Lift Up Your Hearts!

Water supply is an issue in Florida.  We'd probably be a desert, like most places at our latitude, if we weren't embraced by two large bodies of water.  What's more, the water table is generally high, so it's easy to foul the nest with pollutants.  So what do we do about it?

I'm sure there is much being done at the state level, and I don't minimize its importance, but I'm more concerned at the moment with what can be done at the community, family, and individual level.  Our city pioneered the residential use of treated wastewater for irrigation and car washing; in addition to the usual, potable water system, each home has a source of reclaimed water.  Although the water is considered non-potable, with the exception of nitrate and phosphate levels it meets federal standards normally applied to drinking water, so it's safe—and the plants love the extra nitrates and phosphates.

The water is reclaimed and fixed-fee, but still a limited resource, so we use a drip irrigation system for many of our plants.  Our backyard is mostly landscaped with plants that are meant to survive on their own in Florida (i.e. what grows without help from us) and we allow the lawn out front to go dormant during the winter dry season.  When we do water the lawn, it is as much for the fertilizing properties of the reclaimed water as for the water itself.

We have more incentive to conserve potable water, since we pay per gallon, but that's harder to do.  If I were designing a house, and had no financial limitations, there would be wastewater collection systems in parallel with every drain, with an easy-to-use switch, so that relatively clean wastewater, such as shower drainage, would be reused—perhaps for flushing toilets, or for watering plants—while the nastier stuff would go directly to the city's treatment plant.  As it is, however, we must make do with simpler systems. There are a number of reasons I wish Home Depot sold Japanese toilets, one of which is the excellent system in which wastewater from handwashing helps fill the tank for the next flush.  But Home Depot doesn't, and our bathroom sinks are small enough that we haven't yet found a reasonable way (i.e. one we're willing to use on a regular basis) of recovering washing water.

The kitchen sink is another matter.  Ours is a double sink, and a Rubbermaid dishpan fits neatly into one side.  Water that is run while waiting for it to get warm (or cool) we catch in milk jugs and use for everything from watering our worms to rinsing our feet after a barefoot walk.  Handwashing and vegetable rinsing water—anything that doesn't get the water too gloppy—is collected and re-used, generally for rinsing dishes or watering plants.  If for rinsing dishes, it subsequently gets reused another time, for running the waste disposer.  We find this system easy to use, largely because our gardens are just steps away from the kitchen, and it's astonishing how much water can be saved with such a little effort.  I'm not sure how well it would have worked at other stages in our lives, but for now it is great.

The direct inspiration for this was actually not Florida's water problems, but a visit to relatives whose water supply is their own well with an electric pump—an electric pump that doesn't work during a power failure, of which we experienced several during our visit.  Then I learned how much a little stored water could be stretched!

I'm sure you're all waiting on the edges of your chairs for news about our worm farm.  I'm getting more and more excited, as they are finally beginning to make garbage disappear.  I made the mistake of thinking of this as an out-of-the-box working system:  having taken the plunge and bought the Can-o-Worms, I could no longer bear to throw away kitchen garbage.  However, this was like buying a brood of newborn chicks and expecting free-range eggs for breakfast the next morning.  After filling up and freezing two large bags of scraps, which I labelled "worm food," I gritted my teeth and returned to former disposal habits. The worms are settling in, eating their plenteous coir fiber introductory bedding, and growing.  For now, they are teenagers without teenage appetites.  A fully mature system should be able to handle five to eight pounds of waste per week, but for now I must be patient.

They've shed their post-transplant shyness, however; when I lift up their moisture mat I can see they are happy and active.  And they're finally beginning to turn garbage into gold, albeit in small amounts.  Already we're harvesting fertilizer in the form of the liquid that drains from the bottom—it's not as good as it will be, I'm sure, but enough to keep me enthusiastic as we wait.

Green is as green does.

[Quoting Desperate (Green) Housewives] The greenest people are totally unhip and unlikely to be photographed for the Times or a glossy magazine. They’re still wearing their clothes from twenty years ago. They aren’t keeping their home spa-worthy clean. No need to worry about polluting the air with chemicals, if you aren’t dusting every five minutes. They aren’t constantly renovating their kitchens and bathrooms, all of which uses enormous amounts of energy and resources; they are still living with the Formica numbers from the 70s. They aren’t jetting off to Europe to browse the Paris markets; they go bowling in the next town over. They aren’t constantly shopping for new things and tossing out the old things.

