Green Christmas!

This picture demonstrates the ways we did christmas this year. What a great success! I feel proud that my badgering the family about it has yielded a more sustainable use of resources to celebrate the holiday!

There are:
wood items that my brother and I made,
a book by a local author, and CD's of local musicians (an interesting twist on buying local),
an organic T-shirt,
cloth bags that gifts were wrapped in to save on paper waste,
Vermont socks (darn tough brand),
local fudge,
a plate made of sugar maple in Vermont,
a set of reusable bags that replace the plastic bags, for grocery shopping, but they are also good for buying bulk because they function similar to plastic, and become air tight when wet.
and a few other wonderful items.

The majority of the gifts were in this vein and I'm proud of my family for that. I think it'll only get better with time.

This holiday was a great source of satisfaction for me, but it also taught me an important lesson about local economy. The paradigm that the Green Christmas is based on is that as consumers we can vote at the cash register. The things we pay for are sustained while the things we don't buy will dwindle or disappear. It's boycott theory I guess.

The idea of buying local makes a leap from this basic premise to say that supporting a local economy is good for the environment. I am not going to question that too much, but it's worth noting that these things aren't absolute, sometimes a centralized system is better environmentally than many smaller systems.

Overall though, small local systems are far more sustainable than a global economy. That being said, what part of the local economy are we supporting when we buy lots of gift type items around the holidays? So who are we voting for at the cash register now? GIFT MAKERS! musicians, soap people, scarf weavers, and the like. How far does that really go to promote sustainability? It's a start. And even just thinking about it is a start, but if you care enough about it to make it a green christmas, you should keep your pantry and your fridge green too! If Vermont is ever going to secede from the union we'll need grains, meats, and fruit a lot more than we'll need silk scarves. A local economy needs all levels, just like the global economy, the people who often win in Montpelier are the artisans, because there is a lot of money in Montpelier and a lot of tourism. And that's fine, because artisans are great, but don't forget about farmers. NEVER forget about farmers!

Been a while

Oh yeah. I should probably answer Evan's question about hunting,

"So did you go yet or what?"

I've been holding off answering because I believe that hunting stories fall under the category of don't kiss and tell.

Yes I went hunting. No I didn't kill anything. I might be able to tell the tale of hunting, I might even be able to make you understand what it meant to me, but I don't think I will.
I'll tell you though that I didn't carry a gun, my friend did, and she didn't shoot anything. I could tell you about our strategy, my feelings, my sensations, but not on a computer screen. Find me and ask me. I'll sit under a tree and tell you all about it.

My roommate killed a three point buck this fall. It was the last day of hunting season and she was very affected by it. She's been hunting her whole life, but never killed an animal before. This time, she did, and hit him right in the heart. I helped her scrape the hide yesterday, but the snow was falling down and freezing the fat. We needed to dip it in hot water to soften it as we went along. The hide was draped on an angled post and then scraped with a draw knife in a downward pulling motion to get the fat and flesh off like the woman in the picture above. There are so many colors on the inside of a deer hide! Red, blue, white, and they mix together like fingerpaints. It took longer draws with the knife to start out, but at the end of the process when the fat chunks were smaller, shorter faster draws were required. The water we used to keep it warm and workable formed a slippery sheet of ice under the hide that made it very hard to get any purchase or leverage so I found myself bracing myself against the post with my thighs. When I scraped, blood and water ran down the post and onto my legs.

Didn't bother me though. I've changed a lot since the adamant vegetarian days. I have been enjoying Laura's venison for a couple of weeks now. Some of it has been very tender and good. You know, my blood type is O negative (or positive, can't remember) and that means I'm supposed to eat meat and fish to be healthy according to this nutritional theory that the different blood types are indicative of your ancient ancestors who were either hunter/gatherers (O blood types) farmers (A blood types) or dairy-ists...(B blood types) And AB blood types are sort of a hybridization of the rest... Don't quote me on any of this. All I know is I feel strong when I eat meat. I feel satisfied after eating relatively little of it, and there are other feelings too. Reverance during the eating is a big one, but bodily, I feel like i'm the perfect size when I eat meat. My insides feel settled, and I'm not too big or too small. I feel able and appropriate.

Where will I get meat in VT this winter? Oh yeah I'm going to VT in two days. I cannot even contain myself.

Ad-man

I love my readers

Ha ha! It's great to always find your comments, Matt! You ask about a hunting story?

