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Popping about.

The garden is off to a smashing green start.
We’ve already harvested the early strawberries. There’s plenty of greens to eat.

Other things popping about: red cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, bell peppers, beets, chili peppers, heirloom and other tomatoes, leeks, yellow and red onions, rosemary, thyme, basil, sage, zucchini, and cucumbers.

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Living Off The Land: Foodie Week #2 (hard to call it Foodie week when it’s now taken a month. Such is life as a dad, husband, entrepreneur, and employee. No more promises or schedules for this blogger.)

So, getting back to my Foodie posts, I want to take a few minutes of your time to encourage you to live off the land this summer. Well, not really, but what I would like you to do is to close the gap between the food on your table and the field it was grown in.

Last Spring, I surprised my wife (not in a good way, she was just surprised) by heading out in the backyard in the middle of the night and digging up a strip of grass to do some planting. It wasn’t huge, but neither is our city plot of land. A deal was struck! She got some room for flowers, I got some room for veggies.

I’ve been wanting to grow some of my own food for a while now. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. To Close the Gap.
   When you walk around the grocery store and see boxes and cans and microwavable trays, and each product has 50 ingredients in it, you get a very abstract picture of where food comes from. I wanted to close the gap between the field and the table.  I wanted to cook with veggies and herbs that I could see their whole life cycle.
2. To Teach My Kids About Real Food.
   Those products in the grocery store have dozens of ingredients that I can’t pronounce, much less tell you where they came from. One day my son who was 3 at the time asked me, “Where do Graham Crackers come from?” Not a clue. What does it say on the box?  Well, clearly there’s pyrophosphates in there son. Eat up. – Got me thinking, do I really want to give my kids food that I can’t pronounce the ingredients? Or myself for that matter?
3. I like to cook and I want my food to taste better.
   I’m not particularly that good at it, at least, not to where I’d hope to be…but I love to cook. The garden is inspiration. You can’t help but want to be a better cook when you’ve got access to fresh off the vine tomatoes, lush herbs and crunchy lettuce you just pulled out of the ground. When it comes out of the ground, gets washed and goes right into a meal, it tastes better. period.
4. Saving Money
   I think this is possible. I didn’t run the numbers last year, but conceivably, with the right mix of veggies, the right planting schedule, eating what’s “in season,” it is conceivable that you could actually save money. It doesn’t really cost that much to get up and running. Last year we spent less than $100 and had a serious bounty. I plan to do it again this year with more intentionality.

So, that’s why I started and I want to encourage you to grow something. I’m not saying that you should give up your day job and become a farmer. I’m not saying rip up your whole yard and make the whole thing edible. Here’s a few ideas to get you going though:

1. Grow Something. Anything.
   Head to the bookstore and look at the magazines. There’s a ton of them out right now that give you ideas from a window box, to container vegetable gardens, to 3×6 raised beds, to the works. Buy some seeds and grow!
2. Start at a pace that makes sense for you.
   Don’t rip up the whole yard if you’re not ready to deal with the ramifications of it. Not everyone is as crazy or impulsive as I am. Starting with a 5×20′ garden may not be right for you. But, there is a happy place between nothing and full-fledge farmer that is right for you.
3. Don’t be discouraged by some things not growing.
   Truth be told, at least half the seeds I started last year died before I could plant them outdoors. That sucked. But the other half didn’t. That was awesome. Don’t be discouraged. It’s not all going to grow.
4. Start with plants from the garden store.
   Starting from seed can be a lot more work and a lot more defeating. Start with 3-4″ or 12″ plants from the garden store can be a winning recipe. Most of those plants are bred to live in your local area. You’ll have a greater chance of early success.
5. If you’ve got kids, get them involved.
   Everyday, my boy was out in the garden asking if there were any cucumbers or tomatoes to pick. It’s a great way to get them going in the process and even encourage them to eat more fruits and veggies. My boy loves Thyme. He says it’s his favorite herb. Does your kid have a favorite herb at age 5? They could.

I’d love to have some conversation about your successes and struggles.

A few garden shots from last year…

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Thoughts: Who Killed the Electric Car

So, I just got done watching “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and here’s my main thought…

All things being equal, I think most logical, coherent and breathing people can agree on 1 thing: No pollution is better than some pollution. End of argument. Smog=bad. Clean air=good. It’s only slightly above neanderthal in its comprehension quota.

I have little doubt, before or after watching this film that big business is self-intererested in serving the needs of its share price far beyond it’s responsibility to further the health and well-being of humanity. I have little doubt that our democracy has holes in it like swiss cheese where money is the filler that closes the gaps. I have little doubt that if these guys can make the Tesla Roadster run on electricity, then GM, Ford and Chrysler could come up with a long-term, viable, profitable solution to the problem of vehicle emissions.

Bottom line, I think most of us were told when we were kids to, “put it back the way you found it, or better.” There’s no excuse for demoralizing future generations by not solving problems that we can solve today. Electric car or no electric car, we should be interested in taking care of this world we’re here to steward. Zero emissions is a stewardship goal, not just an environmental freak movement.

