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Archives from November 2017
Historic Bag ‘O Chips (Ch. 2): Worms Love the Stuff!
Six or seven weeks ago our friend Jobyl gave us a fully compostable potato chip bag. Dutifully, I tossed it into the sink-side “fly proof” kitchen scraps container, which takes an almost daily trip to the compost pile out back. The bag was so brightly colored and so extremely loud when crinkled (or even touched), I felt a little guilty when it came time to dump the stuff. It just seemed like I was putting something very, very wrong in our sacred pile of soil food. Later, along with the coffee grounds, smushed fruit, soggy rice-crackers, and all manner of muck, the Sun Chips wrapper popped out and onto the pile. Quickly, I covered it up with nearby compost.
07/01/2010 | Compost | Edibles | (0) Comments
Chicken-Coop Addition Provides Shade, Curb Appeal
We had various vague notions as to how to proceed with our months-long goal of increasing the size of our chicken coop. In the end, we wanted to create an almost invisible fenced area under an existing evergreen tree right outside our chickens’ 110 sq. ft. abode. Whenever we let the chickens range free, if they were not in our compost pile, they were typically kicking around under this one tree next to their coop, a tree that we can easily see from many parts of our backyard. If successful, the project would not only add 50% more square feet to the coop, but it would also do so in a visually appealing way. Just as the functionality of our backyard is paramount, aesthetics are equally supreme for us—in part because we do not see the sustainability movement happening if it is seen as anything other than beautiful.
06/03/2010 | Compost | Edibles | Outdoor Living | (1) Comments
One Lesson Learned from Double Digging: It Works!
As you may have already read, I spent a heap of time this spring double digging our garden beds. Following John Jeavons’ techniques (described in “How to Grow More Vegetables”), I mixed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of homemade compost deep into the soil. Although I never got the six-pack abs that I had hoped to gain from all of the upper-body exercise, I’m happy to report that the work itself has paid off.
06/01/2010 | Compost | Edibles | Outdoor Living | Shade | Windbreaks | (0) Comments
Not in Anyone’s Backyard! Critical Public Hearing 6/9
The Santa Fe City Council will vote June 9 on a proposed telecommunications law. If it passes, the ordinance will authorize hundreds of antennae towers to be built all over town. The problem is that if your house happens to be near a new cell tower, the signal will be so strong that your health could be negatively impacted. These would not be the kind of low-grade signals that emanate from your typical Wi-Fi. The waves associated with the system will have to travel to your distant neighbor’s home at the other end of your street many blocks away. Do Santa Feans really want to risk the health of our entire community in a Guinea-pig style test? If you question the antenna-tower approach in the same way that you wonder if we trust our technology too much (in light of, say, the Gulf oil disaster), please attend this hearing.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 7 PM
CITY HALL, 200 LINCOLN AVE.
Please also call your city councilors before the hearing, and let your concerns be made known. I will make my calls but will be unable to attend the hearing. For more information contact:
Arthur Firstenberg
PO Box 6216]
Santa Fe, NM 87502
(505) 471-0129
bearstar@fastmail.fm
05/05/2010 | Community | Ecology | Events | (0) Comments
Sorrel Tortillas Make Perfect Home-Grown Burritos!
Stepping out of our back door, the first thing you might see is a huge patch of sorrel, the leafy green that most people have no idea what to do with. On line, you’ll find lots of recipes for sorrel soup and sorrel punch (a favorite Caribbean rum drink), but its too strong to put large quantities into a salad. Steamed-green dishes featuring sorrel can be incredibly tasty, but in too-large doses its simply overwhelming. A great substitute for both salt and vinegar, sorrel has a lemony taste that quickly makes your mouth pucker if you eat too much of it.
One of the best uses of sorrel is as the tortilla part of a burrito (or for all ya’all on the other side of the Mississippi, the wrap part of a wrap). This week, I been making scrambled egg burritos, pinto bean burritos, and farmers-market-beef-mushroom-garlic-red-chile burritos. They’ve all been wheat free, full of minerals, perfectly flavorful, and wrapped in a delicious dark-green package from just outside the kitchen door.
05/01/2010 | Edibles | Outdoor Living | (0) Comments