Barring the bit about jetting off to Europe (is it okay if the purpose is to visit family?) the author could have been peering in our window.  Good to know we're cool if not hip.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Did anyone else grow up with that phrase hanging around their living environment—as counsel, as a warning, as a reprimand? I did. We sure didn’t live it as well as we might have, but still, I heard it recited often enough, from my parents and grandparents and church leaders and others, to accept it as the Gospel truth, long before I read any of the philosophy or politics or economics that persuaded me of its correctness on their own. Basically, the message is that the way to prosperity and happiness—at least insofar as the material world is concerned—is to live conservatively and renounce extravagance and stick with what you have and know.

[R]eal environmentalism begins with “tending to” our environment, rather than upgrading it or ourselves in the name of continual betterment, and supporting those moral causes and political campaigns that are actually trying to make tending to our families and jobs and neighborhoods more possible, rather than selling us on constantly retraining and retrofitting ourselves and our world.

Sons of Liberty, 2009

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of Kansas secessionists. The participants were rowdy, complaining of economic gigantism squashing them flat and bureaucratic thugs hounding their every move. They were all sick and tired of worker-ant existence in the hive-mind of American groupthink and they wanted out....Kansas patriots fomenting disunion? No, though there are a few of those kicking around these parts. These were local farmers organizing a farmer’s market....[T]he Spirit of ‘76 showed up in force. Damned were the federal busy-bodies who tell local farmers what they can and can’t sell; condemned were the centralized agents of agri-business who want ID chips implanted in livestock; mocked were the credentialed witch-doctors from the department of agriculture who own the brand “organic.”

All that was left undone was a patriotic march to the local Enormo-Mart to dump the limp and faded out-of-season tomatoes imported from South America into the local pond (which isn’t quite Boston Harbor, but it would have served). And while there was no Declaration, it was clear that these small growers wanted out–out of forced participation in the economic union of cheap mass production, central planning, credit money, and the ignorant consumerism they despised.

[Author Michael] Pollan issues this simple dictate: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The harping of a food-scold?  Perhaps. But Pollan fleshes his commandment out well, especially the first third. By “eat food” Pollan actually has in mind something quite revolutionary, because you can’t buy “food” most places. Walk into your local Mega-lo-Mart and what you see is not food—it’s processed corn syrup and assorted chemicals and “nutrients” packaged in plastic and shot so full of preservatives it will never rot.

Food rots. If it doesn’t rot, it’s not food. That’s a good principle to live by.

[S]elf-provisioning is dirty work done by sun hardened men who obtain...membership in the rarefied league of freemen who can pretty much tell anyone and everyone, as circumstances may require, to go to hell without concern for the consequences (taxman excepted). That’s the feed store definition of freedom in Jefferson County, Kansas, though it’s not taught much in social studies textbooks. Only such men—rich or poor, barber or builder, clodhopper or shopkeeper—know true equality, for they know and honor the true measure of the other....[T]he food problem in this country described and catalogued so aptly by Pollan is ultimately a symptom of the much more disturbing problem: that the league of freemen has dwindled to near extinction.  The important questions start not with what we eat but with who we are.

I know—the last thing you need is another blog to read!  And the one I’m about to recommend had several authors and consequently great risk of overwhelming your feed reader.  Especially since nearly all the posts are thought-provoking and well-written.

The Front Porch Republic is new—the first posts were on March 2 of this year—but has already produced so many shareable articles that it deserves its own post.  Treat yourself and subscribe to the Front Porch Republic; they have a Comments RSS feed as well, though I can’t usually keep up with it.  A mark of the quality of this blog (and its readers) is that the comments are so far above the “Your a &%$#& moron!” level seen all too often on websites without benefit of sufficient editorial oversight.

Knowing that most of you would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of meaty reading available there, however, I will continue my practice of sharing excerpts.  Here are a few by way of introduction:

Architecture matters.  I knew I missed our front porch; now I know why.  It’s a much easier way to interact with the neighbors than cleaning up after a hurricane.

[In his essay, “From Porch to Patio,” Richard Thomas] explores the social implications of the architectural practice of building porches on the front of homes and its eventual abandonment in favor of patios behind the house…. As with any central feature in our built environment, this is more than merely a passing fashion trend or a meaningless design change:  the transition from porch to patio was one of the clearest and significant manifestations the physical change from a society concerned with the relationship of private and public things—in the Latin, res publica—to one of increasing privacy.  The porch, as a physical bridge between the private realm of the house and the public domain of the street and sidewalk, was the literal intermediate space between two worlds that have been increasingly separated in our time, and hence increasingly ungoverned in both forms.

