Slacker, That's Me

I know I've been a blog slacker on this blog. What can I say? I only have time to write this right now because I'm in a hotel room with nothing else to do. I coach my son's high school aged FTC Robotics team and we're going to the State championships tomorrow. So I have a few minutes to post. But the last few months have been total chaos.

Every day, I think of dozens of really cool things I could post about in the realms of sustainability, food security, people-powered transportation, gardening, etc. but I somehow never manage to do just that. I'm going to try to be better in the next few months.

In the meantime, we've just been keeping on. Our garden is in its usual winter hibernation, though with the cold frames I'm going to plant lettuce next week and see what happens. My kale made it through the winter in the cold frames which was nice. Even though it was 9 degrees this morning! Our kids are looking forward to getting some spring chicks to add to our flock in the next few weeks. And other than this morning when ice on our hill was too scary, I'm back to commuting on my bike as often as I can.

That's about it from our Urban Farm. Hopefully more to come soon...

Your Car Is Not A Space Heater

I'm constantly amazed at how many people are unaware of the toxic effects of idling their car. This time of year, I frequently see people sitting in cars (most often parents at a school or an event like a soccer game, frequently with other children in the car), and they are idling the car, presumably to keep the heaters running. I don't think they know the increased risk they are putting on themselves and their children. People will actually wait five to ten minutes in a drive-through line at Starbucks or McD's when getting out of the car and going in not only saves them fuel and exposure to the toxic pollutants of idling, but time as well (often the line inside is minimal at rush hour, while the drive-through lines are long).

I made up a simple document that is small enough to hand to people and outlines the dangers of idling in a bulleted format that's quick to read. If you have Idlers in your area who are not aware of these issues, please feel free to copy and print these to hand out!

Please Don’t Idle Your Car

For the sake of your health and of those around you

A Few Idling Facts:

Ø       Vehicle exhaust is the leading source of toxic air pollution in Oregon.

Ø       Vehicle exhaust contains at least 21 air toxics which are hazardous to human health.

Ø       Emissions from idling vehicles can be as much as 20 times greater than those from one traveling at 32 mph.

Ø       Inhaling these pollutants can:

o         aggravate asthma,

o         cause coughing or difficult breathing,

o         decrease lung function,

o         exacerbate cardiovascular problems and

o         lead to chronic bronchitis.

Ø       Children are especially sensitive to the eff ects air pollution because they breathe more quickly and take in more air than adults.

Ø       Children inside an idling car, or directly in the vicinity (as in school drop-off zones) are at increased risk for health problems due to inhaling pollutants

Ø       Asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization for children under the age of 15. Asthma is also the most common chronic illness in children.

Ø       Studies have linked pollution from vehicles to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease, and asthma.

Apples to Apples

This time of year, it amazes me how much fruit is left on trees around town. I wish there was a way to better hook it up with people who need food, since it seems positively shameful to waste nature's bounty like that. Yesterday I found an apple tree in an abandoned lot, just full of fruit. The leaves are all gone, so it looks like a Christmas tree except hung with perfectly bright red globes of fruit. I stuffed my jacket pockets as full as I could get them of the wonderfully tart/sweet apples, and I'm coming back next week with a bag. Applesauce anyone?

Getting Ready For the Dark Days Challenge

Yes, it's that time of year again. Over at the Urban Hennery, they are once again challenging us to think local, to source local, to eat local. It's the 4th Annual Dark Days Challenge and I'm planning to do it again. Yes, it's tough to find local foods in the dark of winter when the garden is buried under snow and the locally available vegetables consist of kale and, well, kale. I like kale, so that's not a problem, but there's only so much of it one can eat.

One thing I've found from participating in the challenge in the past is that when you forge new local connections for food sources, you tend to keep utilizing them in the months to come. Or you think out of the box and plan for ways to eat more locally in the winter. For instance, I cut the Zucchini That Ate New York into small cubes and put it into freezer bags in my chest freezer. I like to use zucchini with my eggs in the morning, so I can just take a handful out of the freezer and fry them up whenever I need them. That's a great easy way to add local vegetables during a season when I can no longer grow them.

