puddings, broth, eggs, etc.
All that stuff can either be produced and sold right here all winter long, or stored from earlier production here.
I don't have qualms about getting spices, coffee, tea, etc from distant ports as they don't require refrigeration during shipping and aren't fresh; these are dried products, relatively lightweight, ship quite efficiently as compared to fresh, canned, or frozen fruit.
There is also a beauty in seasonality. Roasted root vegetables, thick soups, fresh bread, puddings, and stews feel good these cold months. Rather than feeling limited, I almost wish I had more time before spring to try all the recipes in my head for these foods. There will be plenty of time when it's too hot to even think about the oven. Luckily, in those months, fresh salads and fruits abundant will grow wild just outside our door!
**Cabbage would also be good
***I would like fresh parsley. If we had a good south-facing window for it, I would try growing more windowsill herbs through the winter. Some things take dried herbs better than others. In this soup, I felt the flavors of the veggies, especially the parsley, corn, and wild rice, along with the creaminess of the roux gave a full, rich taste that didn't need extra herbs. No sense in making bright flavors dusty with last summer's dried herbs. I don't go in much for buying them at the market. At ours, they come in plastic cases and are expensive. You get this paltry bit of greenery, more plastic case than herbage. I say, skip that!

Conserving at the AmericInn

A while ago we spent a rare treat of a night in a hotel. Gibbie loves hotels, by the way. You know: the pools, ice machines, movie stars; all that glamour. Anyway, at the prestigious AmericInn in Mennomonie, Wisconsin, (Mana-mana.) I found there has been a change in the graphic design of the complimentary products.I don't know how legible these are in the photo, but they read,

Soap up and sink into soothing suds.
Energize with a lively conditioning shampoo.
A lotion to unwind your body and mind.
and, Rinse away the travel day with this facial bar.

I like a few things about these. They're cute. It's nice when even not-luxury places at least try to make it seem like they care that you have a nice time. I like the stars.

They came along with a new Do Not Disturb sign, the back of which mentioned that AmericInn tries to conserve energy and resources and encouraged us to do the same. They have a policy that on extended stays, they only do the laundry every three days.

My first thought was that if they really wanted to conserve, they wouldn't give away all these plastic disposable containers, but would install refillable dispensers of these products. And use real mugs, or at least paper cups instead of styrofoam ones. And about a hundred other things.

My second thought was that this is one of the only evidences I have seen of any business in that town trying, or even claiming to try, to conserve resources. Even if they're only being cheap, conservation is a great way to be cheap!

Do It Yourself love

On thrift and Doing It Yourself:
Fast is expensive in a way that slow is not. Efficient is expensive in a way that inefficiency is not. Oddly, most people love to tell us we are "idealistic" when we are really just being cheap. We don't want to pay so much for the services we don't need. We want to save money for what we do need-- and for the occasional great food from far away. Those of us who remember the annual orange in the stocking are not so much worried about losing freedom and fossil-fueled abundance of options. What we worry about is being able to afford the good things, like air and water and time and balance.
This is Donna Schaper, writing in Grass Roots Gardening; rituals for sustaining activism. It's an odd little book, but I loved her expression of the above idea. We often forget the real costs of the conveniences that seem normal to us. This is part of why I bake bread, and sew clothes.

Speaking of inefficiency, we have some catch-up blogging to do, now that we can post pictures of many special gifts that have been recently all given away. The above bit of inefficient homemade-lovin' is a little zippered bag I made for my dear friend Liz, leaving us for wonderful work in South America. You can find out all about her exciting work with this really amazing organization, LifeWind, on her blog, where you can also find pictures of us singing Elvis Christmas and The Doors numbers with her great family, with Paul at the piano, among other things.
We will miss her so much, and yet we are so glad she is going! Like for my friend who will be receiving the socks, I wanted to make her a present she could use lots, and feel loved every time. This pouch is made mostly out of recycled fabrics. The print is a fabric my mom used on so many things when I was very little; an apron, a teapot cozy, a quilt, maybe matching dresses for us? It is very evocative for me. I just have a small piece of it left, and this gift is worth it. It's funny; I told Liz about the special fabric and when my mom saw the bag, she saw the fabric and spontaneously said almost the same things!
I made the pouch following the directions in Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol. It's the second zipper I've ever sewn and the first that didn't make me cry. It's a little stiff, but will have to do. The pouch is lined with flannel, and I added a simple pocket on the inside, as well as a bit of hand worked embroidery on the inside and out. For extra love.

