The Aftermath.
The Final Week, and a Final End of all things Torturous.
"Well" says Caleb from his position on the floor where he is assembling his new Lego set,
"That's it then. We don't have to care about the environment anymore".
Trev and I pause, mostly to swallow whatever high fat, high sugar, high meat content mouthful we are currently cramming in, to correct him.
It's Saturday, and already we are clutching our stomachs and groaning as the walls are grotesquely stretched from what amounts to only modest quantities of food. We are clutching at our grotesquely shrinking wallets too.
Thursday we drove into town for medical check ups, blood tests and to get the car serviced. We timed it a day early, because we had no intentions of spending half of our first day fasting for blood tests. Friday would be dawning fat filled and sugar saturated.
At this point we only know our blood pressure results.
Prior to the 'adventure' mine was high at 140/90, but has now reduced to a gratifying 110/75. Trev's resulted in his pointing to the doctor's beige jumper and accusing it of being a 'white coat'. We're not sure whether he was suffering from the syndrome, or the high excitement levels of being so close to eating a steak sandwich, but it was 140/90. Then off to deliver blood samples, which we both can declare were gratifyingly red, rather than pale shades of pink. I'm keen to find out our iron levels.
We've started the process of collating figures and finding out just how much power, water, petrol, food and disposable income we've utilized over the six months. It's too early to start spouting firm numbers, but it wouldn't be too far off to say it's around 5% of average household use on all counts. We had been aiming for 0% but have had to come to terms with a worse than average climatic conditions and the decision not to eat grass. One of our conditions was to be able to say it was an agreeable lifestyle.
We've been out for dinner, out for lunch, but so far breakfast has remained a housebound activity. We've made up for it by eating bacon and eggs, store bought bread, oh so luscious large quantities of butter and, of all things, marinated octopus ("it's like rubber in vinegar Caleb, try some").
But with all this indulgence even Caleb has mentioned that the anticipation has not been matched by equal amounts of gratification. It has been nice, but already it's starting to pall.
Caleb asked us this morning, 'so, what about our adventure?"
"Well our adventure is over now"
"Are we going to have any new adventures?"
"What kind of adventures do you have in mind?
"Shopping adventures".
We explain that we will go for a drive down the coast next week and have a final consumer splash, but that we've decided a month of this will kill us and that next Tuesday will see us wading back into frugal waters.
Back on our bikes we will be.
I'm also back to the book. Over the six months I've been working on a book covering our adventure. But it covers far more than that.It is full of diverse environmental and social interest info and is due for Australian release in February 2006.
We'll keep you posted. If you'd like us to let you know when it's on the shelves send us an email - and we'll put you on the 'let 'em know' list.
But as there is a limited number of hours and stomach capacity left till next Tuesday, and an uneaten Tim Tam or two in the house… I'll leave the rest of this update till next week.
Week One Of Living While Spending Plenty Of Dollars.
9 July 2005
We had a day down the Sunshine Coast spending the filthy lucre hand over fist. It took us a few days to not be completely awed by how fast $100 becomes three or four lint attracting silver coins at the bottom of your pocket. $100 of bartered money used to feed us for four weeks; now it has a lifespan of five minutes. We'd console ourselves by spending a little bit more. However, we all have clothes that fit, books we had yearned for, enough chocolate, beer and latest release DVD's to soothe our indulgence deprived spirits. We ended the week with a new dining table and chairs. Something we've never had. It's our plan to tempt Caleb to the dinner table and to stay with us till his dinner is consumed rather than his usual informal wandering around chewing, or dinner in front of the TV. It will be a triumph of hope over experience. In any case, the table looks great. (Plantation timber).
This morning dawned bright and beautiful, but our weekly weigh ins were accompanied with shrieks of horror, and within an hour we were back on our bikes and making an energetic beeline for the library. I took my credit card. I popped it in my pocket and fate plucked it back out again and littered a footpath with it. We retraced our steps, but alas, were too late. It was gone. I cancelled it and put down the phone .It rung within moments. It was the police saying it had been handed in. Too late. It will be another week or so before it is replaced. A good sign to stop spending now and get back into our dollarless habit.
We've now launched into international stardom with our television debut on Channel 7's, Today Tonight Show, to be aired sometime within the next month (on a slow news day). The crew were here for most of the day, and their work will result in 3.5 minutes of fame. There was nothing glamorous about it, and our heads are still the same size.