My locavore omelette includes eggs from my chickens, local goat's milk, spinach and tomatoes from my garden, pork sausage from a local pig (in my freezer) and chantrelle mushrooms harvested locally. I'll be finding more ways to eat locally in the dark days to come!

What Bicyclists Lost in the House and Senate

I know that people in many states are feeling strongly about the outcome of the recent elections. But regardless of your political stance, from a bicycling and cycling advocacy standpoint, we lost some big supporters in the House and Senate last week. We  lost our biggest champion on the transportation committee, Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN) and more than 30 members of the Congressional Bike Caucus in the House. Congressman Oberstar was instrumental in passing much of the important cycling and pedestrian legislation in the last two decades. Things like Safe Routes to Schools were shepherded through by this tireless public servant.

Here in Oregon, I'm incredibly grateful that Peter DeFazio is returning for another term. He has been a long-time supporter of sustainable bike and pedestrian legislation and in fact my favorite bicycling bridge here in town is named after him. If I lived anywhere near Washington D.C. or had the money to travel there, I would definitely be attending the National Bike Summit to make sure our congresspeople know that cycling is a huge priority for our communities.

Green Bean Bonus Makes More Dilly Beans

Unfortunately, I can never make green beans last around here. I love dilled green beans so much that even if I have a bumper harvest, there's never enough to can. I can eat a jar like this in two days flat. Lucky for me, our green beans took advantage of the late warm fall weather to produce a second harvest. I got a couple of colanders full, and now I have at least a few days supply of dilled green beans.

Here's my easy-peasy way to make dilly beans (from my mom):

1. Save the pickle juice from a big Costco-sized jar of dill pickles.
2. Remove stems from green beans and snap in half
3. Lightly steam them just until tender
4. Throw them in the pickle juice for a few days
5. Enjoy!

How To Sling A Pumpkin

This year my rogue pumpkins (all volunteers) even started climbing my fences. This one started setting a fruit while twining up my flimsy fence. I knew it would break off from the vine as soon as it started to get heavy, so I put on my thinking cap for a minute and...one mesh shopping bag to the rescue! Now I have a pumpkin sling, and these mesh bags are great because they expand so much, this pumpkin could get quite large before it tested the capacity of this bag. As you can see, the pumpkin is starting to ripen up nicely, and I think it will survive to maturity in it's happy little sling.

More Than One Out of Ten

I'm happy to say that I'm one of the 11% of Eugeneans that commute by bike. Our town now has the highest bike commute rate in the nation for a city of its size or larger, according to the U.S. Census. Do you remember about a year ago when I wrote that I thought that the number of cyclists I was seeing on my commute was going dramatically up?  As it turns out, that was accurate. Our bike commuting has increased by about a third in the last two years. So it's not just anecdotal, there really are lots more bikes on the road (and the bike racks are full when I try to lock my bike up somewhere).

I also just recently participated in the Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan process, and am excited that our city is on the path of adding even more improvements to our bicycling and pedestrian access and safety. Just this summer, in addition to the ubiquitous road improvements, I have noticed some ped-and-bike-friendly improvements just in my neighborhood. A local street was revamped and sidewalks added. This means we can now walk our dogs to the dog park safely instead of having to drive them there. The bike path near the school was widened and re-paved, taking out the unsafe bike-tire-eating cracks and making it wide enough to pass pedestrians safely. I already blogged about the new bike bridge and the intersection redesign which made my commute safer and gave my kids the ability to bike to the pool and park. We also have revamped and repainted a bike box downtown (though cycling advocates had hoped for the bold green bike box paint that Portland is now sporting for better visibility). Since I go through this intersection frequently though, it's nice to at least have it clearly marked as a bike box (it used to be ambiguous).

