poor bats

       Our bat house is an important conversation piece even though it is still uninhabited.  Bats are in as dire a straight these days as bees.  Many of them have died off due to white-nose syndrome (a fungus disease), while bees have succumbed tocolony collapse syndrome en masse.  Bats are important insect population regulators and can eat their weight in mosquitos and other insects on a daily basis (wow, I would need to eat 130 pounds of food each day).  We like to give afflictions fancy names.  But what is the real cause behind these massive die offs?

            Why do we humans become so sick in later life with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease?  Many signs point to diet, toxins and a stressful unnatural lifestyle.  Studies into white-nose and colony collapse syndrome have also indicated that toxins aka pesticides aka neonicotinoids may weaken these small creatures' tiny immune systems.  Our toxic agricultural practices are upsetting the apple cart aka ecosystem balance.  Not only is it likely that our pollinators and insect population regulators are dying for those reasons, but their die offs are causing further ecosystem imbalances down the line because we'll have trouble pollinating our produce and the insect population will grow out of whack (watch out for Zika and West Nile).

            Luckily many bats live in the cliff next to us.  Bats flutter around at dusk on warm summer nights, when most birds have settled in for the night.  Have you seen any bats lately?

foraging 101

dandelions

lambs quarters

         For the past few weeks I have had an abundant supply of wild greens in my backyard.  Lambs quarters and dandelions are growing with abandon. Both can be eaten raw as salad greens, used in a smoothie, or quickly sautéed or steamed with some garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice.  Dandelion leaves become bitter as the leaves grow bigger and older, so harvest the smaller ones if you don't like bitter greens.  The yellow flowers are edible and look very pretty in a salad, or you can put them in your smoothie.  Lambs quarters is a mild tasting green and can be substituted in any recipe that calls for spinach or chard. 

            In a few weeks we are looking forward to a bumper crop of blackcaps.  What's growing in your backyard?

budding blackcaps

small is beautiful

         Ice cream servings in a cone are small in Europe, probably a bit less than half the size of the big scoops we are used to over here.  Generally we equate big with good because bigger is better, right? Cars used to be the size of boats in this country until people became more energy aware.  "How was the food at that new restaurant?"  "It was great, we had a lot of food."  Huh?  But how did it taste?  May be the portion was too large if you need to take half your meal home in a doggy bag.  

            E.F. Schumacher was way ahead in 1973 when he argued in his economic classic Small is Beautiful that building our economy on eternal growth is not sustainable.  Indeed, our planet doesn't expand.  Around the same time Frances Moore Lappé wrote Diet for a Small Planet.  She pioneered the discussion around the terrible environmental impact our industrial "meat production" causes and argued for vegetarianism.

            Interest rates have been shrinking, they are even lower in Europe than here,  and discussions on negative interest rates are popping up - getting penalized for leaving your money in the bank.  So spend it or put it under the mattress. 

            All of these are signs that small is beautiful, bigger is not sustainable, our economies need to shrink to halt the consumerist excess and environmental damage we have created.  Think quality over quantity.  "How delicious was that meal?" not "How big was it?"  "What beautiful material is that dress made of?" not "Buy 2 for the price of 1."

how you treat animals

             Mahatma Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."  He has a point.

            More of us need to know how the majority of animals raised for human consumption is treated - it's dreadful, and maybe this term isn't even strong enough (read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals if you really want to know more).  It also says something about us that pharmaceuticals are tested on animals kept in captivity and subjected to potentially harmful side effects.  And that kill shelters exist is a horror.  Betta fish are routinely kept in solitary confinement in minuscule bubble tanks.  Thank goodness big game hunting is on its way out, the ivory trade also (they kill the whole huge elephant just for the tusks and don't even bother eating the meat), almost, and shark fin soup popularity is down (see an earlier post on that).  But people still wear fur coats and the Chinese still illegally trade animal parts they believe have healing properties.  Nevertheless, zoos treat animals much better nowadays than say a hundred years ago, providing them with habitats that resemble the places they came from, diets as close to their natural diets as possible, and distraction and exercise in enclosures that are much smaller than their natural territory.

