Standing around an Audubon Society store the other day I picked up a bag of coffee beans that was promoted as being “shade grown”. I had no idea what that meant, but according to the packaging growing coffee in the shade is somehow better for birds. I’m a fan of birds, so I was curious enough to Google it.
Despite my inclination to hug trees, I’m generally skeptical of the latest “save the planet” fads. Reading through the documents, however, their arguments seemed to make sense. The basic concept appears that most coffee plantations are made by clear-cutting forests (not good for birds, and reducing carbon uptake). Further, most coffee strains don’t fair well in the direct sun they’re now forced to be in (so varieties are bred to withstand the light). Roll into this the larger plantations tend to be run by larger corporations (not community farmers) and use more chemical (not organic) fertilizers.
Among the links I turned up, I found a company in Oregon that flipped each negative attribute on its head. Enter Grounds for Change, a roaster and distribution company that claims it’s coffee is:
100% Organic
Shade Grown
Fair Trade
Carbon Neutral
Now, that’s a cup of coffee that’ll shine your Earth-friendly halo. And to top it all off, it’s super tasty.
… all I need to do now is figure out how to offset the carbon for transit from Oregon to Massachusetts.
UPDATE:11/7/2008
I received a couple more links thanks to @2xlp that are worth a look, too:
Up until recently I’ve not had a very high opinion of mushrooms as an ingredient in most recipes. Admittedly, I don’t have the most sophisticated pallet when it comes to subtle tastes. So when a dish calls for mushrooms, I figured that I might as well substitute them with soggy cardboard.
Following a stint of rainy weather this summer, though, I started to see mushrooms in a new light. Specifically, when we were tromping through some of our favorite hiking trails we started to see an amazing array of mushrooms popping through the undergrowth. This spawned an interest in learning more about them so we could identify them. As we dived into the details, we also found out which were edible… even though we had no intention of popping wild mushrooms into our mouths.
So, in a recent trip to the market we purchased a selection of the wide variety of available mushrooms. We brought them home and sauteed them in a dash of butter for an impromptu taste test. I was pleasantly surprised that each had a noticeably distinct flavor. I’m not enough of a gourmand to really understand how to use them each in a specific dish, but at least now I get how more accomplished cooks might put them to good use.
And next time I encounter a recipe calling for mushrooms, I’m going to bypass the standard tasteless variety and go for something flavorful. Perhaps we’ll even get ambitious enough to find a way to grow them at home.
UPDATE:Just 4 days after I posted this note, the Verrill Farm store burned down. If you’re in the area and can help support them rebuild, I encourage you to do so in whatever way you can.
I’m pleased to have found a great local farm stand nearly around the corner in nearby Concord, MA. The Verrill Farm has been in operation for about 300 years, and in 1982 they placed 200 acres under an Agricultural Preservation Restriction nearly guaranteeing it’ll remain a working farm for the foreseeable future.
While I’m glad we finally found it, I’m bummed we’ve been here so long without knowing about the wonderful farm-fresh vegetables and local specialty foods they offer. It was great seeing the wide variety of produce and locally-produced meats and other products for sale. I look forward to putting it on our list of local agriculture outlets.
As a side note, the farm’s caretaker also makes his chicken’s eggs available in a self-serve refrigerator for $6 a dozen. The chickens are free range birds he rotates through the land as part of a sustainable fertilization program with the eggs as a great side-benefit. They’re a bit more expensive than the store-bought variety, but it’s definitely a good feeling to support their sustainable and lower carbon footprint variant.
We knew that this first year of our garden would be a learning experience. We’ve already learned a lot about what to do, what not to do, and what to do better next time. Regarding this latter category, next time we plan to transplant a newly sprouted seedling into the garden, we’re going to make use of a cloche.
And what is a cloche, you may ask? It’s a low transparent cover put over young plants to protect them from cold. They take many forms, from an arched structure covered in clear plastic, to small bell jars over the seedlings. Gayla Sanders has a great “how to” on making your own seedling starter and cloche from clear plastic drink bottles.
While it’s possible we’ve already lost the seedlings we tried to transplant, we covered the struggling plants with just such a bottle as Sanders suggested. It’s still a bit early to say for sure… but I have a feeling we’re going to need to resort to purchased plants for this one. Lesson learned for next time.
We harvested our first lettuce leaves from the garden the other day. It’s one thing to know that a salad will taste better when it comes straight from your garden to your plate. It’s another thing altogether to taste the difference.
What a difference it is. The leaves had a snap to them and not-so-subtle flavor that’s entirely absent from salads purchased from elsewhere. Rolled up into the experience, of course, is the knowledge that you’re eating something you helped grow. So in addition to the fresh-tasting goodness is the satisfaction of something home grown.
Either way you cut it, we’re off to a good start… and now it’s harder to wait for the rest to be ready for the plate.
