Clotheslines in the City

It took me awhile but I have started using the clothesline. It took me awhile to get it going. I hung it up between posts by my walk-out basement. The patio door is the closest to the laundry room and I figured it would be easiest on me as I imagined lugging a heavy basket of wet clothes. I used a retractable clothesline incase we entertain in the area.
The patio has interlocking paving stones which get covered in leaves and dust very quickly. I will have to do sweeping frequently because I don't want to drop clean wet laundry on a dusty ground. I can see the merits of putting a clothesline over grass as dropped clothes are less likely to get dirty.

As I hung my dark blue towels, I thought that the sun might make the colour fade. I have started switching from white towels or linens to darker colours because I wanted to avoid using bleach.
I imagine that a generation ago, people used sunlight to bleach their white linens. Now we know scientifically that sunlight will rid fabrics of viruses.
I think I will dry my clothes outside when it is nice out and then line dry my laundry inside when it is below freezing.
As to the issue of colour fading, I could have my warm weather clothes in lighter fabrics and then go with darker colours for the winter months.
I remember reading that a large city had a law which stipulated that undergarments were not to be hung outside as it was considered indecent to hang your unmentionables where others could see them. I plan to hang our undies inside.
I find it interesting that our generation associates line drying with either poverty or fringe environmentalists. My grandmother had to go outside to collect frozen overalls off the line during the winters in Winnipeg. I imagine cold fingers grasping people sized cardboard representations and leaning them against the kitchen wall until they thawed enough to fold.
I am finding that it does take longer to put the laundry on the line than it does to just chuck everything into the dryer. What is time saving is that I can remove the laundry in groups and fold as I go, making little piles of jeans, shorts, short-sleeved t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, etc.
So far so good, I just have to remember the laundry when a thundershower breaks.

Small Changes: Butter is Better

We have really reduced our garbage output but I have really want to reduce the amount of things we need to recycle. Even though plastics get recycled, the processing of the plastic and the transportation of the plastic to the processing plants requires so much fossil fuels. I am determined to reduce the amount of plastic going into the recycling bin.

I was at Costco one day and I saw a fellow walking around with 3 bricks of butter in a clear plastic bag. My first thought was, there is a big reduction in packaging. I thought about switching from margarine and their containers to butter wrapped in foil. So simple and so much plastic use would be avoided.

I thought to myself, why didn't I think of this earlier? I realized that I had gotten into a margarine habit, leftover from when I was allergic to milk products and had to use a kosher, completely dairy free, margarine rather than feel like I had squirrels running through my intestines. Avoiding all milk products for 10 years gave my body the time it took to stop thinking of milk as a poison and then I was able to use it, and butter again.

Since then I guess I avoided using butter because I still had the 'margarine is better for you' campaign in my distant memory. I couldn't remember why it was supposed to be better or why butter was supposed to be bad. I thought about butter being just stirred cream and how margarine was a mixture of oils greatly processed. I thought of the factories that produced each product and although I have never toured either, I know intuitively that butter requires less processing, less land and machinery. If I bought organic butter, then even the humane treatment of cows could be confirmed.

So I made the switch to butter and I put it in an old margarine container. My next step was to find a permanent butter dish. I thought about buying a nice butter dish, but thought about it being shipped around the world to me, and I got suspicious about the ethical treatment of the workers in a far off factory. I thought about using an old silver butter dish but didn't have the time or childcare to go digging in an antique store in town. I thought about buying something on line, but then kept thinking about local. Also I think a silver butter dish would show little finger prints and I didn't want to use chemicals to polish it. I thought that maybe getting a clay butter dish from a local market might be good in support of local artists or artisans.

On the weekend at the farmer's market, I took a look around. I found a booth with a woman selling clay butter dishes and remembered that clay is found in Alberta all around the bad lands area, Medicine Hat being famous for clay products. Getting a dish made from local materials fit my bill. 

The butter dish she sold was called a French Butter Dish, French Butter Keeper, or Butter Crock. It is an old French method of storing butter without refrigeration by putting butter in a deep lid and putting the lid in a bowl of water. The water keeps the butter from the air, helping it to stay fresher longer. The butter stays at a spreadable temperature at all times so it is easy to use. Upkeep is as simple as changing the water everyday for freshness.

Tips: make sure you can pick up the lid with one hand, resist the urge to get a bigger butter dish.

Permaculture Principles:

1. Observe & Interact:

Making small changes that work for your family take observation as to what you and your family need and desire. This was an easy switch for my family. When we started talking about food choices, it turned out that the older members preferred butter over margarine anyway.