Why entrepreneurs, the self-employed, family farms, small businesses, and craftsmen are the bellwethers of liberty.

In 1913…Hilaire Belloc looked forward and anticipated our moment. He argued that what we today call corporate capitalism was fundamentally unstable and would eventually cease to exist.

The instability would be caused by the slow but inexorable concentration of property into fewer and fewer hands. As property became concentrated, power also would become concentrated, and concentrated power is a threat to the state unless, of course, it is co-opted by the state. Furthermore, as property became concentrated, the security of individuals would be threatened. People would find themselves in the precarious situation of living paycheck-to-paycheck. Because they possess no capital, they would not be able to provide for themselves in the way that a small farmer or craftsman could. They would be completely dependent upon their wages, and when economic crisis struck and wages were threatened, the insecurity of their situation would become acute. In such a time, it is not hard to image the people clamoring for a solution, rejoicing over a new kind of leader who promises change, if only he is empowered. Yes we can.

According to Belloc, the most obvious solution to this economic instability, the path of least resistance, is the acquisition by the state of the major economic interests, e.g. collectivization. This is sometimes called socialism, and, according to Belloc, it is the most natural course. But socialism is not benign or even honest, for the collectivization of property under the authority of the state results not in a more just society but one characterized by glaring inequalities and the loss of freedom for most. As Belloc puts it, “in the very act of collectivism, what results is not collectivism at all, but the servitude of the many, and the confirmation in their present privilege of the few; that is, the servile state.”

The unlikely alternative is what Belloc calls the “distributist state.” It is characterized by widely distributed private property so that the general character of the society is shaped by individual property owners. By “property” Belloc means “capital.” That is, property that can be used to make a living. When a critical mass of citizens possesses capital and are therefore economically independent, a stable situation exists. According to Belloc, private property is the only means of achieving security with freedom. Collectivization does, in fact, provide security. The price, though, is freedom.

The choices are stark. The Obama administration likely will continue to seek ways to nationalize the economy unless and until the American people rise up and demand a different direction. Do we even remember this better way? Can we imagine a world of free men and women who own real property and do not look to the state for happiness or economic security?

From a related post:

Here we can see the curious state of affairs in our waning republic: Democrats tend to be suspicious of big business but they trust big government to rein in abuses; Republicans express suspicion of big government but no fear of economic centralization. Both are half right but half blind. Here is a principle that we would do well to grasp: concentrations of power in any form are a threat to liberty. It may be too late for this generation to see this vital truth, or if seeing, to do anything about it. But nothing is inevitable, and there are hopeful signs that people are beginning to think seriously about the importance of localism, human scale, limits, and stewardship, the very things woefully lacking in the current spending orgy. While a return to these ideals is still only in its infancy, change is afoot. This represents a glimmer of sanity in a world succumbing to the apparent security promised by centralization.

Tobacco farming and community life.  My antipathy towards tobacco products is well-known, and I thought Barbara Kingsolver inexplicably inconsistent when in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle she decried our unhealthy farming practices yet bemoaned the loss of small tobacco farms.  I still can’t rationalize subsidizing such an unhealthy crop, but here’s another side to the story.

[E]very community must be bound together by something it shares—and for the ties to bind strongly there need to be several somethings.  Here in Henry County, when everyone used to raise tobacco, everyone had the crop’s seasons and its demands in common.

My state is one of the few that still has a good number of small farms, and for years here tobacco was the mortgage crop.  It made keeping those small farms possible for many families, and it was a vital part of a farmer’s mixed use of his land.  The federal tobacco program and the Burley Tobacco Growers’ Co-op acted as a brake for the small farmer on the pitilessness of the international market….Today farmers here and in the several burley-growing states are free from any buttressing power between the small growers and the supranational tobacco companies that buy their crop.  They are free to contract with the companies directly (and typically do, as otherwise there is no guarantee their crop will sell), and in one of those rhetorical equalities that is so unequal in fact, the companies are likewise free to set the price and limit the production, in a world market in which it is cheaper, of course, to grow tobacco in Brazil.

But my point is not only that farmers in my area have lost a good source of revenue.  We’ve also lost a shared experience intimately tied to this place in which we live.  Tobacco gave us something in common…tobacco was our common language…. [I]f the weather for curing was wet, everyone waited.  If blue mold hit the county, everyone compared their losses.  And everyone had a near-disaster story from working high in the rafters of the barn, to be retold every fall.