Love you so much, Liz!

Egg and Laundry Thoughts

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban is one of our very favoritest books around here right now. Inspired by her, we have been having lots of soft-boiled eggs in the morning.
As Frances' father said, "What a lovely egg! If there is one thing I am fond of for breakfast, it is a soft-boiled egg."
"Yes," said Mother, spooning up egg for the baby,
"it is just the thing to start the day off right."
"Ah!" said Gloria, [the baby] and ate up her egg.
My friend Liz Winter taught me how to make a soft boiled egg and we learned how to eat them at our friend Ann's annual St. Patty's day bash. Lots of fun is had by all. Except for non-egg eating Paul.

Here's what we do:
-Put eggs in cold water on the stove. Bring to a boil. Boil for three minutes, counting from when the boiling actually starts.
-Since the kids are waiting at the table hungrily, after the three minutes, run the eggs under a bit of cold water so they can touch them.
-Set an egg on an egg cup (found ours at the Vinnie, down on West Seventh. Small baby food jars or shot glasses also work great.)
-Use a spoon or fork to crack a ring around the top of the egg by chiseling at it somewhat carefully. Then whack off the top! (I don't remember where I got this great pointy spoon, but it's just perfect!) Dig to the yolk, if necessary. Ideally, the white is all cooked, and the yolk is still runny and bright yellow or orange.
-Salt and pepper to taste and let the kids dip little sticks of toast or pita into the yolk
-Lo and behold! Egg yolks taste way better when they are less well cooked! (we like to use eggs from happy, healthy birds.)

I have seen more than a few bloggers whom I really like post such picturesque photos of hanging their laundry up to dry. Ha! My laundry line is certainly not fit for public display! I'll just show you a little corner to show off Gibbie's hanging job. I guess laundry can be pretty even if it's not all bright white and red tablecloths and vintage linens snapping in the breeze.

So, around here it's getting too cold to hang clothes to dry outside. What's an earth-lovin girl to do? While indoor drying racks are a pain on rainy summer days, I've found they are wonderful for chilly winter days! When it's cold out, the air gets painfully dry inside our old house. I'm real sensitive about this. I have dry skin, and get uncomfortable just breathing the dry air all night long, so we tend to keep a humidifier going at night. Laundry can be a great help too! On a cold day, it will dry inside in no time!

Advantages: Humidify the house and dry the laundry at the same time with no use of electricity!

Plus, our folding rack has lots of spaces that are low enough for Gibbie to hang up the clothes himself. It's pretty fun, working together like this. He can focus now, for a whole basket of clothes, actually hanging each piece up as nicely as he can. He's also started helping me fold things! Here's how it went.

Little Bear: What are you doin, Mama?
Mamabear: Oh, just folding these blankets.
L: I don't know how to do that.
M: Would you like to learn? I can show you.
L: No, I am not big enough to do that. When I am a man, I will fold blankets. I will do that when I am a big big big big kid. Not until then.
M: folds another blanket
L:joins right in
So I showed him how to match up the corners, and stack the folded ones in their place. Now he helps me with all sorts of folding! Above is pictured a common sight around our house these days. The littler one climgs into the stroller and the big one pushes him all around the house. They are taking a lot of trips to the cabin, the lake house, the coffee shop, and the restaurant these days.

