Suburban Sustainability

Chickens!

November 30, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: chicken eggs, chickens, eggs | 3 comments

So…I caved (or rather, my husband did). I got chickens. Our friends who were relocating from a house into an apartment offered them to us and…well, that’s pretty much the whole story. Now, technically, I’m not supposed to have them in my neighborhood, but I find they’re relatively low-profile.

As with everything, there are pros and cons to the chickens, and some of these go hand-in-hand.

Pro: They’re fun to watch!

Ahhhh...the open range!

Con: Watching them usually entails letting them out from their enclosure into the yard which leads us into…

Sub-con: They poop on the deck if we’re not watching.

Sub-con: They eat our nommable tomatoes if we’re not watching.

I have my eye on you...!

But…Sub-pro: Free-ranging them means low feed costs. They eat very little feed if I let them free-range.

Sub-pro: They also eat slugs, fertilize the garden area, and turn over the dirt.

Pro: Their eggs are bigger than quail eggs! 2 vs 10 for an omelette!

Con: Their eggs are bigger than cute widdle quail eggs :\

Three short of a dozen!

Pro: Hens are very quiet most of the time.

Con: Their bok bok ba-GAWK hey-I-just-laid-an-egg-song can be noisy and nerve-wracking if you are not technically allowed to have chickens. It’s at a dog bark decibel level and goes on anywhere from 0-5 minutes a day.

We converted the side yard into the chicken yard. Area on the right is for growing nommables for the chickens. Right now it holds clover, chickweed, vetch, bok choy, and a grapevine.

Pro: If you give them plenty of greens, their egg yolks are orange and the eggs amazingly delicious.

Summer vegetable fritatta

Con: They need more space than quails and are more conspicuous.

TIME INVESTMENT: 5-10 minutes a day. I put them somewhere between fish and cats on the upkeep scale.

COST: $2-3 for a baby chick at your local feed store + $25 for a bag of organic feed (less smelly poop with organic feed) + $90 to build the coop = $124 start-up costs for three hens. If you add on pine shavings, a heat lamp, straw, store-bought feeder/waterer, the cost would be something closer to $150.

Raising baby chicks is adorable, but keep in mind, they will not lay for six months. A hen at laying age costs somewhere around $10.

I'm really selling the older hen thing, aren't I?

So…keeping chickens is not the most money-wise venture in the world. If you value fresh organic eggs, then keeping hens may be a good idea for you. If you could take them or leave them, you could probably leave the chickens out of the equation as well.

Building a Basic A-Frame

September 25, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: a-frame, cucumber, vegetables | 2 comments

Building a basic a-frame for growing vine vegetables on is pretty easy, and very very cheap! The ones I build aren’t too large or very impressive, but it’s hard to beat the price, they work well, and they’re reusable. I’ve used this one for two years in a row so far.

The paint's faded, but the string and poles have held up well

First go out and buy some string (butcher’s string works well) and some of those 4-ft long bamboo poles. You can get them from the hardware store.

25 in a package

For this project, you’ll need eleven of them. So you can make two a-frames per pack! Not bad… Take two of your bamboo stakes and a piece of string 12″-18″ long.

Make three of these. Place them next to each other in your garden, about 1.5′ apart. You should have used six stakes. Take the seventh stake and place it on top – use this to line up your stakes properly. Tie it on.

The top bar, going across

Now take your eighth and ninth stakes, and tie them going across, about 1.5′-2′ up from the ground. The stake getting tied to the vertical supports goes on the inside of the frame, the stake getting tied to the diagonal supports goes on the outside of the frame.

Tie them to all three vertical supports, and all three diagonal supports.

a-like so!

Now take your final two stakes and break them in half. You’ll only use three of the halves for this frame, but save the other one in case you want to make another frame later. Tie them going across your horizontal supports, at each intersection.

You don't have to get as crazy with the string here, these stay in place pretty well

Once you’ve tied all three, your frame should be finished!

Finished A-Frame

Simple, effective, easy, and cheap.

COST: $4 for the package of 25 4′ bamboo poles, +$5 for a package of string (if you don’t have it already)

= $9 total, makes TWO A-Frames. $4.50/frame

TIME INVESTMENT: 30 minutes

We grow a variety of vegetables on ours – cucumbers, beans, green beans, peas…they hold up remarkably well. One of ours began to lean a bit under the weight of all of our cucumbers, but it never fell apart and it never fell over. We plant one seedling at each base of the stake – so it should hold six plants.

