Goodbye / Hello

I am so excited to finally reveal Pocket Pause, with "Tails" of my family's adventures: our follies while learning to farm, and the joys i get from food, cooking and practicing fiber arts. Yay! If you are a long - time reader of An Austin Homestead, you will love Pocket Pause, even if we left you back in Texas. While Pocket Pause will have an Oregonian angle, my focus will always be on sustainability, which transcends all borders. Watch for the occasional post from Pocket, our blog's namesake and the best little corgi in the world. PS, Pocket is a girl.

Head on over and browse around the new site, and feel free to comment with feedback on what you'd like to see more or less of. You can expect to read lots of posts about local hikes and travel destinations in Oregon, delicious and easy recipes, local and national resources for sustainably grown meat and veggies, tutorials and DIY tips, helpful links and more! Pocket Pause will be a week day blog, with 3-5 posts a week. Looking for more tips on DIY beauty products or herbal medicine? Check out Bathtime, our sister blog for weekly posts about natural bathing, healing and fun using herbs and essential oils.

Please join me in wishing An Austin Homestead a big "good-bye" and i hope you will check out, and hopefully stick around, Pocket Pause for many more of the posts you have enjoyed here and will continue to enjoy there. I'm so proud to have built up such a loyal following. I'm sure I will lose many of you in this transition, but i hope many of you will follow me, Pocket and the husband to our new blogging destination. Hint: i'm working on some "giveaways" as added incentive ;)

Who's with me? Will you follow me to Pocket Pause?

Last Minute Shopping? Shop Sustainably: a Guest Post

The Benefits of Shopping Locally/Sustainably

- Adam Jacob from Frugal Dad has provided this post. FrugalDad.com is a personal finance and frugal living website.

We all love the convenience and simplicity that technology affords us. With just a few clicks on your computer, you can purchase virtually anything: food, a car, a spare part to fix your broken appliance. But do you ever stop to think about the miles that your purchase(s) travels to reach you? You’re not alone. Many people don’t realize how unsustainable some of their shopping habits can be.

What is shopping locally/sustainably?
Environmentalists urge people to shop and eat locally, but many people do not understand how buying from local food growers relates to the environment. To understand this, consider the food on your plate and the processes it has gone through to reach you. Depending on what type of food it is, it probably went through a minimum of four of these processes: how it was grown, harvested, processed, packaged, shipped to the retail outlet, prepared for consumption at your home, and finally where the waste goes. Each of those processes has an effect on the environment. They directly affect the earth’s natural ecosystem, positively or negatively. A process that is most sustainable is one that has the least negative effect on ecosystem. Locally made goods skip or minimize some of the processes, reducing the environmental impact.

So how do YOU benefit when buying locally?
1. When a local farmer sells directly to you, he’s not likely to attach much importance to packaging, transporting, or the shelf life of his food items. Instead, he will choose to grow and harvest food crops in a way that guarantees the utmost quality of freshness, taste and nutritional value. Local famers tend to grow seasonally too, something closer to what Mother Nature allows. So, in addition to eating better tasting, more nutritious food, you’ll also eat seasonally when you buy locally.
2. It takes less energy to process food grown and sold locally, so by buying locally, you help reduce the carbon footprint because less energy used means less emissions into the atmosphere. Imagine the amount of energy it requires to grow, process, and transport food for a family of five every year, and we’re talking about fossil based fuel sources.
Fossils are a non-renewable source, which means they degrade the earth during the drilling and production process. Fossil fuels are used to power machinery used when applying agricultural chemicals, such as pesticides and fertilizers, on the farms. Worse, these fuels are again used to ship the food across the country, or the world, and even in refrigerated storage trucks during the journey. If the food is going to be processed, that takes up even more energy, not to mention the unhealthy additives used to preserve it. Locally grown fresh foods skip many of these processes, hence more energy saved.
3. Most local farmers grow organic foods - foods grown strictly through natural farming methods. This means that by buying local foods, you contribute towards minimizing the use of potentially harmful chemicals, such as fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, most of which are petroleum based. Chemical residue on the plants eventually ends up polluting the soil, water bodies, the atmosphere, and some may even end up inside your body through consumed food. Chemical residues are believed to increase the incidence of certain health ailments, especially tumors, and resistance to antibiotic treatments. On the other hand, natural farming methods work in line with natural ecosystems to preserve fertility of soil while drawing ‘friendly’ insects and pollinators to avoid the use of hazardous chemicals. This is a more sustainable method of farming as it replenishes soil through natural means. When you buy from a local farmer, you’re indirectly contributing to this process.

