Entertainment without a Footprint

I am loving this digital age. There are so many ways to cut back on our garbage, refuse and clutter if we learn to embrace the technological age. The very fact that I am embrassing technology separates me from many homesteading and simple living advocates. Most would have us believe that new age technology keeps us chained to our desks, slaves to our jobs and always plugged in.

I agree in some ways. Being such a technologically advanced society has many draw backs. There is quite a large pile of electronic garbage piling up as things like VCRs, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, old cell phones, broken printers and any number of out dated computer related garbage. Sometimes new technology is manufactured so cheaply that when an item breaks down it becomes more cost effecient to buy a new one. One could also argue that being so plugged in makes employers expect more by way of productivity. It makes us slaves to the office and it causes many to interrupt family time to answer the blackberry or check innumerable emails.

On the other hand, if approached wisely technology can be a boon for those of us who are environmentally conscious. For one, most electronic items can be recycled with nearly all parts finding new uses leaving very little to be sent to the landfill. These recycling places are usually private businesses that accept your broken monitors and televisions for free. Their employees strip it down and then sell the material to industries needing the copper, glass, gold and plastic that is found within. To find one near you check your phone book. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Another trick is to think about the items that give you and your situation the most bang for your buck.

For me, I love my digital camera. I can take a plethora of photos, save 100s of pictures on a disc and put them away for safe keeping, never having to print any unless I have a specific use for them. I love that no chemicals are used so I can enjoy my pictures.

I have a digital picture frame that flips through hundreds of photos, always changing and showing me memories through out my day. I am often pleasantly surprised and thus my photoframe never blends in with my surroundings. When on vacation my most prized souvenirs are my photos so I never have to purchase snow globes, pins or other such items found in most gift shops (and then later at the second hand store). It would also be good to note that keeping your photo files on a disc which is stored in a fire safe box is a good way to guard your memories against fire or, even a more likely, a computer crash. You may loose a lot in a house fire, but the most common item missed is family photos.

My husband and I have also made a pact when it comes to electronic and entertainment items. We no longer buy new music in CD form. We either shop online for MP3 formatted music or purchase used. DVD's are approached in the same way, buying only used movies. This has drastically reduced our garbage from these items.

My husband is a big PC gamer. He loves getting a new game each month and I just couldn't imagine the waste we would generate if he bought those video games at the stores. Instead he belongs to an online account, in our case Steam, that allows him to purchase games which are then virtually added to his profile. He can play as often as he wants and if our computer crashes there is no chance of loosing his purchases because they are operated through this company that holds his account. In this way he can be entertained by this modern convention without contributing to the landfill issue. There are no emmissions from trucks transporting his games to him. And he didn't need to create emmissions going to the store.

I bet if everyone sat back and thought about digital ways to cutback on waste hundreds of pounds of plastic could be prevented from going to our landfills. There could be less trucks on the road carting these goods around. And less chemicals filling the air while manfacturing these products.

When Good Tomatoes Turn Bad

We are still making our way through our stash of canned edibles from the garden. Much of my canning this year was done with vegetables I purchased from local farmers. My small garden had let me down again, or was it I who let it down. In any case, som valuable lessons were learned this year so not all as lost.

I made vegetarian chili yesterday. It's a very easy recipe that involves two 500 ml cans of tomatoes, my 100 mile tomatoes. Since I make my chili in the crock pot I assemble all the ingredients and just throw it in as I chop or open cans. That's when I noticed one of my cans of tomatoes did not look right. There was not enough liquid surrounding the diced tomatoes and the colour was slightly off. The tomatoes were still red, but just a tad more brown then the jar beside it.

Tomatoes were an experiment this year. I had never canned them before, so I needed to be on the safe side. I brought out another jar of tomatoes and used them, leaving the "off" one on the counter. Today I decided it would be better to dispose of it before I inadvertantly used it on something.

Well, there was no use in worryying about me using it. As soon as I opened the lid I could smell how bad they had turned. The actual tomatoes looked okay, just the slight colour difference. I am sure now that even if I had not noticed the colour I would not have missed to odour. I suppor nature is good at letting us know when something is not safe to eat.

