Tea and Honey

It occurred to me awhile ago that the only way to drink tea responsibly is to buy is loose tea. Usually I purchase our coffee at The Coffee Exchange on Wickenden Street in Providence. The owner was selling and roasting "fair trade" coffee long before it was a buzz word. He has also invested in the families living in the region by creating his own organization Coffee Kids. 

While I'm waiting for my coffee, I've been noticing the loose tea that they sell there. They don't sell a lot of it, but they sell the basics. When another customer strolled in and ordered a bag of black tea, I started to feel . . . guilty. All of you tea drinkers out there, go and take a look at your pantry. See all of those boxes and individually wrapped tea bags? (granted, not all of ours are individually wrapped) Not very environmentally responsible. Whenever I purchase anything (especially food) I look at the packaging and deliberately avoid things that are bagged, boxed and then wrapped in plastic! (I'm an specifically thinking about those chip snack packs you buy at Walmart or Shaw's.) Think about all of the wasted energy and raw materials (or worse, chemicals to make the plastic) that went into all of that packaging. Think about all of the recycling you'll have to do. Think about how much of it isn't recyclable and will end up in the dump. 

So, when I was out of Peppermint Tea, I went to the Coffee Exchange and purchased some loose tea. This enormous jar of tea cost $4.80 . Wow. Nice savings -- on several levels! 

My Mom gave my sister-in-law and I these fabulous little single serving tea pots. The interior is lined with a fine screen that prevents the loose tea from being poured into your cup. It's also very easy to make another pot with the same leaves -- yes, you will still get a nice pot of tea. 

There are several types of tea pots that work nicely for loose tea. When I was in China everyone had a glass tea pot with a basket that set inside, then on the top there was a plunger that looked and worked just like a french press coffee pot. The Japanese restaurant we sometimes go to simply uses a fine strainer over your mug of tea that they remove before bringing it to your table. Then, of course you have the metal balls and such -- which are okay, but a little bit cumbersome. You do have to clean out your tea pot rather than just dumping the bag into the trash (or better yet, your compost!). But really, we can handle that, can't we? We use a French Press Coffee Pot at home. Not only does it make fabulous coffee, but it is glass (not plastic) and we don't have to spend money on coffee filters. All of these things add up. Before you realize it, you'll notice that you spend less time at the grocery store / Walmart / Target and save. Incidentally, coffee grounds are great in your compost! If you don't have a compost, you can sprinkle them around any acid loving plant -- like blueberry bushes! 

Since we are talking about tea, let me tell you about my 2nd Honey Bee class last night. First, our class has grown. We are all jammed into an Agricultural High School classroom -- all thirty of us, along with the large assortment of teachers. I am amazed at the commitment the teachers have to the aspiring bee keepers. Most of them are men, bringing in all kinds of supplies to show us, putting in a ton of thought into the classes with a PowerPoint presentation and even a syllabus. It seems like there's no place they'd rather be than cultivating future bee keepers and answering all of their random questions. You really get the feeling you could call these guys up at any hour of the day with a bee emergency and they'd walk you through it like they have nothing they'd rather be doing -- and maybe that's just it. Our teachers are happy bee keepers. They are in awe of the honey bee, and rightly so. Honey Bees are amazing. 

• Do you know that the Queen (of which there is typically only one per hive) lives 2-5 years and in her lifetime only has one mating flight where she mates with 7-15 drones (the males that do nothing but mate and eat honey) then stores the sperm and uses them to create eggs. Amazing. 
• After the mating season (spring) the Drones just hang out and eat honey. By July / August the Worker Bees (the gals) have kicked the Drones out of the hive and they die of exposure. Our teacher says you'll see the poor rejected dudes laying on the ground by the hive. 
• There are about 5-7 guard bees at the entrance to the hive (these are the ones that will sting you if you threaten the hive aggressively ... no the whole hive doesn't come out and attack, fyi)  These Guard Bees stand at the entrance and check every bee that goes in and out of the hive to make sure that intruders (like a yellow jacket) stay out. The funny thing is, if a honey bee from a different hive comes and tries to get in, they will reject the honey bee -- unless that bee is carrying nectar and honey in which they say "Come on in Honey!" Smart little bees. 
  