Knowing the plants

It was a great moment for me when Gibbie, seeing staghorn sumac with it's drying flower clusters pointing up all over, said, "hey, that looks like fruit!" What kind of fruit, we asked? And he said, "Sumac!" I was particularly proud because the sumac flowers we have gathered looked very different from these, because these had all lost their leaves. Yup, we've been making a tasty juice from the flower clusters, and he's even developed an appreciation for licking the sour fuzzy flowers.
I do hope the kids grow up knowing how to read the land and plants. In the above photo, you can see dozens of different plants. I don't so much care if he knows all their names (I sure don't!) but I'd like to teach him, and learn together, and I'm sure eventually learn from him, all about them. Know how to make baskets from the bark of the white trees, as he calls them. Know how to eat the different parts of the milkweed plant during different seasons. We can dig the wild parsnip, and look forward to the raspberry and blackberry seasons in their turns. We will look around for the jewelweed when we get a nettle's sting and pop the seeds out at each other in the late summer when the pods are spring-loaded.
Here Gibbie is enjoying the tactile beauty of the ready milkweed seeds. Soon he will scatter them in the breeze, as any happy person will.

Fall is a great time for gathering basket supplies; we collected willow and cattail. They are drying on the porch, if one can call it drying with all this rain! I look forward to weaving them up into beautiful and useful things when we are stuck inside later in the year. That's the great beauty of this world; In the plants, seemingly dying back in the fall, are the stores for new life, promises of fresh vigor and growth next year, and abundant material for wild and artisinal beauty. This world is so made that in a deeper sense than I can grasp, dead things are always and everywhere coming to life, greater and better than before they fell. I am thinking of the food we eat, the seeds we sow, the troubled lives we live, and Christ himself.

Woodstoves, Purlieu Stew, and Carmelized Onions

One of the things we most love about Purlieu is the rawness of it. I realize I have some romantic ideas about farming, simple living, poverty, and the "olden days", but man, do I ever love cooking on a woodstove! Really, there's nothing pretentious about this cabin; it's very simple and practical and I think those things make it beautiful though it's not fancy at all. Of course, I also grew up coming here and can't remember not loving the cabin and everything about it. Unknowingly, growing to love the same land my dear Paul does.
Chris, who built this cabin, has two woodstoves. The little one in the pit is the primary heat stove. Paul stoked it several times each night to keep us cozy. It is great to put a big kettle of water on top of this stove for dishes, bathing, or hot drinks. We also cooked potatoes and squash right on the coals inside. Yum! We fuel it with wood that Chris mostly chops from downed trees on the property, and the ashes go into the outhouse, completing the cycle. If we lived here, I bet we could use those ashes to make soap and fertilize the garden.
There is nothing like sitting in front of a roaring fire on a chilly rainy day, which we had plenty of.

I don't think of it as roughing it, though we sure have more amenities at our home in the cities, because if I could, I would prefer to live like this.
This range has gas burners, powered by a propane tank, plus an oven and hot plates heated with a fire box. I loved cooking on it! We had hash browns, pancakes, and a killer squash stew:

Bake squash (we used a small butternut) and potatoes in the oven or fireplace if the fire's going.
Dredge lamb stew meat in flour (pancake mix also works just fine!) Saute in olive oil or butter with chopped onions till onions are tender and meat is brown.
Continue to saute gently whilst seasoning with whatever's around: I used dried tarragon, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, and bay leaves.
Add squash, potatoes and water and continue cooking and tasting until it's just right.
For a vegetarian version, I would simply omit the meat and use a bunch of fresh basil.

Another smashing success I had on the range was the carmelized onions. These would be a fine garnish for a plain soup or stew, and are great on burgers, vegetables, or baked potatoes, and are very simple to make.
Carmelized onions:
Saute chopped onions (they're in season right now here, and available from local farmers) in butter, without browning until tender. Pour a decent glosh of water in the pan and stir as the water evaporates. Repeat until onions are brown and delicious.

