Friday preparedness

Henceforth to be known as Independence Days Update.

Rather than inventing (and forgetting) my own categories this week, I'm going to rely on the rubric for the Independence Days challenge as I do my weekly review. Unfortunately, the first few categories will be somewhat lacking since it's high winter here, but I still think it's a useful way of thinking about what I'm doing.

1. Planted something: not so much here - there's snow, and the ground is frozen; but, I have started some sprouts for salads and, although it's expensive and does require power, I'm looking into one of those little aero garden things for my counter, so I can grow inside through the winter; I'm also looking into low-light things that can be grown inside, but not finding much.

2. Harvested something: harvested the dried leaves from my dead basil plant (not enough sun in here for it to survive the winter, which is a shame); gathered squash and apple seeds from some grocery-store produce - I don't know if these will germinate (it's questionable, at best), but they were there and I thought it might be worth a shot.

3. Preserved something: dried celery, spinach, and kale in the dehydrator.

4. Stored something: extra oats and brown sugar; bottle of iron pills; 250 multi-vitamins; bottle of hydrogen peroxide; bottled 12 litres of water in recycled bottles; bought a second-hand washboard and manual grinder.

5. Prepped something: Reorganized the kitchen to accomodate extra food; worked on knit fingerless gloves; decluttered to make more room for the necessities; replaced remaining regular lights with CFLs; prepped egg cartons for sprouting plants in the spring.

6. Cooked something new: barbequed potatoes and carrots (from the More with Less Cookbook - yum!); looking into more recipes to try - I mostly have favourites that I turn to again and again.

7. Worked on community food systems: not so much here either, other than talking to a friend about food issues; still hoping to join the local food co-op after break, though.

8. Managed my reserves - started a record of what's on hand, since I keep losing track as more food stores come in; currently sorting through food brought over by my temporary houseguest, to see what's still good to keep and what's not.

9. Learned a new skill - haven't actually started yet (mostly because there were cats on my counters for much of the last week), but I've been reading "Putting Food By" in preparation for preserving; learning how to effectively use a washboard for laundry; experimenting with grinding grain to add to bread; got a new rank in aikido - still not so good for self-defense, but better.

Karmic thrifting?

For the last few days I've had a friend and her menagerie of pets (four) living with me in my apartment. It was an interesting exercise in seeing how living with someone (and maybe a few someone) could be if people had to move in with me. It wasn't always easy, but I think I learned a few things about what I need to survive with more people than just me and my sweetie around.

Since she was moving across the country, she brough over some things that just wound up staying here, rather than moving with her. Some of it is useful to me - I'll be keeping a water jug, a shopping basket for the back of my bike, and a few other bits and pieces. Other stuff will be on it's way out, especially the cleaners that made their way over here, since I don't use chemical cleaners. Still other things will probably be on their way to Goodwill, since I just don't have room for it all.

So, in an effort to tidy up a bit, this morning I wandered over to the Goodwill so I could drop off some of the left-behind stuff. I managed to find some more dishes for mom's Christmas present. But, even better, I found two things that have been on my list for awhile now.

It's no substitute for a good grain mill, but I got a small manual grinder. It grinds very (very!) coarsly, but I'm going to experiment with it and see what it can do. I also got a small washboard. It was decorated to be hung on a wall, but I stripped off the flowers, will wash it up and maybe wax it, since it will be in water. And, I now have myself a very low energy way of doing the laundry. Someday I'd like a larger one, but for a whole $2.29, this is a good start, I think.

I like to think that, after doing a somewhat big favour for a friend, the thrift gods smiled down on me. These were two of the things that I really wanted to add to my Peak Oil preparations, and I really appreciate having them.

Friday preparedness

Rather than focusing just on food on Fridays, as per Sharon's food storage quickiesI think I'm going to look at everything that I've done during the week to increase my preparedness for whatever's coming.

Food:
- dehydrated mushrooms
- bought corn meal, brown rice, peanut butter, large cabbage, 10 lbs carrots, 15 lbs potatos, 10 lbs yellow onions, ramen, oats
- bought canning supplies - canning jars, extra lids, magnetic wand, jar lifter

Home:
- bought cast iron pan (thrift store)
- bought air mattress (WalMart)
- bought flashlight (Circuit City)
- bought hand-crank radio (Circuit City)

Clothing:
- bought two thick, warm wool sweaters (thrift store)
- worked on wool fingerless gloves

Books:
- bought "The Book of Whole Grains" and "Putting Food By"
- borrowed "The Encyclopedia of Country Living", "Practical Skills", "The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving", and "Local Flavours"

Community:
- talked with some friends about post-carbon activism
- researching local food security groups and the local food co-op

Confessions

I have to make a confession. Maybe even a few confessions.

I haven't bought anything on Buy Nothing Day for a decade now. Now, I live in Canada, where we don't have Black Friday per se, so it's perhaps not a big deal as it is in the US. But, on principle, I've gone along with it because I do have issues with consumption. These issues range from the extremely personal to the more widely social, but I've always taken some pride in my lower-consumption life, both in general and on Buy Nothing Day.

But I bought stuff today. And not only that, but I bought something from WalMart today.

(The horror...the horror.)

The things that I bought were all on my list of preparations that I want to make just in case. But I still don't feel so good about them, and I don't know if it's shopping in general that's getting to me, or shopping new instead of used, or shopping specifically on BND.

All told I spent about $75 today. I bought an air mattress, because I have a friend coming to stay with me for a few weeks, and need a place for her to sleep. I've also wanted one for awhile now, just in case people need to come stay with me if things go south. It's not an ideal solution, but I have room for this, and it's easily portable. I also bought a hand-crank radio and a flashlight to keep around for emergencies (happily, both on clearance and fairly cheap). And, finally, in an effort to start in on one of my competence projects, I picked up canning jars, a magnetic wand, extra lids, and a jar lifter so I can start learning how to preserve food.