I'll close by showing you a picture of Ripley doing Yoga. The other day he got my matte out and said he wanted to do some Yoga. So, I got my package of Yoga cards out and he did various poses one by one -- trying his best to duplicate what he saw on the card. Too cute. Honestly.

Environmentally Friendly School Lunches

What is an environmentally friendly parent to do when it comes to packing school lunches?
The good news is that being environmentally friendly and saving often do go hand in hand.

• Wrap all sandwiches, breads, carrot sticks, grapes in wax paper -- just like the "old days". Waxed paper is compostable. My 9 year old is well trained and brings all compostable things home in his lunch box. What a guy! Plastic baggies are more expensive, are toxic to recycle (although always better to recycle) and let's face it -- go right into the trash at the school.
  

How to wrap a sandwich in waxed paper

• Bake "quick breads" as a great part of a pack lunch. Quick breads are great ways to get healthy vitamins into your children. From carrot, to zucchini, to pumpkin bread -- it's good stuff. Wrap in waxed paper.
• If you pack a dessert for your children, bake cookies and freeze them. Take them out of the freezer one at a time -- they will be thawed out by lunch time.
• Use older cloth napkins (maybe with a stain or tear or two) rather than paper napkins. I won't be devastated if it doesn't come home -- but once your children know the routine, they put it back in their lunch box just like any other reusable food container. (No need to continually buy paper napkins.)
• Go to a thrift store and purchase mis-matched forks and spoons for them to take in their lunches when needed. Again, if you lose one, you won't be devastated. So far, all of mine have come home. (A much cheaper option than continually buying plastic ware.)
• Pack whole fruits like apples, peaches, pears. Sometimes I wrap the fruit in an old cloth napkin if the fruit is fragile. Train your children to bring home the apple / pear cores so that they can go into the compost. If necessary write "our family composts" on the inside of the lunch box. At first, my (now) 9 year old got pressure to throw stuff away, but he stuck up for himself and explained that we compost!
• I pack hot soups a lot for my children. They bring it in low wide mouthed thermos. So healthy for them and what's better than soup on a fall / winter day?
• I was sending my children (who can handle glass carefully) to school with my glass food storage containers. I finally got two complaints in one week from the schools so I ordered stainless food containers from life without plastic. They are adorable and my children seemed to work them just fine. (4 and 9 year old) If you don't know already, I'm anti-plastic. :)
  

The State of My Garden - Fall 2008

My big project.

A girlfriend of mine was putting new windows into her antique home, so I asked her if I could have her old storm windows to make cold frames -- inspired by Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest.

Frost will be coming soon here in New England so I need to get busy.

In these frames I should be able to grow cold loving vegetables -- especially greens like arugula, spinach, bok choy, parsley -- No doubt this fall / winter will be a learning year, but I'm looking forward to it!

The one remaining loaf from Karen's Homemade Bread Recipe. The problem with fabulous homemade bread ... two huge loaves disappear in 72 hours.

My yard clippings compost bin. As you can see, this three sectioned bin is made with pallets that I was able to get for free. I will put yard clippings, leaves and grass. The leaves and grass should break down so that eventually I can use it as a "leaf mold" in place of peat moss. Helpful when planting seeds. We (as you can see) have a lot of woods in the back of our property -- so excess clippings etc will go in the woods and I can transport them over for "quick" composting that I can easily turn and rotate. I have another enclosed compost bin for kitchen scraps.

Here you can see my leeks are coming along (although more slowly than I would like) and the peas that Ripley helped me to plant in late August are almost ready for picking. Are you taking advantage of second and third plantings? Growing isn't over for your garden once the tomatoes and zucchini are done ... there is so much more that you can get from your garden!

