MamaStories

Copying data files we just found this audiofile, from April 2007. It’s just too cute!

Click here: amiesample_12april2007

(Please let me know if you can’t hear the recording)

Bed under row cover: lettuce and spinach

Fat broccoli under row cover

Lettuce and escarole

Dead wood expedition

A good haul

Woosh!

I was talking with a friend today and she mentioned my picture a while back of my canning pantry. She said she certainly understands the feeling of growing, harvesting, putting up and getting the firewood ready from her reading of the Little House on the Prairie books - which I admitted I have never read (all gasp), as it’s not quite part of the European schoolgirl’s library, and as I simply never felt the need to read it after my school years. She told me that especially the ritual of putting up always gave her a sense of security, and how had she lost that feeling?

I said when you live according to the seasons, you live according to the ever recurring year, with its waxings and wanings, its rituals of life and work, its periods of plenty and of less, and its ample pockets of security in rough times… A life, in short, that can count on certain comforts even if they’re not present, because the recurring rituals hold them in place in the future. This gives you a sense of security without however lulling you into a false sense of security. Because it is a whole year, it doesn’t get boring, and the periods and transitions within it cannot be taken for granted.

This unlike “modern life”, which lives not the recurring year, but the recurring day, over and over again the same day, with (as per usual at least) not a one big shift, whether gift or sacrifice, to make us feel alive and the passage of time.

This friend understands what I’m trying to do here, and I appreciate our conversations, however interrupted by kids and “modern life”, more than she knows. I hardly ever write about the emotional side of our endeavors and dreams on this blog, I don’t know why. Perhaps I fear of the dreaded “No Comments” under the entry headings. But most of the time, it is simple exhausting to try to get the maelstrom of emotions to stay still on paper/screen, in neat sentences let alone paragraphs. Easier to let it all come pouring out as a warbled stream of consciousness into the ear of a dear friend. And, later in the evening, to salvage a few choice thoughts.

This is what happens when “Mama spends too much time in the kitchen canning!”

(Canned green beans, pickled cucumbers, peach pie filling.)

Our latest adventures…

This month there were no shifts in the household: just the three of us, which makes the reckoning much easier.

Amie feeds the compost tea some molasses

Gasoline: 27%

This stayed the same as last month. The school year hasn’t started yet, so DH is spending more time working from home and Amie isn’t daily being driven to school and back, all of which save on gas:

33.9/3 gallons of gasoline = 27% of the US National Average

Electricity: 8%

306 KWH = 8% of the US National Average

We’re now routinely careful with lights and appliances and we’re inching down (from 10% last month), but honestly I doubt we can get it any lower without investing in some expensive solar battery-charging equipment. But then again DH is looking into building a deluxe solar oven, which will save some more electricity, especially as the temperatures drop and stews and soups come back on the menu - though we hope to use the woodstove cook top for those. Anyway, right now it’s just chipping away.

I’ve been canning a lot, and getting that 23 quart canner up to 10 lbs of pressure really puts my electric range to work. That will show up in next month’s Riot, though.

What strikes me now about this number is how easy it was to get our usage down to within 10% . We run our laptops all the time, and we’re not ruining our eyes to candlelight at night. I run my dishwasher every other day, and my washer once a week (never my dryer)… That is, we’re not deprived of electricity at all. With a little bit of effort everyone in the States could quite easily get down to, say, 20% of what they’re using right now. All it takes is some vigilance.

Heating oil and Warm Water: 22%

13.6 gallons of oil = 22% of the US National Average

This is down from last month but warm water is still our Achilles heel. We still haven’t insulated the boiler and the pipes - one thing after another happens and distracts us from such simple measures. No excuses: it will happen this month!

Trash: 4% or 493%?

The big bill finally came in: we had rented a dumpster for the trash generated by our remodeling project that we weren’t able to recycle.  We don’t know how much it weighed after we were done with it, only that it was under 2 tons. 2 tons, that’s 4000 lbs! I can’t  believe it was anywhere near that, so I estimate it was about a ton, but I really have no idea.  So let’s say a ton, the dumpster plus our usual household garbage, which came in at 5 lbs per person per month.

666 lbs of garbage per person this month = a whopping 493% of the US National Average

Ouch. Does the US National Average include construction debris, dumped cars, etc? If not, then I can write:

5 lbs per person per month (= 4% of the US National Average)

But it’s only fair to count it. Most of it ended up in the landfill, after all.

Water: 17%

During our brief dry spell I watered only with rain water, and all our compost tea was made with rain water (as it should: the chlorine in the drinking water kills the benificials). And at the beginning of this month we installed our new flushing method, which paid off: we lowered our water consumption even more (from 20% last month), to

506 gallons of water per person = 17% of the US National Average

Consumer Goods: 10% ?

Stuff we bought but that I won’t count,  because they are for purposes in accordance with the Riot: canning rings and lids and some canning jars - though most I got through Freecycle and Craig’s List - and the canner itself, of course; a substantial investment in our new wood burning stove,  one of the most efficient stoves on the market and to be used judiciously;  the (poorly designed and useless) solar lamp we purchased  from - and will return to - IKEA.