            I believe that we are unable to harm an animal once we look it deeply in the eyes - because then we connect with its soul.  When animals are kept in pens under anonymous conditions we don't connect with each one individually.    That's why people have no qualms about eating supermarket meat.  If we all had to look our steak in the eyes, work in a kill shelter, spend a week in a slaughterhouse or a pharmaceutical animal testing lab things would change very very quickly.

a million years!

               I am a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to recycling because I want to make sure nothing that doesn't need to go to the landfill goes there.  In the kitchen, in the spot originally designed for the trash can, I have a big recycling bin for the usual paper/glass jars/bottles/various packaging items, which the weekly collection truck picks up.  A canvas bag hangs behind the pantry door for the returnable bottles and cans for which I get 5c each back from the supermarket.  In another canvas bag behind the pantry door I collect recyclable plastic bags - the supermarket has a drop-off bin for them.  And then I have a bucket for all the produce scraps, eggshells and tealeaves that we compost in the composting bin in the backyard.  I recycle clothing six ways from Sunday - by giving it away, bringing it to the second hand or thrift shops in my area, or dropping it into one of the many clothing drops.  Cable, phone stuff and very small electronics go to Best Buy, but a few old phones are lingering on the hallway table while I am trying to figure out what to do with them.   

            My son always comments that the back of my car looks like a junk yard.  Indeed, it can get crowded back there between the mountain of reusable shopping bags, two freezer bags (you never know), various items waiting to be dropped off somewhere, and the carton I use to safely transport my weekly raw milk, yogurt and egg order back from the farm.

            The only thing I am really frustrated about is styrofoam.  They don't accept it for recycling anywhere in our area and it will linger in the landfill for a million or so years! No kidding!

            Also revisit a previous post on the joys of composting and one on wasting less.

the earth is all we have

             Let's not throw her to the dogs, let's not pollute her any longer, or blow her up to smithereens, we can't go live on the Moon or Mars.  Besides, I kind of like it here.  Do you?

            Without the Earth we're nothing.  We do not exist without her, at least not in our human form.  The Earth furnishes us with everything we need, food, fuel, material for shelter and clothing, and beyond those basics beauty and wonder.  Gaia and you and I are one.  She exists so we can experience her and all of us together.  

            On this Earth Day consider becoming aware of what you see and experience, then unravel it backwards to unearth what beliefs lie behind it, under it, buried.   What you experience and see is based on your thoughts and beliefs.  On this Earth Day the second phase of our solar installation is being completed so we can produce 100% of the energy we consume.  Zero footprint.  It's about mutual respect, and it's an investment in the future of our planet.

            Also take a look at this one and that previous Earth Day posts.

super crop

         You can eat it in seed, flour or oil form, you can make clothes and rope out of it as well as biodiesel fuel, paper and building materials.   Meet hemp, the old/new super crop.   Pretty much the only thing you can't do with hemp is get high on it because it's not the same as marijuana, although they both belong to the cannabis family.   It's a super plant and super food that withstands drought, thrives in poor soil, and grows fast.

            Hemp oil is extremely rich in essential fatty acids, and according to David Wolfe of Superfood fame "the only known food with ideal ratios of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids."  The oil is also used in body care products.  Hempseed is a complete protein, the leaves are edible and you can make tea out of them.  The seeds can be made into butter, bread, beer and milk, similar to a nut milk.  Hemp's fiber is one of the strongest fibers on earth, hence its use for rope.  But it can also be made into clothing.  Hemp clothing is better than cotton in every way - warmer, more absorbent, stronger and more resilient, accepts dye better, extremely durable and it becomes softer and more comfortable the longer you wear it.   Hemp can grow pretty much anywhere in the world and yields 2.5 times the fiber the same area planted with cotton would yield. A biodegradable plastic can be made from the stalk as well as building materials like insulation, fiberboard, and hempcrete, all non-toxic and non-off-gasing.

             Hopefully, the silly hemp ban in the US that dates back to the 1930s and was engineered around political and monetary interests will be lifted soon as people become more aware of this super crop.  

going sustainably

             We tend to bury our burial wishes because we don't really want to think about death and dying.  My husband and I decided quite a while ago to be cremated and our ashes thrown into the wind - from whence we came.  Perhaps it's a bit more sustainable than embalming the body in all kinds of chemicals for an open cask viewing, which I personally find kind of creepy, spending all kinds of money on a casket that takes 25 years to rot, and both, body and casket leeching all kinds of yucky chemicals into the soil (and our ground water!).  But even the burning is a toxic and energy intensive process.

