Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Homemade Sun Cream

Disclaimer: I wouldn’t trust this cream at the beach, above tree-line in the mountains, or even on a hatless hike at midday. But as my summer cream, put on under a hat to spend a morning puttering in the garden or for a walk in the late afternoon, I think it’s splendid.

Apparently, the oils used in this cream have a bit of an SPF value–some say as much as 15. I don’t think they offer any UVA/UVB protection, and how that reconciles with the claim to an SPF I cannot say. I’m not a huge user/abuser of sunscreen, though I do use it when it seems necessary. This cream is for the rest of the time. When I’d probably not have anything on at all.

I also wear a hat. And believe in light tans. I confess to having an inordinate amount of faith in the power of chaparral oil to protect the skin from sun damage on nothing more than ethnobotanical evidence. Beyond that, common sense in the sun must prevail.

I made this recipe with a friend, and it yielded a lavish summer supply for both of us.

Melt in a double boiler:

3 1/2 T Shea butter

3 1/2 T Coconut oil

(And 1T beeswax if a creamier thickness is desired.)

Add:

1/3 C Sesame oil (raw, un-toasted)

1/3 C unrefined Jojoba oil

1/3 C unrefined Avocado oil (we used chaparral oil instead).

Let this mixture of oils set until room temperature, and partially solidified.

Into blender pour:

1 C Aloe vera gel

1/2 C green tea

Set blender whirring on high-ish. Pour partially solidified oil mixture sloooowly into center of vortex. Blend away.

Watch and listen–the cream will do its alchemy of marrying oil and water and that moment is amazing and miraculous everytime. It will thicken and turn creamy colored. Give it another couple seconds, then stop. If there is any loose oil or water, blend it in by hand–over beating will not improve things.

This cream is nourishing, soothing, and possibly slightly protective. For me, that’s all I was after. When I run out of store bought sunscreen, I might add some zinc oxide to this lotion and call it a day.

Be safe in the sun, friends.


Posted on

River Blessing

The River Blessing is my favorite community ritual.

It’s been happening for a couple hundred years in this same spot–San Isidro, the patron saint of farmers, is brought to the river in a procession. There’s lot’s of singing, and flowers.

Some years, there’s no water in the river. Some years, there is.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s us who are blessed by the river, and not the other way around.

Posted on

In Praise of Teachers…or, El’s Big Idea

Have I told the story of how it was we came to take a plastic free semester? Today seems like a fitting day to tell it, as it has a lot to do with a particular class of high school seniors I just had the pleasure of watching graduate.

They were my husband’s students. Last year he taught them American history, this year government/economics. At the end of each year the seniors do some kind of personal action project related to the issues they’ve been studying. It was with that in mind that E. announced last fall that he wouldn’t be buying any plastic for the entire spring semester.

I was a bit baffled at first. “But what are we going to eat?!” I shouted, waving my hands at the cupboards and fridge filled with…plastic packaging. “It’s not like quitting plastic will solve global warming or clean out the ocean!”

“No,” he answered calmly, as if what he had suggested was we eat more fiber. “But at least we won’t be contributing so wholeheartedly to them. Besides, you know as well as I do it’s the right thing to do.”

Hmph.

As you know, I came around. Quickly. I was intrigued by the challenge on a practical level and eager to learn the old-timey skills I’d have to learn if we wanted to, you know, eat. But more than that I wanted to experience what it felt like to live as if my actions actually made a difference. Just the idea of taking the fast changed my life almost immediately. Because for whatever reason, I was locked into my habits, my belief that buying organic and occasionally local was all I could do and therefore all I needed to do. Simple changes, small things like using cloth bulk bags and opting for glass bottles were fast in coming, and before long I felt like a revolution had taken place in my kitchen, my home, my life.

Thank goodness for good teachers, wherever you might encounter them.

I want to honor my husband’s conviction that the best way to teach is by example. For his belief in action as a cornerstone of a participatory democracy, and his dedication to encouraging young people to become creators and repairers rather than users. Somehow, I have a feeling that it is these lessons the kids will recall in ten years as opposed to his no doubt equally brilliant and inspired lectures on Supply and Demand or the Spanish American War.