All in all, although there are many areas where my city could definitely improve (one street in particular), I am happy to see them continue to move in a direction that encourages non-motorized transport.

Happy Spa Chicken and Harvest Time

I'm happy to report that the chicken spa treatments did the job. Voodoo's foot is back to normal and apparently we didn't have to face the dreaded bumblefoot. Now it's just harvest time in the garden, a race to get all the produce in and dealt with, as well as mulching and taking care of our late fall/winter crops. I had hoped to have a space to move my cold frames to, but it was overtaken by rogue pumpkin vines that have set fruit. Since we all love pumpkin here, I'm loathe to move the pumpkins until we've harvested them, which means the cold frames may have to wait.

Every year at this time, this blog takes a significant lull as I try to keep on top of everything going on outside in the few weeks of good weather we have remaining. Happy gardening to all!

Spa Day for a Chicken

Meet Voodoo, one of our favorite chickens. She's a six month old Barred Rock, a breed which has given us some of our mellowest and most friendly hens. Our oldest hen Hera is a Barred Rock, and a real sweetie too. Voodoo however is a little more adventuresome than most, and has consistently figured out ways to defeat the chicken pen security and escape to freedom. We find her on our front lawn, with all of the other chickens clucking indignantly that they should be out to roam too (we do actually let them out to free range as much as possible, but not when we're not around the house). It was probably on one of these escapades that Voodoo hurt her foot, and we noticed that she was limping a little bit.

Then Wayne and I went out of town to the Reno Air Races with my dad, and my mom stayed with the kids. It was during this time that the foot started to swell up and get noticeably worse. From the laptop in our hotel room, I frantically started Googling "chicken foot injury" and came up horrified. Who knew that there was this dread chicken foot disease called "bumblefoot"?? Fortunately, I don't think that's what she has after looking at the foot, but Mackenzie was very panicked when it swelled way up and many of the websites talked about lancing and surgery and antibiotics.

What I did tell him to do was to go and get some epsom salts and start soaking the foot, and move her to a sterile environment indoors. So he and grandma set off to the drugstore. Unfortunately, Epsom salts have now gone designer, with all kinds of herbal addititives (gone are the days of the $3 bag of just "Epsom salts" apparently) and they came back with a scented bag of chamomile salts. So we've been joking that Voodoo is getting her twice-daily "spa treatments" at the Blue Skies Ranch, and so far the swelling on her foot has gone down almost completely and she's putting weight on it again. Another day or two and she'll be done with her little spa vacation and can go back with the other ladies and tell them all about it. I bet they'll be jealous.

The Hundred Hen March

This week at our town's big celebration and parade, one parade entry will be the Hundred Hen March. They may well have more than a hundred hens as it seems every other house in our area of town now has chickens. Asa is planning on going, towing a couple of hens along (caged of course) in our bike trailer.

The purpose of the Hundred Hen March is to increase awareness of backyard chickens and the growing food sustainability movement. Sounds like a good cause and a fun time to me. I may have to make some kind of clever sign to march along with. What do you think of "Feeling Clucky Punk?"

Okay, I Take It Back About the Snap Peas!

You might remember I posted awhile back that my attempt to stagger my snap pea plantings looked to be a failure. As it turns out, it wasn't at all! My snap peas that I planted later have continued to produce as the first ones burnt out, with the result that I still have bunches of snap peas every day, and we're eating fresh veggies from the garden like I had hoped. In past years, we've just had a burst of snap peas and then they were gone, but this year the staggered plantings worked like magic and we've got a sustained harvest that so far is not letting up. I love it when things go right!

Since my kids really love raw veggies and aren't so keen on canned or preserved stuff, it's one of my goals to move towards a year-round harvest. This means staggering how I plant things, and using our sun room and cold frames to try and extend the season as much as I can. I'm still learning as I go, but I count this as a victory along the way.