Most of the furnishing in the renovated room are either stuff we had or things we got from the landfill (a nice desk and a chair). But we did have to buy some tools and lot of building materials for it. We also replaced our beaten up old porch roof with a new roof - which necessitated a surprising amount of caulk. Sigh. I hadn’t so far, but now that I am counting the renovation waste, I’m thinking I might have to count these costs as well… And then we’re talking several thousands - sometimes things are so necessary that you just stop keeping count.

If I’m not counting these, then I could write $80, spent on books for Mama, DH and Amie:

10% of the US National Average

Food

It’s been a while since I visited this category. It still boggles the mind how to calculate it, but I can at least say that we’re eating a lot out of the garden. I am canning a lot, so that will lessen our impact during the months to come. (See the last Independence Days)

But our garden failed to produce onions,garlic, peppers, lettuce… Those I buy at the Farmer’s Market, along with the honey: all local. I have many plans for improving the garden next Spring.

It all feels good, but we can do so much more. For instance, buy bulk wheat berries and grind our own flour, or the least I could do is bake my own bread. Get chickens so we can make our own pasta. Get a chain of homemade yogurt going, with local milk. Start mushrooming. Find a good storage place for the many potatoes we hope to harvest, and for apples from a local orchard…

So many more steps to ween ourselves off the supermarket, which is increasingly more expensive. Only last week I bought a gallon of organic milk: $6.99! But if we had a couple of goats…

Ah, so this is what it was all about! Finally the garden is giving up that abundance that was promised: beans of all kinds, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes and tomatoes, and our first eggplant (apple green). There’s enough to eat and put by.

This is one day’s harvest. The tomatoes that weren’t eaten straight away were canned in a tomato-apple chutney:

In the back are peaches (like the apple, also farmers market) in syrup. Yes, that’s my fifties kitchen cabinetry: I love it!

And Amie loves to shell the red kidney and cannellini beans. We harvest the pods when they’re dry, light brown and leathery, and when you shake them the beans rattle inside. I don’t think I’ll have enough for eating (even one big meal), but there will be enough as seed for a much bigger planting next year. I don’t trust my drying methods - no barn or garage for drying the plants - so I freeze them. I hope they stay viable that way.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to harvest and process most of the basil plants. I think I might just chop them up in the food processor and freeze them in cubes, like the Omelays. I’m also going to do a backlog of laundry, as the rest of the day will be sunny. But this afternoon I still hope to put the Fall planting seedlings in.

Math

Tea Party

Parrot

…

“Mama, when you see it IN your eyes, but not outside your eyes, it’s a dream, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why when you open your eyes it’s no longer there.”

…

“Mama, Peter Pan [movie] is made up of pieces.”

“Yes, like Kipper: episodes.”

“No, Kipper episodes are stories by themselves. Peter Pan episodes are all part of one big story!”

…

We do a lot of outdoors stuff too, when it’s not too hot - especially gardening, and taking walks around the block. I forget my camera though.

…

Yum!

A couple of days ago Amie was helping me in the garden. She was raking away the weeds I had just hoed - though raking around is closer to the truth.  There was a lot of chopping with her little rake, too close to my face. There was also yelling - “Go away, weeeeeds, go away!” She was not wearing a shirt - adamantly refused to wear a shirt. Her hair, though newly cut, bounced wildly. Several times I had to remind her when she stepped onto the small buckwheat field close to where we worked.

A neighbor who has been interested in our gardening - which is visible from the street - was walking her dog and came up our driveway to say hello. We chatted while Amie transferred water around, from bucket to bucket, getting the path and herself quite muddy. Amie explained:

- That’s why I didn’t want to wear a shirt, because I’m working with water.

Very sensible.

My neighbor said, quietly:

- I’ve been watching and… isn’t Amie in your way?

I looked at her in surprise, and said:

- In the garden she’s as much in my way as the tomatoes, or the lettuces!

My neighbor smiled and we talked of how children really should be in the garden, growing just like the vegetables and the flowers do.

Barry Lopez wrote: “One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.” Could my garden by such a place, for me, for Amie?

To forget blight trouble, and to expel the dreadful memory of my first nocturnal slug hunt (brrr), an account of our trip to the Cape (Cod), from which we returned (already) several days ago.

We drove out through a torrential downpour into brighter skies. On the Cape we had almost no rain and even some sun. The ocean was made more mysterious and powerful by the ever present fog, but quite bearable qua temperature (after some jumping and yelling - about 56F) and so much fun - I had forgotten how much fun!

It was Amie’s first exposure to the ocean, and she was fearless and careful. What a sensory feast she had, running in the spray, running from the waves, making sandcastles and seeing them demolished by the oncoming tide. Click for larger images.

We drove back to Boston three days later, now a while ago, through another downpour - or it might have been the same one?

It stopped raining yesterday and the forecast looks more or less clear for the next couple of days. Okay, hey, I’m trying the power of wishful thinking here…