Salt from the Earth

Try Chicken Keeping. . . But Put Away the Blankets and Towels

by Laura Parker Roerden

Best Investments in Sustainability

Many of us have seen movies like Food, Inc or others and learned horror stories about the antibiotic and hormone laden poulty coming out factory farms. Yet buying chicken and pastured-eggs at Whole Foods can be quite expensive. If you care about your food and where it comes from, consider raising your own–even if you only have a small backyard in which to do it. Not only will you be able to benefit of controlling how your food is raised, you’ll be embarking on one of the greatest adventures of your lifetime.

Even though our fifth generation farm was once a poultry farm, I did not come to chicken keeping easily. A famous story in our family is of the littlest grandchild (ME) collecting eggs in our double-decker chicken barn. My father always laughed whenever he told the story of me chucking eggs from a distance into the wire frame basket, breaking a couple dozen eggs in a few particularly hard flung tosses. But I recall him being pretty angry at the time. I myself think I just had a brilliant sense for conserving energy when farming, or perhaps an even better sense for how to get out of farm duties.

My nephew and our fifth-generation farmer Ed was the one who reintroduced chickens to our farm. At the outset we purchased twenty-five Rhode Island Red chicks from our local feed store because it was the breed my grandparents had kept. Rhode Island Reds are good layers and bred for the long New England winters.

grandfatherinfield — My grandfather free-ranging his Rhode Island Reds (RIR) and Leghorns. He preferred the RIRs, which lay brown eggs, but kept the Leghorns because some of his customers insisted on white eggs.

The first year, we kept our young chickens inside our farm’s big red barn with a small concrete-based chicken wire enclosure to qualify as outdoor space. Despite the fact that our farm had once supplied eggs and poultry to the entire Blackstone Valley, we were hopeless novices.

I remember that first fall noticing that a lone hen had gotten out and was roaming my vegetable garden. I panicked. I could imagine hawks circling and was pretty sure that with dusk setting in our young chicken would not make it through the night. (I had watched enough Looney Tunes cartoons as a child to know the dangers.)

I enlisted our babysitter and children to help. There was utter pandemonium as all five of us ran around our yard and hayfields with towels and sheets, flinging them at the terrified bird as she ran for cover under brush.

It was almost dark when I announced that we were giving up. The hen could not be caught. We all went back in to the farmhouse where I poured myself a glass of red wine and pondered the fox or hawk that would soon also be having dinner. I was sautéing onions when I glanced out the kitchen window to see the escapee Rhode Island Red casually cross the street to the red barn. She was putting herself back in for the night.

I laughed out load. In that moment I learned that it’s true: chickens do actually literally come home to roost. From then on we allowed our chickens to roam our pastures and yard freely, knowing that they would always come back at dark.

But I had also learned an even more important lesson:

You can take expensive chicken keeping workshops and order fancy chicken coops online. But the best way to learn about chickens is by keeping them.

So if you have been thinking about having some backyard chickens, just do it!

Here are some very simple guidelines I can offer:

Build your own coop Chicken coops need not be expensive; they simply need to provide shelter from the elements and a place to roost and lay eggs. So build your own. Here are some inspired ideas for upcycling and to get your creativity flowing.

Buy Sexlinks or have a plan for re-homing roosters You can buy baby chicks through your local feed store such as Tractor Supply or online in the spring. You will receive the chicks when they are only a day old, which means that your supplier will be sorting the chickens by sex when they first born. Even though you can order all females; it’s likely that your supplier will make some mistakes and you will receive at least one or two roosters with your run. Many towns have ordinances that forbid roosters because they might be considered a nuisance to your neighbors, so consider ordering Sexlinks (a breed of chickens in which females and males are entirely different colors, thereby virtually guaranteeing females) and as a backup have a plan on how to re-home your roosters. Or if you can keep roosters in your community, consider doing so! There are many benefits to having a few roos in your flock.

Free-range or provide an enclosed yard with both dirt and grass access Pasture-raised eggs are so much healthier for us, because of the diet the chickens are eating outdoors. You’ll want to provide your hens with a habitat that has worms, insects, and sufficient dirt for the birds to take “dirt baths”— an important part of their hygiene. For a complete discussion on the benefits of pasture-raised eggs, see Pass the Pastured-Eggs, Please.

