GreenCouple.com

It’s December and it’s snowing and I am feeling totally unprepared for Christmas.  None of these things are particularly unusual for me or I suspect for most people.  The good news is, I did manage to launch the webstore for my new organic seed company, Nature’s Crossroads.  It has been a lot of fun coming up with collections and kits based on the seeds we have in stock.  Probably my favorite is the sunflower fort but we are also selling some really cool heirloom tomato seed-saving kits.

Will and I are plugging away on the house and our respective businesses.  2009 has been a good year but it felt very transitional.  We’re looking forward to a little more stability in 2010.

There are also some cool green living events coming up in 2010 which I’ll post more about next week but just as a sneak preview, we recently signed up for the SIREN Energy Showdown where households try to become more energy efficient and win fabulous prizes.  I’m also debating entering an outfit in the Trashion/Refashion Show which challenges designers to make new clothes out of either discarded items or old clothing items.

It’s events (and organizations) like these that remind me how much I enjoy living in Bloomington.

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Well, approximately one year after we purchased an ODL solar tube from the Home Depot, we have finally installed it in our kitchen!!  So far we love it and are even contemplating installing a second one, although Will’s a little concerned that it might reduce our energy efficiency a bit since it’s a little less insulative than an intact ceiling with a thick layer of insulation.

The installation was surprisingly easy with two exceptions:

1. Short attics with fiberglass insulation are not fun to work in.

2. There were two pieces of pipe and we managed to swap them, meaning we were almost done and then had to go back to the beginning so it would all fit.  Aargh!

The first step was to stand in the kitchen, think about where we wanted to put in the solar tube, and drill a hole in that spot through to the attic.  I threaded a coat hanger up through the hole and then took the dreaded step of crawling around in the attic looking for it.  (It is surprisingly easy to get disoriented in a small space filled with insulation.)  Once I found the coat hanger, I figured out where the true center point of the solar tube would go (centered between the roof joists) and drilled one nail down through the ceiling and one nail up through the roof.

Next came the fun but mildly intimidating step of drilling a hole in the roof!  We rented a “Sawzall” reciprocating saw for the job since it didn’t seem like a piece of equipment we really needed to own.  I am mildly afraid of heights but I do love power tools so I had a good time cutting out a big chunk o’ roof.  Happily, the solar tube is designed in a way that the hole does not need to be perfectly circular (it wasn’t) since it comes with a rubber “boot” that fits over the hole, under the neighboring shingles.  Once we had the hole cut, we pried up the shingles around it, put some roof sealant on the rubber boot, and slid it into place.

Somehow we didn’t get any pictures of us sliding the actual metal tube into place, probably because I kept blinding Will with it.  The solar tube is comprised of two very shiny metal tubes and a clear plastic dome.  Sun shines down on the dome and then bounces down through the tubes to our kitchen, where a frosted plastic light fixture lets the light shine through without blinding anyone.

We slid one pipe down from the roof and then attached the dome on top.  Then I headed down into the kitchen with a keyhole saw (not powered this time) to cut a hole in the ceiling.   (The picture at the top of the post is my very ragged hole before we put in the light fixture piece.) Once I was thoroughly covered with drywall plaster I headed back up into the attic to put in the final metal tube.  This was the part of the process that was very difficult, largely because there was not very much room in the attic.  I’ve never been super handy with tin snips (picture giant deadly scissors) but it was particularly challenging to cut the metal tubes to size while lying on my back across three attic rafters.  The idea is to have one tube coming down from the roof and one coming up from the ceiling with about an inch of overlap.  Alas, I realized that I had the tubes swapped and the one I was trying to fit neatly into the ceiling fixture just wasn’t going to work.

So, back up to the roof to remove the dome, swap the tubes, then Will stayed on the roof while I went into the attic and it was much easier to get the tubes together.  He pulled the top tube up while I put the correct bottom tube into place in the ceiling fixture, and then he pushed the top tube down, helping me wrestle the two tubes together and then tape them with the shiny metal tape enclosed in our original kit.  Whew!  I totally used some muscles I didn’t know I had but I would willingly do it again and I know it would go faster the second time.

