Blackberries ripen in the August sun, cherries plop onto neighbors’ lawns, and squash crops overwhelm backyard gardeners.  There is nothing I love more than taking advantage of summer’s opportunities for hand-picked fruit—especially when it’s free, organic, and grown locally. 

Here are my favorite food finding tips:

Wild berries: Blackberries seem to be a national favorite but huckleberries, salmon berries, and thimbleberries are just a few of the other choices available here in Oregon. I usually call our city maintenance department to check about which areas are being sprayed, ask about berry hot spots, and end up picking loads of free organic berries! I slather my clan up with sunscreen and scramble out the door in the morning hours before the sun zaps our enthusiasm.  Then we freeze the berries or make them into jam to last through the winter months.

Fruit trees: My goal is to load up with fruit from a neglected apple tree this year. When I see a tree with rotten fruit under it, I shall screw up my courage, knock on the door and ask if I can pick some.  (My son’s charm might help.)  Even if the homeowner wants to use the fruit, chances are he or she will reach a point of saturation with fresh cherries/apples/pears.  Also, here in Oregon, we have the Portland Fruit Tree Project, which helps save urban fruit from rotting away on city sidewalks. You can check out their website to donate to their cause or to join a local harvesting party.  A large portion of the fruit they save goes to vulnerable people who need healthy, organic food.  In other areas, try to call city maintenance to see where city-owned fruit trees are located.

Tomatoes, zucchini, squash and other garden faire: Although it’s wonderful to grow a prolific garden, slogging through twenty pounds of summer squash in a few weeks is no easy task.  On the first days of September, my fellow teachers often leave heaping boxes of squash, tomatoes and zucchini in our staff room for the taking.  It’s worth it to let your friends and family know that you’ll welcome their garden overflows and then sit back and enjoy the unique flavor of a homegrown food.   You may be inspired to grow your own garden next year!

Damaged fruit:  According to Parade Magazine, grocery stores toss an estimated $20 billion worth of food annually.  While it might be tough to get large chain stores to offer you a discount on imperfect produce, independent grocery stores sometimes have a damaged fruit and veggie section.  If not, ask the manager if you can get produce for free or for a discounted rate when it needs to be removed from store shelves for disposal.  You can always cut away the bad sections and use the rest to make soups or sauces. 

By picking the food yourself or saving it from the grocery store dumpster, you’ll be cutting your costs and ensuring that local food doesn’t go to waste.  Instead of buying kiwis from Chile next January, you can happily pull those local blackberries out of the freezer for a low-emissions, no-cost treat!

Every week the Green Baby Guide will be hosting the Thrifty Green Thursday Blog Carnival.  If you have a blog and some thrifty green ideas of your own, please join us!  See this post for details.

Many months ago, I wrote about the baby rules I break for the planet.  One of those “rules” included mopping up baby with wads of paper towels.  I don’t think I’ve ever bought a roll of paper towels in my life.  We do have two rolls of paper towels in my house.  One roll was generously left here by the previous owners.  We moved the other roll over from our last house, where it sat in the back of a closet for at least four years.  My husband bought that roll long ago, without my consent or knowledge.  I cannot be blamed!

Aren’t trees nicer than paper towels?

Last May, Peggy from Treehugging Family issued a paper towel challenge.  She personally wanted to reduce the number of paper towels she used and asked readers to do the same.  You will see my comments on those posts, urging people to try the “hide the paper towels at the back of a musty closet” technique.

I hate to see paper towel commercials that make it seem like these tree-killing/landfill-filling products are indispensible to modern life.  The one that really gets to me shows a mother going through her house, allowing all the glorious messes of family life because she has paper towels to help clean them up.  “If you knew he’d make a mess, but let him anyway, you’re crazy,” it begins.  At the end of the commercial, she plops down on the couch with a magazine, confident that she’s cleaned everyone up with Bounty.  