Hopefully, they will remember these words from E’s commencement address at graduation tonight (as well as the virtues of a hot thermos of tea always at hand):

“…If you should despair about the hopelessness of the world, remember: the smallest steps you take may not solve the problem, but they will solve your hopelessness.”

I like that.

Congratulations Class of 2010. May your journey be one of discovery and constant revolutions of thought and action.

Posted on

Where We’re At

As most of you know, my family just spent four months buying as close to no plastic as we possibly could. Our “experiment” was an extremely successful primer in simple living, one that we continue to be instructed by. We are much changed. So what does life look like now that the rules have been lifted?

Well, I’m still making soft cheeses like chevre and ricotta. I make our yogurt and sour cream. I’ve started buying hard cheeses like jack and cheddar from a local source. Yes, it’s packaged in plastic. But it’s organic and local, and while I might have avoided personally creating trash when I bought cheese from the grocery deli in my own container, I noticed they wrapped the (non-local, non-organic) cheese right back up in a fresh piece of plastic wrap after serving me. So that’s one change.

I’m still making our tortillas, bread products, and crackers. I did buy a can of tomatoes, which is lined in a BPA containing plastic. My first canned product in ages. It felt…kind of sinful and unnecessary, but also kind of wonderful. Oh, and we’ve been having a bit of a strawberry  feast for the last couple weeks. Just couldn’t wait for their local season after so long eating home preserved apples all winter. They are wonderful, and I vacillate between disgust at the plastic cartons piling up in our normally empty trash and pleasure in my daughter’s pleasure. Hopefully she’ll get sick of them soon.

Some folks might wonder, why not keep going the way we have been? For us, that’s not an option. We have cars to maintain, a house to hold together, bodies to nurture, and a growing child to care for. As I’ve learned in the last few months, this requires very, very little plastic. But it does require some, and we’d be lying if we said we didn’t need it. Also, we have a growing commitment to local foods–I want to try to get as much as 4/5ths of our fare from local sources this summer, and sometimes this means choosing plastic packaging over a non local, unpackaged food. I’ve struggled with this for the duration of our fast, but am now ready to switch my priorities just slightly so that local takes precedence.

So, basically we are continuing to implement our new ways of living, and ending the rigidity of the actual fast. In my mind I’ve devised an elaborate flow chart that helps me to decide when a plastic purchase is appropriate.

I ask myself: Do I really need this?

No: Don’t buy it. Yes: Am I sure?

No: Try to go without for awhile. Yes: Is an alternative available?

Yes: Buy the alternative. No: Am I sure?

No: Look around more. Yes: Ask,

Will this help us to live more ecologically overall? How durable is the plastic? How much can it be reused before being thrown away? Can it be found secondhand? Will it bring us joy, encourage creativity, enhance our life in a way that is ultimately responsible?

Things that we’ll probably be buying in the near future are: drip irrigation supplies, glass storage containers with plastic lids, a bottle of oil lamp fuel, fixtures for the gutters we are installing this spring, and key ingredients that help us to cook from scratch and reduce our packaging waste overall. Assuming of course, that these things meet the criteria laid out above (i.e. no alternative available). Still, there are lot’s of things a four month plastic fast won’t give you a chance to run out of–I’m just now starting to wonder about craft paste in a glass jar, and a refillable ink pen. It’s things like this that we’ll continue to investigate and incorporate into our lives.

So the journey continues to discover what we really need, and how we can best acquire it. Thanks for coming along with us.

Posted on

River Love

What a glorious and busy week it’s been in these parts.

I was consumed with getting ready for this reading featuring fifteen contributors from the book I edited (it’s still forthcoming, but soon, soon).  Yes, before I quit plastic I had a life as a literary activist. (I should put that on my tax forms instead of Extreme Eco Housewife.) The reading was dedicated to honoring a vital but much neglected part of our community: our river which was once named most endangered river in America. We had music, poems, and stories from some of the most talented writers and musicians in town, and a wonderful packed house.

Here I am giving my little speech at the beginning. The reading was in a gallery currently showing an exhibit about the Santa Fe River. Fitting, right? Basically what I said in my talk was this: “Our stories, poetry, songs, and art are a crucial part of breathing life back into the river. I believe this kind of praise and honoring feed it in a vital way, and that they are possibly as essential as water. For a river can flow with water and still be invisible and neglected if it doesn’t live inside us…By re-storying the river we bring it back to life in our hearts and minds, smoothing the way for its physical restoration.”