If you sell your eggs, sell them at competitive prices THIS might be the most important advice I can offer. Chance are if you’re thinking about keeping backyard chickens, you’re a friend of the local-vore movement. So don’t undercut professional farmers in your area by offering your eggs at a lower price just because you “only need to cover your expenses.” You’ll be doing more harm than good by out competing the local food providers, who are likely struggling to keep in the game.

And lastly: Put away the blankets and towels. Your chickens will thank you for it.

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Laura Parker Roerden is the founding director of Ocean Matters and the former managing editor of Educators for Social Responsibility and New Designs for Youth Development. She serves on the boards of Women Working for Oceans (W20) and Earth,

A Love Letter to Baking Soda

by Mary McDonald

Best Investments in Sustainability

My first encounters with baking soda happened, of course, in my mother’s kitchen. Whenever my mother was getting ready to bake, it was my job to help her gather all of the ingredients. Cinnamon, cloves, sugar, vanilla, baking powder,baking soda. I had no idea what baking soda did, or why it was different from baking powder. I was kind of fascinated with both. The baking powder was almost silvery-white, fluffy, with that nifty top that helped you level your measuring spoon.

Baking soda by contrast, was its gritty, rough and tough cousin. The box had a picture of a huge, muscled arm about to swing a hammer, a strange visual for something that was necessary for baking banana bread. You would think a baking ingredient would have a picture of a cake, or an apron, or a spoon. But, no, there it was, a defiantly masculine visage nestled among all things floury and sweet and spicy.

It looks like the folks at Arm and Hammer knew a few things about their product that I didn’t back then. Far more than a leavening agent for baking, baking soda or natron, its pure mineral form, has been used for thousands of years. Back in ancient Egypt it was used as a cleaner and as part of the mummification process.

The baking soda we are familiar with today came into use in the 1840’s. In modern times, baking soda was used to clean 100 years of grime off the Statue of Liberty. Baking soda has also been used to aid environmental clean-up efforts. People have used to it to decontaminate soil, neutralize the effects of acid rain in lakes, and decrease air pollution in factory smokestacks. How’s that for muscle?

One the home front, baking soda is a non-toxic, inexpensive alternative to a host of cleaning and personal care products. Leslie Reichert, says in her book, The Joy of Green Cleaning, that baking soda was one of only four products her great-grandmother used to clean. It plays a starring role in many of her non-toxic cleaning recipes. Dirty oven? No need for toxic, aerosol cleaners- baking soda and vinegar do the trick. Carpet needs refreshing? A little sprinkle of baking soda before vacuuming neutralizes odors.

Lest you mistake me for something I am NOT, let me assure you, I hate cleaning and domestic chores in general. Nobody will ever mistake me for a domestic goddess. Cooking, cleaning, gardening-I am half-assed at best. The idea of green living lights my fire, though, so I am pretty revved about baking soda as something that helps us live greener, cheaper and more simply.

Again, Pioneer Woman I am not. I can make homemade cleaning recipes, but only if they are super simple. More than three ingredients and you’ve lost me. If I can make these kind of changes, anyone can do it! I have replaced shelves full of toxic cleaners with a few, large boxes of baking soda.

My go-to baking soda cleaner recipe is:

Baking soda
A few drops of essential oil (anything you love)

Remember I said no more than three ingredients? A lot of people recommend tea tree oil, because it helps with mildew and mold. I use orange essential oil because the scent seems to be have energizing, uplifting effect.

Here are some ways I use this mixture on a regular basis (Ooh, wait! Is that a latent Hestia, goddess of the hearth, emerging? Nah. More like Artemis. I just want to save the wild forests!)

Cleaning

Stainless steel sinks

Stainless steel sinks seem to cling to smells and scrubbing with baking soda gets them clean, clean, clean! I spray hydrogen peroxide afterwards and let it sit for a few minutes to kill germs. Voila! Even a half-assed cleaning slacker can do this.

Drains

For some reason, the sink in one of our bathrooms periodically gives off a God-awful stink when we run the water. It’s disgusting. I have to take the stopper out and scrub the drain with a bottle brush. You don’t want a visual on this, trust me! It doesn’t stay clean long. I hate this chore, but I resigned myself to getting it done when it’s needed. Recently, I tried the baking soda-orange oil mixture. I poured it down the drains and let it sit for several hours. I can’t believe it, but it’s been weeks and that gross smell hasn’t come back.