Giving up paper towels when the baby comes along might be an even greater challenge than eschewing them under normal circumstances.  There’s always a mess to clean up–on the baby, on yourself, on the floor.  I got a few packages of baby washcloths as gifts, and I used those instead of paper towels.  I just threw them in the wash when I was done, and they’re so small I’m sure they didn’t add to the overall amount of laundry I did.  Of course, any old rag or washcloth will also do the trick.

Think of all the money you’ll save by giving up paper towels.  Say you normally go through a pack of six rolls a month, at $10.00 a pack.  In ten years, you’ll spend $1,200 on a completely unnecessary product!  And if that’s not motivating enough, think of the trees.  Paul on things that make you go green says, “The NRDC estimates that if every household in the United States used one less roll of paper towels, we could save 544,000 trees.”  Saving a few thousand trees seems like a much better reason to take a self-satisfied couch break! 

Never buying paper towels works for me.  For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, check out Rocks in My Dryer.

A friend of ours just had her second child after 61 HOURS of labor!  Before I had children, that would have made me tired—but now it makes me want to flop onto the floor unconscious.  Why?  Because I always imagined that childbirth was a marathon.  What I realized after my first, is that it’s just the beginning of an endless “Ironmom” tournament that lasts for years. 

In that long succession of sleepless nights, there is a way to balance green values and exhaustion and it’s as simple as asking for help. Here are a few things I’ve learned from wise friends who have kept from being plumb pooped in those early weeks:

1.    Construct a support system: I spent my first few week of motherhood napping, figuring out breast feeding, and eating glorious nourishment prepared by my mother.  Then she left and I felt a little lost. Two of my well-supported friends have arranged for friends or family to help every day of their first month with baby.  I will make sure to do the same next time around.

2.    Consider a diaper service: Luckily my husband has a weird affinity for laundry so I had lots of help with cloth diapers.  Sometimes sheer exhaustion makes other families want to give up on cloth, but having a diaper service can make all the difference.  It’s totally possible to launder diapers alone, but it’s also important to know when to call in support.

3.    Avoid wonder-mom syndrome: Before becoming a mom I judged myself by my daily accomplishments.  Afterwards, I felt lucky to have achieved a shower. It was tough for me to go from a human-doing to a human-being.  The classic symptom of the wonder-mom disease is the urge to do housework when there’s an opportunity to nap.  Let the mess slide, have someone else make peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, and breathe in the smell emanating from the very top of your baby’s head. 

We would like to have a second child someday, and to be honest I’m already nervous about those long sleepless periods with a toddler in the house.  Still, if I follow my own advice, we can balance exhaustion and eco-friendly living. 

We’ve received a couple emails asking us about BPA and phthalate-free bathtubs.  This Spa Baby European Style Tub claims to be BPA-free, and the baby in the picture appears to enjoy the “European spa” experience the tub offers.  At $45, it’s a bit pricier than the typical tubs found at Target, but if you are worried about toxins, it may be worth the higher price.

Of course it’s possible to go without a baby bathtub.  One water-saving option is to have the baby bathe or shower with a parent.  Babies can also use the full bath tub, but that can end up being a waste of water, especially in the early days when the baby isn’t interested in splashing around for the fun of it.

We ended up getting a free plastic bath tub at our local consignment shop.  Our kitchen sink was not suitable for baby-bathing, and we didn’t want to waste water by filling our gigantic claw-foot tub with water.  Also, it seemed much safer to have the baby contained in a small little tub in those first few months.  At the time, we did not worry about BPA or phthalates leaching into the bath water and into our baby’s bloodstream.  Honestly, I probably wouldn’t worry about it a second time around, either.  The baby is not drinking the water–just soaking in it for about ten minutes.

I do worry about bringing another hunk of plastic into the world, which is why I was glad I found a secondhand one.  Once Audrey had outgrown the tub, we passed it along so it could take part in another baby’s bathing adventures.

If you live in a steamy region where the humidity matches the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, please stop reading this post immediately and start making your baby an ice bath.  My humble advice only works for areas where the air is light enough to move. 