If for no other reason than to be entertained and make you say, huh? add “Who Killed the Electric Car? to your netflix queue.

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I'm a sucker for high efficiency…

With our new furnace:

• we heated 1 extra bedroom
• had a lower electric bill (1 room switched from electric baseboards to gas)
• used 32% less natural gas over the same time period last year.

The average  temperature was roughly the same, so I’d say this is going to save some money in the long run. I should mention too that we’ve been keeping the house a little warmer this year. Chilly toes don’t agree with my pregnant wife so much this year. Thermostat is set to 71 when we’re home compared to 67/68 like I like to have it.

For this month alone, using last year’s natural gas rate as a comparison, we saved approximately $76 on natural gas for the month of December with our 95% efficiency furnace.

Good for budget, good for earth. Of course, I’ll be paying off the furnace/air conditioner/air filtration system for the next 5 years, but what the heck, huh…

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Solar Decathlon: Great Impact with Less Impact.

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A Good Food Manifesto for America

I’m a foodie, and more and more I’m becoming a foodie purist. I believe that underlying our healthcare crisis is a food crisis that is causing diabetes, heart disease, childhood obesity and the majority of the issues that form the baseline for our healthcare “needs.”

Take a moment to think about the food you eat with a few of these resources:

1. A Good Food Manifesto for America at  ChangeThis by Will Allen.

2. The Movie or Participant Guide of Food, Inc.

3. The Omnivore’s Dilemma Book or Audiobook (my fav)

4. Or just make something good and fresh to eat.

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This week in Prefab: Place Houses via Inhabitat.com

I love this house and I can’t believe it’s a prefab.
Maybe it’s just the chartreusie pea green set in the foggy Pacific Northwest, but I think the angles, color, and contrasting materials make this prefab model especially tasty to the eyes.

Read the article over at Inhabitat.com or
Check out the Place Houses website.

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This Week in Prefab: SwellHouse

The SwellHouse is a new prefab package from The Office of Mobile Design.

The SwellHouse advertises mass-customization. In essence, it’s mass produced, with the ability to quickly customize it to your modular needs…It essentially comes as a bunch of boxes that get shipped from the factory, bolted together on site with all the energy, plumbing and information systems hidden away in the cavities.

I like the standard design of this house. The “S” model as the call it, has sliding panels and walls that merge the inside world and the outside world by creating courtyards on the inside of the building. They use stand “green” practices and materials to make this house have a smaller environmental footprint, aside from the smaller footprint of the factory produced modular building process overall.

Check it out.

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This week in Prefab: MK Again, Sunset Breezehouse

I wish I could find a plot here in the city, and order up one of these beauties. The Sunset Breezehouse is exactly what you’d imagine: A place for the breeze to flow. 

Outdoor/Indoor living are seamless in this model. There’s literally a glass door, an entire wall of glass doors or clearstory windows in every room…even in the bathroom in some models…could be dicey. Outdoor living space with decks and verandas built right into the plan are also included. 

The prefab/modular nature means you can also build to suit your needs. just add another section as needed. MKD also uses sustainable materials as available and factory building processes. Rather than workers driving to a buildsite everyday…and delivering materials to the worksite everyday…everything goes in bulk to the factory where it’s built assembly line style…it’s the IKEA model…reduce transportation and material waste and drastically reduce the build time as well. Good for you, good for the environment…

Next week, we’ll check out the SwellHouse from the Office of Mobile Design.

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Living and Working

I just watched the 2007 TED Talk from Jaime Lerner. He’s an architect and city planner from Curitiba, Brazil, often looked upon as the most progressively planned city in the world.

I love how Jaime Lerner starts with,

“City is not a problem, it’s a solution.”

One of my growing frustrations since I came back from France, is the dependence I have on our cars. Even in North Minneapolis, which is an urban area, the reality of using our public transit to get anywhere is largely hopeless. It takes forever. One of the problems as Jaime pointed out is the lack of mixed use space in our city and the relative lack of opportunity to Live and Work in the same neighborhood.

My wife and I are fortunate. We live on the northside and we both work on the northside. Unfortunately, our childcare is rarely on the northside. This means, we have to drive to make life efficient. It sucks.

Economic, social and environmental justice are all interconnected. But it seems like with intentional design, fast action and planning based not on what I want, but based on what we need will make all the difference.

If we think about how bringing jobs to a community, hiring within a community and making the jobs accessible from the community can impact the economic, social and environmental justice of a community, then we would just do it. Because it seems like the right thing to do. Because God wants us to think about the interconnected web we all live in. And about each other. And because justice is the business of the church.

I want to live & work without making a huge dent in the ozone over New Zealand. Don’t you? The church needs people who are thinking about this stuff. And there are people thinking about these things for sure, but it seems like the voice isn’t loud enough. I had to go to another country figure these things out for myself….how are other people hearing the message…

I’m trying hard to keep this from being a rant…it’s not working. Now I’ll quit.