Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Happy Live-Your-Regular-Life Day

So I guess this is Earth Day. Wheeee.

Obviously we don’t pay attention to such things, but of course many others do. Celebrants discuss ways they can increase their sustainability, decrease their carbon footprint, commit green “acts,” and other such things like the suggestions on EarthDay.org.



The Earth Day website claims there have been 1,123,958,881 “acts of green” committed. (That's an uncannily precise number. How did they determine this?)

Websites like this urge us to “support environmental education” and “reduce energy consumption.” I tried to learn how we can “Use Less Energy: Save Money and the Environment!” by using their online calculator, but it required me to log in and divulge personal information, so I didn’t do it.

So in our own fashion, we decided to (cough) celebrate Earth Day too. What kinds of "acts of green" did we commit? Consider the following:

• I simmered an enormous pot of pinto beans...


...and then canned them for our pantry.


• I gathered our own organic eggs.


• I planted heirloom herb seeds which eventually will get planted in our organic garden. The peppers (cayenne and cascabella) are already planted in seed pots.


• We walked to work (about 50 feet).


• We banded (castrated) little Curly, turning him into a steer and thus assuring organic grass-fed beef in the freezer in about two years.


• I did some laundry (in cold water) and hung the clothes to dry on our indoor clothes racks.


• I fed the livestock, including our bull Samson, who is responsible for the sustainability of our herd.


• I emptied the kitchen compost bucket into the garden compost pile.


• I mucked out the barn and put the waste on the barn compost pile, continuing the sustainability of our organic garden fertilizer.


• We got in our first shipment of tractor tires for the year, thus recycling these massive items, saving disposal costs for the tire center, keeping the tires out of the landfill, and transforming them into useful food-producing units.


• I dug some weeds in the garden, preparing the tire beds for planting so we can harvest our own organic vegetables in a few months.


In other words, we did stuff we pretty much always do. This is our lifestyle.

The trouble with all these “green acts” we’ve been committing is I doubt the Earth Day people would appreciate them. Why? Because while we thoroughly subscribe to the notion of green living, we entirely disagree with the green agenda. To understand why, here's an older WND column entitled My Green Is Greener Than Your Green which more fully explains things.

So while Earth Day will come and go, the Lewis family will continue to live our quiet, earth-anchored God-centered sustainable low-carbon-footprint lives, happy as clams. Happy Earth Day! Or happy Wednesday! Whatever.

25 comments:

  1. If you had a steer named, Samson, it would just sound wrong.

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  2. Ms Lewis,

    Concerning the use to tractor tires in the garden, do you have any special cleaning procedure to ensure that the tires are safe for food growing? Or is that a non-issue?

    Thanks,

    Scott

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    Replies
    1. It's a non-issue. Please see this post:

      http://www.rural-revolution.com/2014/01/in-defense-of-our-tire-garden.html

      - Patrice

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    2. Thank you. Sorry for the late reply. I missed that post when searching the site, probably due to poor google-fu.

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  3. Forget Earth Day. Today in Oklahoma it's 89er Day. The Land Run of 1889 took place on April 22, opening the Unassigned Lands (much of present day central Oklahoma) to settlement. My great grandparents and my grandmother made the run in a covered wagon from the Kansas line into what is now Hennessey, OK. They lived in a dugout for several months before building a log cabin. Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Norman, and many other cities had their beginnings on April 22, 1889.
    Jeff

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  4. It's not Wednesday!

    It's hump day!

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  5. I completely agree with you and love your green living examples for today. I do many of the sane things and love our lifestyle. Wish I could truly homestead, but for now we're suburban homesteaders--its still s great choice!

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  6. Your actual sustainable and green life puts all of their tweeting and emoting to shame. For instance, that Paltrow idiot and her foodstamp attempt and spectacular fail
    But you still won't ever be invited to any of their houses.
    Ha! . Like you care what they think...

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  7. Earth Day? It's a religious holiday, and it's not my religion.

