Hi Everyone; Here I am again. I don't know how many of you know what sustainability is. I'll try to explain at least my definition of it. When I was growing up in the Midwest, i heard comments from a lot of my grandparents and their friends. This is what they said: "Use it and reuse it until it's gone." What it meant was talking about clothes, appliances, etc. You sewed, handed down to younger siblings or neighbors, patched clothes, and when they were unwearable, you used them for rags. Many people during the depression were what they called "rag pickers." They were the people who went through everyone's trash looking for clothes they could wear or make into rags and sell them if they didn't need them. Appliances were fixed until they couldn't be fixed any more. The same with transportation and everything else. You didn't waste anything if you could help it. I believe that's pretty much what we need to do now...
I raise sheep and alpacas and shear them myself. Whatever I cannot spin into yarn or is too rough to use for anything else, I either felt or use for compost in the garden. The yarn I spin from the usable wool or alpaca fiber, I knit, crochet, or weave into clothing, or with weaving I make cloth, rugs, placemats, etc. I use the manure of the animals for compost and then it goes into my garden to keep it fertile. I grow many of my own vegetables because they taste so much better than the stuff I was buying in the store.
I grew over 50 lbs of carrots over the summer as well as lettuce, mesclun (lettuce-like greens and herbs for salads both spicy and mild), heirloom tomatoes (5 varieties), and let some go to seed so I wouldn't have to buy seeds the next year. I always try to grow heirloom varieties so that I'm able to keep producing the plants the way nature intended--so they'd reproduce without problems. I also have 2 apricot trees, 2 peach trees, cherries, apples, hardy kiwi, red and yellow raspberries (some everbearing and some spring bearing), 2 walnut trees, 2 asian pear trees and a hazelnut tree, as well as over 150 of 3 types of everbearing strawberries. What we can't eat before it spoils, we freeze or dry.
The vegetables and herbs, we plant in rotation to keep the pests at bay and if we do get pests (aphids and other insect critters), we spray with a homemade solution of habanero peppers and mild soap and spray the the plants and roses so they go away. For the larger insects, we have chickens to eat them...they also keep the garden and grass fertile. We also harvest the grass for the sheep and alpaca to give them in the winter after we dry it...just like hay. We don't use regular grass seed, we use nutritious pasture seed, which is better for the animals. The chickens eat it too when it's small and easy to get out.
Chickens are omnivorous, which means they eat everything. I have several roosters and a bunch of hens and we raise our own chicks and eat the eggs...the eggs are the best I've ever eaten in my whole life. The yolks so tasty and red orange that you know the beta-carotene is really high. If you ever seen fresh eggs for sale in the country, buy them...you won't regret it.
Everything we do on our little 2.3-acre farm is geared to sustainablity. But we aren't the only people who benefit, so do our friends and neighbors, as well as the rest of the world. If everyone would live sustainably, we wouldn't have the pollution problems we have now, or at least not to the degree we have now.
We also use the any plastic containers for storing things like emergency water, or small things like beads or mosaic tiles or seeds. I use cut off milk cartons for mini-green houses for my seedlings to keep the chickens away from the little plants until they can fend for themselves as well as to protect them from the sun. I also use reused fencing to help protect the plants and seeds while they're growing.
Maybe I'm just anal...who knows, but I do know I've never been happier than I have been since we bought out little farm. The chickens are so tame they let us pet them and they love it...they're very friendly though visitors don't know what to make of them and are a trifle afraid. Most people never even saw real live chickens before or had farm fresh eggs. Once they do, they buy a dozen or so from us (if we have them) and cart them off for home. I'm not sure what they do after they're gone, but I can only hope they find another farmer with chickens to have more eggs. Those eggs make the best French toast you've ever had.
So, I hope that this will give you a chance to think about living a little or a lot more sustainably...If not, that's fine, too. We can't all be the same, right? So, good luck with however you want to live your life as long as you feel good about it.
I raise sheep and alpacas and shear them myself. Whatever I cannot spin into yarn or is too rough to use for anything else, I either felt or use for compost in the garden. The yarn I spin from the usable wool or alpaca fiber, I knit, crochet, or weave into clothing, or with weaving I make cloth, rugs, placemats, etc. I use the manure of the animals for compost and then it goes into my garden to keep it fertile. I grow many of my own vegetables because they taste so much better than the stuff I was buying in the store.
I grew over 50 lbs of carrots over the summer as well as lettuce, mesclun (lettuce-like greens and herbs for salads both spicy and mild), heirloom tomatoes (5 varieties), and let some go to seed so I wouldn't have to buy seeds the next year. I always try to grow heirloom varieties so that I'm able to keep producing the plants the way nature intended--so they'd reproduce without problems. I also have 2 apricot trees, 2 peach trees, cherries, apples, hardy kiwi, red and yellow raspberries (some everbearing and some spring bearing), 2 walnut trees, 2 asian pear trees and a hazelnut tree, as well as over 150 of 3 types of everbearing strawberries. What we can't eat before it spoils, we freeze or dry.
The vegetables and herbs, we plant in rotation to keep the pests at bay and if we do get pests (aphids and other insect critters), we spray with a homemade solution of habanero peppers and mild soap and spray the the plants and roses so they go away. For the larger insects, we have chickens to eat them...they also keep the garden and grass fertile. We also harvest the grass for the sheep and alpaca to give them in the winter after we dry it...just like hay. We don't use regular grass seed, we use nutritious pasture seed, which is better for the animals. The chickens eat it too when it's small and easy to get out.
Chickens are omnivorous, which means they eat everything. I have several roosters and a bunch of hens and we raise our own chicks and eat the eggs...the eggs are the best I've ever eaten in my whole life. The yolks so tasty and red orange that you know the beta-carotene is really high. If you ever seen fresh eggs for sale in the country, buy them...you won't regret it.
Everything we do on our little 2.3-acre farm is geared to sustainablity. But we aren't the only people who benefit, so do our friends and neighbors, as well as the rest of the world. If everyone would live sustainably, we wouldn't have the pollution problems we have now, or at least not to the degree we have now.
We also use the any plastic containers for storing things like emergency water, or small things like beads or mosaic tiles or seeds. I use cut off milk cartons for mini-green houses for my seedlings to keep the chickens away from the little plants until they can fend for themselves as well as to protect them from the sun. I also use reused fencing to help protect the plants and seeds while they're growing.
Maybe I'm just anal...who knows, but I do know I've never been happier than I have been since we bought out little farm. The chickens are so tame they let us pet them and they love it...they're very friendly though visitors don't know what to make of them and are a trifle afraid. Most people never even saw real live chickens before or had farm fresh eggs. Once they do, they buy a dozen or so from us (if we have them) and cart them off for home. I'm not sure what they do after they're gone, but I can only hope they find another farmer with chickens to have more eggs. Those eggs make the best French toast you've ever had.
So, I hope that this will give you a chance to think about living a little or a lot more sustainably...If not, that's fine, too. We can't all be the same, right? So, good luck with however you want to live your life as long as you feel good about it.
