Our current version of daylight savings time ends the first sunday of November (November 2 this year) at 2:00 am local daylight time, which becomes 1:00 am local standard time. Daylight time will resume the second Sunday in March, March 8, 2009, at 2:00 am local time. Our current verison became law in 2005. Many countries observe some kind of “summer time” and most of the US observes daylight savings time expect for Hawall and parts of Arizona. A recent hold out, Indiana began observing DST in 2006. (Photo credit: ghewgill creative commons via Flickr)
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Living small makes CNN
Bill and Sharon Kastrinos move to a small space is featured on Friday’s CNN, along with a link to accompanying “iReports” from citizen journalists about their move to smaller living. The CNN story also makes the connection to Jay Shafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House. Shafer has recently been on a road show with his design.
The story does capture one essence of smaller living:
By sizing down, he says he’s living on a total of $15,000 a year. He doesn’t have to worry about not making a mortgage payment and gets to work a job that he enjoys.
“Living in a small house has allowed me to do what I love doing, which is designing more small houses,” he says.
He, too, has purged junk and other items, donating most of it to the Salvation Army and to friends. “It does feel good,” he says. “I don’t miss the extra books, the extra clothes I never wore.”
If you can’t go all organic, go this far
Our friends at WiseBread picked up this story that originates with the Environmental Working Group listing the pesticide load of produce in a simple to follow chart. The group bases it’s list on research:
The produce ranking was developed by analysts at the not-for-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) based on the results of nearly 43,000 tests for pesticides on produce collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2000 and 2005.
The worst five:
|
1 (worst) |
Peaches |
100 (highest pesticide load) |
|
2 |
Apples |
96 |
|
3 |
Sweet Bell Peppers |
86 |
|
4 |
Celery |
85 |
|
5 |
Nectarines |
84 |
and the best five:
|
41 |
Mango |
9 |
|
42 |
Pineapples |
7 |
|
43 |
Sweet Corn-Frozen |
2 |
|
44 |
Avocado |
1 |
|
45 (best) |
Onions |
1 (lowest pesticide load) |
Photo credit : Pamela Heywood (Secret Tenerife)
Gardening Question: Garlic mustard weed
Is garlic mustard weed edible?
The young leaves of garlic mustard weed are edible as salad greens and are high in vitamins A and C. Mustard weed was brought to America by early settlers, who used it as a spring potherb and to flavor other foods. The common name results from the faint garlic odor of the leaves when crushed. Although it may be an attractive plant and it is nutritious, it can take over a woodland area in a very short time, choking out other desirable native flora.
From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Gardening Question: Fall bug control
Is there something I can do in the garden this fall to control bugs that will eat my vegetables next season?
If you till your garden in the late fall, you will expose insects hiding there to harsh winter conditions and reduce their populations next year. Fall tilling may help kill corn borers, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, earworms, and vine borers. Tilling has the added benefit of making the soil easier to work in the spring.
From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Hunter’s Moon October 14
The Hunter’s moon is full in October, named as deer and other wild game are fattened and the leaves are falling. Many fields are harvested, making it easy to locate hunting prey.
If it aint broke, don’t fix it, and if it is, you can fix it
You remember the tv commercial, don’t you. Sally Struthers, of All in the Family fame, doing the voice over
Do you want to make more money, of course, we all do.
and then the screen scrolled text listing:
High School
TV/VCR repair
Computer programming
Electrician
Animal Care specialist
Auto mechanic
PC repair technician
Book keeping
Legal Assistant
Medical office management
Hotel/Restaurant mangement
Electronics
What I didn’t know as I watched those adds 15 – 20 years ago was that soon, I would be doing all those things. Welcome to the reality of living on a small farm. If it breaks, you fix it, and usually, no matter how much you simplify, something is always broken or will break when you need it.
I have a simple operation: a 1964 Farmall 706 gas tractor, an Artsway pasture mower, a 1989 Ford F150, a single row planter, and a 12 foot IH disc. For my habitat restoration, and general upkeep, that’s enough for me. As of today, the Ford needs a new battery (wouldn’t start today), the pto yoke broke last week on the mower, and I picked up new parts last night — and in the distant future, I need to put a hydraullic arm on the disk (I bought it used without one). The disk also needs two new tires, the curent ones are rotted for yeas of siting in the previous owner’s pasture.
So by my count, I have 24 tires, 7 batteries, 4 gasoline motors, four 2-cycle gas oil motors.
Something will break. It’s part of the Small Farm Life.
One of my current favorite books has this quote:
There is almost nothing an amateur working alone cannot do, from building a house or a barn or a shed to stretching a fence and hanging gates. And pitted against his constructive and orderly efforts are the familiar antagonists of a small farm — age, weathering, hard use by animals, and the consequences of altering the landscape.
A Very Small Farm
– William Paul Winchester