6. Produce No Waste:

It is a small change to stop buying margarine and their plastic containers, but over a year, we were really using a lot. If you smashed them up and put them in the ocean, their effects could be devastating. I will consider the worst case scenario when thinking about the consequences of my shopping choices. Charles Moore on the Great Pacific Plastic Garbage Patch 

 9. Use Small & Slow Solutions:

Blogging about butter may not seem like the beginning of world peace and fixing the environment, but if more people look at cumulative little changes they can make to reduce fossil fuel use and low tech solutions, I am confident that it will make a big difference.

Girlfriend's Guide to... Getting into Gardening

Plant what you like to eat fresh and what your kids and husband likes. Everyone in my family likes lettuce so we ate that all summer.


Think about your favourite preserved foods. I go crazy for pickled beets so grew them and canned them and brought them out ‘for special.’

Consider your work load and time commitment. I really like swiss chard, but hated the amount of time it took to wash, look for bugs, then blanch, drain, cool and bag. It didn’t seem worth it when my kids wouldn’t even eat it.

When your kids are young, plant vegetables that they can help process to make your job easier. We spent many afternoons sitting on the deck popping peas from their pods and putting them in a colander to be blanched and frozen later. Once your kids are old enough to use a knife, get them to sit and watch their favourite movie while snipping the ends off the beans.

Understand that it is an important experience for your children to eat food directly out of the garden. Let them eat sun warm fresh veggies.

If wasps are busy drinking water as you water your garden, don’t wear a knit sweater, wear a tight knit fabric to prevent the biters from getting caught between you and your sweater.

Keep a hankie in your pocket if your nose runs.

Put up some poultry wire around your garden to prevent your dogs from discovering that they like potatoes and carrots. Our dog went digging for a vole and discovered he like fresh veggies too.

When spending the day outside doing heavy work, pause and stretch your muscles. Bend at the waist and touch your toes. Stretch those arm, back and leg muscles because gardening can be hard work and your body needs a break.

Take pictures to mark your progress and to remind you of what you did so you can make changes or keep doing what works.

Have a Garden Party. Show off your work and chat it up with your friends and celebrate your success whether it is in the beginning, middle or after harvest. The enjoyment of food is a very social experience and what can be better than serving your friends and family food that you grew?

Try to discover a new recipe with an ingredient from your vegetables, herbs or fruits. I recently had Limestone Lemonade made with lemon juice, lime vodka and a sprig of rosemary, my mouth is watering and wishing for weekends on the deck. http://www.tastereport.com/TasteReport.com/Drink/Entries/2009/2/24_Cocktail_Nation:_drink_experts_dish.html

Leaping Down the Garden Path

It was a synergistic year for me, everything lining up perfectly so that I could get a vegetable garden going. It felt like the universe was begging me to get my hands into the dirt. I was a stay-at-home mom and the youngest of my five kids, the triplets were past the age of putting every found object in their mouths; I was able to take them from the deck to the yard without the worry of needing to watch them like a hawk. We were able to hook up to city sewer and water through our front yard, leaving our backyard free and clear to put a vegetable garden in without worrying about having to rip it up midseason. My husband’s work contract was due to run out and I felt an urgent need to learn how to feed my family directly.

I was planning to put in some raised beds so that the dogs and the kids wouldn’t run through the vegetables. My father-in-law mentioned that raised beds are more accessible for people with poor mobility and I wanted to build so that it would be easy for him to garden if he ever came to live with us. Raised beds are also good so that you don’t need to be constantly bending over and getting a sore back.

As I was planning to put in some raised beds, a couple of people came to visit from Green Calgary’s (then Clean Calgary) Healthy Homes Program. They told me about lasagna gardening and the importance of buying local food because of the degradation of the planet caused by food shipping. I went to the store and bought seeds for my favourite vegetables. My father-in-law came to visit and he and my husband built four large raised beds. My father-in-law also gave me the book Square Foot Gardening so as they built, I planned the layout of my garden. I collected newspaper and leaves from neighbours and layered them with twigs and peat moss and compost with loam mix. It snowed in late May so I waited until June 1st to plant the seeds.

To my amazement, the garden actually worked. Water, soil and sunshine were the simple things it took to get things growing. I was struck that such a small seed could grow into a mature plant. Radishes, lettuce and potato plants popped up quickly. I planted zucchini seedlings and their big elephant ear like leaves quickly covered their bed. Vibrant purple veins sprung up from little balls of beets. My daily routine involved visiting the garden marveling at the speed with which these plants reached for the sunshine. I would stand with the water hose and spray the garden, the sound of water rushing and the warmth of the sun on my back comforted me as deeply as any religious service. The smell of fresh turned dirt felt familiar on a cellular, on a genetic or evolutionary level. With every step into gardening, I felt like I was coming home.

