DAY 1

DAY 1

15 AUGUST 2010

miles biked - 12
water used -  12.2625 gallons (2.7375 surplus)
3.25 kWh used (without electric stove included)

“We must face the prospect of changing of basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature.”

(Jimmy Carter)

FOOD:

First day without oil and I've already googled "where does chocolate grow".  oh man.
 

While I have a few good ideas of meals to make for myself, after only one day I'm already starting to see how limiting buying only locally is.  That is, compared to the HUGELY VAST array of foods available for our consumption from all over the world.  I have come to take advantage and be dependant on foods that 100 years ago were not even a distant thought for native Minnesotans.  Coffee, spices, teas, chocolates, tropical fruits, olive oil, avocados, citrus, the list goes on. 

For breakfast this morning I made oatmeal with the last bunch of blueberries of the season.  Oatmeal is locally grown, bought in bulk at my grocery co-op.  Luckily, I live 3 blocks away from this grocery store, which is my only resource for food besides the farmer's markets and some scattered local/organic produce found at other high-end grocery stores.  I also came to realize that possibly my only option for sugar (besides sugar found in fruit) is honey.  I made the oatmeal with milk in a returnable glass jar (Cedar Summit), and added blueberries.  I'm going to need to research how long local grains are stocked in bulk at the co-op and maybe stock-up accordingly so I don't run out of all local grains.  A also made a meal of vegetables I found at the St. Paul farmer's market yesterday.  The St. Paul market is all local vendors, though not everyone is organic so I have to ask.  I mixed together yukon gold potatoes, green bush beans, garlic, cilantro and sauteed it all in a local/organic sunflower oil.  Sunflower oil is my replacement for olive oil as most of that is imported, and, sadly, none grown locally. 

The other obstacle I will run into is although there are a wide variety of locally grown vegetables in Minnesota, our growing season is less than 5 months.  This means that unless I can, dry or freeze foods there will come a point where nothing local is available.  It is too humid to dry many foods in Minnesota, especially meats, canning takes a huge amount of energy and freezing may also be out of my "electricity budget". 

To remedy this possible dry-out of available foods I've started seeds to grow vegetables in my living room.  I have a grow table 3'x8' which sits in front of a south-facing window.  The light coming in from the window is not significant so it has to be supplemented with grow lights .  I have a fluorescent grow light which is 20,000 lumens (about 1800 foot candles).  While this may seem like a lot, the comparative light that vegetables get outside is 50,000 foot candles.  The most efficient grow lights are metal halide and high pressure sodium (HPS), however, they use an ENORMOUS amount of energy, and would overtake my electricity quota.  With advising from Interior Gardens (an excellent interior growing store in NE) I was pointed towards fluorescent lights.  It is questionable whether these lights will be bright enough to grow certain vegetables, but the greens and herbs should get sufficient light. 

I spent last night starting my seeds.  To avoid using lots of plastic seed trays I am making soil blocks from a "soil blocker" mold.  I started 50 seedlings, an assortment of the following:

_Basil

_Cilantro

_Lemon Balm

_Romaine Lettuce

_Arugula

_Rosemary

_Green Beans

_Tomatoes

_Cucumbers

_Jalapenos

_Collard Greens

_Spinach

_Tomatillos

_Soybeans

_Onion

The germination period on the vegetables and herbs is 5-8 days and the greens take 10-14 days.  Hopefully in a week or so I'll see some sprouts!

WASTE:

On another note, I've been composting for 2 days now, a last oil-world meal cooked last night resulted in almost a gallon of compost, which means I may end up with a lot.  My homemade composter is two rubber tubs stacked on top of each other, the top tub is shorter than the bottom one and has small holes drilled in the bottom to allow for drainage into the "catchment" tub beneath it.  The tub is covered with a lid. I'm mixing in newspaper with the compost and debating getting worms.  It sounds like worms create better quality compost for use in soil and compost faster...advice is welcome.

ELECTRICITY:

I've spent a part of the day calculating energy usage for various appliances around the house.  I'm using a "Kill-A-Watt" meter to count up kWh over time, which I can then calculate watts/hr.  In a spreadsheet I'm keeping, I'll be keeping track of all electrical use to make sure I don't go beyond my hypothetical solar array limit (still to be determined).

_laptop computer 27 watts/hr of use

_large fridge 68 watts/hr (continuous)

_grow light 175 watts/hr (8 hrs a day)

The grow light is a huge energy suck, I'll also be calculating energy used by my electric stove, radio and lights around the house. I avoided using lights all day because I'm unsure what my quota is at this point.

HEALTH + HYGIENE

Everything today has taken about 4 times as long as it typically does.  Everything I did I had to think about how I was going to go about it.  We confirmed the square footage of my house last night as 1791 sq ft, thus harvesting 120 gallons a day (average rainfall) (see calculation on first post).  This leaves me with exactly 15 gallons a day to use.  I filled a 15 gallon rain barrel this morning which has a pump.  This is a good way to store all my day's water but makes it difficult to use for various purposes (hand washing in bathroom, showering)  This morning I took my first 1 gallon bucket shower and had plenty to spare.  I imagine most day's I will be able to use 1 gallon for showering and at least once or twice a week use about 5.  Water was cold.  Below is a quick illustration of my current and post showering situations.  Most conventional bath products are made with at least one of the following: Petroleum based: fragrances, colors, preservatives.  They are all packaged in plastic.  Even my washing tool (loofah) itself is plastic.  My new showering method includes locally made soap (with no petroleum additives) I can buy this soap (Bryn Mawr) without any packaging at my co-op (The Wedge).  Today I had to use my old loofah but eventually I'll have a natural sponge (pictured is my roommate karli's -don't worry, I didn't really use it)

I'll end this post with a tribute to a fabulous beverage.  One which has been there to support me in times of need, but, at least for the next 100 days, will no longer be a part of my life. 

Iced Latte, you will be missed.