In Eugene, Oregon, where I live, the temperature occasionally gets above ninety degrees and the humidity is almost always manageable.  Still, I am a self-professed heat wimp so I do all I can to keep our home cool.  We don’t have air conditioning, but with a little extra effort we mostly stay very comfortable through the warm summer months. Even if we did have air, I think I’d keep up the steps below to lower our power bill and our emissions with just a few minutes of effort.

Nothing about what we do is earth shattering, and I’m sure everyone used this same routine years ago.

Step 1: Put a thermometer outside your home where it is visible from a window.

Step 2: In the evenings, wait until the thermometer outside is cooler than your thermostat inside.

Step 3: Open the windows, turn on the fans, and get the air moving.  You can opt to blow the cold air in or the hot air out—but the main objective is air flow. 

Step 4: Secure the windows before going to bed only if you need to. 

Step 5: As soon as baby squeals at 5 a.m., open windows up again and get those fans on.

Step 6: When the temperature outside is hotter than inside, close everything up.

Step 7: Repeat as needed.

I actually get ridiculously excited as the fans whir around the house in the evening and our thermostat radically drops.  We’re able to keep the interior of our house between 70-76 degrees on even the hottest days just by opening and closing windows.

If evening and morning ventilation doesn’t seem to keep the heat down during the day, consider having an energy audit to check out your insulation.  Insulation is the biggest energy saver in heating and cooling your home and it should be working just as hard in the summer as it does in the winter.

Another strategy is to plant fast growing deciduous trees near your home so that you can have some relief in the years to come.  Believe it or not, there’s actually a website entitled “fast growing trees” that can help you find some options for your region.

If any sunbelt dwellers happen to still be reading, there is hope for you in the future as a company called BROAD is working on solar powered air conditioning.  Isn’t that the most obviously brilliant idea ever?  If you live in a dry climate, you may want to look into a swamp cooler as an eco-friendlier alternative to an air conditioner.

In the meantime, we’ll stick to our fans, our popsicles (organic and veggie) and an occasional run through the sprinkler.  I’ll end up using the same technology to keep my child cool that my grandmother did six decades ago–––which happens to be great for the planet and my pocketbook. 

This Independence Day, in spite of the fact that I teach American History, I’m looking forward rather than back.  Maybe it’s motherhood, or rising gas prices, or melting glaciers, but it seems as though boundless independence might not be working for our country at this point.

We’re free to use as much fuel, energy, food, and water as we’d like.  We’re free to toss recyclables into the trash and drive Hummer limousines. The pursuit of happiness has pushed us into a level of consumerism that would have baffled our nation’s founders.  (I can’t help but mention here that they were imperfect as well—some of them using slavery to support their own luxurious lifestyles.)

Meanwhile, our unsustainable lifestyle is having a daily impact on the planet.  You have to check out this website, Breathing Earth, to see just how much more carbon we’re emitting than the rest of the world.  It’s humbling and a bit shocking.

So what do we do now? If you’re reading this website, there’s a good chance that you’re making eco-conscious choices instead of shrugging your shoulders in apathetic dismay.  The next biggest change we can make is to share our down-to-earth ideas with our local communities.  People are very threatened by the idea of composting, or using cloth diapers, or planting their own garden until they know someone who has done it themselves.  Share your cloth diaper experiences with other moms, start a green group in your area, and include your family in your eco-victories, even if they don’t share your enthusiasm. 

Grassroots movements have changed the world countless times.  On this Fourth of July, it’s good to remember that a small group of dedicated people started a nation based on freedom. Looking forward, we can help one another take small steps toward sustainability to make our shared future just a bit brighter.    

The sun’s out, your baby’s teething and it’s time for a soothing summer treat.  So, how exactly do you concoct the perfect popsicle?