Final Thoughts
Do you ever think about the impact of your consumption of meat and dairy on climate change? Simply altering the way you enjoy animal products can have a huge effect on climate. Meat and dairy production contributes to a great deal of the global green house emissions. Animals bred on corn and soybeans in confined farms emit higher amounts of methane gas, which greatly contributes to global warming. This means that reducing your consumption of meat from these animals has a positive impact on the environment - less demand, fewer animals reared - saving your health too in the long run.
If you’ve made it to the end of this article, you’ve taken the first step! Take the next step by buying a few products from your local farmers market or that haven’t traveled as far. Even the smallest of efforts makes all the difference.

See Frugal Dad for personal finance tips.

Wholesome Wednesdays: A Frugal Closet

This Wednesday i'm going to ever so briefly touch on a topic other than food or health that is also an important part of living lightly.

Headband i made w/ fleece i've had for yrs

If you know me, you'll most likely hang out with me and notice that i'm wearing something you've seen before. If you've never seen it before, it most likely came from the back of my closet, i just made or altered it, or it was recently given to me by a friend or family member. When it comes to clothing, i hate shopping and i do it so rarely i can count on my fingers the number of new garments i've purchased for myself in the past 2 years. I do not give up on a garment, often wearing them past the point of 'social acceptability' which is just a silly concept anyway since i spend most of my time at a drafting table in my studio or out in the garden. When i do buy clothes i try thrift stores or TJ Maxx, seconds type stores before stepping through the doors of a new-clothes retail shop (though i am obsessed with Target's excellent selection of knee high socks.) The one consumable garment i go through about every 6-9 months is sneakers: i spend 1-2 hours at the gym or on the trail every day and need fresh support for my ankles and knees to avoid injury. My 'used' sneakers go to goodwill or get reserved for gardening/mucking about or get handed 'up' to my mom or grandma who refuse to allow shoes to be thrown away.

Awesome new jacket and knitted headband made by my sister in law

Christmas is the one time of year i occasionally allow myself to splurge on brand new clothes. I received a super awesome jacket from my M.I.L. that will last me forever and acts as a fluffy, a wind breaker, or a warm coat (it's a 3-in-one from LL Bean) and several new outfits from my mom for the gym and for looking presentable, whether i'm in public or not. I had to exchange one item and ended up leaving Title Nine with 3 things! I really did splurge, but i love what i got. Horny Toad is a great brand and uses organic cotton in a lot of their clothes. When i do buy clothes that aren't already recycled (from a thrift shop, etc) i try to choose clothes made from organic cotton or responsibly grown fibers like hemp and flax or even recycled plastic bottles. I chose a really swell skirt that i'm sure will be worn to a frazzle, and noticed this super awesome tag on the inside that i just had to share with you all because it just screams my philosophy on clothes:

So great. I always wonder why people feel the need to wash a pair of pants after wearing them once. Unless you work in a ceramic studio, just butchered some animals, were slinging mud all over yourself, or did some massive sweating, i really just don't see any need for washing pants until they get visibly soiled or have stretched beyond fitting. Thus, i am still wearing clothes that i bought in high school and college, and am proud to sport shirts that were my Grandma's, Grandpa's and Mother's from the 70s or earlier. I even have undies that i've had for 10 years - that may be pushing it though.

So: wash less, wear more, buy used, pass on to friends and family, and don't give up on a garment, even if it's 'out of style.' The garden doesn't mind if you don't match current trends.