Bathrooms

Weirdly, I get kind of a kick out of the fact that I can take a shower and then clean afterwards it with my baking soda mix and not worry that bleach or some other neurotoxins are seeping into my skin. Or, that I could scrub the tub with baking soda, run a bath in my newly cleaned tub, and even add a little baking soda to the water, which can be good for a lot of skin and gynecological issues. (Note that there are several reasons NOT to put baking soda in the tub, like being pregnant or having diabetes, so definitely check with your doctor.) I am gearing up to teach my kids how to clean the bathroom this way. Never in a million years would I have them clean with conventional cleaners and 1) breathe in the fumes or 2) expose their skin to the chemicals. With baking soda, I wouldn’t worry. They’ll probably think it’s fun-win-win!

Laundry

Depending on the type of washing machine you have, you can use baking soda to add a boost to your laundry cleaner. In my old washing machine, I put it right in the washing tub. With a newer model, I add it to the bleach compartment. Baking soda is especially good for getting towels smelling fresh. (You know, because nobody picks up their wet, crumpled towels from the floor.)

Personal Care Uses

Brushing your teeth

If you look at the ingredients, you’ll find that baking soda is in a lot of commercial toothpastes because it’s effective at removing plaque and germs. You can save a lot of money by making up your own paste, or going the slacker route and tapping a fingerful of baking soda on your toothbrush and thinning it with a little water.

Skin care

As mentioned above, you can use baking soda in the bath to help with certain conditions. It makes your skin really feel clean and silky. It can be used as a face cleaner or even a blackhead remover. This stuff is unreal!

Washing your hair

In a pinch, you can even mix baking soda with a little water and wash your hair with it. There are those who say washing your hair with baking soda regularly isn’t a good idea (and others who swear by it), that it can strip it too much of the natural oils. I’m not willing to take risks with my hair and do it long term, but the few times I have done it, my hair has felt spectacularly clean. Like I said, in a pinch.

How About You?

The list of possible uses for baking soda goes on and on. Cleaning car batteries, freshening up stinky shoes, insect repellent, ……. you name it. What will you use it for?

Mary McDonald is a writer and educator living in Central Massachusetts. You can find her at linkedin/marymcdonald or Good Green News.

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Fire and Ice

By Laura Parker Roerden

I hate spring. It feels freeing to admit that. When you live in a cold clime, there is too much social pressure to triumph spring’s return as if it were the 2^nd coming of Jesus Himself, sliding in on a gaudy skateboard wearing a magnolia wreath and tossing chocolate coins to all the good children.

My mother died in the spring. The next day the forsythia along our garage exploded into riotous golden bloom. My father also died in the spring. The greening of the pasture that year heralded the beginning of a battle against weeds; there were no cows to graze it.

Then my brother died a few springs later, four days after the anniversary of our mother’s death. Huge flocks of geese landed that year in the hayfield destroying any chance of second-cut hay. My brother was not there to chase them away. That’s just as well.

By the time my nephew had repaired all of the haying equipment by himself it was nearly fall. He set out with his brother and a few friends and hayed the slanted field for the first time without his father as the light slid low on the horizon, which matched our moods at the time.

Today is the first day of spring. To mark it, I walked the river with a dear friend I’ve known since grade school. The blazing sun projected skeletal shadows from the trees on the white canvas of snow-cover and still partially frozen ice, giving everything an exaggerated architectural feel that nearly propped me up as we walk.

Busy chatting, we stop when we notice two wood peckers drilling holes for their nests in a call and response pattern that felt less like a territorial move and more like an attempt to erase loneliness. If not for the warmth of the sun, which lit the remaining dried grass peaking above the snow across the meadows as if it was on fire, there would be no sign that it was, in fact, now officially spring.

I’ve always assumed I hated spring because of the losses I have experienced during it. But today something different is afoot. I am comforted by the fire from above and the ice below, as if holding these two extremes is easier than swinging into a field of riotous blooms when your heart is still shattered. It’s not a flip of a switch, or turn on the earth’s axis, that allows us to get to spring, but the long march of winter itself.