The medical tests came back. I'm blown out by them and am looking for a good reason why our iron levels would be 72% (mine) and 76% (Trev's) higher. How can this be? We spent six months on a nearly meatless diet. I expected it would be our one point of contention for a better lifestyle. The rest of the results are great, with increases and decreases occurring where they should.
Trev's still on holiday, but Caleb is back to home school. This week it's been Daddy doing the tutoring and they've had a great time learning to play cricket, practical mechanics, music, mostly in the form of guitar lessons and singing, ('Dough, the stuff you pay for beer, Ray, the bloke who sells the beer, Me, the bloke who drinks the beer, Far, how far I'll go for beer, so, let's have another beer, la,la,la,la,la,la,la etc). But such activities were interspersed with story writing, maths science and other pencil related pursuits.
Caleb's convinced us that next Wednesday (his 7th birthday) will be a day off school. I've agreed. He's yet to realise he will have a very long day on either side to make up for it. For me, the end of the six months has been all about reintroducing Caleb to old pleasures. He spent his $200 and now has 10 more Bionicles to trip over. And two very smelly little mice that Trev and I have rescued from under the couch three or four times too many.
We've had quite a lot of emails saying how much people have enjoyed reading our 'blog', and I've been talked into continuing it, but introducing new stuff, like how to make yeast and other factors in domestic sustainability. So if you can bear to have us sitting in your favourites folder for a bit longer you can continue to log on each week and get 500 or so words of undeniable wisdom and wit *grin* .
Week Three of all things Indulgent - July 17
We've spent two days this week dollarless. The rest, well, it's not really working. A trip to the supermarket to buy broccoli and cashews, results in a trolley full of things we 'need'. Trev has come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of entry fee on admission to the supermarket, one that means you can't exit without extracting at least $50 from your pocket. And we seem to infest it. The novelty has worn off. It's two weeks now.
If this is going to work, we will have to set ourselves stronger guidelines. While we are still eating from the garden the percentage rate has been steadily dropping. So next week it's back to basics.
Caleb's birthday has been the source of a great deal of wrapping. The rubbish bin is almost to the point of overflow with excessive toy packaging. We didn't get to see him on his birthday he disappeared into his bedroom and refused all offers of food until he had constructed all constructions. It took from 7.00am till 8.00pm till he could emerge, pale, hungry but ultimately triumphant. His birthday party on Saturday was bursting with flavourings, preservatives and colours; all packaged in crinkly little bags within bags, within bags. Our horror is only just kept in control, while the participants lose their's (is it all the lollies fault?).
It's Sunday now, birthdays over, sanity restored. Our resolve mounts to get back to a simpler lifestyle.
On some counts we are doing well, we're back to the telephone books, and have a friend with an abundance of luffahs to make up for our goat eaten deficit. We plan our few car trips so we get as much done as possible in one trip. We've been for our weekly family bike ride adventure to the library. But it's obvious that we are going to have be an all or nothing family. Next week Trev's back at work and there are no more excuses. The fridge is full, the garden still curiously unfrosted, (is that global warmings fault?)
The Mail Box
A source of emissions, a generator of waste, a user of water and energy.
According to Planet Ark over 7 billion pieces of unaddressed junk mail are dropped in letterboxes around Australia each year.
That equates to approx 875 catalogues and flyers per letterbox. The average weight being around 15grams, that's over 13kgs of junk mail per year.
Spending a couple of dollars on a 'No junk Mail' sign for the letterbox is a cheap and effective way to reduce your paper use, and the amount of waste in your wheelie bin.
It's also a money saving measure. How many times have you been lured into buying something you might not otherwise have 'needed'? If you do need something you can view most catalogues on the retailers websites.
1 ton of coated, lower-end virgin magazine paper (used for newsmagazines and most catalogs) uses nearly 8 trees (7.68)
Conservatree.
One tonne of (office) paper from recycled pulp saves 17 trees,
2.3 cubic metres of landfill space,
31,400 litres of water,
4200 kWh (enough to heat a home for half a year),
1600 litres of oil, and prevents 26 kgs of air pollutants.
UK Environment Agency
Most of the junk mail jammed into our letterboxes is manufactured by a Scandinavian company that produces Australia's magazine paper. About 70 to 80 per cent of the content comes from timber plantations that carry the respected Forestry Stewardship Council accreditation. Very little recycled content is used.
Sydney Morning Herald. June 2004.
