Happy Green Beings

While reading Michael Perry’s book Coop, it struck me that our goal to grow blueberry pies in our yard may require much more work than I’m willing to do for that far off benefit. No, I don’t think that genetic engineers can produce a bush that fruits whole wheat pie crusts sprinkled with sweetener and stuffed with blueberries. I prefer my ingredients from heritage versions of plants anyway. But the growing of blueberries appears to require not only clearing of our overgrown landscaping, but bed prep to boot.

I’m mostly fine with the clearing part other than the fact that it will leave far too little vegetation between myself and the road noise rising from pavement both near and not so far. The ash trees that shade the area are destined to fall prey to the emerald ash bore anyway, so they may as well become a source of firewood or full dimension lumber before infestation. That’s part of why the solar hot water panels to their North and West made sense in spite of what the solar site assessment showed. The question for me is, how can I avoid all of that bending and digging that creates good fertile ground. Thanks to recent wanderings across the pages of Mr. Perry’s most recent book, I’m reconsidering the use of chickens as weeders and tillers of soil in the form of a chicken tractor. I see a road trip to the Restore in my near future.

Now before you go and contact your animal rights persons to let them know I’ve gone bonkers, what Mr. Perry describes is a mobile cage in which young chickens do their natural foraging for worms, insects, and vegetation. Their scratching effectively tills the soil while they get a fresh plot of ground to feed from. The chickens fertilize the soil, doing what comes naturally following their consumption of worms, insects and vegetation. The entire prospect is a win-win. The tricky part is for the chickens to visit long enough to effectively do the garden prep. So, by building a chicken “tractor” cage that will keep them safe, and then sliding it along the ground into positions where garden beds are to be formed, one can avoid the tilling of soil “man”ually.

There is some risk here, since it involves the use of chickens. Somewhere, one has to come by a number of chickens for a long enough period of time to do the square footage required for the bed. Our customary dimensions are 5 feet wide so we can do most of the weeding and harvesting without trampling upon roots. But then again, there is the care of the chickens, and what you do with them once they have dug your blueberry beds…

One of the concurrent story lines in Coop involves the construction of a chicken coop during the acquisition of chicks and construction of the chicken tractor. I defer to our poultry expert, Kirk on the startup of urban chicken rearing. He’s on his second year. Send encouragement, and perhaps he’ll share some of his expertise. Now, what do they have at that Restore that could become a chicken tractor?

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Here comes Fall. That 2002 Chevy Prizm sitting in our garage was rated 41mpg highway and 36 city back when we bought it, and now has 107,000 miles on it. Following collisions with other vehicles, insurance funds paid to have it fixed, worked upon, hopefully it will be fixed for good this time so we don’t have to shop for a vehicle to replace it this year. But the Prizm was the more recent model of our two gas powered vehicles, and the one that typically sits in the garage when I take the bike to school. When that happens it is often used for shorter trips by our teenager (refer back to the third sentence.) When looking for a more nimble car to replace our older van, something that will go through snow drifts on Winter mid night midwifery calls, it seems the gas mileage plummets.

The 2000 Honda Odyssey van that we want to replace doesn’t get as many miles per gallon (rated 18/26 mpg), and we would like to improve things when moving to a smaller car with better handling characteristics. But it seems the best we can do in a wagon is 20/26 for the Subaru Outback. Wouldn’t you expect that the technology would have improved gas mileage more in a decade? There is an electric SUV promised by Phoenix Motorcars in 2008 that can be pre-ordered now, if you bypass your browser’s security. I’m not sure it is the best choice since the Amish families who live about an hour’s drive away don’t have electrical outlets to plug it into, and it is supposed to go up to 100 miles. That is close. Maybe tow a trailer with a gas powered generator? Or maybe move a bit closer to Amish territory.

It would be tempting since EESA created a tax credit for vehicles that have at least four wheels and draw propulsion using a rechargeable traction battery with at least four kilowatt hours of capacity. For 2009, the minimum credit is $2,500 and the credit tops out at $7,500 to $15,000, depending on the weight of the vehicle and the capacity of the battery. If only we could buy that vehicle this year.