It has taken me more than a half century to get it. You cannot have Easter without surrendering to the long march of death that is Lent. If you wait until Thursday, when Christ is betrayed, to prepare for Sunday, when He rises, you won’t get there in time. I know that for a fact. The razor’s edge between the dark and light can be skated, but only within the larger cavern created by tending our broken hearts.

A friend just posted that her mother has had an additional 16 years since today’s anniversary of a stem cell replacement that saved her life. I read this as I grapple with the 15-year anniversary of my mother’s loss of her own battle with cancer.

I do not shrug the coincidence of these two events off. I have at times been sanguine about those years without my mom; but I’ve also been jealous of the time my friends have had with their mothers that I have not. For today, I will settle into the gap and hold my friend’s celebration with joy while also holding my loss with pain and welcome the advent of spring in a field of snow.

Surrendering does not always mean we come up empty handed. Sometimes it means we simply hold two extremes.

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Laura Parker Roerden is the founding director of Ocean Matters and the former managing editor of Educators for Social Responsibility and New Designs for Youth Development. She serves on the boards of Women Working for Oceans (W20) and Earth, Ltd. and is a member of the Pleiades Network of Women.

The Quest

by Laura Parker Roerden

Photo © Brian Skerry. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

You can find just about anything you could dream
in an ocean. Tiny horses

holding on by prehensile tails to flat vines
that float upwards and shimmer in sunlight like cities.

Red squid that fly with vampire wings
and shoot out light orbs to stun predator or prey.
A flat ray with a saw.

It won’t surprise you
at all then to learn of a swimming unicorn
whale: the narwhal.

Swords drawn, several narwhales move as one.
It’s impossible

to know what they seek,
but something in their quickening suggests
a quest,

as strips of Arctic ice fall away around them like sunburnt
skin shedding. They move in now oddly open ocean.

There’s no place
to hide from killer whales;

no escape from our hand.

If we follow them
we’d see:

that everywhere we suffer from wounds
in need of healing.

The Fisher King himself, we are told,
guards a Holy Grail
in a vast wasteland of destruction;

where seas now rise.

Is it any wonder why
the narwhals are headed there, too?
Or perhaps

they have already arrived.

Are they trying to show us that we should come too?

For surely their quest is our own:
for a home where towers of ice
do not tumble down around us.

—where we heed a wild call
for hearts and heroes to wake.

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About the Photo by Brian Skerry
Sea ice and ice floe edge around Navy Board Inlet, Baffin Island in the high arctic of Canada. At this time of year (June) the ice begins to break up and wildlife become more plentiful with animals such as seals, narwhals, bowhead whales and polar bears feeding in the rich waters. Climate change is having an effect on this region, with ice melting earlier during many recent years. (Pristine Seas expedition team working/filming documentary)

An Un-Poem About the Falling Snow

by Laura Parker Roerden

1. I woke up this morning with the phrase, “something uplifting” in my mind, then saw that among the snowfall out my window many snowflakes were rising up on unseen currents.

2. I’m sure a mathematician could help us understand the exact preponderance that falls at a predictable speed to their place on the ground.

3. And a scientist, God bless, could scan our brains to see the landscape of light that begins the chain of chemical reactions that soothes our fraught hearts.

4. If the scientist and mathematician were together drinking wine they might tumble upon fractal geometry rooted in our genetic evolution to explain this, and in days of computation arrive at formulas and the universal concepts of negative and infinite variables that hold the ideas together like gravity.

5. In all of their graceful complexity, they would simply be explaining our heart’s shape is rooted at core to the natural world.

6. That if everything expands and can be plotted on bells, the only thing keeping us from flying apart on rising and falling currents is this singular fact shrouded as mystery.

7. That even simple snow when it falls is able to call us home.

(Inspired by dinner with a scientist, mathematician, musician and writer.)

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Pass the Pastured-Eggs, Please!

Best Investments in Sustainability

by Laura Parker Roerden

What kind of eggs should you buy? Most of us make the decision standing in the grocery aisle, the refrigerator door open scanning cartons with claims like “cage-free,” “organic,” “antibiotic free” and the ever-confusing “natural,” while we mentally calculate how much more we are spending for the eggs that sound healthier and more humane and asking ourselves: is it really worth it?