I don't think there's much here that I should feel that badly about. I bought what I needed, and only things that I'd been planning to buy for awhile now (admittedly, I wasn't planning to get he radio today, but it was on my list, and newly on sale). But overall this is something that I feel fairly pleased about.

Happily, I do this very infrequently. My so-called shopping sprees are always of things that I need and usually happen annually, and that I can live with. Ideally, I'd like it to stop altogether. I'd prefer to have smaller local stores where I can get what I need from people that I know at least a bit. I'd rather buy from people I know, and businesses that I can feel comfortable with.

I wonder now if maybe it's not that I feel guilty, but that I find the whole shopping experience to be wretched. In general, I still find myself hating shopping, and especially hating shopping for things that are new and buried in the back of a huge overstocked store with underpaid employees. Part of my hatred comes from walking into a store and seeing so much stuff - on the shelves, being bought - and regretting the huge focus on consumption in our society. Part of it is hating being around crowds of people, and and another part is the helplessness of not being able to find what I want. And, part of it is probably a result of the horrible news of a WalMart employee killed this morning by stampeding customers. I understand that people are feeling the crunch this year, but this form of consumption - extreme, driven, and more concerned with stuff than with people - horifies me, and leaves me wanting even less involvement in the system han I had before, minimal as it was. I didn't hear this story until after I got home today, but it reaffirms my desire to find even more ways to buy locally and from smaller companies, and to not buy into any of the highly problematic elements of consumption.

Ecological footprint

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night, and so I sat up for a bit with some ecological footprint calculators. I knew going into it that the numbers wouldn't be pretty. In the past six months I've flown to England (for a wonderful summer program and, while I regret the ecological implications, I don't regret the program at all), as well as to British Columbia (ostensibly for a family wedding, but more to see my Nanna, who's been rather ill for the last year - better to fly out for a party than a funeral, I think.) But, they were even less pretty than I hoped, and for the first time I sat down and actively tried to figure out why that is.

Part of the issue is that I live alone. No matter how much I reduce my consumption, use less energy and less water, and change all of the small details about how I live, living alone hurts my footprint, even in a medium-sized apartment. Another part is that I use the bus a lot, not just to get to school, but to go see my boyfriend, who lives over 500 km away. I've pretty much eliminated flying there, which is a good thing, but the travel is still not such a good thing, although I'm hoping that can be remedied soon. The trouble is, at this point in time, these are things that are difficult for me to change, much as I would like to. I'm working on it, but it is slow.

The other thing (although not the biggest by quite a stretch), and the one that's probably easiest for me is food. I'm vegetarian, but I am rather fond of cheese and eggs, which ups my numbers. I also don't live all that close to a farmer's market, and most of my food comes from the supermarket, which isn't always known for its local food options. But, out of all the things to change, this is the one that I can start immediately and most easily, so I took food on as my afternoon project.

Since I was heading out anyway, I first decided to go to the Goodwill bookstore up the street. Happily, I came away with a copy of "Putting Food By". It's an older one, so I'm going to double check the canning standards, but I'm excited about having instructions and recipes for preserving foods now.

I then wandered over to the grocery store. At best, foods are labelled with their province or country of origin, so I decided to stick to those grown in Ontario. It's not a perfect solution, but better than nothing for now. I wound up with a large cabbage, 10 pounds each of potatoes, yellow onions, and carrots, and a bag of empire apples. Other options were squash, rutabega, and turnips, although I left those alone for now. I found it harder to go with local foods when I was working on my food stores. I picked up peanut butter, a large bag of cornmeal, and brown rice, none of which are local. They'll be added to my food stores for future use.

I don't know if this was entirely a success. Some staples - like pasta and peanut butter - seem to be a lot harder to find locally grown. I haven't started looking for eggs or cheese yet, since I have rather a lot of that in the fridge from a past grocery shopping trip. I'm sure it's not impossible, and I'm going to look harder, but I was hoping for better. Fresh stuff, however, seemed to be relatively easy, so long as I was willing to walk past the citrus and less hardy greens at the front of the store. I'm going to keep looking, but in the meantime, I'm going to settle in and make myself a barbeque potato and carrot casserole where at least half the ingredients are local.

Overwhelmed

I'm nearly done my grading, which means that I actually have time! To myself! This afternoon!

Theoretically, I should be working on my dissertation-thing, but I have a long list of Peak Oil prep kind of things to do, and I suspect that I should spend some time on that.

The trouble is, the list is, as I said, long. And as a result, I find it incredibly overwhelming to decide what to do first. Do I stay in, order a grain mill, dehydrate some of the produce in my fridge, and then read up on how to raise chickens? Or, do I head out to the thrift store with an eye to picking up some blankets, and maybe some more yarn or a cast iron pan? Or, do I head out to the local hardware store and see about getting an air mattress, the components for my worm composter, and a maglight to serve as both flashlight and weapon? Stopping on the way, of course, for a hand crank radio? Or, do I just make an extended grocery store trip with my bundle buggy and haul home extra rations of rice, potatos, and long-keeping root veggies?

I dunno - I could do any of them, and will do them all eventually. I'm just feeling rather overwhelmed now by all that I feel that I have to do. And, the fact that this is grading time, and end of the semester time, and holiday time really isn't helping matters any. I'll get over it - probably in fairly short order - but this isn't always an easy thing to do, and I think it's worth writing out the hard and the troubling and the problematic things as much as the good ones.

Words from the wise

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

- William Morris