This works like magic. I don't know why, but pouring water on the onions makes the sugars in them carmelize. It seems counter-intuitive that they would get all brown and sweet with the addition of cold water, but it works! They are especially good for giving depth to mild foods, useful when converting a meat recipe to a vegetable-only one, or when cooking a soup or stew without a good broth base.
I've only ever cooked these, like I cook almost everything, in a heavy cast iron skillet. I don't know if it would work as well in an aluminum pot.

Local Grape Juice!

Grapes are one of the easiest fruits to pick; it goes to fast! As Samuel Thayer says, you can pick gallons in an hour without taking a step. Now, these aren't from our own yard, but they are pretty close to home.This is Gibbie and I sorting grapes. We carefully rinsed our hands regularly as we plucked the grapes from their stems.
We picked the grapes in a local alley. They grow all over around here in St. Paul, fecund and forgotten. Unlike table grapes, these grapes (small, seedy, with a rather alarming flavor and texture to the unsuspecting) aren't really for eating raw. Best for making juice (or wine, cordial, etc, for those more knowledgeable than I) and jelly.

With a full pot of grapes, I added some water and turned the heat on. When all this rain dries up, I can't wait to try juicing in the solar oven! Anyway, on our regular gas stove, I simmered the grapes till the skins burst. The juice is dark, bright purple. An important step to note, that I often try to bypass, is letting this cool off a bit before moving on!
After boiling the grapes until they release their juice, I took a big mixing bowl, set it in the sink, and lined it with a clean dish towel. Into the towel I poured the grapes. Then I bound up the corners of the towel and tied it to the dish drainer, right above my bowl. When the dripping had slowed to almost nothing, I squeezed and mashed all the extra juice I could out into my bowl.
Here we see the drained juice getting strained a bit more in my homemade jelly bag.

As suggested by my guide, Mr. Thayer the forager, I let sediments settle to the bottom before decanting my lovely grape juice into a pretty pitcher. About two quarts of grapes made well over two quarts of grape juice. I mixed it with sparkling water, though I could have diluted it even more, it was so strong. Really it was grape juice concentrate! With just-ripening apples on my brain, I'm thinking that apple juice would make a superb sweetener for our next batch!

I hope to bottle a batch in those re-sealable German beer bottles, maybe also freeze a batch as concentrate, as part of our hoard of local goodness against the winter blues.

The juice was rich and delicious. Also made tasty popsicles!

Midwest Renewable Energy Fair

A week after we went to the cabin we took a trip with Willington to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair near Stephen's Point, Wisconsin. We were tipped-off to this event by our friends at the Solar Oven Society. They've had a booth at the fair for several years running and highly recommended we go. Willington was most exited about the chance to learn about renewable technology that would be useful in his Ugandan homeland. Traveling with him was pretty fun, too, because he'd never seen American farmland before. He was really into all the cows and large farms and marveled that all of the rural places we passed by had electricity and running water.

Although the main purpose of our trip was to learn more about technologies that would be appropriate to Uganda, I also got a chance to visit the alternative energy car show. Pictured above is a whole row of vegetable oil burning diesels. A wide range of conversion systems were represented, ranging from the $350 do-it-yourself (which seemed to involve a generous amount of duct tape) to the fancy single tank Elsbett system.

Since I already have a converted car, what I mostly wanted to know about was waste vegetable oil filtration.  I've read a lot of somewhat conflicting information on the Internet about what works and doesn't work.  I thought that maybe talking to some real people would help me figure things out.  

What I came up with wasn't necessarily the technical information I had hoped for, though I got some good ideas.  My main realization was that there is a wide spectrum of opinion and practice when it comes to collecting and filtering WVO for vehicles.  What one person considers normal would be completely unacceptable to another.  For example, one man I talked to said of the professional Greasecar certified mechanic that installed his system, "well, he's not so careful about what he puts in his tank."  

I think this perspective on WVO opinions is more valuable than a few technical tips.  On the spectrum of WVO filtering I think I want to be a little more careful than center.  I don't exactly know what that works out to yet, but at least I have a better framework for listening to what others have to say about it.