While a complete discussion of the real meaning behind these labels is helpful to every consumer, I’d like to make the case for pasture-raised eggs. Pasture-raised eggs are those lain by chickens that are given free-range access to actual pastures. Some are driven around in what are called “chicken-tractors,” which conjures up images of hilarious antics. But a chicken tractor is really just a wagon that can hold many chickens at a time for flexible transport and shelter. Hens transported by chicken tractors are allowed to roam an area of grassland that is rotated, assuring that high volumes of hens do not ruin the area. The chickens get what they need in terms nutrition, but they also leave their droppings as a natural fertilizer before moving on to greener, and (now rotated) pastures.

Hens that are raised on healthy grassland in the fresh air and sunshine have all of the benefits of eating as nature intended birds to eat: they have free choice access to worms, insects, seeds. These nutrients the hen eats end up concentrated in the egg itself. You could say that the birds are transferring healthy nutrients from the soil and mother earth directly to you through their eggs.

Pastured-eggs are EGG-cellent.Their large dark orange yolks even LOOK healthier, because they are. Their color, flavor and texture are made distinctive by high amounts of Vitamin A, D, E, K2, B-12, folate, riboflavin, zinc, calcium, beta carotene, choline, and tons of omega 3 fatty acids, including DHA, EPA, ALA, and AA. A pasture-raised egg is a true superfood.

Scientists are increasingly looking at open grassland/pastureland as one of the many promising solutions to global warming. Effectively managed agricultural grassland takes carbon out of the atmosphere and puts it back in the ground. Why not give farmers a boost whose efforts to raise animals on pasture are often the only thing keeping land that takes carbon out of the atmosphere from being developed?

Your search for the best possible egg might even bring you to join a CSA or develop a relationship with a local farm, where you can be reconnected to the rhythms of light and nature that have sustained our bodies and psyches for millennia.

Waiting for first eggs can feel like waiting for a pot to boil. The days shorten, the shadows lengthen. Just as darkness descends, the eggs arrive in a blast of nature’s promise of spring.

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4 Reasons it’s High Season to Buy an Electric Vehicle (EV)

by Laura Parker Roerden

Best Investments in Sustainability

Last Memorial Day our family finally replaced our 15-year old premium-gas guzzling car. You could say that it was high time! But it was also an opportunity to think out of the box about our transportation needs and the challenges facing our planet. We bought an electric vehicle (EV): the Chevy Bolt. In those fifteen years, a lot changed in regards to transportation options. Here are four reasons to consider an EV this season.

IT’S CHEAPER THAN A CONVENTIONAL CAR

We knew we wanted to reduce our carbon footprint, but until we started shopping we hadn’t realized how much money we could also save by no longer having to gas up. It turns out that free EV chargers are everywhere! Who knew? We are eight months and 12,000 miles in and have yet to pay a penny for energy. By the end of a year of operating, we estimate we will have wracked up $1,200-$1,500 in gas savings alone. Also see details of federal tax credits (up to $7,500) and any offered by your state. For more explanation about how the total cost of ownership (TCO) is much lower on EVs than in conventional gasoline powered cars see this article.

A cost comparison that does not even factor in tax incentives, which are a big boost of $10,000 tax credits in MA.

IT’S SUPRISINGLY FUN

The EV experience has turned out to be a surprisingly great ride and fun lifestyle. A large network of EV owners offer their own garages as plug ins to other owners travelling through Plug Share. So becoming an EV owner is a bit like owning a Harley-Davidson motorcycle: you find yourself suddenly part of a large community of people with whom you share something in common.

Chargepoint, an easy-to-use app for your phone lists free and pay chargers along the routes that you are travelling. I’ve occasionally combined errands with opportunities to charge, discovering in the process wonderful treasures. I’ve been to new libraries where I’ve read books I wouldn’t have otherwise. Or I’ve ended up at an unfamiliar family-owned cafe where the new vantage helped me work more effectively on a project. You can also slide right into premium spaces in busy places like the beach on a hot day, where you can re-charge both your own and your car’s batteries. Lastly, strangers everywhere strike up conversations with you about your ride. They really should add this part of the experience to the brochure. It’s been the best part of EV ownership!