This post is also found at Simple Lives Thursday

Another Interesting Tool From the City

I don't often click on ads in sidebars of websites unless they look super interesting or cute, but i do like to click on banners that seem to have something to do with environmentalism or sustainability - especially if it involves some useful tool for me or my readers. I was perusing some local website this past weekend when i found a badge about figuring your carbon footprint. I've always wondered what my footprint might be like, so i gave it a shot.

The website for Austin residents is Austin.ZeroFootprint.Net. You can enter your utility account and it automatically takes into account your utility bills for electric and water use, and you can go through a series of questions that will help the calculator figure out if you're hard or easy on the ole' environment. I've always found it difficult to formulate estimations of my travel or energy uses, especially how many servings of food i eat in a week. I dunno - a lot of veggies, not a lot of meat - how many servings is that? I did the best i could and my carbon footprint was logged as 6.1. 

According to the website the local Austin average is 11.4 and the national average is 12.6, so i think i'm doing pretty darned well. I'll be doing better when my family doesn't live on the other side of the nation requiring plane trips to visit them, not that i've done that in over 4 years not counting my whirlwind trip of a wedding. I'll also be doing better when i raise even more of my own food, though i may increase my miles driven if i get a proper job. The website also has lots of helpful hint on how to reduce your footprint if you find it higher than your liking. Lots of really basic tips that i mention often on this blog, and some other locally applicable tips like cashing in on some of Austin's great rebates for energy efficient appliances, etc.

Answering the questions took me maybe 10 minutes, but you can also do a quick version that takes a minute or less. Some people may balk by how high their footprint is raised just by mentioning eating some meat - but remember that it's our responsibility to use this planet to the best of its ability, and it's finite. Sometimes it's better to eat corn instead of feed it to methane emitting moo cows - but sometimes it's good to shoot and eat a wild axis deer that would otherwise be munching on someone's veggie garden: eat meat wisely, and take all computer generated models with a grain of salt.
Calculators like this aren't written in stone - but they can sure give you a good idea of your footprint, and help you maybe change some of your decisions. Walk to the corner shop to get a soda made out of easily recyclable aluminum instead of drive to pick up a six pack of soda in plastic bottles made of petroleum. Eat an actual serving of meat on a plate covered in locally or homegrown veggies instead of a giant steak with a side of peas shipped from China. Put on a sweater, or two, or three, before turning up the heat.

There are a million tiny things you can do or change to make your footprint smaller, and some larger things that will help even more. Sustainability should be a way of life, not a fad or a hardship. It's easy. It feels good. It's smart. It's necessary.

Leave me a comment with your number if you run a carbon footprint calculator for yourself - I'd love to see how you're doing.

*Another Giveaway* !

Hello lovely readers -

Summer has been filling my garden and kitchen with some delicious bounty, and I've been having such fun cooking lately and posting the recipes.  I thought  it would be nice to sponsor a giveaway - not of my own goods this time, but from CSN stores. You have probably seen some other giveaways from CSN stores around the blogosphere - i normally don't like to get commercial or cheesy on this blog, but they've been gracious enough to offer a $50 giftcard to one of my readers valid at any of their jillion (over 200) online stores.  I'm poor, so i like it when people give me $50 =  why wouldn't you?? I've ordered things on Amazon and had them come from CSN stores - they always do a good job packaging their items, and their prices are very reasonable. They carry everything from doggie beds to dinnerware, cooking utensils, and even green houses!

Delicious locally caught, kaffir marinated trout with salsa and pupusas (recipe to follow)

So, to enter the GIVEAWAY:

Visit my handy dandy recipe page, explore, and choose a favorite.  If you've cooked one of my recipes, and would like the chance to win some free dinnerware to serve your delicious meal on, or just about anything else - post a comment below with a link to to that recipe and any feedback on how it turned out. If you haven't tried one of my recipes and just think something sounds good, comment on why you might want to make it and who you'd serve it to.

For a bonus chance, grab my badge (found in the right hand column) and post it to your blog and add an additional comment with your link OR become a follower of this here blog. I'd love to link up with more bloggers and see all the great info you're putting out there.

I will choose a winner (via some creative random choosing method) on August 17th: my BLOGVERSARY! Have at it, comment away: i'm looking forward to hearing which of my recipes you all like best (hopefully any!).