Will it lower our energy bills?  I hope so, although lighting for one room is not that huge of an electrical draw.  We’ve also entered that charming time of year called Daylight Savings so the solar tube really only helps out at lunch time.   (Oh, I miss the days when Indiana ignored Daylight Savings!)   Still, increasing daylight inside the house is one of the best uses of solar “energy” even if photvoltaics are more sexy.  Having a solar tube makes the kitchen feel a *LOT* brighter so we’re definitely calling it a success.  And it was a great weekend project for improving my confidence in making minor home repairs.

Check out the before and after pictures!  (They’re a bit overly dramatic but the solar tube really does make a big difference.)

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I’m about halfway through “Sleeping Naked is Green” by eco-blogger Vanessa Farquharson (also known as Green as a Thistle) and it’s making me feel an odd combination of smug, wistful, nostalgic, and inspired.  She started her blog with the goal of making one green change a day so a lot of the changes seem kinda fluffy (”use revolving doors”) but on the other hand, she’s continuously getting greener and some of the changes she made were pretty big (”unplug refrigerator.”)  Most of them are things I have done or have considered doing or are irrelevant to my life (like “green” make-up).   She’s also a great writer and has some cool insights onto mundane green topics.  I think I initially found her blog when she posted about a butchering class, complete with really interesting but graphic photographs that apparently scarred her vegetarian readers.  I thought it was fascinating and would love to take a class like that even if it were a little disturbing.  But mostly I enjoy her writing because we have similar concerns about how to live green without being a smug eco-expert with a holier-than-thou attitude or a glum eco-doomsayer who never does anything for fear of destroying the planet.  She’s a bit more fashionable than I am (I have no objections to Birkenstocks or hemp necklaces) but we’re mostly on the same page.

Anyway, I recommend both the book and the blog although I do think the book title is a little lame.  She said it was hard to come up with a title that her publisher would support, which I am sure is not uncommon.  Still, I think most green bloggers are jealous of her book deal, regardless of the publisher-wrestling involved.  I’d like to write a book some day.  My most recent idea is writing a cartoon guide to survival that could be interpreted in any language.  However, I don’t think I have the skill set (e.g. drawing ability) to come anywhere near to accomplishing it so if you know anyone who is interested, please pass the idea along.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch(ette?) we did manage to caulk all our windows during a brief moment of warm dry weather.  There is no longer a breeze coming through the windowsill at the head of our bed but I’m still finding little places where another layer of weatherstripping would be helpful.  We also pulled our tools together to (finally) install our solar light tube in the kitchen, which we hope to accomplish in the next few weeks assuming it stops raining for a couple of days.  And I believe our mouseproofing did in fact work.  We caught and released two mice after the initial project installation but there has been no sign of them for at least a week, even when I left chocolate chip cookies on the counters.  Success!

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Well, my big accomplishment this weekend was mouse-proofing our kitchen.  Can you believe they were squeezing in next to the gas line to our oven?  I didn’t know they were so flexible but judging by the amount of mouse poop present, that was their primary hangout.

I found a nice guide to rodent-proofing from the Orange County Vector Control District in California (thank you, Google!) and spent a little time peering in all my cabinets and behind appliances to see if there were any other potential openings but I think this was it.  I stuffed some steel wool in a couple of other holes just for good measure.  And then I spent a very long time cleaning up a mess I had been in denial about for, oh, awhile.

It gave me an excuse to try out Thieves’ Household Cleaner, a product given to me by a friend who sells essential oils.  I’m still a little torn on how much faith to put into herbal concoctions but I thought it worked reasonably well.  Allegedly, these are herbs that were used by gravediggers back in the day so they could rob corpses without fear of contracting disease.  I think it’s a fabulous legend, whether or not it’s true and whether or not the oils are really effective.  I’m sure they help some and I must say, I’d rather have my house smell like cloves and rosemary than bleach and fake pine.  And most anything is better than mouse poop.