I suppose I should spill the beans about it. A friend of mine who has known me since my childhood read my post about hunting and said essentially.

"Adam, you're a vegetarian, and you always have been. Why the sudden change? If you want low impact food you can eat beans and rice! Say it ain't so!" This happened to be the mayor of Montpelier Mary Hooper.

The mayor reads my blog. It's no big deal.

Anyway, here's my reasoning for hunting, followed by my story about it.

(1) RESPONSIBILITY
I demand to interact with my food. Aldo leopold said "Heat doesn't come from the furnace and pork doesn't come from the supermarket." People who don't realize that should forego their right to vote and speak. It is essential for a citizen to appreciate and understand food production.

(2)ENVIRONMENTAL
The production of any food can be calculated in units of food per unit of human effort. It's often done in terms of pounds per man hour or the like. Well, think of the inputs into hunting as opposed to farmed meat. The game just farm themselves so to speak, so the human inputs are much much lower (factor in the administration of the fish and game department, gasoline, the hours of work you did to afford the seven dollar orange vest...) Also the herd needs to be controlled for the good of the deer who survive, and thus the herd as a whole.

(3)CHALLENGE
I am an aspiring naturalist/ecologist. I need to learn constantly about nature. Hunting adds an element of success and failure to the outdoor experience. Stumbling on some deer is very different than finding them or tracking them down intentionally through reasoning, skill, and humility. This added challenge increases my learning curve for the woods. Sure you can identify a flower, but what if it's not around? Can you find it? Two very different skills, one is hunting, the other is observing. Hunting leads to great knowledge about the connections of the forest.

(4)INDIGENY
Can I ever become indigenous to this land or any other? This is my best chance. Search around through it. Suffer in it. Get lost in it and start to develop beliefs about it. Ill never be an Indian, but I can stubbornly be myself until I somehow fit in better.

It's late and I'm... not doing french homework.

Green Christmas

Let's make it happen people.

In the comments section below, I challenge you to come up with gift ideas that promote sustainability. With black friday gone, it might be late to start talking about this.

My aunt Pat, years ago ran a workshop called green christmas and her suggestions were great. A pyramid of snowballs with a candle inside for a luminarie, reusable festive bags rather than wrapping paper, and other trash reducing ideas.

my personal favorite of hers was this:

"Share traditions rather than gifts." It's simple and beautiful. A tradition I started almost four years ago now is a candle ceremony at Christmas dinner. Everyone eating dinner with you gets a candle and one person has a match. The person who has the match lights someone else's candle and tells them why they are lighting their candle. It is very memorable. I lit my older brother's candle and said,

"I'm going to light your candle because your my brother and you've taught me so much. You've influenced me more than you know and every time I meet someone, they end up knowing about you within three days because I want to tell them about you."

My uncle Chris said to me, something like, "Adam it has been great to watch you grow up and what you've accomplished and I'm sure you'll continue to accomplish great things and make us all proud."

It doesn't have to be completely serious either. We have fun with it and we joke around, so it's just kind of a nice thing. And then you can either let the candles light your meal or blow them out and save them for the next year, or whatever you want.

Spread the Cheer, not the Gear.

Bluegrass

There is an actual species of grass called Kentucky Bluegrass latin name: Poa pratensis. I always thought it would be cool to have a bluegrass band named Poa Pratensis, Or just Poa. Only other botany nerds would get it. The plant is the dominant lawn grass in America so why aren't our lawns blue all the time? According to Dag Ryen, who wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in 1993, the leaves of kentucky bluegrass are completely green. The seed heads on the other hand are blue, but only develop when the grass is allowed to grow to its full height of two to three feet. Maybe practicing a little backyard conservation would reveal what type of grass is in YOUR lawn!

Anyway, I made thirty buxx and scored a free dinner playing bluegrass mandolin in a coffee shop/art gallery in Arlee, MT. My friend, Erin plays fiddle in a bluegrass ensemble called the Gravely Mountain Boys. She's a girl, so I don't know why they're called that. I think the group has been around since long before Erin was part of it. Possibly before she was born. The group consists of Dick, an old guitar player/singer, Ron, a younger guitarist/singer, Dick's son, a banjo player, and Ron's daughter, a fiddle player. It's a family affair you might say!

Well, they were missing their banjoist so Erin offered me a spot on stage for the night. It was a beautiful Montana night. Cold and crisp with good sunlight shining on the staggering mission mountains. We practiced before hand at Ron's house where I got to sit in an official bluegrass rocking chair! It was perfect for picking, armless so I had all the elbow room I needed, and it allowed the perfect amount of slouch. We warmed up on a few tunes and then went to the coffee shop.