****A Winner has been chosen! Thanks for all your entries****

Practice What You Preach

I believe in a few things very strongly. I don't like discussing them much, debating, or arguing to convince others of my beliefs - but i do like to teach by example and practice what i preach. This blog is the largest 'voice' of my convictions, and i hope that the tips and suggestions i write here will inspire others to delve more deeply into a life of sustainability. I think i've shown how easy it is to incorporate simple things and practices into our lives  to become more responsible human-animals on this planet of limited resources.

One of the practices and tools that i feel good about is the way i approach the maintenance of my lawn. I see my lawn as a green (sometimes) space that fills the areas between my vegetable gardens, is a place for toads and anoles to nestle in,  puppies to pounce through, and is a luxury to be enjoyed, but not necessarily pampered. If there's a drought, my lawn dies. I don't irrigate it, and save any sprinkling or captured rain water for my food crops and occasional thirst quenching of the native perennial beds. I help to promote the green of the lawn by leaving the 'grass' as tall as i can stand in the Summer (which shades the roots and encourages water thrift), and by scattering winter rye in the fall for Winter green coverage. My front lawn is mostly native horseherb, a low growing weedy thing that is quite lovely with little yellow flowers on occasion. There is also evil bermuda grass that encroaches on all my beds, and a few spatterings of St. Augustine here and there. I let the rye grass seed and get tall and seedy and unruly in the Spring (much to my neighbors' chagrine i'm sure) so that it can reseed itself for the next Fall. We've been lucky to have a fairly wet spring and the lawn is still green. Once the heat turned up (it's been in the high 90s, low 100s for the last few weeks) i stopped mowing. It got a little insanely tall, but it was still green - with an unfortunate side affect of promoting mosquito life to propagate and consume me. The last week and nearby hurricane have brought quite a bit of rain, however: time to mow. Even the horseherb was mounding at its peak height. My itching ankles, and my very short puppy appreciate the reduced lawn matter. I leave the cuttings on the ground to help shade the roots now exposed to the hot Texas sun, and to replace the nutrients stored in the leaves back to the soil.

And when i say mow - i mean mow the old fashioned way. No gasoline is used. I am not addicted to oil (or try hard not to be - my car has been used more as a sun-drier than a transporter of late) and only my own energy is expended in the process. I have a used reel type mower that i got locally - it can't quite defeat the highest weeds or navigate tight corners, so for those areas i use a rechargeable battery powered weed eater.  We've had it almost two years and both batteries are still working great, and are recyclable when they do hit the dust.

 I enjoy getting out there and sweating all over the place: burning calories while beautifying my yard, feeding the soil, saving gasoline, promoting a healthy environment for native critters to thrive, and teaching by the example of my own actions.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, everybody. A day for people to use less energy, plant trees, and feel otherwise green and smooshy. Let's all do a little more to promote earth day every day, shall we?

This will be a short post to reflect some of the things i've done to bring Earth Day to my little homestead every day, and to muse on some of the things i'd like to do more of.

Here's my house when i bought it: nasty, yardy, chemical used (probably), toadless, anoleyless, butterflyless suburban blah, and after we dug the grass out of the street side (over the course of a month) and planted tiny little rosemary and sagelets:

Here it is now! Well, actually a few weeks ago, it's blooming even more now - but it is also raining and not sunny for photographs:

I know they're different angles, but you can get the jist! Since October of 2007 my husband and i have improved our homestead by:

• dug  out 'strip' of lawn between sidewalk and street and planted native perennials, agaves, yuccas and wildflowers - many of which serve as habitats for beneficial insects
• Dug out several sections of front lawn to install vegetable and herb gardens, using found and reclaimed materials, amended the soil, and welcomed the toads, skinks, and beneficial insects
• Only irrigate food crops
• Cultivated native plants and 'weeds' that promote beneficial insects and butterflies in the backyard
• Practice only organic gardening methods
• Installed a rain barrel to use captured rain water to irrigate our veggie crops
• Built a gorgeous and prolific compost heap in the backyard that has now started feeding our gardens. We recycle all recyclables, compost all food scraps and natural fibers, and only fill 1 smallest city trash can per 2 weeks or so.
• Certified my 'homestead' as a Wildlife Habitat trough the National Wildlife Foundation: a place where wildlife can raise young, find food and shelter, and be free of chemicals or pesticides
• I bike places when i can and do a lot of walking, generally driving maybe a few days a week for short distances.
• We do our best to keep our energy use low and have a thermostat that is part of our city's energy conservation plan: during high uses times it is automatically shut off.