Hopefully that will be the end of our rodent guests although we seem to have a fresh batch of ants coming to visit.  Ah, wildlife.  Can’t you just stay outside?  I guess it’s that winter weather, driving everyone to warmer refuges.  I am anxious to do some weatherproofing before it gets too cold but this weekend was rather rainy and it just didn’t seem like the right time to be out with a caulk gun.  Perhaps next weekend although I hope to get in some camping this fall.   Mmmm, cuddling up on cool nights with a warm bonfire!  This is the season where I feel most motivated to get outdoors and I want to take advantage of it.

Today I got outside and biked for three miles.  I’m proud of myself although I did run out of energy halfway up a big hill and ended up walking to the top.  Both my lungs and my legs need to become reacquainted with the bicycle.  My new office is only about a mile away from home (and it’s flat!) so that’s going to be my new commute once we move in next week.

We’re still wrestling with the no-car dilemma.  Even without one of Will’s super special spreadsheets it looks like we’re going to break down and be traditional Americans and buy a new (to us) car.  Neither of Will’s business partners have cars and they’re planning a bunch of client meetings this fall so it would really be buying one car for four people.

Well, maybe that’s just my thin excuse for being a car addict.  Cars are so darn convenient!  And I like to do so many different things in different places!  What I really need is to develop superhero biking abilities so I’d feel comfortable biking anywhere in Bloomington.  I just don’t think it’s going to happen fast enough and it still won’t help Will take clients out to lunch unless they enjoy riding on the handlebars…

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It might not be clear in this photograph but this is (was) an heirloom “Freedom” apple tree I planted early this spring from Trees of Antiquity.  I had it nicely fenced in and it had grown about four feet tall with a nice healthy crop of leaves.  Then a deer came by (I think), ripped down the fence, and devoured almost the whole tree.   *sigh*  I’ve  mostly resigned myself to living in a yard of fences and barriers but it’s really frustrating when I think I have it all under control and then the tiny tree that  I’m counting on to produce apples in five years gets destroyed overnight.  (Actually, it has produced a couple of tiny leaves so I think there might be hope yet; Nature is amazingly resilient.)  I’m debating what to do to protect our latest additions - three gooseberries, two black currants, two red currants, and four pawpaws from Brambleberry Farm.  Maybe I should electrify the whole yard…

We also had a very small calamity this month involving our Earth Machine composter.  The dog somehow managed to wrap her rope around it and popped it right off the pile.  This revealed an exciting new food source, much to our disgust.  (She’s on a diet right now and her standards have dropped pretty low even for a dog.)  The composter kit came with screws originally so I guess I need to break down and screw the darn thing into the ground.  It’s a pretty nice composter although I must confess I’ve been shirking my compost stirring duties so I think it will be awhile before we actually harvest any black gold (you know, the garden kind).

Our major disaster this month is that our beloved Mazda Protege has kicked the bucket.  Will bought the car in 2003, hoping it would last him through two years of graduate school.  It lasted over six years but this weekend all the coolant drained out of the engine, causing major damage.  We could spend $3000 to get the engine rebuilt but that’s how much Will paid for the car six years ago.  So we’re now weighing our options.  Is this a sign that we should go car-free?  Could we get by with a scooter, our bicycles, and the bus line? Look for a future post with spreadsheets and complicated formulas and columns of pros and cons (we love making decisions).

Speaking of future posts, our current plan is to write one treatise… er, post per week that analyzes a project or product or concept.  We want to be generating quality articles that will keep everyone interested and also be considered for publication in our local newspaper, the Herald Times.  Drop us a line if there are specific topics you’d like to hear about.  Next week we plan to post about weatherizing our house, which is our home improvement project for the weekend.  We’re also planning to tackle passive solar heating, rain barrels, an evaluation of our portable dishwasher, an experiment with shredding fall leaves for more effective mulch, and of course our discussion of what to do with our broken car.  Will is also still thinking about green investing and I am doing some fun gardening projects with my new job at Nature’s Crossroads.  What green topics are on your mind?

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I can feel autumn in the air.  We had an unusually cool summer and didn’t end up doing much of the usual summer swimming and popsicle eating but now the city is bustling with students on their way back to school.  I feel the urge to stock up on school supplies, despite having graduated from college nearly a decade ago.