It was a fun show and I played bones for them, a traditional Irish percussion instrument. I had to use all my musical knowledge to keep up with these boys! They weren't telling me what chords to play, I had to figure it out by looking at their guitar playing hands. But then again, they were using capos so I had to transpose as I went along, while trying to look natural and lively on stage. It was hard. I only jumped in to take the lead a couple times at the end. And with the stress of being on stage I totally biffed the ONE song that I already knew! Red haired boy is a tune that I play constantly, but I messed it up. Oh well. Everyone knew I was an outsider anyway so I think they cut me some slack. My friends Courtney and Dan came to watch, Courtney came later because she was in a hottub looking at the mountains under the moonlight while the Mountain Boys and I ate soup and shmoozed with the locals.

Fun night.

Too much of a good thing

Corn was one of the three sisters. Corn Beans and Squash, the staple vegetables of native agriculture in the Eastern U.S. Back then it's storability and high caloric density made it an essential crop for life in the rugged American landscape. Now we see it as an enemy.

Its all a matter of scale. Why are there huge tragedies? Because there are huge countries. Why are there huge environmental problems? Because we have huge economies. Why were there huge 4and a half billion ears of corn harvested in Iowa this year? Because there are huge subsidies that make this unfeasible crop into the best case scenario.

Reasons I'm opposed to Corn:
(1) Corn is being grown mainly for cattle feed and it's unhealthy for the cattle and those who eat the meat
(2) Corn is being grown in a big way to produce ethanol, an alternative energy that is extremely unsustainable
(3) Corn is not eaten whole. It is eaten at the molecular level.
(4) Corn takes a ton of fertilizer which contributes to global warming.

Explanations:
(1) Again, its a matter of scale.
Feeding grains to cows is pretty standard, at the rate of one or two scoops a day. That's why we have silos, I guess. But it's well known that if a cow gets into the silo, it will gladly eat itself to death! That's too much grain. Turn a cow out onto the pasture and it can't eat itself to death. Grass fed beef and bison are the way to go. That or wild game.

(2) Ethanol production is a bad idea. Growing forests sequesters more carbon than Corn fields do. If they could make ethanol from cellulose it would be worth it. Until then, leave ethanol alone. The equation doesn't balance.

(3) Corn products are lame. Aren't Americans sweet enough without them? I can't wait until the days when most foods have a list of actual ingredients on the label rather than a list of chemicals.

(4) Corn requires MASSIVE inputs of fertilizer from year to year. Nitrogen is the plant's limiting nutrient. This element is a very mobile element though, since it has several gaseous phases that it can transform between by means of microbial processes. Nitrous Oxide, NO2 is a biproduct of fertilizing with Nitrogen. NO2 is released in significant quantities to the atmosphere during ethanol production. Each molecule of NO2 is 25 times more effective a greenhouse gas than a CO2 molecule. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Actually don't smoke, you're hurting the environment.

"But Adam!" you say. "80% of the Atmosphere is already Nitrogen! What difference does it make to add more?"

"Well, I'm glad you asked." I reply. "Most atmospheric Nitrogen is N2 which is an extremely stable molecule with a triple bond. NO2 is a different molecule with different properties." for example it has the capacity to FRY THE EARTH."

But it's still a matter of scale. Corn can be grown sustainably through crop rotation or fertilization on a smaller scale. Is the world's population at fault here? No. The earth can sustain this many people I believe. But not these people.

Tracking

I can't wait. I'm going hunting for the first time this weekend. I refuse to let the deer be my adversary in this endeavor. I don't know if I will kill anything, one never does. Talk about low impact food production! Wild game is a great food source.

I just treed a raccoon in Greenough park with Kane (wolf, see earlier posts)! I thought this was pretty cool. I saw his wet footprints on the river rocks, and followed them, followed the little guy right to a cottonwood that he was climbing. He clumb the thing like a rock climber moreso than a squirrel: using his fingers, rather than claws. He was wet and bedraggled, climbing slow. I didn't stop to watch him, didn't stop to bother him you know? Well it sure was exciting. Especially since he could have been a river otter since the tracks are very similar between the two animals.
Similarities:
five toes, size, area found.

Differences are:
Raccoon Otter

walks on tippy toes Has webbed feet with a larger hind foot
visible tail drag that swooshes between feet