Popsicle molds:  There are several plastic molds on the market (I have to confess that I own a set), but there are other options available around your home.  You can make mini-pops with icicle trays or individual used yogurt cups. Crate and Barrel made BPA-free popsicle molds earlier this year but they appear to have been discontinued. I’ve written to our friends at The Soft Landing about their safest choice for popsicle molds and will keep you posted on their response.  If you prefer to avoid plastic altogether, you can use paper cups, carefully washing them out and reusing them each time.  You can also try small juice glasses, ensuring that you gradually cool the glass so that it doesn’t crack with extreme temperature change. 

The perfect recipe:  Growing up, my mom made homemade popsicles out of fruit juice, but they were always extremely dense.  We longed for those soft store-bought brands that seemed to melt in your mouth.  If you’d like to get that texture at home, try blending in whole fruit or yogurt.  The thicker mix will also make it easier for your popsicle sticks to stand up if you’re using ice cube trays or cups.  If you’re up for using gelatin, (which vegetarians might not be) it will create a softer popsicle that doesn’t melt quite as quickly.

Natural Dripless Popsicles:  These are a great way to recycle half eaten fruits and get healthy food into your child. Pictured is the momentous day that that I served Roscoe his first dripless popsicles.  He ate four in a row in one sitting. When I asked him what he would dream about right before bedtime he said “sicles.”  Luckily there was no reason to feel bad about his popsicle obsession since I used organic plums, my son’s half eaten bananas(tossed into the freezer over the last few weeks) and a bag of organic frozen blueberries.  He loved them even though he’s usually picky about eating any of these fruits by themselves.

• 1 envelope unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup water
• ¼  cup sugar (or other natural sweetner)
• Three cups of fruit

Heat water, gelatin and sugar in saucepan over low heat until gelatin dissolves, for about 5 minutes.  Then toss gelatin mixture in the blender with fruit and puree.  Pour the mixture into cups and wait until frozen.  Enjoy!

A chocolate dream:  I found a recipe for Berry Fudgy-cicles on vegan-food.net. and modified it just a bit. Honestly, these are completely amazing and taste way better than anything this healthy should.  The secret ingredient for these homemade fudgesicles is silken tofu which provides them with plenty of nutritional prestige.  I’m not sure if this treat will be more exciting for my son or for me!

Toss the following ingredients in a blender, puree, pour into molds, and freeze. 

• 12 ounces of firm silken tofu (make sure it’s silken tofu made especially for desserts)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar or maple syrup
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup rice milk, coconut milk, or cows milk
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch sea salt
• 4 strawberries, washed, stemmed, dried and sliced into quarters (put these in molds and pour chocolate mix to surround berries before freezing)

Baby-sized options:  If baby is too little to handle her own popsicle stick, consider using one of the products that use a tiny mesh bag. You can put frozen fruit chunks or ice in the mesh and then let her gnaw away to her heart’s content. This link shows Muchkin’s Fresh Food Feeder (which is BPA-Free according to their website), but you can usually find one of these in a local store if it’s easier than ordering online.

What are your ideas for summer treats?  Please add your exotic recipes to our post!

Our house is perched on a giant anthill.  I have no scientific proof of this except for the constant stream of tiny black specks that march around like they own the place. These little sugar ants are happier than ever since Roscoe has joined our family.  Now they can load up with the remnants of my son’s cracker snacks, spaghetti dinners, and cookie treats to their collective heart’s content.

So how do we mercilessly rid them of their newfound territory without endangering our son or the planet?   We don’t want to use any pesticides in our home, not just because our son likes to put almost everything in his mouth, but also because it isn’t safe for the environment. 

So far our weapon of choice has been Borax.  The Boric Acid it contains has natural ant-repelling properties and isn’t quite as scary as some other products.  It does need to be kept away from children so you have to be careful.

After looking at online resources such as greenpaige.com and barebones gardening, I have some new tricks to try on our little friends. 

Barriers:   Sprinkle or spray these in ant walkways or areas where they enter your home.   Their odors disrupt the scent trails ants create for each other. 