Will and I intend to use that going-back-to-school energy to wrap up a couple green living projects this fall before winter sets in.  Our top priority is the roof.  It could probably last another year but we want to replace it with a metal roof, add a bunch of attic insulation, and finally install the solartube we purchased months ago to add light to our kitchen.  We’d also like to build a passive solar air heater and get it installed but that one we’d have to do ourselves, which feels a bit more challenging.  Despite having completed a few construction projects around the house, I still feel like my carpentry skills are limited and am nervous about putting holes through our wall…

The project I’m most excited about is adding in some more edible landscaping features.  We finally created a reasonably accurate map of the yard (look for a post next week) so we can figure out where new plantings can be added.  Our friends at Brambleberry Farm have a number of fruit trees and bushes that they suggest we could plant this fall to get a head start for next year.  I’m also contemplating putting in a mediation labyrinth of flower bulbs but that one might have to wait until next year.

And, of course, we also intend to return to our regular twice weekly blogging schedule.  Sometimes posting to the blog can seem like one more chore to deal with but it’s also a great way for us to constantly evaluate our progress and keep living well.  We’ve done a lot since we started this blog, including some big life steps like getting married, buying a house, and adopting a dog.  It’s exciting to find new ways of greening our lives and enjoying the simple pleasures of life.  Blogging is just one little way to share our stories and to motivate ourselves to keep improving.

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I was interviewed for a podcast on WFIU a few weeks ago and just stumbled across it on the web.  I was tickled to hear myself described as a “green goddess of local food.”  It was a great plug for the Local Growers Guild  but a bit disappointing that they managed to get a few things wrong.  I have very little luck with journalists - they can’t seem to get things quite right!!  (In this case, it was a pretty flattering mistake; they gave our four-year-old organization credit for creating the thirty-year-old farmers’ market in Bloomington.  Pretty impressive, eh?)

Anyway, thought you might enjoy a little snippet from the local food scene in Bloomington.  There are also a few pictures and for the truly brave, the full 10-minute interview rather than the polished shortened version.

WFIU Earth Eats - Maggie Sullivan of the Local Growers Guild

Actually, last week I was pictured and interviewed in the local newspaper so maybe I should include a link to that one as well except that our local paper is very protective and doesn’t want people to see its precious content…  I think you can look at the webchat I did, if you’re interested.  I supplied all the content so I can’t complain about any errors. 

Herald Time Live Chat - Maggie Sullivan of the Local Growers Guild

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I answered some greasecar questions recently over e-mail and thought other people might enjoy reading the answers…

How has it been working out for you?
Well, I ended up selling my greasecar last year so my husband and I could share one car.  He can’t drive a stickshift and my VW was expensive to maintain so we kept his Mazda.  Generally the car was good but I had trouble finding the time/motivation to collect and filter grease.  My car also had a lot of maintenance issues unrelated to the greasecar part that were expensive (brakes, shocks, etc.).  I also think greasecars really only make sense for long drives and I just don’t take very many long drives.  We decided it was cheapest to keep his car and since it has pretty good mileage and we don’t drive very much, the environmental impact seemed acceptable.

I’ve heard there is a fried food smell.  Does it just come out the tailpipe, or can you smell it inside the car?
The smell just comes out the tailpipe.  If you have the windows down and are stopping a lot you can smell it in the car but I actually kinda liked it.

Is it difficult to find all of the oil you need for free?
Depends a lot on where you are.  I think the tricky part is trying to find relatively high quality oil so if you have some connections in restaurants and can talk a staff member into collecting it for you, that’s the best.  You don’t really want to be getting it out of big greasetraps.  In Bloomington, there was a bit of competition for oil but it also meant I could bum oil from other greasecar folks who had a stockpile.  I also knew a couple people who put together drum systems that restaurants could have out back for collecting oil that made everyone happy - it was clean and easy and the system worked well.

About what percentage of diesel do you end up using?
I used a lot more diesel than oil because I was lazy about getting oil and I did a lot of short drives that weren’t good for oil.  However, I had a friend who biked for short distances and used her car with vegetable oil for long distances and she probably used only 5-10% diesel.