Cucumber Seedling

Happy planting! =)

Brewing Sake

September 11, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: brewing, sake | 2 comments

Once upon a time, I looked up how to make sake, and ran across some easy recipes. Sounded simple – rice, water, yeast…wait. Then, however, I found out that this was not the best way to make sake. In fact, it makes really horrible sake. So my husband and I set out to do it right.

We found a wonderfully detailed guide here: http://www.taylor-madeak.org/index.php, and went out to buy the supplies and ingredients.

Brewing Bucket – $15
Sake Yeast – $7
Sushi Rice – $14
Koji – $14
Miscellaneous Brewing Equipment – $15
Bottle Capper – $15
Refrigerator off Craigslist – FREE

That’s $80 to start, for approximately three gallons of sake. That’s a lot of sake, but that’s also a lot of money. And what about time investment?

Rinsing the Rice

Fermenting...

Separating the Rice from the Liquid...

Moving the Sake into Secondary Fermenters...

Moving the Sake From Secondary Fermenters into Bottles...

As you may be able to tell, it was a lot more work than we expected. Steaming the rice was time consuming, especially towards the end, when it had to be done in batches. Stirring the sake a couple times a day was no big deal. Moving it into the secondary fermenters, and later into the bottles was difficult and took 1-2 hours each time. Keeping the sake at fifty degrees was extremely difficult. We eventually ended up purchasing a brewing thermostat ($60) in order to keep our sake at a regular temperature. This cuts down on time investment, but ups the cost.

COST: $80-$140

TIME INVESTMENT: 8-10 hours

And for an impatient person like me, the vast amount of time it takes to go from rice, water, and yeast to drinkable sake was tedious. 10.5 weeks.

I’m going to go ahead and say that this is not worth the time and money if you’re aiming for something quick, easy, and low cost. It’s fine as a hobby (which my husband has decided to take upon himself…after all, we have all the supplies now), but not as a sustainable activity.

My experience brewing beer was much more pleasant, and I’ll post on that in the next few days!

Planting Potatoes

April 26, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: dwarf fruit trees, potatoes, tomatoes | 5 comments

I’d been reading about planting potatoes in tires, and the high yields you can get when doing so. Hubby and I had been trawling craigslist to try to find old tires, but to no avail. When we happened to purchase some seed potatoes on clearance, we thought we’d better get on the ball. We called a couple of auto dismantlers (aka junkyards – but look under auto dismantler in the yellow pages).

I found out that you can get the old tires for free, because otherwise they have to pay to have them hauled away. We happened to pick a truck dismantler place.

If you live in the Sacramento area, Subway Truck Parts is a great place to go

So we got some pretty big tires. Lots of growing space!

Dutiful hubby, loading up ginormous tires

The awesome thing about growing potatoes in tires is that it’s easy to do, it saves space, and you (allegedly) get a high yield. You’ll want three tires for each stack. First tire goes on the ground, in a place of your choosing. Fill the tire with dirt.

Shovel your dirt into the tires

Next step – take out your seed potatoes. Cut the potatoes into pieces, two eyes to a piece. We skipped this step since our seed potatoes were, ahem, very obviously clearance potatoes. They may live, they may not. But this way you’ll get more potato plants. Plant them into your tire.

Clearance seed potatoes! At $0.50/bag we weren't really going to say 'no'

Next step – once your potato plants come up, a few inches high, put another tire on top and add more soil, leaving the very tops of the plants bare. As they grow higher, repeat, up until the top of the third tire.

When the plants brown and wilt, it’s time to harvest your potatoes! I’ll let you know how this works out for us.

COST: $3-5 for seed potatoes, check your local hardware store. Tires are free, and I’ll be posting about how to cut down your costs for gardening soil.

TIME INVESTMENT: 30 minutes to pick up the tires, 30 minutes to plant.

In other news, we’ve transitioned from winter into spring. Our tomato plants are going strong.

Flowering! Can't wait for fresh tomatoes

We also purchased a dwarf peach tree. For those with little space, dwarf fruit trees can be a great investment. $23 for this one.

Growing a lot of peaches for such a little tree

I’ll be back soon to post about what happened with our sake brewing – start to finish, and whether or not it’s a sustainability win or fail.