Encouraging Bike Commute

I'd consider my new bike commute as a report card on how well our city accomodates bicycles. I'm working at a new job, teaching kickboxing at our karate dojo which is in the next town over, about 11 miles from here. So far I've been commuting by bike most days. It's really a terrific commute, which takes about 45 minutes each way on my around-town commuter bike. There is not a single block of the journey that I'm on a street without some sort of cycling accomodation, which is very encouraging as a bike commuter.

First, I start out on a street that's marked as a bike-friendly street. Around town they're delineated by green destination signs and these painted symbols on the street. They're generally low-traffic streets in which biking is encouraged and driving discouraged. In some cases, they have restricted entry to cars or speed bumps to discourage through-travel by cars.

After three miles on that street, I enter the riverfront bike path. Most of my commute is along this path, which winds along the Willamette river for miles on either side. This path connects the two cities of Eugene and Springfield.

Five miles down the bike path, I turn north onto a series of low-traffic streets with designated bike lanes. A new roundabout on one of the streets has a terrific bike accommodation to make it safer for cyclists. Eventually I end up on a new bike path that parallels I-5, and crossing over the freeway on a new cycling-only suspension bridge. This is one of two bike-and-pedestrian-only bridges that I cross on my commute. Our city has invested heavily in making sure cyclists and pedestrians can cross rivers and freeways easily and safely, and this makes my commute much more enjoyable.

The last part of my commute is about one mile on a high traffic street. It's the least enjoyable bit of the whole trip, but I have a good bike lane to travel in, and all of the drivers so far have been exceedingly courteous, yielding to me even when they have the right of way.

All in all, you can see how over the years the accommodations that my city has put into place to make cycling safer, easier, and more convenient have all added up to make it possible for me to commute to my job by bike. All of these changes did not occur overnight, or even in the same decade. It might be a bike lane here, a path there, a bridge here, a traffic change there. But when a city commits to making cycling a priority, you eventually end up with a network of paths, lanes, and streets that make commuting by bike an option that more and more people will choose. And that's to all of our benefit.

Getting Clucky in NYC!

On CNN Money, urban chickens in NYC!

Better Biking Ahead

I'm very excited that a major intersection near our house that was extremely dangerous for cyclists has been completely revamped this summer when they repaved it. I think there are regulations in place now that when they re-design an intersection it is mandatory that they have to include bicycle and pedestrian accommodations. This intersection lays in between our house and the public pool, so my teenager has been biking through it by himself and I am SO grateful that there are now bike lanes and that he doesn't have to ride up onto the sidewalk and risk getting nailed by cars coming in and out of the business parking lots that front the road.

Essentially, the intersection used to have two lanes of traffic  in each direction, and they removed one lane and put in a nice wide bike lane and a wider sidewalk as well. You can see clearly here how the pedestrian and bike access has been vastly improved and made much safer by these improvements. To the people planning them, it might just seem like paint striping and pavement, but to a mom whose children are on bikes next to one-ton vehicles, it means that I breathe a lot easier when they want to bike someplace by themselves.

As a society, we want our children to be healthy and fit. Childhood obesity and inactivity are huge health problems, yet we often don't put the necessary systems in place to make sure that kids can navigate safely around town using their own two feet. I'm happy to say that my city is making this possible!

Bale Fail

Sorry to say, the straw bale planting experiment so far has been a total failure. And I thought maybe it was just me, but my other friends who tried the bale experiment haven't had much luck either. At first, all the plants looked like they were doing fine, but then they just withered away. Meanwhile, the stuff in my garden is thriving and growing like crazy. I know there's lots of great photos on the internet of straw bale gardens just bursting forth, but I wonder if maybe they are using some kind of fertilizer on them? I was under the impression that the composting bale would have enough nutrition for the plants to grow in (in addition to the dirt I put into each hole in the bale that I planted in.) but it doesn't look like it was enough for my poor little plants.

If anyone has bale garden tips and techniques or success storied, I'd love to hear them!