I keep thinking about that Chevy Prizm, and how far 5 people can go on a couple of hundred dollars. At the time we purchased it, I figured the Toyota Prius would have to save us more than 10 miles per gallon to be worth the $10,000 more it cost back then. Even though the new Honda Insight’s 40/43 improves significantly on the Prizm’s city driving mileage, it is mainly due to regenerative braking and still sacrifices winter driving. We’re looking for efficiency and capacity in a vehicle that handles winter roads. I seem to remember that the old Volvo wagons had better mileage, but I guess they’ve become a luxury car with all of the power to go with it. Too bad so many people associate their own power with the drivetrain of their automobile.

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The 30 day pass is handy, and encourages me to keep a car parked when I go to work. I keep experimenting with places to get on or off the bus. My latest route cuts my commute down to an hour from the original route I was taking. The funny thing is, I don’t think that the route is that much farther to ride. But the crux issue for us, like most families, is getting kids to their evening extracurricular activities. That’s why most families keep a second car. With kids scheduled tight around dinner time, it has been difficult to keep at least one car parked at all times.

I’ve been thinking about how to get beyond the 2 bikes per bus limit. First, I’m going to try to get our tag-along trailer approved as a carry on. If that doesn’t work, I plan to lock our old tag along bike attachment near the bus stop serving a frequent destination. When we dismount from the bus with an extra child along, we could unlock it and attach it to one of our bikes, and haul him along. That means one young child could ride to the first bus stop and lock up his bike there, and then still be able to ride to our destinations served by that bus stop.

The one thing I need is for a couple of the Valley Transit bus routes to be extended to the other side of our interstate highway so that I can safely get my kids to the soccer/baseball parks when they play and practice a couple of times per week. It just isn’t safe for them to ride their bikes on the high traffic roads that cross that barrier.

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Since I began going to work without a car again, I’ve been able to do it with a bike and the bus system in comfort and without any major concerns. I even made a couple of bus commuting rookie mistakes without any significant loss of time thanks to a friendly bus driver’s advice. Planning for the commute took time, and going completely car-light will undoubtedly require a changed mindset, but using public transit is now far simpler in Wisconsin’s Fox River Valley.

Valley Transit has joined the ranks of Google Maps Transit. You go on Google Maps, put in your starting and destination address just like you do for a car trip, and select public transit from the drop-down menu. You can get directions, a map, and an itinerary including transfers and fare prices for many transit systems around the world. How awesome is that for planning a vacation and skipping the car rental? (Click the link above to see a demonstration of how it works.) What is great for a bike commuter is that it makes it easy to try out various bus stops. Honestly, the rack and ride option speeds things up substantially if you explore boarding options and are willing to ride a bit farther. If I take the first option offered by Google Maps from my home to my workplace, nearly door to door service is over 2 hours by bus alone. By riding to points farther from my home and workplace, I have that same trip down to less than an hour each way.

I had spent a lot of time second guessing myself and learning the bus schedule. But once they completed the process of joining Google Maps, trips on Valley Transit have become quick and easy to plan. I hope that ridership goes up as a result because funding for all transit systems is going down. They need more riders to fill their trips and help to fund the system. It makes it possible for them to continue serving those who depend upon the system as their only means of transportation.

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I’m on the brink of a car-lite transition. By selling a car, we would be better off financially by about $4,000 right away according to the blue book, and then enjoy steady savings when it comes to gas, maintenance, and parking. We aren’t all convinced of the practicality though. How about going car lite without selling a car right away? That’s the test, and our goal is to start next week. For $56, Valley Transit issues a 30 day ride card, and I’m buying it with gas money. It only takes 16 days of round trip commutes to become cheaper than the single ride fair costs at $1.80 per trip. That’s a pretty good bargain if I stay committed and keep the car key hanging on a hook. The great thing is, I won’t care as much about gas prices.

We don’t have the best funded transit system in the nation here in Appleton, WI, but we do have bus coverage. This took a fair amount of looking at bus schedules and routes to figure out. I’ve requested the information packet that the transit center offers commuters. I plan to ride my bike 1 mile on residential streets, catch a bus that carries me to the transit center in 5 minutes, and transfer to the bus that takes me 10 miles to the town where I teach. There, I’ll be pulling my bike off the bus 25 minutes later and ride another 20 minutes to work. A bit tight for preparing a first hour class, but at least I’m not sitting in traffic while class starts. All told, pretty close to an hour to travel what I could cover on my bike in 45 to 50 minutes if the roads weren’t icy. But hey, it has taken me over 45 minutes to drive with traffic backed up on the HWY 441 bridge cutting deeply into the gas mileage. It took about 80 minutes to commute by bike through the snow, so a dependable hour commute will be sweet and provide some added reading time!