And if you have range anxiety, consider that EV ownership more accurately resembles owning a cell phone. We are in the habit of nightly charging, which means we always have a full tank. For most trips, this is more than sufficient charge.

END OF THE YEAR IS PERFECT TIMING

If you’re in need of a new car there is no better time than right now to consider either purchasing or leasing an EV. Leases start at $139/month, and can be researched through Massachusetts Energy Consumer Alliance, which offers everything you need to shop for a discounted car on their website including handy comparisons. Also, both federal ($7,500) tax incentives are still available.

New Years Eve and New Years Day is traditionally one of the best times of the year to buy a car, with discounts ranging from 7-9% as car manufacturers are incentivized to move inventory and meet both quarterly and annual sales goals.

4. YOU’LL BE LOWERING YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

For the chorus of naysayers who might say, “But the energy you’re charging your car with is also dirty,” the answer is: nowhere near as dirty as a gas car. For a complete discussion of the environmental impact of EVs cradle to grave, see this well-researched article from the Union of Concerned Scientists. And since the devil is in the details, the UCS also offers an interactive online tool that compares the EV you are thinking of buying to conventional gas and hybrid options using the energy grid mix specific to your zip code. Here is the data on how our Chevy Bolt compares:

There’s plenty of reason to believe that 2020 will be a great year for EVs, with more and more models joining the marketplace. Mass Energy’s Dive Green Program Coordinator Anna Vanderspek had this to say: ““After running Drive Green with Mass Energy for a couple years now, we are looking forward to an exciting 2020! Lots of people have gotten excellent deals on cars like the Chevrolet Bolt and Volt and Nissan LEAF so far, and we are excited for the new electric cars coming on the market.”

We’ve recently installed solar panels on our barn so that we can charge the car and power our house with the sun. Growing up on a farm, I think I’ve always appreciated the way the sun grew the hay and corn that fed the cows that produced the high-butter fat milk used to make the butter and ice cream our wholesaler supplied to area homes. Driving a vehicle also powered by the sun is oddly reconnecting to those ancient rhythms and relationships.

In a nod to that history, we bought our Bolt in what we like to refer to as Jo-Erl Farm Blue—so our car matches our tractor. While that coordination might not be on your car shopping list, we hope you’ll now look into an EV as a best investment in sustainability.

Haying equipment in the field at Jo-Erl Farm

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Wrappin’ It Up

Best Investments in Sustainability

by Maria Dee

We don’t wrap Christmas presents. To tell you that this started as an earth-friendly initiative would be a lie. During the Christmas season of 2010, I had a 9-year old, a 4-year old, and an 11-month old. My husband and I had a Christmas Eve routine that worked with two kids: we would stay awake after the kids would go to bed, and while they slept, we would assemble toys and wrap presents. We usually had some drinks and dessert, listening to Christmas music or watching the “A Christmas Story” marathon. At some point we’d split up to wrap each other’s gifts, and then we’d finish the night admiring the mountain of presents under the tree.

And then our 3rd child came, and I knew that was all over. I had never been so tired in my entire life. Wouldn’t the kids be just as happy to receive presents if they were UNwrapped? Those kids never slept past 6AM, and with the excitement of Christmas they’d wake up at 5. I was so tired that my eyeballs throbbed, and I just wanted to throw those toys into a sack and get myself to bed.

Lightbulb. Grab-bag, the Christmas edition!! So I’m sorry, Mother Earth. This was totally about me and catching some Zzzzzz.

These cute bags can be purchased on Etsy by clicking on the pic.

But it does turn out to be a win for Mother Earth.

Would you believe that between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we create 25% more garbage, equalling about 25 million tons of waste? Only a fastidious few of gift recipients will open the packages delicately without tearing it, with the intention of reusing it for another gift. Paper gift bags and tissue are only marginally more likely to be saved and used another time. Cloth sacks are reusable, year after year. And isn’t that the image that many of us have of Santa, a sack thrown over his shoulder as he heads down the chimney, the sacks of toys piled up in his reindeer-drawn sleigh?