Have you gifted your river, mountain, forest, shoreline, woodland, canyon with a story-song-picture lately?

Posted on

On the Land

Hiking familiar trails in every season makes me feel most a part of this land.

Sweet smelling, abundant land.

And to see this girl growing and coming to know it, too–oh my.

::

Thanks to the path, thanks to the feet.

Thanks to the many wonders they bring us to meet.

Posted on

Mourning

Image from this slideshow by the Huffington Post.

Oh mama ocean and all of my kin held in your body,

I am grieving for you. I am angry for you.

Oh mama ocean, oh my brothers and sisters in the sea.

I will find a way to live that honors rather than degrades you.

::

I want to park the car for a week in mourning. But a week, it’s neither enough, nor quite possible.

So I will renew my efforts to live a more radically local life.

Driving seldom, carpooling when traveling across town,

staying home, staying focused on this place,

and the abundance I can find within walking distance.

::

And every day free of driving, be it one or twenty or a hundred,

I’ll dedicate to you.

Oh mama ocean.

My heart is full for you.

Posted on

April Plastic Tally

It’s that time of month again, when I excavate under my kitchen sink to reveal all the new plastic trash we’ve accumulated in the last month. If you are new here, this is a monthly ritual in which I take account of how much plastic our family of three brought into the home when doing everything in our ability to not bring in any. As I learned pretty early on, we were never able to get it down to zero–plastic lids are acceptable if no alternative is available, and as you’ll see there are other transgressions.

This will be a familiar picture to anyone who’s been around for the tally before. Lot’s of milk bottle caps. A handful of missing rings. (Did I say this was scientific? Not really.)  There are a few extras this month because I wanted to finally make sour cream and had a bit of trial and error buying the right kind of cream. More on that later. The ink pad isn’t trash and hopefully will be around for a while, but it does represent my big, pre-meditated plastic purchase of the month. You’ll also see a lollipop wrapper, a mini yogurt container I needed for starter, a ketchup bottle lid wrapper, the last of my plastic yarn wrappers purchased mail order back in January (I had no idea anyone would think of labeling yarn in plastic!), some random cellophane, and the bag from my vital wheat gluten debacle back in February or so. A sort of sad follow up to that quest for plastic free VWG is that by the time my packaged stash ran out the store that carried it in bulk discontinued it. Yup, that was Whole Foods in case anybody wants to complain. I’d hate them outright, but they also started accepting #5 plastic for recycling. Bring them lot’s of trash, please.


This is the CSA pile. Apple cider, local raw honey, garlic, cheese, and a few bags I couldn’t realistically transfer the contents of to my  cloth bags. The local food arena is one area that I’m going to loosen up about as we enter the Plastic Free Lite phase of our experiment. If something is available locally, but packaged in plastic, I might choose it over a non-regional, unpackaged version. But only if we really need it, it really makes sense, and I can’t find an alternative locally or convince the producer of the error of their ways.

A broccoli tab, a plastic lined bag of cat food and some packing bubbles. Can I just that I had a whole lot more of those packing bubbles, but they’ve been stowed away in the shed in case of future shipping needs. I inherited a sewing machine from my grandma, and it arrived safely thanks to a sea of this stuff. My mom sent it for me, and I have to add that she also padded the box with some thrift store clothes she thought I’d like.

not included here is the bag of ice we bought for our road trip without even considering it was in plastic. An excellent example of how invisible plastic can be when you need it and have blinders on. Or the beer bag we got on that trip. And probably some other things, like the plastic wrapping on the neck of a wine bottle. Who saves plastic when they’re tipsy? Also, I don’t save things like olive oil lids with plastic inserts, or junk mail with plastic windows in the envelopes. Just to give you full disclosure.

Thanks for your interest in my trash! Have a nice day.

Posted on

Good Green Words from Here and There

Here it is folks, the Long Awaited, Much Anticipated Old Recipe Garden Party Extravaganza.

Thanks to all who contributed posts, and to all of you who left comments about your passion for soil and sun and the miracles that take place in-between.

Christina of Tumbleweeds and Handful of Seeds wrote about falling in love with her tumbleweed farm. I am excited to follow her journey as a high desert locavore.