This experience has reinforced a few things for me as far as canning goes. You can do everything by the book and still suffer a bad jar. Tomatoes are tricky so pay careful attention to times, head space and acid content. Always look carefully at your jars even after ensuring the lid is sealed. Any off colours or major air pockets can indicate a good jar gone bad.

I am not sure what happened to make that single jar go bad. I have had over 12 jars of perfectly scrumptious tomatoes in former chili batches and so this single one was an anomoly. Even still careful attention to detail is certainly not lost when it coms to canning.

Thoughts on Simplicity

Taking the time to slow down and awake your thoughts is a good thing but something that has become highly under rated. Our modern society has become so concern with tangible productivity, we often ignore the barely noticed but more important act of just being.

I was totally engrossed in a book the other day. I had been reading it steadily all afternoon between seeing to the laundry, breaking up squabbles and general household stuff. This book is good, I mean, can't put it down but must get dinner on the stove good.

I loathed to put it down. I did so reluctantly and as I set about to peel potatoes I was trying to conjure a way to prop the book up so I could read and peel at the same time. It took a moment before I realized what a bad idea it was. I don't know about you but I would be apt to slice a digit if I were not watching my fingers. So I abandoned my book, saying a sweet, "I'll see you later" and started the very menial task of peeling potatoes.

I was making Sheppard's pie with the last of the supermarket beef, and so I had double the amount of potatoes to peel than normal. The prospect of spending so much time watching my fingers peel potatoes, a normal, everyday occurrence, was disheartening. As I peeled I thought about how peeling the lowly potato is often viewed as drudgery. A common punishment long ago was peeling potatoes. Sure the task is repetitive. It certainly isn't exciting.

I peeled and thought, and peeled and thought.

Perhaps it is being alone with ones' thoughts that has their skin crawling. As a society we spend so much time trying to save time and then what do we do with it? Fill it of course. The average person allows themselves no time to be alone with their thoughts. Minds are always racing. To do lists are etched in our brains. Standing at the counter cutting potatoes is far less productive than say... surfing the internet.

If we truly allow ourselves the freedom to think about our dreams, our reflections, our actions (past and present) we can often come to deep conclusions about what we really think and feel about things. I imagine our modern society's preoccupation with busy-ness is deeply rooted in our fear of our thoughts. If we stood there for ten minutes peeling potatoes what would we think about? Would we like it? Would our thoughts make us uncomfortable? Upset? Ashamed?

In my view living deliberately is about getting to the center of our souls. Being present in the moment, peeling potatoes is just as valid an activity as reading a book, and just as valid as any number of the busy tasks we assign ourselves. This week, slow down, enjoy your moments where you become lost in thought and see where they will take you.

---- for anyone interested, the book I am reading is Less is More, by Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska. It's a collection of essays from a number of "experts" in Voluntary Simplicity (if there ever could be an expert on such a thing). I have been reading it daily, and dubbed it my daily devotional for all the wisdom I pull from it's pages. A very good read. Like I said, I couldn't put it down.

Kill it, Cook it, Eat it.

There is a nice farm in England where sheep, cows, pigs and any other number of animals are raised. There's a gentle slope to the hills, stone walls and thick bushes along the sides of the pastures looking more like a carefully manicured movie set than a real farm. There are any number of animals grazing, running, snorting and lying in the sun... you know doing the things that farm animals do best.

To me this is a real farm, not a monoculture where farmers concentrate efforts (in the name of profits) on one breed and species. Since I began dreaming of being more self-sufficient I have been drawn to anything and everything farm related.

So when my husband suggested watching a show airing on BBC called Kill it, Cook it, Eat it, I was intrigued. I am a proponent of people knowing where their food comes from. I feel if people knew what factories did to those cookies they would choose not to eat them. And if they knew what factory farms did to the animals they would choose more sustainable/ethical sources for their meat, or at least respect the life that was given so we can have protein. I am not squeamish and so the prospect of killing my food does not bother me.

The premise of the show is this: Six participants, two vegetarians, two fast food junkies, one young mom on a strict food budget and on country girl who makes her living from the land. Each week these participants are walked through the process of caring for animals, selecting which one will die, watching the animals' fate come to pass and then cooking and eating the resulting food.