 I feel like we've done a lot, and are repaid daily by the enjoyment that watching native plants and wildflowers grow and bloom, and insects reproduce, be born, transition, and flourish within a healthy ecosystem (complete with awesome scenes of assasin bugs eating flies and ladybugs eating aphids) brings. It is so wonderful to know i played a part in restoring the natural balance of the ecosystem surrounding my house.

However, in the future there are things we'd like to do to help restore the natural balance in our own ecosystem - we use a lot of energy despite being frugal, and there are some things i'd like to do to help with that:

• Install solar panels to power things like electric fences, water pumps, out buildings, water heaters, etc
• Wind power perhaps? Depending on where we move, perhaps we could have a wind turbine to help power some things, but perhaps that's beyond our scope.
• Grey water collection: i desperately want a grey water collection system set up - either to redirect it to gardens, or to be filtered and reusable in other ways. (grey water would include sink and shower water waste)
• More rain barrels! I want a better system, particularly in its orientation. My present rain barrel is down hill from my veggie garden, which means i have to use a watering can and walk back and forth a million times. I'd like to set up a system that can use gravity to automatically irrigate our veggies and herbs. Perhaps also setting up certain barrels to filter the water to potability standards for our livestock.
• We desperately need to add more insulation to our attic and get better windows and doors - the seals are all off due to our foundation troubles and i'm sure our energy use would be lessened with more insulation.
• I already grow a lot of our food, but i'd really like to grow a larger percentage so that we rely less on food that is grown more than a few miles from our house. I'm doing well in this regard, but could do much better!

Enjoy Earth Day, everyone. Let me know what you'll be doing this next year to reduce your (negative) impact on this earth as a human being. We're very destructive animals with the greatest capacity for domination over the rest of the world - let's take that power into our own hands and use it for good!

-Miranda

8 Months Old and Laying Like Champs!

We're gearing up for Easter here at the homestead. The fridge is full of eggs destined for hard boiling, dying, and hunting amongst friends. The girls have been much obliging: Olive didn't even take a day off last week. The four laid 23 eggs between them, and the prior 3 weeks each brought to nest 22 beautiful eggs.

It is really feeling like Spring here: germinating corn babies, popping wildflowers, timely rain quenching the thirst of baby plants. Easter used to be my favorite holiday (you just can't beat Cadbury mini eggs in my opinion) and i'm excited to share my first Easter With Chickens with a few friends, and perhaps some brunchy cocktails.

Another first this spring is a new publication, Whole Kids Lifestyle Austin. It's a magazine and a community that promotes a holistic, eco-friendly and sustainable approach to life. They’re passionate about all things related to creating healthy communities – whether it’s the latest in educational science, the newest eco-fashion product, or an update on organic foods.  Obviously WKL fits perfectly with all of my interests and goals, and i've been lucky enough to be a contributor. I'll be writing articles with family friendly recipes, gardening/chicken raising tips, and other homesteading ideas that may or may not be in line with current blog posts here. I'm also contributing fun artwork for the kiddos to look at while their parents read the useful stuff between the jackets of the magazine.

Check out the first article i wrote for Whole Kids Lifestyle Magazine. It is a very brief primer on the raising of chicks up to 8 months old. I had to limit my words (which is hard for me to do!), so many details are left out- it's still a good basic guideline to get you started if you're interested in bringing home some Easter chicks. The online version of the magazine is up now and the print version should be in stores (like Central Market, Whole Foods, Sunset Valley Farmers Market, etc) in April.


Will you be donning your saddle shoes this Easter?