[W]ith the end of the program, most of us took the buyout and quit.  The relative few farmers who still grow tobacco grow significantly larger crops now, which is a different sort of operation.  People were growing something like two to twelve acres; now farmers often grow forty, or eighty, or even more.  This is factory farming, and there is no way a family can manage it alone.  There is too much to cut all at once, and hang all at once; it requires jobbed-in crews of migrant labor.  Raising a few acres of tobacco was good and satisfying work….Toiling under the pressure of eighty must be something else.

So it is that here in Henry County we have lost the bond that tobacco gave, and one important part of our shared history is only history.  And at times of real disagreement….we find we have fewer acres of common ground.

(My personal favorite tobacco farm is not in Kentucky, but Virginia.  The Claude Moore Colonial Farm lives in a time warp—1771—and raises tobacco along with other heirloom crops and livestock.)

The Front Porch Republic—I’m reserving a rocking chair, as I plan to be a frequent visitor.

Observant readers may have noted a new category of post, which I’ve labelled “Conservationist Living.”  When considering a title for this particular type of post, my first thought was “Green Living,” but that’s too trendy and not really what I mean.

I was born and raised a conservationist.  I’m not sure what people might mean by that label today, but in my family it meant someone who loved the world of nature, cared for it, and used it prudently and wisely.  Conservationists loved hiking, mountain climbing, camping, and picnics.  They never threw litter on the ground and didn’t waste water.  They knew the rules of the wilderness: how to build a safe fire, pitch a tent on dry ground, keep food out of the reach of bears, dig a latrine that would not pollute the water supply, and leave.  At a conservationist’s home one was likely to find a lovingly-tended garden, with bright flowers and the best-tasting vegetables in the world—and a compost pile.

The conservationist label was broad and inclusive.  If I dared curse hunters—because the coming of hunting season meant we couldn’t hike during some of the most beautiful weather of the year, and anyway how could they kill those darling deer—I was quickly reminded that the hunters and fishermen were some of the most ardent protectors of nature because they had a personal interest in the survival and health of wilderness areas, and anyway the deer they killed provided their dinners, just as cattle were killed to supply my Saturday-night hamburgers.  When I grumbled that the rest of the state was controlled by voters in New York City whose concerns were far different from ours, I was informed that it was the votes of those city dwellers against the interests of Upstate developers that had protected our beloved Adirondack Mountains.  Conservationism had a common-sense, “we’re all in this together” feeling about it.

Not so the environmentalism that superseded it.  Environmentalism’s strident tone and us-against-them attitude was possibly the impetus needed to accomplish quickly what conservationism was achieving slowly—perhaps too slowly.  But it also opened the door to backlash, to the polarization that had some people celebrating the recent Earth Hour by turning off their lights and other electrical devices, and others marking the occasion by consuming as much power as possible.  While conservationism easily crossed the Liberal/Conservative divide, environmentalism widened the gap to a chasm.

Hence my wish to return to what I see as a friendlier, more inclusive and constructive label.  We are all in this together.  What I post in this category will include conservationist suggestions gleaned from elsewhere as well as our own very modest attempts to live and promote that common-sense conservationism of my childhood.  There will be no preaching—at least none intended as such—because we all can’t do everything, certainly not in all stages of our lives.  But we can all do something, and encourage each other along the way.

I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. — Edward Everett Hale

Today at the grocery store I bought sugar.  This is not a confession; I refuse to feel guilty for the purchase.  After all, displayed prominently on the package was this warm-and-fuzzy logo:

I wonder, though:  What am I going to do with my five-pound bag of H₂₂O₁₁?

Keep Meadows, Not Lawns.  That's the title of a Front Porch Republic post (more on the FPR later), the sole content of which is this 16-minute video:

I have nothing against lawns, per se.  We had a large yard when I was growing up, and its lawn was the perfect surface for our volleyball, croquet, and touch football games, for whiffle-ball hitting contests, picnics, tumbling runs, tag, and running through the sprinkler on a hot summer afternoon.  We didn't baby our lawn, though:  aside from mowing in the summer and clearing of leaves in the autumn it received minimal attention, but it grew tough and we grew up thinking dandelions were a positive addition to the landscape.  That said, we do need to rethink our use of the land, and the resources it costs to keep the now-common sterile, pristine, perfect lawn. Let's not overlook the fact that meadows don't require mowing, except for use as baseball fields—and for that even a teenage boy might crank up the lawnmower without being asked.