    Be a good steward? Have dominion? Definitely.

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  8. What are y'all?? some kind of communists?!?

    ROFL!

    We country people can (and do!) outgreen the greens any and every day of the week, can't we?!?

    Although I'm not sure how you mange that walk to work. Such a trudge! Do you have to pack Don a lunch? ;)

    Carry on!

    A. McSp

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  9. Well, I couldn't do much outside because it was snowing off and on here yesterday, I did go out and look at the rototiller though.

    Carl in the UP

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  10. These celebrants worship Mother Earth as their God. Frankly, I liked them better when they were monkeys.
    Montana Guy

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  11. We in the country ......every day is "Earth Day".

    Have a wonderful day!

    R. Peterson

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  12. Love this post! So good and so true, too.

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  13. It's a treat to catch up with you, now that our one (OMG, the privation!!) computer is up and running again. PERFECT TIMING. Love it.

    If more people would make the choices you and Don have, we wouldn't need an "environmental movement."

    What shall we call it?? The "Live Like Sane People Movement??"

    Revolutionary!!!!

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  14. I love your photography. It bespeaks that everyday items straight from nature are beautiful in their simplicity. No need to manufacture anything; it's all there.
    Just reading your column today makes me feel tired. My potato beds are planted, my rhubarb is coming along, and the real planting will begin around May 5th.
    Green agenda is indeed horrific.

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  15. What did you do the rest of the day? LOLLOL

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  16. How did all those people at the Washington gathering get there? Did they all walk eating only kale and tofu? It is PC and makes you feel good but they dont walk the walk.

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  17. Random question. When Samson's children "grow up" and are ready to be bred, will you breed them back to him? How much animal "incest" until you see negative side effects? I'm just wondering because of all of your talk of sustainability, what would you do if the SHTF? Trade bulls with a neighbor? Or continue on with breeding father to daughter, brother to sister, etc.?
    Thank you, just morbidly curious!

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    Replies
    1. That's actually a very good question. After several years of breeding and culling as needed, as now have a number of excellent breeding cows who are unrelated to Sampson. It's pretty common to breed back daughters to fathers, so we do that for one generation. We either sell or beef any granddaughters.

      As our cows age and/or as Sampson becomes older, we may trade him out or beef him and buy a new bull. This is our third bull in 11 years and Samson is here for the long haul. He has a (fairly) nice disposition (for a bull) and is fertile.

      - Patrice

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  18. I really enjoy your blog. I saw today that you put up some beans. I hope that you pressure canned them as they are a low acid food. Keep up the great work.

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  19. What an inspiring blog post! As a born again believer myself, I've often wondered how to handle "Earth Day". As Scripture teaches we are to be good stewards of this earth that the Lord has given to our stewardship until His return. Thus we ought to be productive and prosperous in our daily living, either on a farm or living in the city. Though I much prefer the farm living!

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  20. I was informed by a good friend's 1st grader that it was Earth WEEK at their school. One of the activities was to turn off the lights in the classroom for about an hour---one more reason to homeschool

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  21. I love reading your blog - you always have awesome ideas that get me moving on my own path to self-sustainability.

    I have a quick question about your compost piles...you mention emptying the bucket into the garden compost pile and then also reference the barn compost pile. I read your post about the barn pile, but I can't recall anything about your garden compost pile. Can you elaborate on your garden pile a bit? I have just started my "pile" with leaves, table scraps, and grass clippings and am soaking up all the info I can on them. Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. The barn compost is just that -- a catch-all for anything related to cleaning the barn or chicken coop. It's enormous.

      I have two "boxes" made of pallets in the garden for tossing in weeds, leftover vegetable material (i.e. last year's corn stalks), and other detritus. I toss my kitchen waste into this pile. It is by no means scientific and, since our barn compost pile yields such marvelous compost, I don't pay much attention to the garden compost pile. In a few years I may open one of the pallets and see what's at the bottom, but I'm in no rush.

      - Patrice

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