When you filter the used oil, does the remaining junk have to be properly disposed of?
Yes, although I would feel comfortable putting it out with my regular trash.  It’s very gross but not really dangerous beyond being slightly flammable.  I did learn that vegetable oil will eat through rubber and asphalt if left to sit there long enough.  And it also is attractive to raccoons but gives them terrible diarrhea.  Really, filtering was probably my biggest challenge and one I never quite mastered although I think if I had been willing to put either more time or more money into development, I could have had a nice system that was easy to use.

Did you loose trunkspace for the additional tank?
Yes, I basically gave up my trunk because my tank lid did not seal quite right at first and it sprayed the trunk with a fine coat of oil.  If that hadn’t been the case, I still would have lost about a third of the trunk to fit in the tank.  I’ve seen some different systems that used a lot less space and were a lot cleaner.

Would you do it again?
Yeah, I think I would.  Like I said, I think it makes the most sense for people who take long drives (more than 10 minutes) on a regular basis and who are committed to setting up a good oil filtration system.  I know in Louisville there’s a business that does greasecar installations and also that sells filtered used oil to folks; if I had that around, I’d be way more tempted to get back into the greasecar groove.  Right now I’m transitioning into a job where I can work from home or bike to the office and so I’m not that worried about what car I use on the few occasions when I drive.  But if I ever start driving regularly again, I’ll have to reconsider.

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I just got addicted to Facebook last week and this was one of the random photos I uploaded.  As you might imagine, it was the one that got the most comments, mostly along the lines of “What the heck?”  Well, folks, this is an anatomically correct knit worm that was lovingly created by my friend Heather several years ago.  She was tickled by the idea of me starting a vermicomposting system and knitters are always looking for a new challenge…

As it happens, I also just received a request for an update on the worm composting bin that I put together last March.  Lets see.  I know last summer the worm bin got relegated to our back deck due to some fruit fly infestations but when we moved it into the new house I set it up in our mudroom.  I haven’t seen fruit flies lsince, probably because I’ve been more diligent about keeping a thick layer of bedding on top (which is easier now that we subscribe to the newspaper).  I am afraid I neglected the worms most of the winter and only remembered to feed them once or twice a month but they survived and even made babies.  Nature is pretty amazing.

It’s about time for me to conduct a “dump and sort” when I pull out as many healthy worms as I can, remove all the nice vermicompost to use on my plants, and put the worms back in their box with fresh bedding and whatever random chunks haven’t been broken down yet.  I’ve stopped putting in avocado pits but there are some other large seeds in there right now, I think from a pawpaw, and also some broccoli that I didn’t cut up very well.  I read about a prison vermicomposting system where they actually ran all the food scraps through a garbage disposal to make a slurry for the worms, which I’m sure they loved.  I’ve thought about looking for some sort of hand-cranked slicer/dicer/smusher but haven’t found one yet.

If you want to set up your own worm bin, I strongly suggest the book “Worms Eat My Garbage” by Mary Appelhof.  It has great detailed directions on how to construct and maintain a worm bin.  For a long time I wanted to build the worm bin coffee table featured in the book but right now I’m wanting to build a really small bin out of a styrofoam cooler so I can keep it in my kitchen under the sink.   My current worm bin is a pain in the butt to move and it’s set up in such a way I tend to stack junk on top and then it’s hard to open.  (Yes, I’m one of those people that puts piles on every horizontal surface.)

If you live close to Bloomington, I’d be happy to give you some starter worms.  Otherwise, check out your local bait shop, search for a regional worm farm, or just order them through the mail from someplace like organicwormcomposting.com.  The amount you need depends on your patience level; with a little time and TLC a handful of worms will turn into a bucketful but you won’t be able to put in a huge amount of food at first.

On the plus side, even with a fair amount of benign neglect, they’ll keep on trucking along.

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We are back from a much-needed 10 days of vacation (on the beach!) and are struggling to get back into the swing of things.  It was thunderstorming this morning which made it hard for me to motivate myself out of bed and even harder to get excited about riding the bus.  However, I gritted my teeth, grabbed my umbrella, and was rewarded with a free bus ride since it’s “Dump the Pump” day for Bloomington Transit.

And hey, the weekend’s almost here so hopefully next week will be all sunshine and roses.

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