Despite the title, however, the video is less about lawns than about bees, what's happening to them, and why this is a serious problem.  It's well worth the investment of 1% of your day to watch.

We're not much of a pet family.  We had a cat for a few years, but he didn't get along with the new baby.  He was old and accustomed to having all our attention; he did not like the intruder.  (A few years later she returned the favor by becoming allergic to cats.)  He left for greener pastures, i.e. other family members who returned him to his spoiled, prince of the family position.  As the kids grew older they acquired a few pets—two hamsters and a cockatiel.  We enjoyed them all, and even paid for surgery on a hamster that could have been replaced for $2.50, but I never did understand people who treat their pets like children.  I'm not saying that's wrong, just that it doesn't appear to be part of my makeup.  What's more, we tend to travel a lot, which is a lot easier to do if you don't have pets to worry about.

So...those who know us may be surprised to discover that we have recently acquired some new pets.  Many new pets:  about 2000 red wiggler worms.  They live on our back porch in their own recycled-battery-casing worm condominium.  I've been admiring these garbage-converting little guys for four years, and finally took the plunge with a visit to the Our Vital Earth worm farm in Apopka. There I met Bernie and Carl Moro, both in their 70s and more spry and active than many of us in our 50s.  They started their worm venture as a retirement project after discovering how well home vermicomposting works in Australia. You can see a news story about Bernie and Carl here.

As with all new pets, it's going to take a while to get things running smoothly, but when they've all settled in nicely they should begin to turn our kitchen scraps, dryer lint, vacuum cleaner dust (minus the occasional button and pin), and paper into fantastic fertilizer for our garden.  Animal products are out, except for egg shells, because they attract rodents, and also tend to smell up an otherwise—supposedly—odorless system.  A little milk on leftover breakfast cereal is fine, I'm told, and these amazing worms can even turn small doses of battery acid into harmless fertilizer.  But I think I'll skip the cheese, even if the Swiss do compost theirs, rather than face the prospect of rat visitors to our porch.  The occasional mole is quite enough.

This isn't a money-saving proposition, since we have fixed-fee garbage collection, and it will be a long time before our $234 investment can be returned in fertilizer savings.  But it certainly feels better to be doing something useful with our waste rather than adding to the landfill, and I'll be happy to have worm castings and worm "tea" with which to pamper our fledgling garden.  Family and friends who wish to venture into vermicomposting may be able to get away with a lower initial cost; we bought the whole package, both to get the best start we could and to support the business.  We can certainly lend out the instructional video, and if you procrastinate long enough we should have enough worms to give some away.

Here are a couple of videos about the vermicomposting system.

Update 23 May 2009  If you watched the videos, you saw the hemp "moisture mat" that covers the worms and their food.  Our unit did not come with one of those; suggestions were to use damp newspaper or an old towel or t-shirt.  We don't get the paper, so rather than raid our neighbor's recycle bin, I went the old t-shirt route.  When bagpipe music starts emanating from our well-educated worm bin, I'll let you know.

On Saturday we went to the Central Florida Fair, old-fashioned fun with rides, a midway, cotton candy, and hundreds of exhibits. I particularly enjoy the 4H and Future Farmers of America presentations. What I like best, perhaps, is that it is SO NOT DISNEY.

This year I again visited my favorite fair vendor, Our Vital Earth. I like them because they sell worm condominiums. That's Porter's term for the product, which I like better than the official name, Can-O-Worms. Whatever the appellation, it's a nifty system for dealing with home garbage. The tiered container (shown here expanded) takes up about as much room as a large kitchen garbage can. You put your organic garbage—scraps (except meat and bones), grass clippings, leaves, newspapers, dryer lint, old cotton socks—into one of the three trays (the bottom tier holds liquid) along with the garbage-eating worms. When that tray is full, put another on top; the worms migrate upward as they run out of food. After a while the worms are out of the bottom tray, leaving fine fertilizer behind. Water and worm urine collects in the bottom; the resulting liquid makes a good, natural insecticide as well as fertilizer. (They also say it's good for sunburn, but I don't think I'd try that one.) It's supposed to be a rapid, odorless process, big in Australia, where I'm told the device is often kept in the kitchen. I'd probably opt for the back porch, but the one I saw at the fair would not be out of place in a kitchen. It smelled better than most garbage cans.

We have no affiliation with Our Vital Earth, nor any other Can-O-Worms seller. We don't even own a worm condo; I just think it's a cool idea. And we may get one yet, once I figure out how to keep a straight face when arranging for a worm babysitter when we go on vacation.