For more information and the opportunity to have a free no junk mail sticker sent to you (it ends up in your letterbox, something funny about that). http://www.planetark.com/mailing_preference_stickers_oz.cfm
July 24 - To Exhale or not to Exhale.
I'm doing a lot of research at the moment. I'm learning so much, some stuff is useful, and other stuff I find enormously interesting but without much use. I've decided to sneak a bit out of the book to give you an idea of what it's about and because it's Sunday morning and I'm feeling very lazy and there is 10 kilos of cherry tomatoes to pick. It's a great avoidance strategy.
The average person exhales around 300 gms of CO2 a day, more if physically active. With 6 billion of us that's 2.03 trillion tonnes a day. Seems like one of those figures to start sighing over and thinking about population control using draconian methods. But what we are exhaling is fast cycle CO2 that was absorbed from eating plants (and animals that ate plants) who, in turn, absorbed it from the atmosphere. This CO2 whether you eat and emit it doesn't make any difference to the level of atmospheric CO2 as it would have decomposed and re-entered the chain anyway.
However burning fossil fuels, which have been bound up in the slow carbon chain for millions of years, does increase atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
The message: get on your bike and don't be frightened to exhale!
For Homeschool Caleb started a new garden. The bed had already self seeded with warrigal greens, coriander, basil and eggplants, he interspersed them with a dozen magic dragon broccolis, (maybe it might encourage him to eat broccoli, but I know it will all be in vain. He used to love eating 'trees', but is now a strictly non-green eating humanoid) - he counts the worms as he goes. He waters the plants in and helps me pick caterpillars off the older broccolis in another bed, and throws them to the chooks, it resembles a rugby scrum in the pen as they tackle each other over the tender morsels.
One of the chooks died of old age this week. She didn't lay so much as an egg over the six months. If we were truly energy efficient we would have converted her old bones into a chicken pie a long time ago. I guess that means we've not become so fundamental about energy usage that we can't allow an old chook a period of peaceful retirement before choofing off to chooky heaven.
The garden has been largely ignored in the past month as I invest more time in getting the book written than I do in weeding. A lot of my garden paths have disappeared under a forest of tomatoes, pumpkin, flowering pak choi and brocoli and some of Possum's favourite weeds. The peas are flowering like crazy and if it wasn't for Caleb's concerted efforts they would be heavy with over mature pods. Trevor dreams of regimented rows of vegies, instead of this, great sprawling mass. Tomatoes are literally dropping on the ground even after ten jars of pasta sauce and daily staple of tomatoes.
We had a light frost this week, it's knocked back a few of the pumpkins, singed the sweet potato, but all else keeps on keeping on. All the stone fruits have flowered and set fruit. Often they have a bit of a go, but don't get far, as they drop off after the first frost. But this year is oddly mild. We've even been getting rain (which we would have preferred four months ago when it should have been raining and wasn't), and generally overcast days, so our power use is still stubbornly high as we resort to hot water heating of the unenvironmental kind.
However we do seem to have most things under control again. I could probably do a bit of curbing on the Tim Tam eating, but takeaway is mostly a thing of the past. We're hopping on our bikes every chance we get, and the lures of the consumer world have receded back to where they should.
Trev summarised it nicely by observing that after all those months of riding his bike past KFC, salivating at the smell of chicken and chips, flirting with temptation and dreaming of July the 1st. He's now been past numerous times and not once has the smell hooked its fingers up his nose, and dragged him through the door.
July 31 - A New Adventure!
A New Adventure!
We've had a months break from the last adventure, it seems like a natural transition period before we embark on the new one. The new adventure has been a recurring theme or dream that we revisit on and off, but now it seems the right time to go for it.
Having reduced our greenhouse emissions through household power and transport, our reliance on mains water and purchase of supermarket food by 95% - we're ready to move on to the next logical step. Build a house using the least amount of embodied energy.
We're walking around the garden sighing about how we might not get to eat the next crop of peaches, apples, avocado's, and that the olives may go untasted, at least by these mouths as we prepare to put the house on the market and start looking around for a suburban block on which to start our next adventure.
However sad it will be when we do move, it's just as exciting as we pore over books learning more about sustainable buildings and compare the embodied energy of various structural elements. Another learning curve.
Meanwhile I'm still hard at work writing the book, which is coming along beautifully. Except for the title which remains obstinately out of reach, it goes like this " Da da da da da - An Adventure in Domestic Sustainability". We're looking for something that gives an instant idea of a family living off a suburban block in a way that is easy on the environment, without being dated, eg, "The Good Life", which while a great show, was a 70's concept, and we're moved on since then. This isn't a step back, we think it's a step forward. Hm, all very difficult to convey in a few words. Backyard Bliss? We say, hm. No.