As my garden grew, I realized that other than eating fresh carrots and strawberries from my mother’s garden when I was growing up, oh, and that one time that potato plants grew out of my little compost pile, I had never grown vegetables and had no idea when to harvest. I started doing research as to when to tell when radishes were ripe, when and how to harvest lettuce. I picked the radishes and found to my delight that my kids didn’t like them so I could eat them myself. I did save some for myself and restrained myself to share with my husband. Unfortunately I wasn’t until I started cutting them up that I noticed little worms. I had forgotten about doing bug checks. I hadn’t thought about bugs at all. I needed to look into that and finding natural ways of preventing bugs.

Imagine how elated I was to discover that if you cut lettuce off leaving an inch, the lettuce will produce another head. I thought I would have to replant all summer, but to my delight, my little lettuce plot could produce all summer.

We had fresh salads every single day. I raided my potato plants too early to get new potatoes. I would point out to the kids every time we were eating something from our garden. That summer we only shopped for meat and dairy products. We were making our own bread and growing our own vegetables.

Throughout the summer, I was getting daily email notices from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about salmonella in spinach, lettuce and pistachios and Listeria in meats and processed food. The food delivery system was failing and we were all vulnerable; our children, sick, and elderly were most at risk for chronic damage to tainted food. I suspected that in the desire to bring costs down, corporations were cutting corners in food safety. I was more determined than ever to learn how to safely grow and handle food to make sure my family was protected.

I thought more and more about local food sources. I started foraging in my yard, finding Nanking cherries and Saskatoon berries. I moved the rhubarb to a better location hoping for big yields in future years. I pruned and fertilized my crabapple tree. I planted more perennial herbs. I looked at sub climates in my yard and looked into planting more fruits and berries; I planned to plant super foods like blueberries near my fir trees. I vowed to no longer buy shrubs or trees unless they were food producing. I started to imagine my whole yard as food producing.

I started thinking about different seeds to get and new that experienced gardeners poured over seed catalogues all winter. I did a search for seed catalogues and found heirloom seeds. Another door into sustainability opened as I saw that certain varieties of plants are important to continue to maintain genetic diversity. I had heard about the Irish potato famine and knew that agribusinesses’ reliance on a select few strains of vegetables and genetically modified foods was not good for the future of food. The trail led to Salt Spring Seeds on Vancouver Island and their Zero Mile Diet kit. The thought of growing my own wheat and grain for my own breads got me thinking of how to even further push my self-reliance.

My next step was to learn how to preserve the harvest that we weren’t using right away. I loved pickled beets so went shopping for canning supplies. My first attempt at finding used canning jars on Kijiji was successful and I got a pantry’s worth of big jars. I was chatting it up about gardening to everyone and then found some friends who canned all the time. They even bought me the quintessential guide to canning filled with facts and recipes. I had read the book Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preservation Changed the World by Sue Shepard. http://www.amazon.ca/Pickled-Potted-Canned-Science-Preserving/dp/0743255534/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271101654&sr=8-3The book outlined the sometimes accidental discoveries in food preservation and how the processes worked. I appreciated the scientific discoveries that we took for granted that enabled us to eat in a climate with a short growing season.

My first attempt at canning involved peeling tiny beets and boiling vinegar during a hot summer day with 5 kids home and curious to hang out with me. I was flipping pages in my book while wearing oven mitts, trying desperately not to burn myself, my kids or spill purple juice all over my canning book. I was all for the idea of self-reliance but understood in that sweaty panicked moment that some things are best learned as an apprentice, not just via a book. My half-sister, an experienced gardener and canner, came to visit later that summer and she and I pickled zucchini spears, made strawberry freezer jam, mint jelly, canned Bruschetta and liquor soaked pears. It was an awesome inheritance.

My pantry filled with the fruits of my labour and I felt like I had surpassed what Jane Austin described as an ‘accomplished woman’. That Thanksgiving everything but the wine, turkey and cranberries was either from our garden or homemade; I was truly thankful for the bounty of my garden.

As I noticed my stores dwindling, I thought about how to increase my garden yield. I would analyze what grew well and what my kids liked to eat. I would try to find more recipes for preserving foods that I used year round such as ketchup. My goal was that within 3 years, I wanted all of my vegetables to come from my own yard.

Secretly, I wondered how to enjoy the vibrant culture of the city while being completely self-sufficient by getting fruits, dairy and meat from my yard as well. Enter the backyard chicken…

Getting to Permaculture

I must have been about 10 years old when I saw and was fascinated by the cover of a magazine, I think it was Mother Earth News; it had a sketch of a homestead with a two story house with a wraparound porch, a beehive, sheep and a wind turbine. I looked at that and thought that is exactly what I want when I grow up. I thought it would be so cool to have everything I needed in my own yard. I must have been a home body and part hermit even back then and the idea of getting honey, wool and electricity from my own yard was ideal.