Some where along the line the general public has been removed from this process. We no longer know how the animals we eat are treated or how they lived and died so we could eat.

Despite showing grisly close ups of blood and skin during the slaughtering process, this show seemed to candy coat it. The abattoir where the animals are slaughtered is a small family business, and where as most of the meat you find in your supermarket has not been slaughtered so... elegantly for lack of a better word. Most slaughter houses push through 300 animals a day to punch out junk meat for the local fast food joint or side street hot dog vendor, but I digress.

Eating animals has not bothered me. What bothers me is the industrialize mechanism our western culture has created to process tonnes and tonnes of meat. We are cutting down rain forests to create cattle ranches. We are using acres upon acres of prime land to raise a meat for those who can afford it, land that could produce enough fruits and vegetables to feed the world many times over. Raising meat is not as efficient as raising crops but alas, raising crops is not as profitable as raising meat. (Vegetables are labour intensive and can be finicky if bad weather plagues your region on year) All this I know. I know if I want to truly be a steward of the Earth I must minimize my meat consumption.

With this in mind, I watched. I witnessed the many debates between the country girl and the vegan. The vegan had many points with which I agreed and as the show unfolded I found myself disagreeing more and more with the country girl's point of view. She argued that many people depending upon the industry of animal farming. She argued that everyone should eat meat so these people could keep their livelihoods.

Well that's not a logical argument.

Am I denying a teacher their livelihood because I choose to homeschool? Am I denying fast food chain owners a livelihood because I choose not to eat fattening, cholesterol-laden junk? That's the joy of a free market economy. Consumers carry more say then they realize.

Even if everyone decided to boycott public schools or fast food restaurants (highly unlikely) there would be an opportunity for those in the industry to find other lines of work. Yes it would be difficult and yes certainly not the best case scenario but tell that to the millions in the manufacturing industry who lost their jobs last year. No one is immune to changing tides.

So the thing that struck me while watching this show was castration. It was painful to watch. I averted my eyes like watching a horror movie and found my stomach turning for the rest of the night. No anesthetic. No painkillers. Just the farmer, a piglet and a razor blade. And this is legal? Apparently it is.

The way in which the animals are killed unnerved me as well but I loathed to admit it to my Meat-a-terian husband. But he saw my reaction to the castration and was surprised that I was more affected. We talked for a bit about it after the show. And I realize that with numerous eco-friendly, personal health, and animal welfare reasons swirling around in my head, I was seriously considering becoming vegetarian!

When it comes to the farm (still in my dreams) I could focus on vegetables, fruits, berries, an orchard, a sophisticated green house and preservation system. I would be able to purchase fewer acres and perhaps I could even take charge of this extra weight I have been carrying around.

I spent the morning researching ethical farm practices but there is a sick feeling still in my stomach. My head is in spin. Even if I could avoid castration there are still any number of concerns I have with the meat industry and common farm practices. I sat down to watch the show not expecting to be affected by the premise at all. I emerged with a completely new perspective.

Extraordinary Canadians: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Extraordinary Canadians: L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart

A possible lesbian. Suicidal. Depressed in her choice of Bridegroom even on her very wedding day. The last statement I knew, the other two took me by surprise. When an article was published last summer on L. M. Montgomery's possible end by medicinal overdose, I cried. But I wasn't all that surprised. She had been horribly haunted all of her life. Her own personality including a perverse need for control and keeping up appearances made her life even more horrific. Even in the end, she was granted no respite from controversy or drama. She was in real life, by all accounts, the very opposite of what you would expect the authoress of our beloved Anne to be. And yet it all makes sense.

Perhaps one of the most distressing things about her life, in my view, is her close encounter and then complete resistance to passionate love. When I am reminded how close she was to giving into her feelings for Herman Laird before convincing herself that he, at least in her mind, was a lowly, uncultured farmer that she could never prevail herself to marry, I feel sadness in the depths of my soul.