This may not be a totally original idea, but we came up with a way to easily water the garden without having to monkey with the hose every time. Since our hose is across the yard, each time we need to water there’s a process required that, while not onerous, is a minor barrier to ease. The solution was to fill up and leave a water sprayer next to the gardens.
Even though this was primarily a solution to increase the ease of watering, it turns out there are additional benefits. First of which is that plants grow better with water that’s warmed to ambient temperature, rather than the colder water generally coming right out of the tap. Leaving the sprayer out allows the sun to warm it throughout the day.
Second, and probably more important, we found we’re wasting a lot less water. When using the hose, we often let it run while we did minor work on the plants (e.g. pulling off dead leaves). Also, when using the hose we would be watering much more of the beds than was strictly necessary. Using the sprayer we only watered the area around the plants themselves, not the unplanted sections.
Finally… the kids love it, too, and they don’t get as soaked as they generally do when using the hose. Goodness all around.
Even though the weather wasn’t great, we braved the drizzle of rain to mix the ingredients to make our growing medium for the square foot gardens. In case you haven’t read Mel’s book, the Square Foot Gardener, the medium is made from equal parts (by volume) of vermiculite, compost, and peat moss.
Since most of the ingredients were marked with their weight, rather than their volume, we had to estimate the relative amounts to mix together. Fortunately, it looks like we estimated correctly as the final product appeared to be just what we expected.
Unfortunately, however, our overall calculation for the amount was off by a factor of two. For some reason we underestimated the total volume needed for all three boxes, so we’re going to need to do the exercise again (and mixing it together can most definitely be considered exercise) next weekend.
As we had enough to fill one and half boxes, though, we went ahead and planted the first one. While we’re still germinating some seeds inside, we got a jump start by purchasing a few starter plants. So far, we have a couple different varieties of lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower. Allyson also took over a couple squares to plant radishes and cucumbers.
Also, we found that while working around the boxes it could get kinda’ muddy. We opted to surround the boxes with large bark mulch so that we could walk around them without tracking too much of the mud back into the house. So far it worked out pretty well, plus it looks nice.
We did learn a lot about how to effectively mix the amount of medium we needed. I’m sure the next round will go more smoothly, and I’ll post any time-saving tips we come up with after having put them to the test.
As a side note from the “Coincidence Category”, I received a note from Steve Greenberg, my DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast co-host in response to a tweet over the weekend. Apparently, his wife is about a month ahead of us in the garden race… I guess we better step up our game.
We spent the past couple of weekends building the raised garden boxes that will be the foundation of our backyard gardens. We’re basing our approach on the technique outlined by Mel Bartholomew in his book, “Square Foot Gardening“. The basic concept is to build a raised garden bed, filled with a growing medium blended from equal parts (by volume) of compost, vermiculite, and peat moss. There are some subtleties in the types of compost used (ie. you’re supposed to mix at least 5 different sources of compost to increase the probability of a wide-spectrum of nutrients), but other than that it’s relatively straight forward.
The first step is to build the frames, which we’ve done:
The book is full of variations the reader can choose to adopt, or not, depending on particular situations. For our part, the yard is slightly sloped where we placed the frames, so we opted to dig down slightly in order to terrace them. We also lined the bottom of the boxes with a wire screen to keep out tunneling critters, then laid down a weed barrier:
Oddly enough, we found it relatively difficult to find large bags of vermiculite. After calling around to the various shops in the area, we opted to order a couple large bags from Uline, a packaging wholesaler, rather than purchase a dozen smaller bags. Doing so was easier, and was about half the cost.
Next up, when we receive the vermiculite, we should have all the raw ingredients for the soil. We hope to mix it up and load the frames next weekend. In the meantime, we’re planning out what we’ll grow and start germinating some of the seeds inside. We’re definitely a bit behind schedule on the germination, but we’re learning as we go… hopefully next season we’ll be much further along by this point.
According to a story I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, eating meat takes a bite out of your carbon footprint. Specifically, it’s the production of the meat that takes its toll on the environment.
As global demand for meat products has increased in recent years, so has awareness of the environmental damage that the industry causes. Modern meat production uses enormous amounts of energy, pollutes water supplies and creates greenhouse gases.
An interesting quote in the piece was that by decreasing your yearly meat intake by 20% has the equivalent carbon offset as replacing your average mid-size sedan with a Prius. As they said Americans consume about 40% more meat per year than Europeans, it seems we’ve got the wiggle room there to make this happen.
Another snippet in the segment talked about how the adverse environmental impact would also be offset by eating meat that’s produced more locally. A lot of the issues arise from large scale feed farming and transportation.
After checking out the Aptera, I seriously wonder if it’s worth moving to California (the only state they’re being sold). I mean, come on… 300mpg? How can my puny Prius compete with that?
We knew that this first year of our garden would be a learning experience. We’ve already learned a lot about what to do, what not to do, and what to do better next time. Regarding this latter category, next time we plan to transplant a newly sprouted seedling into the garden, we’re going to make use of a cloche.
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