But what if I have to go in to work early? I can ride 2.5 miles and catch the first bus that runs between towns and be at school early enough for a staff meeting or host a make-up swim session for a group of students. This time of year, I’m pretty sure the racks will be free on the bus. The return trip may have a bigger say in what I actually do on a given day due to other obligations. It is disappointing that another bus isn’t running the Neenah route so that a departure happened every half hour. Here, they alternate bus routes with schedules offset by a half hour, and there is another trip from my work town that goes to Appleton’s West side, but both routes leave at the same times:(  It just links with another route that takes me into the transit center a half hour later. That means, if I miss the bus, then the bike and I will complete the trip in less time than it takes to wait for the next one. Now, it’s time to adjust the fenders so they clear the studded tires I ordered for my bike…

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In an effort to protect us from harmful substances in toys, the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act was passed this year by congress.  The law goes into effect in two months, and will introduce sweeping changes for small mom and pop type toy operations.  These are just the kinds of places I do try to buy from, because I’m fairly well assured of a quality product.  You can read more about the act and what you can do to help here.

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I was looking for a book for my 6 year old son on how cars are built in the on-line catalog of our local library, and came across a book called “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save money, breath easier, and get more mileage out of life” by Chris Balish. I wanted to encourage his interest in designing cars in case he has the engineer genes of both grandfathers. I visit web sites like Car Free Cities and participate in some bicycle commuter discussion groups, so I was familiar with some of the ideas that I might hear from this author. But the idea of an entire book dedicated to how I might benefit from living car free, particularly the economics of the choice seemed interesting, so I wrote down the call letters, and headed for the non-fiction aisles.

What I found was my second brand new untouched book on a green topic in as many visits to the Appleton Public Library. Since this book was placed in circulation nearly a year ago, it makes me a little doubtful about how well Americans are responding to international concerns about global warming. Our economic woes may have a bigger impact on worldwide consumerism than suggestions on how to individually reduce our carbon footprint. But then again, we wear huge blinders when it comes to our assumptions about using automobiles. This author may have found the way to get people’s attention with his argument that much of what keeps Americans from feeling wealthy is their habit of using automobiles. The actual cost of owning a car is about double the car payment. That turns out to be a lot of money considering that the alternative is to pay for something that looses value at 10% to 15% each year.

Now, I’ve long thought that when the price of non-renewable resources becomes high enough, maintstream people will begin using alternatives. But Mr. Balish points out that people have alternatives in the form of public transportation systems if they want to use them. He points out that there is always the rental car if you really need one for a trip not serviced by the transit systems. He goes on to promote the transit systems’ effectiveness by sharing paragraph long testimonials on page after page by people who have sold their cars, and live without them. They rave about the experience of not having to worry about a car, sit in traffic, worry about maintenance, and the many things that they have money for because they don’t own a car. The funny thing is that without exception, they look at the rest of us car dependent Americans as the people who are losing out. I’m talking with my family this holiday about getting rid of a car, and depending upon the Valley Transit System and my bicycle to see how much of a difference it makes for us. Even loosing one set of car related expenses may make a difference for us.

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Do-it-yourself may be lots of fun, but it can also be expensive. Paying full retail for lumber can cost close to the same price you may pay for discounted build-your-own-furniture kits. On top of that, you have to acknowledge the impact of the forest industry on our environment when it comes to production of full dimension lumber. And at retail prices, it seems expensive too. But with some luck, you may come across recycled supplies that will allow you to build something from scratch that, like a stone sculpture, is just waiting for a need to expose what potentially lies within.

The past two weekends, I’ve been on a mission that is nearly complete. Looking at the remaining cedar bleachers recovered from a school dumpster a few summers past, I had been wondering what lay in store. My trailer and I were over there the moment I saw one dumpster load hauled away. I had already floored a knee wall space of a walk-in closet, decked the crumbling concrete stoop and a concrete patio, and built a matching workbench and potting bench all from the recovered wood. But the remainder had yet to reveal it’s purpose to me, and was waiting in the garage rafters. The pile of boots that reappeared in our entryway as winter dawned became my inspiration. How about a storage bench to collect those annoying boots? Strategic placement just outside the garage entry might also help to keep our socks dry as we travel from one level to another of our split ranch.