Renee at FIMBY wrote a beautifully illustrated post about…gardening for beauty, of course.

Nicola from Which Name?‘s post In the Garden also starts with beauty, but redefines it in terms of ecological function. I love when she writes, “My garden tells me to keep trying. I am listening and it is working.”

Shadymama from Adventures from the Motherland offered a piece of poetry after my own heart. She writes “i find myself paying more attention to the moon and my breath. to my feet on the ground, my soul and my needs. to presence and truth. these are the lessons of my land.” And lot’s more good stuff.

Emily at Laundry and Lullabies wrote about the joy of gardening, and tells her woeful tale of crabgrass. It made me feel better about my bindweed.

Rachel at 6512 and Growing pretty much rocks it with this post called I Dig Dandelions and Apricot Blossoms, and this one about a romantic manure interlude.

And my personal garden guru, Erin at Seedybeans, took a break from her customary dispensing of invaluable gardening advice to tell us just why she gardens. In the garden, she writes, “I have found myself as a woman, one hand marveling at our mothers mysteries, and the other spinning seeds and stems with my own gifts.” Ah, yes.

My own post can be found by just scrolling down a bit. Or if you’ve arrived here in some roundabout way, click here.

Lastly, I’d like to make Michael Pollan an honorary homegirl and include his ever relevant and motivating article “Why Bother?” in this lineup. I consider it required reading, and revisit it at least once a year when I need reminding of why I live this way. It’s ultimately about gardens, but everything else, too.

Posted on

Mending the Land

My garden is a small part of what I consider home. Home is the high mountains rising up in all directions and framing the huge valley with various watersheds winding towards the Rio Grande. This open space, with the vistas I know with my eyes closed and the trails I have followed in all seasons, is my home.

Pretty as it is, this is a landscape that has been severely altered and damaged in the last few centuries. Like so many things in the West, and, I suspect, landscapes everywhere, it is close to impossible to tell what is “natural” and what is a remnant of a once intact ecosystem.

The other defining feature of my home ground is the river. Once free-flowing and healthy, today it’s dry as a bone save for what the city water managers decide to release from the reservoir that supplies this town with its drinking water. The river today is a deep, severely eroded ditch largely denuded of plant and animal life, and heartbreaking to behold. Despite this, we walk it almost daily. It doesn’t always run with water, but contains the flow of our days.

I say all this as a preface to my garden post, as a bit of grounding that will help you to see why I consider nurturing this small piece of land an act of healing. For years my garden has suffered because of my stinginess with water. I couldn’t justify watering a few lettuce plants at the cost of the river. My efforts at conservation yielded not much more than bitter greens. The city gives saved water to developers, the cycle of overuse continues. Now I see watering this land as an integral part of restoring the river. Water soaks through my rich soil, trickling back into the water table. The water I use nurtures a kind of ecology, devised by me, yes, in a sort of hit or miss way, but an ecology nonetheless. It sustains insects, bees, birds, and abundant plant life. It is a patch of soil that is fed and cared for rather than stripped and neglected.

Here’s the huge pathway that used to divide two of my garden beds. (Both of which were in the shade, as it happens.) I spent this spring turning it into fertile beds. Which brings me to another kind of healing–the gift that comes from regular connection with the land. From relating to it in the intimate way that is the gardener’s–touching, digging, sowing, watering, harvesting, smelling, sensing. From the give and take of energy exchanged. From the mutual care-taking that happens when one eats food grown from the soil one has fed. This is healing of another kind of cultural wound, the kind that comes from disconnection with natural cycles, removal from food production, and an acceptance of the loss to human and plant communities that is its inevitable result.

The next level of healing that takes place in the humble garden is of the broken system we are so entrenched in–the system that keeps us reliant on imported food, petroleum powered corporate agriculture, and an economic system that doesn’t aid our communities. At the same time we are shut off from our neighbors, our land, our water supply, and our own resourcefulness. It’s a question of dependency on the System vs. interdependence with Place.

So that’s why I water my garden now. By hand, often, and thoroughly. That’s why I turn kitchen scraps into black gold, and keep on trying. It doesn’t always yield what I hope for. But at the same time it yields so much more.

And each year we become a little more whole, my land and I.