Adjusting for Winter

January 18, 2010 in Uncategorized | 4 comments

Whew, it’s been a while! Had a family emergency, and the whole world sort of dropped away for a bit. But, I’m back.

Our winter garden is growing well. We’ve got lettuces, cabbage, mustard greens, bok choy, onions, kohl rabi…lots of stuff! The green beans lived out their life and withered with the chill, and we had a bit of a fail with the spaghetti squash. The spaghetti squash ended up getting powdery mildew, we thought we’d take care of it when we got back from vacation, and…it was dead by the time we got back. I’ll post on powdery mildew later.

Two out of our three garden beds. We're planning to build one more.

Bok choy, ready to pull out of the ground and eat!

For the first couple weeks of winter, our quails stopped laying. Quails depend on light as a queue to lay eggs. Less light, no eggs. So once it starts getting dark, we plug in some Christmas lights and leave those on for a couple hours. Pretty AND functional!

We moved the quail hutch closer to the house.

A full day's haul from our quails.

We’ve been eating out of the garden nearly every day now. The mustard greens are a quick producer. Instead of uprooting the plant, we’ve been clipping the leaves off, one by one. They’re great in stir fry and in soups.

Burgers made with produce from our garden - chives, quail eggs, and lettuce.

We’ve been working on a new, fairly involved project recently. I doubt it will save us much time, but it will save us money…

What do sushi rice, rice koji, and sake yeast have in common? HEY, get out of the picture, sake bottle!

We’re going to be homebrewing sake. The hubby and I love sake, so this will be a fun experiment. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Winter Gardening and a New Tree

November 10, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: fruit trees, raised garden beds, seedlings, vegetable garden, winter garden | 1 comment

We’re planting our winter veggies right now, in waves, so we’ll be able to harvest at different times. We bought a cute little greenhouse from Lowe’s ($40) to make it easier to grow seeds outside. We’re considering putting some small warmer weather vegetables in there and seeing how they do.

Cute little greenhouse!

This weekend, we planted lettuces, mustard greens, and bok choy.

Ready to go into the ground...

Our new garden beds are working out really well. They get more sun than our side yard.

YUM! We've got leeks, mustard greens, lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, and cabbage =)

Here's our second garden bed. Green beans and spaghetti squash on the right.

We're getting quite a lot of green beans. They're super-tasty.

We also started pulling up the summer plants from our side yard. They had a bit of measly production left, as we harvested a tiny butternut squash and itty bitty eggplants, but overall, they’re done.

Pulling up cucumber plants.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a big storm here. Our big, beautiful eucalyptus tree fell over. Thankfully it didn’t land on our house, but did damage our spa cover slightly. We found out later, from our neighbors, that the tree had already fallen over once before! The people that lived in our home before us propped it back up. Clearly, a poor idea. When my hubby was digging out the roots, we saw that the largest root had been broken off from the trunk long ago. Once a tree falls over, it’s pretty much said “Goodbye, world”.

So we bought a loquat tree and put it in the spot where the old eucalyptus tree was.

We bought it from our neighbors. At a garage sale. Score!

Loquat trees grow very quickly, are evergreen, and produce tasty fruit. Three wonderful things that both the hubby and I desired. My mother actually grew her loquat tree from seed. These trees are very expensive in the hardware store or at the nursery (~$60-$75), so this may be the way to go for those looking to guard the pocketbook.

For the Ladies! Plus one lonely banana tree.

October 13, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: banana tree, birth control, iud, menstrual cups | 1 comment

This post is (mostly) strictly for the ladies, unless you men want to read about SCARY lady stuff. You know what I mean!

For everyone else…

A miniature red banana tree! A little worse for the wear for being in a box for two day and shipped, but should recover quickly!

Read the rest of this entry »

Lunches: Bought vs. Brought

September 10, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: bento box, lunch | Leave a comment

I notice that a lot of my coworkers purchase their lunch, and sometimes their breakfasts. It’s not every day, and it’s not all of them, but it’s still a lot of lunches! But who can blame them? It’s convenient, it’s quick, and it’s tasty.

Here’s what a typical bought lunch looks like.

Teriyaki chicken, an eggroll, and a soda. Yes, I eat at my desk...alone! *sob!*

Yum! But all of that packaging goes into the trash. The cup and straw – trash. Bag of chips? Trash. Napkins…? Well, you get the idea.