So Much for Staggering Snap Peas

In years past, I've only planted one batch of snap peas. They've produced a good amount of peas, but in a short period of time and then they're done. So we gorge on snap peas and then they're just gone for good. I though this year I would do something really clever - I'd stagger my snap pea plantings by several weeks and then we'd have peas for a much longer time period. So in the first garden box I planted some snap pea starts that I bought at a plant sale to benefit our local food bank. In the second box I planted seeds at the same time. In the 3rd and 4th boxes I staggered more pea plantings at 2 - 3 week intervals. Hah, I would have an unending supply of snap peas!

Except that it was cold and rainy through May and most of June, so almost nothing grew. Then a couple of weeks ago when it suddenly got really warm, they all exploded with growth and blossoms. Now all of the snap peas look identical in size, no matter when they were planted, and they're all bursting at the seams with pea pods. So guess what? I'm picking a colander a day of snap peas and we're all turning green from eating them. And I guess they'll all be done about the same time since the weather is in the mid-nineties and not falling anytime soon. Snap peas don't really care for the heat.

I guess we'll just have to enjoy them while they're here. We're definitely eating very locavore right now!

Last Year's Tomatoes, This Year's Sauce

I have to admit, I never got around to canning last year's tomatoes. Oh, I had the best of intentions, but September's siren song of the last of summer's sun called me away. So I stuck the tomatoes in one gallon freezer bags to can in the late fall. Of course late fall means kids' activities and preparing for the holidays, so it just never got done. But all was not lost. Whenever I've wanted to cook up some tomato sauce, I just take a big baggie of tomatoes out of the freezer and pop them in a saucepan with some water. After they've cooked down for awhile, I fish out the skins and stems, add spices, some onions and garlic, and reduce it down to a yummy pasta or pizza sauce. The kids swear they've never tasted a better sauce, so you can't beat that! Sometimes laziness pays off.

Mystery Chicken Death

A couple of days ago, one of our chickens went missing. Just gone from the coop. No tell-tale pile of feathers from a raccoon or raptor attack, just no chicken. Today she wandered back into the chicken pen in the middle of the day and promptly squawked twice loudly and fell over dead. I have no idea what was wrong with her, a mystery chicken death. I am wondering if she ate a mushroom of some sort since the recent massive rains have caused a large sprouting of many varieties of mushrooms in the woods and even in my raised garden boxes! We have had another chicken die like this a couple of years ago and I just don't have a clue.

RIP Bingo, this is a photo of her about three years ago, happily foraging through our leaf piles. She was a bit of a  mystery chicken from the get-go, she was supposed to be an Americauna chicken, but never developed the fluffy face feathers that our other Americaunas did. She had her own unique look to her, but was a very pretty girl. Here she is in her awkward teenage days, next to Saphire, our Blue Andalusian:

Garden Updates

It's been hard to get much gardening in the last couple of weeks. The rains have been absolutely torrential, in the fullest sense of that word. We got more rain in the first four days of June than we usually get all  month (and June is not particularly dry here). The weather seemed to have a perverse ability to clear up when I had to be someplace away from the house, and just as I was thinking "at last, I can do some gardening when I get home", the dark clouds gathered and began to dump water from the sky.

Many of my plants are not doing well, especially melons, squash, and cucumbers. They're just not liking the combination of cold and wet when they're supposed to be growing. The snap peas on the other hand are ecstatic.

Still, in the couple of nice days we did manage to have, I got the whole front garden weeded out (weeds don't seem to care about less-than-ideal growing conditions) as you can see above, it actually resembles a garden plot now! To the left of the fence, you can barely make out the newly-fenced addition where I've got a double-row of corn planted.

Lucky for me, I didn't transplant out any of the tomatoes from the cold frames, because the tomatoes that are out in the open air look puny and unhappy. The ones in my cold frames look quite good, especially since they were grown from seed! They're having a happy time, and I'm not sure yet when or even if I'm going to transplant them out of there.