• White or yellow chalk (ants will not cross a chalk line)
• Cucumber peelings
• Red chili or dry mustard mixed with a bit of water
• Lemon juice
• White vinegar or half strength cider vinegar
• Orange based environmental cleaning products
• Cloves
• Coffee grounds
• Cinnamon
• Baking Soda
• Baby powder
• Black pepper
• Mint Leaves
• Mint tea bags

Ant traps: You’ll need..

• Borax
• Sugar
• A sticky substance such as mint jelly or peanut butter

Mix the substances together thoroughly.  Spread the mixture on a cracker and place out of the way of children in a cupboard or on a countertop.  When the ants get the food, they’ll also get the poison. 

Dealing with Ant Hills:  The most merciless way is to pour boiling water or hot vinegar directly into the anthill.  This site recommended putting dry grits outside the hole.  Apparently the ants try to eat them and then explode.  That sounds a bit less humane but it’s your call. 

What are your natural pest control tips?  How do you keep baby safe without ending up with ants in the sugar?  

Since fuel expenses, high food prices, and child-rearing costs are eating into our thrifty budgets, here are some simple, eco-friendly tips that can save some money. They all come directly from stopglobalwarming.org, which has another five money saving tips available for your perusal.  While you’re there, use their handy-dandy online calculator to estimate your carbon and cost savings.

Run your dishwasher only when it’s loaded to full capacity.  It’ll save you $40 per year and reduce your carbon emissions by a whopping 200 pounds.

Move your thermostat down two degrees when it’s cold and up two degrees when it’s hot.  This minor switch will save your family $98 annually and bring your carbon emissions down by two thousand pounds!

Take shorter showers.  Check out Crunchy Domestic Goddess’s post  on this.  She recently challenged her readers to time their showers and try to keep them to just five minutes per shower.  This really isn’t that challenging!  By reducing your showering time you could save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide and $99 per year. 


Switch just three standard light bulbs in a highly used area of your home with compact fluorescent bulbs.  You’ll save $60 per year (and remember that they last for many, many years) and 300 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

If you have a car, make sure the tires are properly inflated by checking them regularly.  You’ll save a shocking $840 and 250 pounds of carbon dioxide. 

Why not give a few of these tips a whirl?  It’s like getting paid to save the planet!  We’d love to hear some of your budget friendly, earth friendly tips too. 

Don’t get me wrong. I cringe every time we fill up and I know that the extra expenses brought on by high fuel prices are uncomfortable and even crippling for some tight budgets. 

So is there an upside?  Actually I think there are several. 

We are being forced to consider fuel efficient vehicles:  I like making the choice to drive less and walk more, but now I’m finding all sorts of creative ways to get even more out of our gas dollars.  Many families are taking on slightly higher car payments as they dump their SUV’s for more fuel efficient vehicles, knowing the gas savings will make a huge difference in the long run.  We finally sold the SUV we were using and I feel that a huge (carbon) weight has been lifted off our shoulders!

We are being forced to move more: More than sixty percent of American adults and over thirty percent of American children are obese.  The last decade of office inactivity and video games have contributed to the rapid spike in our weight issues as a nation. Now people have extra motivation to ride bikes to work or walk to the bus stop. Every extra step we take helps us with global warming and our American obesity epidemic.

Buying local is becoming cheaper: As fuel costs go up, so does the price of mangos grown in Central America or kiwifruit from New Zealand.  Since the local food movement has been rapidly expanding over the last few years, high fuel prices may just boost it to a whole new level. 

It’s changing the way we think: In Europe, where fuel prices have always been high, people have been willing to invest in public transport and focus on urban density.  Since we haven’t had the price pressure in America, we haven’t been forced to be as proactive.  Now building eco-friendly communities, buying local, and limiting our fuel consumption becomes more appealing to consumers wanting to conserve their budgets as well as the environment. 

What are your thoughts on this recent surge in gas prices?  How is it affecting your family and how are you managing to deal with higher prices?  Do you see any upsides (or downsides) that we haven’t mentioned yet?  Thanks for enriching this post with your input.