Cottage Farming

I’ve seen this trend happen over the past few years, but it’s always a bummer to watch my fuel efficiency drop with the temperature. One day I’m happily bopping along at an average 52 mpg, then whamo, the thermometer dips near freezing and I’m pumping out carbon at 45 mpg. I even scrape out another one or two miles per gallon by keeping the temperature in the car just above the point where I can feel my fingers.

This year, however, I just experienced the worst gas mileage of my hybrid-driving career. I was stuck in an 8-hour traffic jam during a recent snow storm that dumped something like 2 inches an hour on Boston. There I was, inching along with the rest of the commuters (when we were inching at all), and all I could do was watch my average miles per gallon plummet. The constant draw on the battery to keep the lights on, the windshield wipers moving, and the heat and defrosters going dragged me down to the 31 mpg mark.

So, when’s that arcology I’ve been promised gonna’ be ready?

Assuming we’re all gonna’ buy stuff anyway… the folks at UTNE Reader have teamed up with Moment Marketing to create EarthMoment.com. The online shopping site sells stuff from standard retailers (Apple, Barnes and Noble, Circuit City, Macy’s, Sharper Image, etc.) at what appears to be MSRV. They then donates half of their commission-based revenues to Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit organization supporting projects that reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

It seems like a relatively good idea… though I’d prefer to see them work out an integration model with existing shopping portals. By building their own, they’re going to have to get the word out it exists for it to succeed.

I’m becoming more interested in local harvesting by the minute. I’ve been predisposed to sustainable living since I ran into the concept of building Earthships while growing up in the Southwest. Layer on top of that reading the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (my larder has gone through a radical restructuring since this book entered my house), and my growing interest in the concept of “food miles“.

Anyway… that’s all very well and good, but what’s a suburbanite like myself to do? Well, here’s a fun, sticky, and sweet way to start. A friend of mine has her own bees (and chickens), so we made a party out of this year’s harvest. Actually, we invited ourselves over to raid her honeycombs. It was totally fun interacting with the folks who descended on her place with jars in hand.

The feeling of local community harvesting was alive and well in her kitchen (especially since we used a an ancient honey spinner). The experience really got me thinking about what more we could do like this. I’m noodling the idea of a yearly “Harvest Party” where we invite the neighbors to a shindig where we share what we’ve harvested from our own land (or otherwise made using local resources). Social networking the old fashioned way.