It was just recently that I remembered that childhood dream, as I learned the skills and put into practice becoming more self-reliant, I realized how blissfully happy each change made me. I felt drawn to different skills and would study books and the internet to learn how to do different things. As a young woman I collected skills, learned how to do things and why we do things. As I learned something I felt drawn to share the information. I was collecting skills and knowledge and it all had to do with becoming self-reliant. I was collecting the pieces of a large puzzle and it wasn’t until a friend asked me if I was into Permaculture that I realized that I was deep into it, yet didn’t know the idea existed. My puzzle had a title.

As I have learned more about Permaculture, I have felt a complete mesh with the philosophy and systems of it. As I read the standard texts about Permaculture, I have recognized books that I have read and cherished. The ideas presented have articulated the concerns I have had in terms of the problems I see in our society. I experienced an intellectual homecoming.

Looking at my current situation, I see that there are lots of ways that I can make changes in my household and I am working diligently to convert my household into a Permaculture Suburban Farm. Follow along as I make and describe the changes.

Permaculture Ethics & Design Principles: Processing Pheasants

Permaculture Ethics

Care for People: looking after self, kin and community, by learning how to process a bird for eating to feed myself and family as well as sharing information with others.

Permaculture Design Principles:

6. Produce no waste: I saved the feathers for my chicken coop as warm nesting box bedding. The only waste produced was the head, feet and innards; I will look for uses for those before I do it again.

9. Use Slow and Small Solutions: purchased free range pheasants from local small ranch.

10. Use and Value Diversity: put pheasants in my freezer to feed my family a different type of meat as we typically only eat chicken, pork, beef, and fish.

12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change: I recognize that with global warming and peak oil, our way of doing things will change and I want to be prepared for it, especially making sure I can feed my family when the fossil fuel subsidization of the current food delivery system starts to unravel.

Permaculture Icons used with permission. http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/

How to...Pluck and Gut a Pheasant

1. Grab live pheasant by head just below scull, hold arm down making sure the pheasant cannot touch the ground. Twist body around in a clockwise circle while holding head firmly similar to twisting a towel for a sharp towel snap. Do this very quickly to avoid suffering and to prevent bird from flailing and possibly breaking bones.

2. Hang bird by the neck with twine in a cool room above zero degrees Celsius to keep it from freezing and below 10 degrees Celsius to keep the meat from rotting. Smell the bird each day to check to see if it smells ‘gamey’ if so, discard immediately.

3. Set up your area with a table lined with newspaper, two lined garbage bags, a bucket for each bird, paper towels or cloths, a bone knife and a pair of bone scissors. Wear warm old clothes and a full apron.

4. Cut twine and take bird into your arm, placing breast side up and somewhere in the middle, start plucking the feathers going toward head. Pluck feathers and put them in into a bag for keeping. If any skin comes off, discard into a different garbage bag. Keep skin taught by pulling slightly on the skin while pulling the feathers out. Grab feathers from the base, while pushing the feathers down and then pulling feather out in the same direction as the feather growth. Pluck up to the neck, down to the feet, and then up to the second joint on the wings.

5. Take a knife and score the skin on the foot. Hold the foot on either side of the scoring mark and break the leg bone. Place the foot on the top edge of a counter with the bird hanging down and the bone break at the counter corner. Keep the leg on the counter while pulling really hard down the other part of the bird leg until the foot separates. The foot will still have the tendons attached which will make eating the leg easier. Repeat for the other leg. Discard feet.

6. Grab head just below skull with one hand and just above torso with the other hand. Pull head from body with steady strength. Discard head.

7. With bone shears snip wing tips off on the outside of the joint. Discard wing tips.

8. Pull larynx and gizzard from neck. Birds hold gravelly bits in their gizzards to grind their food as they don’t have teeth for that. Place fingers in throat and scrape innards away from top of ribs as far back as you can reach.

9. Place the bird on the newspaper lined table. Locate the vent on the bottom of the bird and cut above the vent, pointing the blade directly toward the middle of the bird, preventing the piercing of the intestines leading to the vent. Place fingers into the incision and carefully pull the innards away from the bottom of the inside of the bird. Then pull the innards down and towards the incision. Be careful not to puncture the intestines as the odor can be unpleasant and could taint the meat. Discard innards.

10. Place bird in a bucket and carry to a clean sink. Rinse the inside and outside of the bird. Place in the fridge or in a sealed plastic bag then freeze.

11. Wash hands thoroughly using a nail brush. Throw garbage out. Save clean feathers for chicken nesting boxes, fly fishing lures, feather stuffed doggy beds, etc.

Time: 20 minutes to 1 hour, depending on plucking speed.

Disclaimer: Safe food handling requires certain considerations such as keeping food in cool temperatures, keeping feces away from meat and keeping yourself and the area very clean. Learn how to do these things to prevent food poisoning. Information provided does not include such considerations.