Solar Oven Love

So this morning Gibbie helped me cook dinner.

We lugged a bag of carrots and a lil sack of potatoes out the back door.I peeled carrots while the kids played in the grass. We washed the potatoes together. (Gibbie also helped by fetching rags to scrub with, putting the lids on, and he and Ezra gnawed on carrots. They love helping with real work) We put everything in our black enamel pots along with half a dozen whole raw eggs. The pots went in this black box, then a big clear lid and a collapsible reflector. We turned it to face the sun and played all day in the yard. Twice in the afternoon I turned the oven a bit more as our northern sun arced across the sky.
By our 5:00 dinnertime we brought out bowls and drinks, served up piping hot food and had a dandy little picnic. A simple meal, quite good. We are looking forward to using this new oven lots and lots. The next day we got a little more adventurous. I adapted this recipe from The Sephardic Table,
a lovely Middle Eastern cookbook.

Solar Oven Lamb Stew
This is one for the recipe box. It was easy and delicious. It makes its own gravy.

1/2 onion, chopped
6 md. yellow potatoes
12 carrots, peeled and broken into finger lengths
1 lb. pieces of lamb stew meat (so worth it to get organic, pastured meats!)
1 tsp. fresh ground coriander (let me rave about my mortar and pestle sometime!)
2-3 bay leaves
1-2 tsp. tumeric
1/2 tsp. salt
a few grinds of black pepper
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
handful of raisins
a glug or two of apple cider vinegar
I've given measured amounts here for the spices, but I honestly just do dashes and handfuls and pinches myself. These things are flexible.
Put all ingredients, in a black covered pot, into the solar oven. We cooked them 5-6 hours. The oven temp never exceeded 250F; these low temps make for tender, juicy meals and apparently more of the vitamins stay intact than when cooking conventionally.

We toured the Solar Oven Society where the oven was made. (it's in Mpls on Hennepin!) All of its simple, carefully engineered parts can be cut, folded, and assembled using hand-operated jigs. No electricity is used. They are a pretty great organization. Half the price of our oven goes towards making these affordably available in third world countries where this kind of technology makes so much sense, for the same reasons I want to cook solar here in Minnesota though the needs in other communities may be more accutely felt.

Solar cooking doesn't:
-consume natural resources
-cost anything
-degrade our air or water
Our friend Willington, a Ugandan priest who attends our church while working towards a PhD, said of solar cooking, "The one thing we have so much of in our country is sunshine! And all it does it seems is to make it too hot, to make the groung too dry. But this-- this is a way to catch it-- and use it, for something good!" You really have to see his face and hands while he talks-- he was quite excited. He wants one for his mother.
Many people in Uganda (and countless other countries) cook daily over open wood fires. Now, I love a good campfire, but a little reading has opened my eyes about the implications of cooking with fire everyday. The byproducts of cooking with wood are deforestation; (fully on half of the wood consumed today is used for fires--more than that for paper or lumber!) lung problems, especially for women and children; and lots of time spent gathering wood as local supplies diminish.
Now, while we don't typically cook with wood,

for us, solar cooking means:
-Gibbie's increased participation in cooking (safer for him to be near than the stove)
-decreased use of non-renewable resources
-not heating up the house in summer! We try not to use A/C and I missed cooking so much last summer. Bread, vegetables, meats, eggs, cake, cookies can all be made in the oven.
-the simplicity of consuming less
-the pleasure of being outside more
-a lower energy bill (I said above we don't cook with wood, but we use it indirectly; our power comes from a grid of nuclear, wood, and coal power plants, each of which create their own types of disastrous waste. We try to use as little as we can.)

I think this oven is a do-able choice for anyone with access to sunlight. This is Minnesota in April! It doesn't need to be hot to cook; just sunny. It was also less expensive than I thought it would be, and very easy to use.

Thanks to our neighbor and friend T.J., who swang, slid, and rolled on the ground entertaining Gibbie and Ezra while I wrote this post!