... to dream of marrying such a man. If I were mad enough to do so -- well, I would be deliriously happy for a year of so-- and wretched, discontented and unhappy all the rest of my life. I saw this plainly enough--- passion, while it mastered my heart, left my brain unclouded. I never for a moment deceived myself into thinking or hoping that any good could come out of this love of mine.

To let some misconceptions cloud your judgement so. To be so judgmental. To be so blind. Some spectulated that it was a combination of Herman and her Saskatchewan love interest, Will, that culminated to create Gilbert Blythe.

And yet this is what she later wrote about the day she did marry:

I felt a sudden horrible inrush of rebellion and despair. I wanted to be free! I felt like a prisoner-- a hopeless prisoner. I sat at that gay bridal feast, in my white veil and orange blossoms beside the man I married-- and I was unhappy as I had ever been in my life.

All these things come together so eloquently under the prose of Jane Urquhart, another of Canada's beloved authors. Not chronological. Deeply engrossing. Certainly thought provoking. This biography of my favourite author has to be one of the better ones. Reading this has forced me to pull out my pictorials of Montgomery's numerous photos, her journals, her auto-biography The Alpine Path. This has been an ideal way to kick off my L.M. Montgomery Challenge.

Perhaps each January, when the snow drifts splash on my windows and the pines on yonder field sway in their annual ceremonial dance with the Wind Woman, I will strive to pull out my collection for some reading and reminiscing.

Making Butter

It's really quite simple and oh so satisfying. Nothing tastes better than homemade butter on homemade bread. Simply divine! Yet another thing to check off my self-sufficiency list!



Start off with heavy cream, the heaviest you can get a hold of. In my neck of the woods, the heaviest available is 35%, commonly known as Whipping cream. A lower cream content can also be made into butter but it takes longer.

Whipping Cream recently went on sale in my area so I pick up some. I am using 500 ml of 35% cream and two 500 ml mason jars.

Fill jars half full and place on the lids. And now shake! You don't have to shake vigorously, just keep the liquid moving.




After about 10 minutes the cream gets thicker.




And then it will almost solidify. At this stage it becomes hard to shake and it really feels like you aren't doing anything because the cream is stuck to the outer edge of the jar and then...puff! The whey separates and you have a big lump of butter in the middle splashing around.



We kept shaking for a few more minutes before emptying the whey (cloudy milk) and adding ice cold water. Shake around again. Pour out, add more ice water. Keep going until the liquid is pretty clear. Pour out remaining water.



Then put your butter on top of a cloth. I used a cheesecloth in this picture but the fibers were too far apart. A linen cloth would be best. Squeeze the cloth around the butter and let the remaining whey drip out.



It's important to get the whey out or else the butter will expire pretty quickly. Then remove cloth, and place butter in your desired container and refrigerate!

Since I was doing two jars my daughter volunteered to help with one. We had a shake off, to see who's would turn into butter first. She won by the way but only because I was stopping to take pictures.

You can also make butter using a blender or food processor or a mixer. To get directions for this method check out Down to Earth

My 500 ml ( 1 pint) yielded almost two cups or one pound of butter. Let's forget about self-sufficiency for a moment and look at the numbers. At the regular price of $3.59for whipping cream, this process hardly makes it worth it when pre-made butter costs $2.99 but when whipping cream is on sale for $1.99 it makes financial sense. It certainly can provide a nice treat at a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast!

L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge

I have decided to participate in Reading to Know's L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge.

Maud has always been one of my absolute favourite authors and when I saw this challenge come up on a friend's blog I realized how long it has been since I last read on of Maud's books. Last Christmas I read Christmas with Anne, so not too long but long for me.

To be honest there is not a single book or poem or article written by L.M. Montgomery that I have not read. My collection is extensive and so this challenge will be a re-acquaintance.

I am going to revisit the Blue Castle and Emily of New Moon and write some related posts about them soon. At the library last week I picked up Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, a prequel to Anne of Green Gables. I am a purist at heart but I didn't want to discount something before giving it a shot. Obviously this book does not count in this challenge since L.M.M. did not intend for there ever to be a prequel but like a junkie I am always looking for a fresh fix.



A picture from our vacation to PEI in 2007.