DAY 4_PLANTS ARE SPROUTING!

18 August 2010

miles biked- 12
water used- 5.95 gallons (9.05 surplus)

day 4 seed flat

This morning I woke up to find my seeds are already sprouting!  After only 4 days!  So far, I see basil, tomatillo, edamame and cucumber sprouts.  Throughout the day, the spouts were literally growing before my eyes!  There is hope.

basil babies!

On the topic of food, I am fairly certain I live in the PERFECT location to be doing this project. I live within yelling distance of two great food resources: three blocks from the Wedge Grocery Co-op http://www.wedge.coop/ and 1 block away from Eco-Politan http://www.ecopolitan.com//  (raw foods).  I was able to meet with Marcos Lopez-Carlson at the Wedge before starting this project and he helped me outline what foods would be available and meet my criteria.  Marcos explained that I was lucky to be doing this project in August because almost everything which grows locally can be found in August at farmer's markets and at the Wedge.  I made a list today of what I saw at the Wedge, it became clear that I need to find out when the END of the growing season for many of these foods is, to avoid a total and unexpected dry out of food supply. 

cucumber baby!

baby tomotillos!

Here is what I found today that was local and organic:

_Bell Peppers
_Cucumbers
_Broccoli
_Cabbage
_Gypsy peppers
_Chard
_Yellow squash
_Zucchini
_Portabella Mush
_Edamame
_Maybe Syrup
_lots of greens
_Apples
_really expensive blueberries

BULK ITEMS:
_lots of variety of bread flours
_sunflower seeds
_rye grain
_hulled spelt kernels
_hard wheat berries
_cornmeal
_flour
_rolled rye
_oats

Basically the only bulk items which are local are grains and oats.  To be honest, I don't even know where to start with most of the grains. I guess I should start making bread. The company which supplies most of the grains is Whole Grain Milling.

http://www.wholegrainmilling.net/index.html

While this company grows some of their products locally: Oats, Hi Lysine Corn, Buckwheat, Yellow and White Popcorn, Spelt and Soybeans, the rest arrives as raw ingredients which are processed locally and distributed.  Because the concern for most people who are motivated to buy local products is to support the local economy, the Wedge's definition of 'local' reflects that.  Any company which receives raw ingredients and processes them locally can be called 'local'.  This means that even companies like Peace Coffee are defined as local.  Peace Coffee is likely the most environmentally responsible choice for coffee's in the Twin CIties because they receive green beans and do all the processing and packaging locally, meaning the product does not have to be shipped around the country to various processing and packaging plants. However, in the context of my project (in which local means minimizing transportation as much as possible) the definition doesn't necessarily apply.  This means that I need to look into each company and find out where they are sourcing their product from.  Fortunately, this is made really easy with the Wedge's website, it is amazing and totally great how transparent they have made the information about where food comes from.  

WASTE:
My compost bin is molding, I'm going to guess this is a normal thing to be happening?  Because the food is rotting to turn into compost?  I shake the container up everyday and add some newspaper shreds, any advice on this?

ELECTRICITY:
Still working out my electricity budget, mostly because I got an answer that I can't accept haha.  I spoke with Jamie Borell at Innovative Power System's in St.Paul and based on my 1790 sq ft roof he had the following advice:

"Ballpark, cocktail napkin-drawn numbers:


You can fit 6kW on the roof or (30) 200-watt solar modules, producing 600kWh/ month or 7,200kWh/ year. This solar electricity offsets 900 pounds of CO2 per month or 10,800 pounds of CO2/ year and is the equivalent of planting 720 trees"

If I'm doing the math right, it sounds like 20 kWh a day total, divided by 6 residents is 3.33 kWh/day as an energy budget.

To give you an idea of what the breakdown of electrical use I have recorded so far is:

Daily these items use:
Grow Light - 175 watts/hr (8 hours a day) = 1400 watts or 1.4 kWh
Refrigerator - 68 watts/hr (24 hours a day) = 1634.4 watts or 1.634 kWh
Computer - 27 watts/hr (8 hours a day) = 216 watts or .216 kWh

As you can see, I already log a total of 3.25 kWh/day using only the essential things.  I haven't turned on a light in four days (except for the occasional forgetful light switching) and haven't been using my stereo or TV.  I have yet to calculate the energy used from my electric stove (which is a lot), and heating is obviously not accounted for yet.  So...um... uh oh.

me in the dark :/

I haven't quite adapted to the darkness thing yet, and I have to admit that I have been using my headlamp to find things.  I wonder how hard it would be to make an solar powered LED headlamp.... Candles are difficult and annoying to carry around.  I can waste A LOT of time trying to do things without ample lighting.  Luckily, when using my computer I don't need any extra light, so my schedule has shifted somewhat to doing all the tasks I need light for during the day and working more on my computer at night.  A friend had a suggestion that I change my schedule to wake up earlier when the sun comes up to maximize the amount of daylight I have.  I am surprised every morning how much easier it is to do everything with LIGHT.  Note to self: do the dishes before it gets dark.  Oh my gosh, the things we don't appreciate.  I am looking around for any place locally that sells soy wax (suggestions?)  I can't make regular candles (paraffin wax) because paraffin is a by-product of crude oil.  Soy wax candles are supposed to burn cleaner (clearly) and last longer, we shall see...