In 2010, I spent $50 on 5 large cloth sacks. I have not bought Christmas wrapping paper since then. Some friends, inspired by the idea, made their own out of fabric or pillow cases, and then gave me some, too! When I am unsure about getting a gift sack back, like at a Secret Santa or for teacher gifts, I reach under my bed for the remaining rolls of Christmas wrap that are, yes, 7 years old.

Christmas morning in my house is just as festive as it ever has been. We tag the presents with the kids’ names, and the kids take turns reaching into the bags and giving the gift to its recipient. Each year, though, I am stunned at the amount of trash still created—factory packaging is full of plastic and cardboard, and both the recycling and trash bins are piled high. But the trash would be 25% higher without that effort.

Maria Dee lives in Boston with her husband and three children. She’s an accidental environmentalist, a result of focusing on every day ways to reduce waste without sacrificing convenience, too much money, and her sense of humor. She also pretends she can sing, take photos, and make a difference in Boston politics.

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Beeswax Food Cloth

Best Investments in Sustainability

by Guest Blogger Bonnie Combs

“Plastic is Drastic,” said a local fourth-grader working on a poster to promote plastic bag recycling at her school. Along with startling images of sea turtles negatively impacted by plastic pollution and plastic bags caught in tree branches blowing in the wind, those words could not be truer. I got to meet this inspiring girl while giving a presentation on recycling at her school and they have stuck with me.

My commitment to plastic recycling (truthfully it’s more more like plastic avoidance), kicked up a few notches a couple of years ago when I attended a Keep America Beautiful conference and crossed paths with a representative from Trex, who was promoting their recycling program for plastic bags and plastic film. It was a watershed moment for me when I learned that those recycling bins at the entrance to your local supermarket accepted not only the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag, but all kinds of plastic film, known as stretchy plastic and includes products such as bubble wrap, newspaper bags, product overwrap (from things like paper towels and bottled water), food storage bags, bread bags and similar products. Trex works with many retailers in collecting this plastic and makes lumber products with it.

It should be noted that these plastic bags and film must be clean and dry in order to come into contact with food and to be recycled. The next best step is to find something reusable, so that it does not end up in the trash bin. Using a food-safe plastic storage container is one good idea, but did you know that you can call on the bees to help you cover certain dishes that do not have lids?

Beeswax food cloth is trending now among people concerned about their environmental impact and also the effect that plastic has on our own health. It takes just two ingredients: cotton cloth and beeswax to create an all-natural food wrap that can be used over and over again.

Image from Bee Kind Wraps. Follow on FB at https://www.facebook.com/beekindwraps/

In my travels this summer, I purchased a beautiful package of beeswax food cloth at an artisan fair and decided I was going to learn how to make it myself. I clipped it to my fridge for inspiration and when the holidays started rolling around, I decided it was time. After watching several videos and reading tutorials on the subject, I settled on a no-fuss version of baking it in the oven.

On Thanksgiving morning, while everyone was baking holiday pies and posting pictures of their delicious creations, I posted my pictures of baking cotton cloth with beeswax. Along with sweet potato rolls that I baked and wrapped in a linen towel and an apple torte that I packed in cake carrier, I had made some delicious cranberry apple chutney and purchased a beautiful bowl that sat on a pedestal at a local consignment shop with the intention of leaving it for the host where we were going for a Friendsgiving dinner. The bowl didn’t have a lid and I knew I wasn’t going to show up with plastic wrap over the bowl, so the night before I put my 100% cotton fabric through the wash to prepare for the making of the beeswax wrap.

How to Make Beeswax Wrap

The process is simple.

Warm an oven up to no more than 195 degrees Fahrenheit and line a baking pan with parchment paper.
Cut your prewashed 100% cotton fabric into desired size and shape and lay it onto the baking pan.
For the beeswax, you can purchase a block and shave it with a cheese grater or you can buy beeswax pellets. I settled on the pellets for ease of use and sprinkled them on, being mindful to evenly distribute them overthe cloth. You don’t need to cover the entire cloth as the beeswax melts and is quickly absorbed by the cloth.
It’s almost magical to watch through the oven door. Within 10 minutes, the cloth is wet with the melted beeswax and you can remove the pan from the oven. Inspect to make sure all the edges and areas of the cloth are covered. Carefully pick up the cloth from the edges and hang from a makeshift clothesline until dry, which is just about two minutes.

