Living The Green Life...

hi, just thought i'd break the ice here and introduce myself. I'm becky from england: vegetarian, vegetable grower and chicken keeper (in between working as a typesetter in order to pay the bills!) Interested in healthy sustainable lifestyle issues and making the world a better place. It would be good to connect with other like-minded souls and discuss common interests. Hope to speak soon, becky.

Hi Rebecca,

I was going to ask you if you have had any luck in getting your chickens to go broody? I have been trying for about a month now and my girls just keep pushing the eggs back out to me...They think I am going crazy because I have left them (eggs) in their laying box!;0)...LOL Let me know if you have any helpful tips...I would appreciate it a lot.

Elizabeth~

I always am searching for ways to feed my family Organically and locally grown foods on our very tight budget. I have a few tips that I have learned and have been passed along to me, that I would like to share. Please add your own tips too!

TIPS TO SAVE ON ORGANIC AND LOCALLY GROWN FOODS:

~ Read your weekly sales flyers. Organic foods go on sale. Local groceries are carrying larger and better selections or Organic foods because we consumers have asked them to.

~ Buy your Organic food staples in bulk at your local Coop or Whole Foods Store. Foods like brown rice, steel cut oats, dried fruits, herbs, etc. are all offered in bulk. Even laundry soap and shampoo can be bought in bulk.

~ Pick your own fruits when in season and freeze for winter eating. Purchase tons of yummy locally grown fruit for a fraction of the price you would pay at your local grocery store.

~ Raise your own foods. Those living rurally have begun to raise chickens, beef, lamb and many other forms of livestock... Be sure to check your local zoning before you buy a bunch of animals.

~ Purchase your meats from your local butcher. It may seem like a lot of money out of pocket all at once but when you sit down and do the math you save lots of money in the longrun, and your local butcher uses local meats usually. Be sure to ask.

~ Visit your local farmers market. Seasonal produce, meats, and eggs should be available all year long. Mosta farmers markets are open year long now. Offering comsumers freshly made local cheeses and bakery goods.

Here are just a few of my ideas. Do you have any helpful money saving tips when it comes to Organic and locally grown foods? :0)

Elizabeth~

some good tips there, Elizabeth.

Another good idea, if you grow your own, is to do some swaps with friends, neighbours and other producers. I swap eggs and vegetables for home made bread with my next door neighbours, and for cakes with my mother. Anything spare gets put out for sale by the garden gate, which helps to pay for veg seeds and chicken food.

Chickens have a mind of their own in my experience, they only go broody when you don't want them to! We usually hatch our eggs in an incubator, as you have a bit more control - we have about 50 babies from this year's eggs so far.

If you want to do it naturally though, it's probably just a case of waiting until the weather's nice and warm, and your hens are ready! Providing a nice snug little nest box, and leaving eggs in the nest (like you are) is a good idea. Some breeds are naturally more broody than others though, cross-bred hens and bantams are much more reliable than the highly bred hens. We used a Sussex bantam to sit on a mixed batch of eggs last year, and she was great, but our pure breeds very rarely get maternal. Let us know how you get on.

Great idea! I hadn't really thought about that before. It got me thinking about trading work for food too. I have a neighbor that grows strawberries...

I really HATE to throw out perfectly good household items. Last year we had a bunch of old cinder blocks laying around from some DIY project Gordy had done.  What to do with them...Then it came to me. I spaced them out around our Silo with the hollow squares pointing up. I placed composted soil in them and planted beautiful pansies. The cinder block worked better than a flower pot. Because the cement is absorbant it would suck in the extra water and gradually release it back out to the soil as needed!

Always looking for new ideas... Do you have any creative, or funny new uses for old household items?

Hi,

I thought you may be interested to read about a local initiative in my nect of the woods, where volunteers get together to recycle all sorts of things to reduce landfill and benefit the environment.

The web address is:

http://www.bridport-tlc.org.uk/Joomla/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

I have just had the results in from a beach litter survey run by the Marine Conservation Society once a year here in the UK. I helped to organise an event at my local beach, and with some volunteers collected and recorded all the washed up and discarded litter that we found. 374 beaches took part in the UK, and the information collected will be used to lobby governments and to encourage the public to take a more responsible approach to litter.

The results show that, nationwide, 59% of all the rubbish collected was plastic - and from my own survey, I know that a lot of this was plastic bags. The amount of plastic rubbish had also increased by 146% since 1994. Plastics take years and years to break down, and pose a serious threat to marine life which can become tangled up in or choked by ingesting plastic rubbish (amongst other things).

My point is, please think twice before accepting those plastic carrier bags at the supermarket, take your own reusable bags and reduce the number of these unsustainable products that are littering up our planet.

we've been enjoying some wonderful spring weather here in the uk, and have been spending all our spare time getting our veggie patch prepared for this year's crops. We like to grow everything organically and wondered if anyone would like to share any tips for organic gardening methods, for instance pest control or organic fertilisers.

