Vegetables per Day

Fridays are devoted to topics about nutrition

The USDA recommends 2.5 cups for women in the 30-51 age range and 3 cups for men per day. So 2.5-3 cups per day of vegetables. And that's for people who exercise less than 30 minutes per day. Most of us, I think. I know when I was working an ofice job, the most exercise I got was walking to my car - maybe 10 minutes per day.

Being super-analytical, I want to know whta they mean by a cup. Straight from the USDA themselves,

In general, 1 cup of raw or cooked vegetables or vegetable juice, or 2 cups of raw leafy greens can be considered as 1 cup from the vegetable group.

Then there is a handy chart for you to look at that describes what a cup is for various vegetables. You can get there from this link: http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/vegetables_counts.html

The interesting thing about the new food pyramid is that it is customizable depending on your activity level, age and weight. Go to www.mypyramid.gov and click on MyPyramid Plan to go through a "wizard" to help you plan out what you as an individual should eat.

You can build a pyramid plan for each family member if you would like. This seems to be a lot of time to me. And it can be, but if you have no idea what you should be eating and how much, it may be well worth your effort to find out.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Thursdays are devoted to animals

Here at the farm, we have very ambitious plans to fence off what eventually will be a 100 by 500 foot area into several 50 foot square pens for rapid pasture rotation. Only problem for me is that is mainly a one-woman job with occasional help from various friends. Putting in fence posts two - three feet deep can be back breaking labor. When you're in a drought, you might as well forget about digging holes. I've bent my post-hole diggers blades, more than once this summer. But it must be done for two reasons: to keep the lovely critters in and keep the predators out. Here is what I have learned so far.

• Keep your post hole diggers clean and sharp to cut through the clay-shale mix we call a subsoil.
• It is better to attach your fence on the inside of the pen because when the goats rub against it, it doesn't bow out so bad.
• Check out the lay of the ground under your bottom wire. If there is more than a four inch gap, this will become a chicken escape route.
• Goats can jump anything under four foot tall.
• Goats and chickens can mix, but whatever flimsy thing you built for the chickens will not stand up to play time with a goat.
• Make sure your gates swing into the pen so if you forget to latch them, the goats still can't get out.
• Make sure your gate latch requires motion along several planes to unhook so the goats can't open it.
• A car and a fence stretcher make things a whole lot easier and tighter when putting up a fence.

Sustainable Essence

Wednesdays are devoted to sustainability


My grandparents called it reusing as in

Buy it new

Wear it out

Make it do

Do without



My parents called it recycling



And the latest version is re-purposing.

My grandparents were children of the Great Depression. Really more like teens of the Great Depression. All four worked to make ends meet for their families. All four were masters of re-use.

One of my grandfathers dropped out of high school his senior year to work full time to help support his family. He went to night school after work and earned his high school diploma. He went on to graduate from Carnegie Tech. With five boys in his family, clothes were constantly passed from one boy to the other.

My grandmother, whom he married, recalls wearing dresses made from the flour sacks her mother got her flour in. That family even recycled the ties from the ties from the railroad track. When the old ones were replaced with new, my grandmother's brothers would haul them up the hill from the tracks and chop and split them into firewood. Probably not very environmentally friendly, but they were warm when they wouldn't have otherwise been.

My other grandmother was already out of school and working. She always had a special drawer in the kitchen for bread bags, wax paper, string and rubber bands which she re-used when refrigerating leftovers. Sometimes these items would cover thoroughly scrubbed meat trays of cut vegetables for visitors, such as my brothers and I.

Her husband, my grandfather, taught me the important skill of salvaging nails from old boards and reusing them. I learned how to pull them out straight without bending them, so I could use them again on another project. He also built several bicycles from parts he would find in the woods. They all worked wonderfully well.

My father recycles lumber scraps from garbage collection day in the city by making them in roll-top desks and other carpentry projects around the house.

My mother is a master of recycling cereal boxes, doilies, wax paper, cardboard tubes, newspapers, Christmas cards - the list goes on. They all become new items in her various craft projects she does with teens and seniors.

This week, I had an especially inspirational week. I re-purposed feed sacks into garbage bags, old drink bottles into terrariums, and broken lead ropes into goat tethers.

Call it re-using, recycling or re-purposing, whatever you like. This is the essence of sustainability. Ask yourself, what do I usually buy at the store and what do I usually discard? Can I pair any discards with needs?