The new beeswax coated cloth responds to the heat in your hands and will gently encapsulate what you are try to cover, be it a round bowl, or a piece of cranberry nut bread that you want to share with a friend.

To care for your food cloth, gently rinse in cool water (never hot as the wax will melt). You can use a mild soap if needed and hang to try. I should point out that you can also reuse the parchment paper. You will have droplets of melted beeswax on your parchment-lined pan and they will quickly harden. Just save the paper until your next use and place the cloth over them. They will melt again into your next piece of fabric!

Sharing food has become even more fun now that I have made my own beeswax food cloth! And now you can too!

Just in time for the holidays, Bonnie is offering beeswax food wraps for just $5.00 (plus shipping). “Bee the Change” and order yours today!

Bonnie Combs lives in Blackstone, MA, and is the Marketing Director at Blackstone Heritage Corridor, Inc., where she also manages the non-profit’s Trash Responsibly™ program. Bonnie works with the 25 communities within the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor on litter cleanups and provide recycling education and events. When she’s not working, she is usually sewing up reusable shopping bags made from seed, feed and grain bags. She also gives workshops on how to make them. Most recently she has started making zippered storage pouches made from upholstery samples that were destined for the landfill by a major retailer. You can follow her journey on Facebook at Bird Brain Designs by Bonnie.

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Cloth Everyday

by Guest Blogger Sarah Harrison Roy of Running Girl Eats

Best Investments in Sustainability

Cloth napkins: why even bother to write about something so ordinary?

Well, to me there’s nothing ordinary about cloth napkins. To me, they are gorgeous works of art that lighten up and decorate the kitchen table. To me, they are an outstanding way to save money and our gorgeous forests. To me, they are a way I nurture myself, my family, and give meals a special ritual and celebratory feel.

I grew up using cloth napkins as there was no such thing as a paper napkin at the time, at least not to my knowledge, and my mother NEVER would have used paper napkins at our kitchen table.

I grew up in a house of hanging laundry, homemade bread, and lots and lots of canning from the gigantic garden we grew out back. My mother sewed our clothes, my father built our dollhouses and furniture, and my mother prided herself on re-using everything that came into our home.

She made our meals special. We set the table with silver for each meal, matching place settings, placemats or table cloth, and of course beautiful napkins.

I still use cloth napkins at my kitchen table. I use those same dishes and placemats, as they were handed down to me at my wedding. I learned to make meals feel special; to make the meal a time for the family to gather together. To talk and listen to each other. To share about the day and enjoy the homemade food at the table. We sit and slow down. We put our phones away and shut the computers off. We join together to share what was good about the day and possibly what wasn’t so good. We laugh, we give each other high-fives, and we offer support.

The dishes, placemats, and napkins are symbols that tell my family it’s time to settle down and come together. By using these items, I’m able to give our meals some history and ritual.

Using cloth napkins makes our meals just that much more special and in the process I’m able to do my little part in saving a few trees. Using cloth doesn’t take much effort. Simply wash, hang dry in the sun, and re-use. It’s that easy. If everyone used cloth at their meals, just think of all the trees and money that could be saved.

Why not add a special ritual to your family meals and put a few cents back in your wallet at the same time? Do something good for you and for our Mother Earth. I purchased some of these gorgeous napkins on Etsy.com. Go take a peak.

About Sarah Harrison Roy and Running Girl Eats

Holistic Nutrition Coach Licensed * Institute for Integrative Nutrition, MBA * Simmons College

My goal is to help people move beyond emotional eating and to healthier more desirable habits.

I combine philosophies of a few great experts, licensing as a Holistic Nutrition Coach, and a lifetime of experience in my own battle with emotional eating, anorexia, and addiction. I offer to you what has worked for me and my clients. Together we get to the root cause of your eating struggles.

No more dieting, depriving, calorie counting, product testing, disappointment, and distress around what we see as our lack of willpower.

I choose to see that our eating struggles exist as a doorway into the other areas of our life that need love and attention. Our struggles with emotional eating habits shine a light on what we can learn and change in order to feel more life satisfaction in our relationships, career, physical body, and spiritual world.

Please visit my website at Running Girl Eats and schedule an Introduction if you would like to get to know me better and hear more about how I can help you.

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