Due Date…The Post that never was

This is the post that we had in draft and were working on when we left for the hospital to have Rayleigh.

August 6, 2010… the day we said we were going to have a baby.  Well it is confirmed,  the child will truly be the product of Kevin and myself as it seems he or she will be making a tardy arrival!  We spent the day enjoying each others’ (exclusive) company.

This evening we explored around Crandall Park in Glens Falls.  They have a pond with a fountain, monuments and some nice wooded trails Kevin may try to bike in the fall.

On another note, earlier this summer we told you all we had bought a share of a local CSA.  So far we have have been pleased with the results and are still loving the concept.  Our share is picked up at our farmer’s market and we spend Saturday afternoon processing what we “reap”… from the pre-harvested piles at market.  Here are some pictures from today:

In addition to our planting our garden, buying local food at market, composting, and water conservation habits we have been trying to shrink our environmental footprint in other ways and using our “purse strings” to help influence demand of products we believe in and support local businesses. Some of the things we have been doing include using CFL’s for all our lighting needs- (our house looks ridiculously bright at night driving by), we put up a clothes line, Kevin mows the grass using a “reel mower” powered by him, we pay extra to have our electric provided by wind energy, we’ve installed low-flow shower heads and a dual flush toilet, we get e-delivery with as many things as possible, most notably our bills and account statements, and although we do not have a hybrid, we do drive fuel efficient vehicles and keep them maintained to achieve the best efficiency possible, and are strongly considering buying an EV (electric vehicle) when the Jetta dies.  Other purchases that have helped are energy saving curtains- which we usually keep closed to further energy savings and help control the inside temperature.   Our recycling company recently switched to single stream recycling.  This means we can recycle all our items in one container.  We recycle everything! In addition to your standard recyclables we also recycle aluminum foil (which we rarely use), packaging to mailings, groceries and packages- including the air packers (most recently from baby items), we also try to take into account the packaging of items we do buy in stores.  What all this means is that between recycling and composting we generate about 50 gallons of recyclable content (I also bring home things from work since we don’t recycle there… yet!) and the equivalent of 1/2 to 1 kitchen bag of garbage during a normal week, and 10-12 gallons of compost a week (about 1/2 is yard waste the other half is kitchen and compostable household waste-including tissues etc.).  We are working on transitioning away from tissues and to cloth handkerchiefs.

We also buy as much local and organic food as possible- much of this is done at market but some of it is done at the grocery store as well.  The soy milk we buy- Silk uses Non-GMO soybeans and donates money to help wind energy development.  The sugar we buy is Florida Crystals, the only organic sugar harvested in the USA and is carbon neutral.  Our household cleaning products include a bagless vaccum cleaner, and environmentally friendly cleaners with as little packaging as possible like Method refills that come in bags instead of molded plastic bottles using 83% energy.  (If you have ever visited a country with a trash issue you would notice nearly everything comes in this type of packaging- think of the savings we could buy our fridge door condiments in bags instead of bottles!) Kevin has recently altered his morning shake recipe to include local apple cider we can source at the market instead of commercial apple juice.

As part of this process we have also tried to step-up our canning and preserving this year.  So far we’ve done corn, bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, strawberry jam, blueberry-orange jam, currant jelly (Grandma Elsie would be proud), salsa, and pesto.   Also as part of getting our meat at market we’ve been limited with chicken in that we need to buy whole chickens, this had enabled us to make and freeze our own chicken stock as well.

Thanks for reading- there will be another post shortly- with photos of something you actually want to see-Rayleigh!