Here are my cold loving greens coming along - two kinds of romaine, bok choy, arugula, spinach and some random peas that were late comers from an earlier planting. I planted some in late August, some in Early September. A lot of the little seedlings were destroyed when we had the left over hurricanes plow through, so I had to replant.

Here are my strawberries. I planted the root crowns this spring, clipped off the blossoms and helped the daughter plants take root when they sprung from the "mother" plant. Now we can't wait for spring! Our asparagus are also looking great and are ready to go next spring. Contrary to what "they" used to say, asparagus actually do better if harvested only ONE year after planting as opposed to three years -- however the first year you can harvest every 2-3 days for 4 weeks. The following year you can harvest for a longer period of time. What an amazing plant.

Fruit Trees, Benjamin and Whole Foods

Well, over the weekend I attended a seminar given by the University of Massachusetts Amherst about growing apples organically. We live in a rural development and are regretably restricted from having chickens. When I started lamenting about where we had chosen to settle, I realized that with all of the land we have, what is to stop me from enlarging my garden space and planting some fruit trees? I've already met with a man we've used before to do various plantings to see about enlarging the number of raised beds we have and creating a mixed fruit tree "petite" orchard including apples, peaches, pears, cherries and blueberries that works with our "rural development" neighborhood. Fruit trees are known for being challenging - particularly if you are growing them organically. So, this is what the seminar was all about. Exciting! I'll keep you posted.

Just a word about Benjamin ... I've been meaning to write this for awhile now ...

Do you know that my eight year old brings home to me anything in his lunch box that is recyclable or compostable?! A boy who saw Benjamin not throwing all of the contents of his lunch box away told on Benjamin. Benjamin explained to the teacher that he was bringing these items back to recycle and compost. So, the teacher told the other boy that this was a good thing for the environment. How cool is that?!

Speaking of the enviornment ... when going through the check out line at Whole Foods last week the gal running the registers mentioned in passing that by April Whole Foods will be discontinuing the use of their plastic bags. How fabulous! I hope it's true. Go Whole Foods!!

One small bag of trash . . .

Here is Ripley standing by our one small bag of trash. We have recently made a commitment to become more "green". After discovering that our trash carrier was not recycling, we have decided to head to the dump ourselves. There, we can recycle more things, plus, with our new commitment I've found recycling homes for our "stretch" plastic bags and batteries at Whole Foods. Also, at the Seekonk Department of Works on Rt. 44 (a nearby town) I was able to purchase a compost bin (that sells online for about $100) for a mere $25. So ... with all that, in one entire week we are only generating one small tall kitchen garbage bag worth of trash! Isn't that exciting?? Before our commitment we were generating one bag a day at least -- for a family of four. I have to say I have also made an effort to choose things when I'm shopping that don't have much packaging. I've been getting things from the bulk bins at Whole Foods using paper bags since I can rip those up afterwards and put them into my compost bin. I figure the less toxic plastic I use, the better for everyone -- even if it is recycled. For those of you unfamiliar with composting, you can put organic matter into this bin and after 6 months to a year (depending on your climate and the season you start) you will have beautiful FREE fertilizer for your garden and plants. What can I put in my Compost Bin? You can put all of your fruit and vegetable scraps in there, torn up paper, cardboard, toilet paper rolls, used Kleenex, used paper towel (w/o meat, dairy, chemicals) grass clippings, non-woody garden clippings (woody clippings just take longer to decompose and should go in another pile), hair (if you cut your kids hair, as I do), egg shells, coffee grounds and filters, your old jack-o-lanterns!, and hey, when you unload your fridge of things that you didn't use before they went bad ... at least you can make great dirt out of it ... put it in your compost! Next to the trash can under our sink is the kitchen compost container that Seekonk gave to me along with my $25 composter. Cool eh?