So, the challenge goes out to everyone, if you can think of a great title for the book we'd love to hear it, and we'd be so grateful we'd mail out a free copy of the book as soon as it becomes available.
We drove to the beach this weekend for the first time in a long while. The moment Caleb saw the sea he rushed in clothes and all, and managed to repeat the experience three times, using three sets of dry clothes. In the end he had no choice but to parade the streets in nothing but my poncho. But the sinuses have had a good clear out, with just as much sand as salt water as he took the grind your face across the sea floor option on every second wave. Ahh, the Queensland winter, what a wonderful thing.
August 8 - Madness
It's madness. The house is up for auction on the 3rd of September, our first open day is this coming Saturday; we made the decision to go a week ago. The book is due to be presented to the publisher soon. We're working on getting ourselves and our cannot-bear-to-part-with stuff to Tasmania and organise what we intend to do when we get there.
We're hoping all the activity will distract us from the impending loss of our home. Every now and then we pause while scrubbing, painting, sweeping, weeding or any of the other three hundred things we're doing consecutively and panic instead. What are we doing? We've done all this work and finally have a really productive garden full of fruiting trees, the house is solar, water and waste sustainable, and we're leaving?
We focus on being closer to Trev's family, further from the heat that effects Trev's health, a different garden environment, and the chance to build a new home, sustainable from the ground up. It's a new adventure, but not a new focus.
Enough of the chaos. Here's this week's quick grab on being sustainable.
The Solar Torch.
We've owned one for four years now and it's still going strong. It's the one I depend on when there's a late night fox-like kafuffle in the chook pen, or when I think I may have forgotten to turn off the hose and have to trip down to the garden at 2.00am to find that I hadn't. Nor have I left it on any of the fifty or so times I've found myself sleepless and wondering and then wandering, my trusty solar torch in hand.
I received my solar torch as a Christmas present; the following Christmas, everyone received one from me.
They use no batteries, thereby keeping the nasty things out of landfill where they like to leach toxic heavy metals into soil and groundwater. They cost around $25-$40 and, over time, result in cheaper way to illuminate dark spaces.
August 19 2005
We sold Possum. Her pen yawns wide and empty and I catch myself walking down to feed her, and get halfway down the stairs before I divert myself off on another (of the 500) tasks required prior to auction. It was very sad to see her go. We put ads in thinking it might be some time before she left us. But it took only a few days. No more goat's milk. We have 1.5kg of fetta cheese left.
Trev's whippersnipped the whole block, I'm still finding rows of stunted carrots that he's not seen. We're mulching the block. It doesn't look wild anymore. We've scrubbed, sanded and painted so much that the place looks great. Having regrets already. There's a real vomit of a web address below if you want a look at the real estate listing.
http://www.harcourts.com.au/listing/details.do?rul=%2Fsearch%2Fprocess.do%3Fpg%3D1%26ts%3D69964207%26sta%3D1001%26sub%3D3030%26br%3DB%26typ%3DHOU%26reg%3D1031&id=85843
Caleb is keen to move on. There's been snow in Hobart. He's always been the fascinated by the thought of a whole landscape of that stuff that collects on the wall of the freezer. A tropical boy he hardly ever wears a shirt and rarely shoes, so will be a fair amount of frostbite going on till he gets the idea.
We've been going through the kinds of fruit you can grow in Tasmania to a chorus of "Oh yeahs", we followed it by a list of things you can't and the concept of not having a mango season has been about the only concern Caleb has about the move. When I first came to Gympie it was such a good season that mangoes were literally rolling in the gutters and no one was picking them up. Caleb; who eats mangoes by the tray, and spits out the box; will have to be tempted with apricots and other stone fruits.
We have a composting loo - we're not sure if that will end up being a detractor to potential home buyers or not. We know it doesn't smell, it smells less than a conventional toilet) with it's unique ability to suck away all the farty smells. Most people have a preference for flush toilets, the one's where you get to see things floating, ewwwww, how revolting! J
As past loo flushers we invested in a brick in the cistern to reduce the water capacity, and then for $11.00 bought a small blue gadget that was easily fitted into the cistern. It regulated the water flow. Only while your finger was pressed on the flush did it gush. Remove the finger, and the water stopped. I've plonked in a link to where they can be purchased. Though I'm sure there are other places they are available. Potential to save water is enormous. The average Australian household flushes 200 litres down the toilet a day. That's 73,000 a year. Per person that's around 16 tons of water to flush what amounts to 25kg of decomposed material a year.
http://www.greenharvest.com.au/tools/water_saving_home_prod.html
We also borrowed the NSW motto, "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down". Caleb had a different motto. It went, "If it's mellow, let it yellow, if it's brown, just let it sit there and stink".
