Baby spinach microgreens This is my first installment of the Independence Days Challenge. Plant something. We double-dug three raised beds and constructed the bases of four 4×4 potato bins. I chitted the early potatoes, and those and many seeds and seedlings are ready to go in this week (will update when that happens; it’s raining …
Category Archives: Recent Riot Posts
Riot for Austerity: Month 6 – and Ode to Freecycle
Gasoline Whenever there’s a birthday party or a school outing, I volunteer to drive ourselves plus several more kids there and back and even around to their houses. This month has been laden with those, and DH has had to drive in to work a couple of times. Result: 9.65 gallons/person, or 23% of the …
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Riot for Austerity: Month 5
“Rekenen,” Dutch: to count Am I reckoning month 5 already – or only? Sometimes it seems like we’ve been doing this all our lives, other times it’s like we only started yesterday. It shows that we’re not totally “in the habit” yet. I’m 16 (!) days late in reporting. Also, this month is ugly: our …
A Page from my Garden Book, and Pruning the House
I’ve pruned our house, that is, pulled all the suckers! That is, I unplugged all the appliances that suck electricity even though they’re not in use. Like battery chargers of all kinds (they don’t need to be charging anything to be drawing electricity anything that has little lights or clocks, like the microwave anything on …
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Three for the Neighborhood, or How I Scored Unlimited Amounts of Horse Manure
One Our renovation project has so far generated a fair amount of scrap materials. Luckily it’s mostly wood and only some drywall, which is virtually not reusable. Of the wood DH and I have saved most: we take out the nails, tease off the drywall and have built up a nice stack of project wood …
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Riot Reckoning: Month 4
“Rekenen,” Dutch: to count Gasoline: doing much better at 16% Between us we consumed 20.3 gallons. That’s 6.77 gallons/person, that’s: 16% of the US national average. I have this great deal with another mom from Amie’s preschool: in lieu of my watching her kids for four hours a week, she watches Amie for two hours …
Poll: Why Do/Don’t You Simplify/Prepare in the face of Peak Oil/Global Warming?
{This is a second attempt at this poll. I deleted the first one: the polling service wasn’t working properly. My apologies to those who already voted; please vote again.} I am curious about how my readers think about Peak Oil / Global Warming. Do you think the threat is real? What do we hope/fear for …
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Garden Plan and Onions and Potato Order
I am having fun with the garden plan. There are so many possibilities, so much to do! I’m cautious about planning too much. I want to concentrate on the food growing areas first: the veg garden, herb garden and some container gardening, and perhaps some berry bushes around the perimeter. But we need to address …
Riot for Austerity Month 3: An Average Winter Month
Gasoline: 25% After our road trip splurge last month, we did better this month: we used 31.1 gallons between the three of us, which makes for 25% of the US national average, but more than our first month Rioting (19%). The reason was the schedule changes that necessitated DH to take the car into school …
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*We* are The Economy
I had a great discussion with a friend about David Orr’s essay, “Loving Children: a Design Problem“. She concluded that the breakdown of education is one of the many results of an unfettered capitalistic economic system. It sounded like the end of our conversation, because, you know, The Economy: what can I do about that? …