            Did you know that embalmers have to wear full body "armor" while embalming because of the toxic fumes associated with the preservation chemicals?  There are more sustainable burial practices than cremation, from the weird (we saw the Jain funeral towers in Bombay from afar many years ago, where the bodies are laid out in the open on the top of the towers and the vultures take care of them) to the simple (wrapping the body in a shroud and burying it without casket and chemicals).

            Better yet may be this method.  One of my faithful blog readers (thank you, Alice) reminded me of this 2011 TED talk by MIT trained artist Jae Rhim Lee.  Lee has created a mycological burial suit embedded with mushroom capsules that assist in the quick decomposition of the body and digestion of toxins, as well as mushroom spores allowing mushrooms to grow and use the body as feeding ground while composting it all completely and sustainably.  Cheap and non-toxic!  Watch the talk on her website Coeio.

            I think I'll change my mind about cremation now that I know about the mushroom burial suit.

grasshopper or ant?

             You may remember LaFontaine's fable of the ant that strategically planned its food reserves during the summer in preparation for winter, and the playful grasshopper who ended up without food because it played all summer long. 

            Short-cuts don't always work, and it often takes hindsight to realize it.  We have taken many short-cuts on environmental and agricultural issues in favor of quick monetary gain.  Whether fracking, pesticides, factory farming or a host of other quagmires, the money comes quick, but then.....there is always always always an ugly hidden cost, and in the end it costs much more. 

            Take the recent dramatic drop in oil and gas prices, which almost immediately led to people buying fewer electric and fuel efficient cars.  While buying that less expensive vehicle right now, deferring getting those solar panels or better insulated windows, or delaying insulating your house, may indeed save you money this year, the long-term consequences are no savings.  Take the purchase of solar panels for example.  Payback is around 6-8 years.  That means that after 6 to 8 years your electricity will be free for the life of the panels, which is around 20 years or so.  So you get 12 years of free electricity!  And keep in mind that the cost of electricity keeps going up.  In addition you are helping to cut down on the pollution caused by burning fossil fuels, which contributes to the warming of our planet.  Win-win for all. 

            The hook?  It requires an investment and a short-term material sacrifice in favor of long-term environmental and monetary gain.   What's so bad about that?  You do the same for retirement.  You sacrifice something now for gain down the road. 

            Think like the ant, think long-term!

octopus consciousness

       Many scientists still do not feel comfortable attributing some sort of cognition to animals.  But all of us dog and cat lovers simply know that our beloved pets have a consciousness, albeit different from our's.  They recognize different people, know our character (whether we are kind to them or not), can make themselves understood (being bored, being hungry, hurting), and exhibit feelings (mourning when a close mate has died, or exuberance when you take your dog out to run on a beautiful day).  My daughter says her Betta fish watches her as she moves about her room.

            Maybe Paul the Octopus, who supposedly predicted many 2010 FIFA World Cup outcomes correctly, was instrumental in spreading the idea of octopuses' intelligence to the wider public.  I am currently reading Sy Montgomery's delightful new book The Soul of an Octopus.  It is quite amazing to find out that these animals, whose beingness seems so  much further removed from our's than even cats or dogs, recognize their keepers and distinguish between people they like (reaching out and tasting their skin with their suction cups - yes, they taste with their suction cups, and who knows what they are able to taste, hormones? medication in the blood stream? feelings?) and dislike (water squirting).  Octopuses are enormously intelligent and inquisitive and have been known to exit their supposedly tightly secured tanks to go explore.  They can go through extreme appearance changes in a matter of seconds, not only to blend in to their environment as protect against predators, but also reflecting their disposition, such as white and smooth when calm, or red and bumpy when excited.  Each octopus has a distinct character.

            It seems to me that we are slowly entering a new and more inclusive era of understanding the nature that surrounds us  - my daughter is into crystals and swears she can feel them pulsating.  Please revisit an earlier blog post spiritual cats.