On that odious note …
30 August 2005
During our six months there were roughly 17 million cars manufactured world wide. There were also an estimated 54 million bicycles produced, and no, not all of them were for children under the age of 12.
Bicycles are second only to sailing ships in energy efficient forms of travel, and around 98% more so than the average car. All hail to the bicycle! I can only assume that it's the poorer countries in which the majority are leaning against houses, because of the 54 million, I get to see relatively few.
Bicycling uses calories not petrol. Lots of us could do with using more calories.
For instance sitting in a car for 30 minutes uses 30 calories,
Perching on a bicycle seat for 30 minutes uses 190 (more if you weigh over 60kg)
Exercise reduces the risk of nearly ever type of western lifestyle disease, those that are typical of sedentary lifestyle. Yet it keeps on being easier to pop pills and pop out out for milk in the car.
Then of course there's the environmental side of the coin. Every litre of petrol (which, incidentally, is still cheaper per litre than Coke), accounts for 2.24 litres of CO2, which pollutes over 10,000 litres of air.
It's not always possible to bike everywhere, but it's always possible to substitute a bike ride for quick local trips. If you live in a bicycle unfriendly area, get onto your local council. Let them know. More and more councils are designating bicycle zones on roadways to try and ensure greater safety.
Bicycle Victoria has really got into gear with 40,000 members and a great website
http://www.bv.com.au/ and events like Ride To Work Day.
Bicycling isn't just for kids, it's fun. At least it is after the first few weeks in which you have dealt with the fear of falling off, of being pushed off by an over friendly 4WD or being chased by dogs. These and other issues are about the equivalent to the fears of the early learner driver. The ones where they feel every tree has their name on it and every bridge is an opportunity to become airborne.
Riding a bike is also cheap, it's better for your health and the environments and you sometimes find the darn-dest things on the side of the road.
September 11
The house did not sell at auction. But there is interest in the property and the next couple of weeks will be telling. So the house is currently up for offers.
Possum's progress. Last I heard she was running around a 20-acre property with a number of horses she had befriended (I think sharing her lucerne with them did it). The family she lives with are rank beginners just as we had been. They took an hour to milk her each day, hopefully by now that will be down to ten minutes or so. We've only just stopped looking over the verandah and expecting to see her looking back up and doing her bellicose meet and greet. We're really missing the milk. Last of the fetta is being consumed as we speak, or perhaps as I write.
The latest article is out in the ABC Organic Gardener Magazine. The book is at the publishers, and my days are spent cleaning the house and the windows. Not sure how, bar electric shock therapy, I can get Caleb to open the sliding doors with the handle and not by placing his greasy mitts on the glass and pushing it all sideways. House cleaning is not my forte, though I'm enjoying going through cupboards and struggling up the stairs with bounteous loads of ill fitting clothes for St Vinnies, and making long lists of garage sale items. We've even donated over 400 books to the local library. We're lightening our load and getting a nice zen look about the place.
My reading material is all strawbale at the moment. There are numerous pieces of paper fluttering about the house with sketches of my latest passive solar design.
I've had a great website pointed out to be this week. It's about Shaun William's successful attempt to convert a standard Toyota Echo into an electric vehicle. It's an informative website, documenting the conversion process and exposing a few myths at the same time. It's an inspiring effort.
Our reduction in car related energy use has been about walking around car sales yards and looking at the fuel consumption labels. I remember the salesman's facial expression well when we bought our current car.
"That one" we pointed to the Pulsar.
"You want to take it for a test drive?" asked the salesman.
"Nope".
"You want to look inside it?"
"Nope".
"You want to know any of its features etc?"
"Arhh, no. It'll do".
I think there must have been a few laughs in the tearoom that day.
And of course using bikes when we can, and avoiding unnecessary trips. As to rising petrol prices, we'd like to see them get higher yet.
If you, or someone you know of has done something interesting on the environmental front, we'd be keen to skite about it. Let us know.
|