We use our own chicken manure and home-made compost to improve the soil, and I have found that a good tomato fertiliser can be made from stinging nettles soaked in water for about 3 days - it smells just like manure, but is very rich in nutrients that are great for tomatoes.

Does anyone else have any good organic tips?

hi all,

this forum is now linked to the new zone "Caring for the environment".

It's been rather quiet round here lately, I guess you're all busy in the garden like me!

We had our first rhubarb, lettuce and radishes out of the garden this week - they were scrumptious. Roll on the new potatoes - not long now!

Becky

Not particulary ingenious but we save the plastic food containers that EVERTHING seems to come in these days and use them for planting and starting off seedlings. Our local council doesn't seem to recycle them and I can't bring myself to throw them away.

G

Hi all.  This is the first zone I have joined as I am just exploring them, but this one is especially important to me because my family and I have been going green for over thirty years now since we bought our property in the Australian Bush.  Our green initiatives include:  we went solar for our power back in the mid 80's.  Our stand alone system consists of a bank of panels on the roof that charge our deep cycle batteries.  The power goes through an inverter so we can use regular appliances in our home.  We also have a solar hot water heater.  We cook with gas and heat with a wood stove because our property has acres and acres of forest where we can sustainably gather firewood.  We have most of the 'mod cons' but have foregone a dryer in preference to hanging our washing out in the sun and wind.  We have just installed our first wind generator as well, which is often charging when the panels are not.  We also have a back up generator for heavy power uses such as power tools, vacuuming and clothes washing although on a bright sunny day we can also do these things off the solar power.

We compost and recycle our wastes and have a large garden plus a small orchard and free range chickens.  I work as a teacher so I have less time for gardening than I would like but am still able to pick flowers, herbs and some vegies.  It's winter here right now so the garden is rather sad and that's why I have time to write about it.  Actually our summers here are rather tropical and gardening works better in spring/autumn and  winter rather than in the wilting summer heat!

We have a lot of wildlife on our property including koalas, platypus, wallabies and possums plus some beautiful parrots and cockatoos.  Bush life is hard though and I wouldn't want to try to make a living off 'bush tucker!' 

Regards to all, Maggie Skeel

Greetings all,

Feel free to view my You tube video Meet Brian J Cody, author,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfgTHgzoiz0

Follow me on twitter at;  http://www.twitter.com/FrugalityAdvice

Thanks and have a great day

Brian J Cody, author, "Your Frugality Adviser"

hi maggie,

sounds like an idyllic (if hardworking) lifestyle. Great to hear your perspective on things from down under!

I think the green philosophy has always been an important basis for a good sustainable lifestyle, and is a natural way of doing things, it's just that the rest of the world seem to have forgotten!

thanks,

becky

hi brian,

what's all this frugality business?

Although I'm an environmentalist, I'm not so sure about the implications of self-denial. I think the green movement implies much more reward, on a personal level, for your efforts than simply cutting back and saving oil and money for the governments and big businesses of this world, who think nothing of polluting our environment for the sake of a few bucks! Fulfilment and success have nothing to do with financial gain. Money is just the thing that gets in the way.

I'd like to see the people who make the big decisions showing us the way, and not trying to pass the responsibility on to us. Don't get me wrong, I take full responsibility for my own use of resources, recycling my waste, etc. - I'd just like to see more action from the people who can really make a difference.

Is that reasonable? What do others think?

Becky

Greetings Becky ;  

  Thank you for reading and commenting on my article 1532130 Green lifestyle stop global warming.  The main point of my article was the promotion of the "Green lifestyle" along with a "Frugal lifestyle."

In an ideal world making a Green lifestyle decision could be made without being concerned about the economic decisions both at the individual level and at the national level. You have to start somewhere so you can save the world by  starting taking steps to lower your own utility usage at home as well as in your neighborhood.

  By taking steps in your home weither you rent or own, you can lower your utility costs as well as lowering the utility usage. In my own home the steps that we have taken has cut our energy use by about 55% from the prior years bill.

 To use the metaphor of "Hand in glove",  being both personally  active in your "green lifestyle " and promoting a "frugal lifestyle" you will be able to  acheive both energy independence as well as financially independent.  By embracing both life styles you are showing a level of majority as well as personal responsibility.

You can save the world by saving your local home and neighborhood first. Second you need to be envolved in politics both locally and nationally.  Make sure that your contact and write your local government leaders, state, and federal represenatives, to state your concerns about environmental issues.  You can hold elected officials accountable for their actions.

Chicken manure is very high in acid and where I live it would be necessary to first do a soil test before using chicken manure as it could ruin the delicate Ph balance that mother nature needs to get her work done.

However where I live there is plenty of horse and cow manure which is a lot safer and a lot less acidic. The stinging nettles idea has been used for years and will be good dry or wet weight but live pest repelent are very possible like Marigolds.

that is great, i plant some pea, i do not know how to show pic here