Not only that, but this is a huge punch to the financial gut. Let’s say you buy your meals at work, and you’re fairly frugal about it. Say…an average of $5 a day (and I KNOW it can go waaay over this). Let’s make it four days a week to be generous, and two weeks off a year for vacation.

$5 x 4 days a week x 50 weeks = $1,000/year.

YIKES! Considering that many people spend more than this (you know who you are, Starbucks coffee drinkers…), that is a huge chunk of cash! And lots and lots of garbage that gets carted off to landfills to rot…very…very…slowly.

I bring my lunch most days, in tupperware, but on a whim I bought a Laptop Lunch System Bento Box – Primary. And then I ran through the pages over at Lunch in a Box.

The wonderful thing about the bento box is that it creates no waste, and I LOVE that this one has utensils that fit right into the box. I’m always losing/forgetting utensils. It looks like it’s for kids, but it fits plenty of food for me, and the insulated carrying case looks adult enough. If you browse through bento boxes though, you can find some really adorable ones.

My first lunch:

The upper left container has a leakproof lid. It must be removed for microwaving.

Leftover pizza in the lower right, mustard greens and green zebra tomatoes in the lower left, pasta with homemade tomato sauce in the upper left, and carrots and bread with hummus in the upper right.

My second lunch:

Can you tell we had lots of leftover pizza?

Peas in the lower right, leftover pizza in the lower left, Plain yogurt with peaches and honey in the upper left, and carrot sticks and hummus in the upper right.

COST: $60 with shipping for two bento boxes.

TIME INVESTMENT: Cook enough dinner for leftovers, keep fresh fruit around, and it takes five minutes to pack yourself a lunch. Ten to fifteen if you want to get fancy! Look up “bento box” on flickr if you wanna know what I mean…

Winter Vegetables and Vertical Gardening

August 31, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: herbs, vegetables, vertical gardening, winter garden | 4 comments

We started some seedlings for winter a little over a week ago.

I sold my old TV and used the $$ to buy sooo many seeds!

Lettuces, broccoli, carrots, spinach, spaghetti squash, cauliflower, kohl rabi, onions, leeks, celery, cabbage, brussel sprouts, chinese cabbage, bok choy…and so on and so forth! I’ll try to cover some techniques later for you folks that live where there’s a killing frost. Here in West Sacramento we get a light frost in the winter mornings, and that’s it.

True to my first post on growing from seeds, we used the biodegradable pots this time. They’re $2 for 50 at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

We're reusing the miniature greenhouse trays from spring

And, now here are our seedlings!

Green beans in the front are actually a summer veggie...I'm pushing it a bit.

Even though we don’t have a huge yard, I know others have an even smaller space. I was wandering around Instructables.com when I came across this wonderful little tutorial. So, of course, I ran out and grabbed a hanging shoe pouch thingy ($13 at Target). I filled it with potting soil.

I put mine on our fence.

I planted a number of different herbs in it, as well as some mesclun mix and arugala.

Oregano, Tarragon, Catnip, Dill, Basil...and some more I can't remember =)

I made a little hole in the soil in each of the pouches.

About the same size as a little seed starter pot.

And then I poured some seed starting mix into it, and patted it down.

I planted the seeds into the seed-starting mix.

Hopefully this will get them going! I’ve been watering them every day, so I’ll let you know how it works!

TIME INVESTMENT: 1 hour

COST: $13 for shoe rack, $5 for seed starter (I already had some lying around), and $5 for potting soil (already had some of this too). You won’t use all of the potting soil or the seed starter. $23, without seeds. Seeds run $1.50-$2.50 a packet.

My husband just put together a cute little greenhouse. We’re working out some kinks, but I’ll show it to you next time! We’ve also got some quails that we hatched from our quails.

Building a Solar Oven

August 18, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: Devin, solar oven | Leave a comment

What do you do when you’ve just had a wedding, and your garage is filled with cardboard and packing materials?

YIKES!

Why, build a solar oven, of course! I used the instructions/plans from The “Easy Lid” Cooker and “Minimum” Solar Box Cooker with one or two modifications.

Find two boxes, one slightly smaller than the other. My smaller one didn’t have flaps, hence the modifications, but ideally yours would. You’ll want at least a 1/2″ margin on all sides. Check to see if you can fit the pots you plan to use for cooking in the smaller box!

