Toe clips are the new bane of my existence.   A few weeks ago while endeavoring to save the earth by riding our bicycles, my husband made an unexpected (to me) stop just in front of me in our driveway.  Instead of pulling forward and running over my son in the bike trailer I too tried to stop suddenly.  As my bike slowly tipped toward the cement, I struggled in vain to pull my foot out from its toe clip and ended up sticking out my arm instead.  Crack! 

I knew it was broken right away but didn’t realize it was also quite dislocated. As Roscoe chanted “Uh-oh Mama,” I wondered whether I would actually be able to pull myself off the pavement.  I lay there ungracefully sprawled out for few moments, using Lamaze breathing to try not to descend into shock.  Some very kind passersby stopped to help, the neighbors volunteered to take Roscoe, and we were off to the hospital in search of healing and relief in the form of morphine.

Despite the pain and the long emergency room ordeal, I am very grateful for the small things that have made this bearable.  Here are the lessons that I’ve learned that (abstractly) relate to living green.

• Local is Better: Thank goodness it happened in our driveway rather than a few miles away!

• Community Counts: Friends, neighbors, and family cooked for us, babysat and let me take long naps.  We are so grateful to have a circle of support.

• Children Need To Be Empowered:  Roscoe can do more than I realized and having one arm has helped me allow him more independence.  He now climbs into his car seat by himself and walks more than ever before since I can’t lug him around as much.

• Cloth Diapering Is Shockingly Easy: If I can change a poopy cloth diaper with one arm and a squirmy son, surely anyone can! 

Now that my arm brace is off and I’m slowly improving my range of motion, I hope to be back on the bike before summer begins.  In the meantime, I’m feeling gratitude for all the things I once took for granted, like scratching my nose, having two arms for toddler tending, and being able to type this blog.  

You may recall from my Earth Day Resolution blog that I’m a struggling grocery shopper. Deciding what’s for dinner is hard enough, but figuring out how to get healthful eco-friendly food for reasonable prices has felt nearly impossible.  I want my child to munch on organic fruits and veggies, but when I see the prices my inner tightwad has a nervous breakdown. 

I’ve only been a Community Supported Agriculture member for one week, but already I feel vastly better about our family’s grocery habits.  Wondering what a CSA is? It’s a farm that provides seasonal organic produce directly to community members for a regular monthly price.  In our case we pay $135 each month for weekly bags chock full of organic goodies.  Click here for more info on CSA’s in general and here to find out if there’s one in your area.

Our CSA, Sweetwater Farm, allows people to join a month at a time so I was able to make the giant leap over to a farm subscription without worrying about a year-long commitment. After just one week we love it, and here’s why:

It’s easy!  Every Thursday we head to a shopping center close to our home to pick up our bag of mystery veggies and fruits.  They’re fresh, mostly local and so very good for us.  I don’t have to run around town to get the best prices or scrub my non-organic veggies to get the sludge off. 

It inspires healthy eating.  My friend Andy lost 18 pounds when she joined her CSA just because she found herself surrounded by glorious wholesome foods and subsequently began eating better each week.  She ended up quitting Weight Watchers but sticking with her CSA.

It gets us out of our comfort zone.  The idea of getting a large bag full of unknown produce was daunting at first, but already we’ve had some amazing meals with cabbage, asparagus, and fingerling potatoes that I wouldn’t have picked up on regular trips to the grocery store.

It exposes our toddler to a variety of produce. He’s still young enough not to stick out his tongue when we pile veggies onto his plate.  If he gets accustomed to eating lots of green stuff now, we may be able to avoid the long “cheese pizza” phase that some youngsters undergo.  (My fingers are crossed!) 

It comes with recipes. Last night I made an amazing frittata with Swiss chard and earlier this week we ate a scrumptious stir fry with cabbage and fresh asparagus.  I NEED weekly ideas for meals so this has been a treat!

It sends money directly to farmers. When we buy produce at the grocery store a tiny fraction ends up in the hands of the people who labored to grow the food.  With a CSA your money goes directly to the grower, so  you are sustaining your local economy, eating organic food for less, and helping the planet. 

We’re certainly spending more than we did on produce, but that motivates us to value our veggies and buy less meat, which happens to be environmentally beneficial as well.  My only regret in joining a CSA is that I didn’t do it sooner. What are your tips for finding good prices on organic fruits and vegetables?  

First it was the spaghetti.  Roscoe would pile heaps of noodles on his head at dinner and the make us laugh against our will as he peeked out from the pasta tendrils. Now Roscoe, always the entertainer, has come up with another coy little trick for mealtimes: spitting out food.  He pops it into his mouth, takes a few chews to savor the taste, and then just as happily lets it dribble down his chin while he goes for the next bite.  We can say our son is a comedian or a creative eater, but when dinnertime is over and the belly laughing is done, what are we supposed to do with all that food?

Families with dogs don’t ever have to ask themselves this question and probably also have much cleaner floors than we do.  Since the only thing resembling pets in our home are wilted houseplants, we depend on our compost bin to function as a food waste controller.  Rather than sending scraps to a landfill where they don’t have enough air to decompose properly, composting allows food to biodegrade and be reused as fertilizer. 

We keep a plastic container (purchased at a thrift store) on our countertop and dump in all the non-dairy, non-meat waste that ends up on Roscoe’s tray at each meal.  Then, we regularly head out to our Darth Vader-shaped compost bin and dump in the latest batch.

As our years of composting continue, we’ve learned just how many things can be tossed in, including tea bags, manure from vegetarian animals, wood ashes, paper napkins, fall leaves, and grass clippings. It confounds me that the bin never fills up, no matter how many overflowing containers of scraps we load into it. We even tossed our old bank statements and paperwork into the bin this year-good old Darth managed to quickly digest it, leaving plenty of room for Roscoe’s offerings. 

For those that haven’t started a compost bin yet, it’s far simpler than you might guess.  You can make your compost bin out of an old trash can and just a few other materials.  Check out this website for a video showing just how to create your bin and start composting. In warmer climates, like here in Oregon, the bin can go year round, but in more seasonal areas it’s best to start composting soon (early spring) and continue through the fall.  Compostguide.com has loads of inexpensive options for setting up your own bin plus tips for advanced composters on using worms or making “compost tea.”

In addition to composting, we’ve also tried some creative methods for cutting down on Roscoe’s food waste.  Instead of loading his tray up with too many choices, we fork over a few items at a time. This seems to cut down on the off-tray food dumping. Christina Katz, author of Writer Mama, recommends taking all those half eaten bananas (which we seem to accumulate on a daily basis) and other partially-nibbled fruits and tossing them into a Ziplock bag. She stores them in the freezer and when her kids long for a smoothie, she whips out the frozen fruit bag and dumps it into the blender.  Voila!  I suppose if I were organized enough and/or had more time, I could do the same thing with veggies and then blend them up for vitamin-packed soups and stews.  

At this point in our busy lives, the compost bin remains our standby for dealing with Roscoe’s food waste.  In the spring when we pull rich dirt out of the bin for use in our garden beds, we are glad that we trooped out into the rain all winter long to dump our potato peels and carrot tops.  The top quality soil from our compost is produced at no expense AND saves us money on our garbage bill by cutting down on our monthly pickups.  That dirt manages to help us grow organic tomatoes, basil and peppers for lovely summer meals that Roscoe will likely be putting on his head instead of into his mouth.  Those scraps will again end up in the mouth of dear old Darth, our family’s favorite compost bin.