A quick search of the web for diy woodworking plans revealed a simple and sturdy boot bench with complete plans for just $5.00. All I needed was some structural lumber to use with the cedar, a hammer, nail setter, circular power hand saw and a saber saw. Shopping carefully, I picked out four recycled 7′ long 2″x4″s at the Restore along with a pair of hinges and a piece of 1/2″ plywood that had once been part of a kitchen cabinet. (I also picked up a pair of unfinished cafe cabinet doors that I’ll use to hide our electrical box when I finish the laundry room next week.) The only thing that didn’t come from recycled materials were the finish nails. I could have used the assorted nails available from the Restore, but in my cold garage the pneumatic finish nailer sure sped up the process. It also makes my lack of skill less apparent. All together, this piece of furniture cost less than $15.00 to build, including the plans. Now that’s a price that only a rummage sale deal or an outright gift could beat.

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Just in time for frazzled mommies at the holiday time, a great give-away on the Simple Mom blog.  Good luck!

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I’ve always felt like my commitment to environmentally friendly ways came from a mixture of my science background, my finances, and my faith.  Many ideas about the Christian faith hold that the Church has historically done nothing toward healing the earth.  While there have been times of rampant environmental destruction in which Christians have participated, at least we can say that our faith has always encompassed care and concern for the earth.  Here are excerpts from a current statement of many of the present-day leaders of the church:

. . .the contemporary witness of Orthodoxy for the ever-increasing problems of humanity and of the world becomes imperative, not only in order to point out their causes, but also in order to directly confront the tragic consequences that follow. The various nationalistic, ethnic, ideological and religious contrasts continuously nurture dangerous confusion, not only in regard to the unquestionable ontological unity of the human race, but also in regard to man’s relationship to sacred creation. The sacredness of the human person is constrained to partial claims for the “individual”, whereas his relationship toward the rest of sacred creation is subjected to his arbitrary use or abuse of it.
These divisions of the world introduce an unjust inequality in the participation of individuals, or even peoples in the goods of Creation; they deprive billions of people of basic goods and lead to the misery for the human person; they cause mass population migration, kindle nationalistic, religious and social discrimination and conflict, threatening traditional internal societal coherence. These consequences are still more abhorrent because they are inextricably linked with the destruction of the natural environment and the entire ecosystem.

Orthodox Christians share responsibility for the contemporary crisis of this planet with other people, whether they are people of faith or not, because they have tolerated and indiscriminately compromised on extreme human choices, without credibly challenging these choices with the word of faith. Therefore, they also have a major obligation to contribute to overcoming the divisions of the world.

The gap between rich and poor is growing dramatically due to the financial crisis, usually the result of manic profiteering by economic factors and corrupt financial activity, which, by lacking an anthropological dimension and sensitivity, does not ultimately serve the real needs of mankind. A viable economy is that which combines efficacy with justice and social solidarity.

The Orthodox Church believes that technological and economic progress should not lead to the destruction of the environment and the exhaustion of natural resources. Greed to satisfy material desires leads to the impoverishment of the human soul and the environment. We must not forget that the natural riches of the earth are not only man’s property, but primarily God’s creation: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein” (Ps.23:1). We ought to remember that not only today’s generation, but also future generations are entitled to have a right to the resources of nature, which the Creator has granted us.

“Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, glory be to him in the Church and in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:20-21). Amen.

In the Phanar, 12th October 2008.

+ Bartholomew of Constantinople
+ Theodore of Alexandria
+ Ignatius of Antioch
+ Theophilos of Jerusalem
+ Alexey of Moscow
+ Amphilochios of Montenegro
(representing the Church of Serbia)
+ Laurentiu of Transylvania
(representing the Church of Romania)
+ Dometiyan of Vidin
(representing the Church of Bulgaria)
+ Gerasime of Zugdidi
(representing the Church of Georgia)
+ Chrysostomos of Cyprus
+ Ieronymos of Athens
+ Jeremiasz of Wrocіaw
(representing of the Church of Poland)
+ Anastasios of Tirana
+ Christopher of the Czech Lands and Slovakia

Amen.

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