My two boxes for solar oven use!

MATERIALS:
-2 boxes, 1 slightly larger than the other, plus some extra pieces of cardboard – FREE
-a pair of scissors or a serrated knife (for cutting the cardboard) – FREE
-Elmer’s white glue, non-toxic and safe for use in a solar oven! – ?? I had it lying around, let’s assume $3
-lots of aluminum foil – $2
-turkey-sized oven bags – $2
-a wire coat hanger – FREE
-newspaper or newsprint – FREE
-black spray paint, non-toxic when dry – $3

TOTAL COST = $10

Your basic supplies

First step – cut the larger box in half. Glue the hanging flaps down. Take the side you intend as your bottom, and line it with a big piece of cardboard. This is what is going to allow the top part of your box to act as a lid.

The lining should be tall, taller than the other half of your box

Take your lid, and hold it up to the liner. Cut the liner down to the height of your lid, leaving the four corners up to form tabs.

Like so! You can see the corner I left up as a tab

Using your Elmer’s Glue, line the inside of the outer box with foil – all four walls and the floor.

Shiny! Better view of the tabs too

Now plunk your inner box in the outer box, and line the space in between with crumpled pieces of newsprint or newspaper. This is the insulation for your oven.

We overstuffed ours a little, but we were able to squish it all together later

My outer box was a little too tall for my outer box, so I cut my outer box down to match the inner box. And since my inner box didn’t have flaps to fold over, I took spare pieces of cardboard, glued them to the inside of the inner box, folded the over the insulation, and tucked the remainder in the space between the outer box and the liner. Didja get that? If not, here’s a picture =)

I scored the cardboard with sharp scissors so it would fold in a precise manner

As for the tabs, I found it easiest to tuck them under the flaps. Cutting them in half down the middle (from the top) helped me maintain the corners. I wanted the top to fit snugly. I think I missed one tab and ended up gluing it on the top. Oh well! I weighed everything down with a couple of books while I was gluing things, to get it to better stay in place.

Devin shows me exactly what she thinks of my methods...

Done!

Line the inside of the inner box with aluminum foil.

Starting to look (sort of) like an oven...

Make sure your lid still fits, in case you were over-zealous with the paper-packing. A snug fit is good – less heat will escape. Since I cut down my liner to fit my inner box, I had to cut down my lid as well. You don’t want any space between your lid and the top of your oven.

Measure the thickness of your walls. Draw a rectangle on the lid that matches the dimensions of the open part of your oven. Cut it on three sides and score the last side with your scissors/knife. This will be your reflector.

Glue one of the turkey oven bags shut (prevents moisture from accumulating inside). Glue this to the underside of your lid, over the opening. Line the reflector part of your lid with aluminum foil (just on the side facing the oven).

It should look like this

You’re almost done. Now to make your drip pan. Take a piece of cardboard that will fit inside your oven, flat on the bottom. Cover it in aluminum foil. Spray paint it black.

Fancy fancy drip pan!

Cut a piece off of your wire hanger, and use this to prop up the reflector. The ends of the wire can go into the corrugations in the cardboard.

I ended up propping mine up higher than this to get more reflection

Put the drip pan in the bottom, put the lid on, face the reflector towards the sun, and you’re ready to cook! Of course…don’t forget the pot with the food in it.

Mmmm...beef stew...

I cooked some beef stew. The oven DOES work, a fact I am very excited about! It will get to a temperature of about 300 degrees. Food inside does not require stirring and will not burn. It works something like a slow cooker, so you can pop food in it in the morning, and come home from work to a meal. Prime cooking hours are between 12 and 2 (or so I’ve read).

Best of all? Cooking in a solar oven takes no power and will not heat up the house! Make those hot summer months work FOR you.

TIME INVESTMENT: 3 hours

Just so you know, we’re expecting more quail babies later this week!

In a quick aside, I’ve installed a hummingbird feeder in our yard. Not only will they help pollinate our flowers, but they are awfully fun to watch!

hummingbirds

Suburban Sustainability

Chickens!

Building a Basic A-Frame

Brewing Sake

Planting Potatoes

Adjusting for Winter

Winter Gardening and a New Tree

For the Ladies! Plus one lonely banana tree.

Lunches: Bought vs. Brought

Winter Vegetables and Vertical Gardening

Building a Solar Oven

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