thinking ahead to sustainability - growing food in your own backyard

Mom has always had flowers, since I can remember, which she took very good care of: lilies, iris, tulips, pansies...

But Dad planted a garden, with radishes, carrots, beans, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, canteloupe, pumpkins, even corn! I remember the first time we all helped him seed...and the first time we pulled up the mutant carrots... But Dad cared about that garden as well as for it. He watered it, tended it, and then we would bring in the bounty. Only thing was, Dad didn't cook. And neither, really, did Mom. I am trying to remember eating this gorgeous bounty but, aside from swallowing soggy things boiled in bacon and salt water, which is how you "prepare" vegetables in the South, I do not recall ever eating any of these wonderful fruits of our labor at anything near their natural form...

Today, Mom and I had to go buy a tea kettle to replace hers that started spewing water all over the stove. On the way home, we had to wait for a train so we killed time at St Matthews Feed & Seed store. I thought to myself: It's now or never, and walked straight over to the tomato plants. Real food. Plants you can grow which make no garbage and keep giving you food. It's miraculous! I have grown plenty of plants in my house but, other than herbs, I have never bought and planted plants to grow food for my family. This is a first! We bought cherry tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, cilantro, lemon mint, and seeds to start green beans.

"You don't know if any of these seeds are GMO?" I asked the store lady. "Huh?" "Genetically modified - these are just seeds right, they haven't been messed with or anything?" She looked at me like I was asking her to bicycle to the moon so I took our little packet of seeds and thanked her, then we paid and skedaddled. The little plants are waiting hopefully outside in their pots for the day, coming soon, when I will put them in the real ground for them to take root and start really growing...like the baby in my belly...

We can grow things. That's amazing.

YERTmama check-in: garbage on the homefront

YERT mama checking in... confessing to some trash-making on the home front in Louisville, whilst the remaining explorers make out across Minneapolis in search of green drinks, BagE-Wash and bees...

When I got dropped off of the road part of YERT, I knew that being trash-free would become a bigger challenge - mainly due to food preparation since, suddenly, all the packaging that the three of us had mostly managed to avoid (by not finishing people's cartons of milk or OJ, or boxes of cereal, etc) I would now be coming face to face with in my mom's own fridge. I mentioned a few days ago that I've been a little frustrated but, seriously, what do you do with a kitchen full of already packaged food? Not waste it, surely?

"Mom," I'd said, pointing to her little under-counter bin, "this garbage bag is going to last us until the baby is born. So don't throw anything in there that you don't want hanging around for the next 2 months." She'd just looked at me, big eyes. "OK." she'd said. I'd had a feeling it might take a few days to catch on. I did pull a couple of banana peels, a few pieces of junk mail and the occasional kleenex out of there but for the most part, and no thanks to my tirades and nagging, Mom started getting the hang of it. It has been 3 weeks.

I was hoping that we wouldn't have to take garbage out...I really was. But, I am not kidding, the trash had started to stink. I couldn't figure it out since all we'd been putting in there was plastic, plastic and plastic. And waxed food cartons that had been washed very well. This morning I found the culprit - a disposable diaper. Yum. We had a little visitor a few days ago who isn't quite potty trained yet and I hadn't told his sweet mama that we were trying to keep the same garbage until July.

It's not her fault. Anyway, I was fooling myself if I thought I could keep packing the refuse down to make that bag last another week, much less another month. So, regrettably, Mom and I took the garbage out, and took video to record the unhappy event. I have to say, though, I am so proud of mom for her efforts!! We have only one very small bag of garbage, compared to 3 BIG bags of recycling going out tomorrow, and that is a BIG change. I wonder if the garbage men notice? Almost makes me want to get up at 6:00 am just to watch them them scratch their heads in wonder at how we manage...but not quite...

AND, yesterday, Mom turned in her gas powered lawnmower for $50 at the recycling facility in Louisville and then we went to the hardware store to pick her up an electric, battery-operated lawn mower (for which she also got a $50 rebate. She's hoping it will pay for itself in saved gas costs, and she feels good about not polluting or using oil), and today we bought a few more CFL (Compact Flourescent) bulbs. Next on the agenda.... could it be that Mom is considering retiring her old van and buying a Prius???

Maybe Ben’s not showering in 12 dys makes up for the amount of garbage that is filling the trash here at home…

YERT mama checking in on the site…and just noticing from the shower checker that YERT daddy has not taken a shower in 12 dys.

I can honestly say that I left the road part of the trip just in time.

I have been home for just about 10 dys now. Last weekend, I accompanied my brother Tony and his wife Heather here in Louisville as they picked up red wrigglers (worms!) from Breaking Grounds (related to Heine Bros Fair Trade Organic Coffee). Tony and Heather were the first people to buy worms from the newly established compost/wormery, along with another Louisville lady. I interviewed Brian B, the new worm wrangler, and got a first hand look at worm eggs which i had never studied so closely before. I hope to start volunteering on Sundays, bringing worms to the ignorant masses…

At home, we are finding the NO GARBAGE challenge to be nearly impossible. Firstly, we have a lot of food to use up in Mom’s fridge and cabinets that is highly packaged and, secondly, there are certain things that Mom cannot get on board with yet. I have to learn to be gentle or this will be fruitless. She did not sign on for the YERT experience. Hiding her papertowels and kleenexes and chiding her for flushing the toilet is, so far, not charming her. I have got to be more creative and maybe come up with a way of making NO TRASH more fun.

So far, I think it is mainly annoying. For both of us. I just didn’t realize how much easier it is to make no trash when you are all 3 dedicated and you are eating out half the time and not absorbing the waste that comes from restaurant food…or from the households that are so kindly offering us to partake in their juice, milk and cereal…

…To be continued…

Just another thing on the birthing worry plate...

Boy, it just keeps getting trickier and trickier.

There are just all kinds of things that can go wrong - tho they usually don't - in homebirths AND hospital births. If you focused on any one of these, I can see how it would be difficult to give birth at all since you're supposed to relax in order for the body to do what its made to do. Today a friend of mine called and warned me about something called Group B Strep which can be carried and passed on from mother to baby and which can, on rare occasions, cause death. Noone has mentioned this to me yet - not the ob/gyn's or anyone else. The only remedy is to have IV antibiotics during labor. Which of course make the baby more susceptible to strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Sheesh.

The only good thing I can see about this scenario is that if a mom is carrying GBS, then there really shouldn't be ANY kind of physical intervention with the actual delivery - no fetal monitor in baby's little head, no forceps, no vacuum, no c-section - bc it all increases the risk of baby's getting germs in its little system.

But it is just another thing to potentially worry about, along with the myriad of other things... like finding JUST ONE caregiver in Louisville who is not too worried about malpractice to back up homebirth if things get tricky. You'd think there would be one doctor who understands the benefits of homebirth who could at least offer support even if they can't necessarily condone it on paper. I am stunned daily.

In Europe, over 1/3 of all babies are still delivered at home, with a midwife. In the state of KY, midwifery is illegal unless the midwife is licensed...but alas no licenses have been given since 1976. But I am still going for it! And somebody else is having a home birth on my street next week!!! Wahoo, go ladies, go!!! Take back birth!

for my fellow girls who are going for natural childbirth!

Before I go to bed, may I please just say that I cannot believe that midwifery is illegal in 14 states in this country!
If you have any interest, go to this site and see the documentary, The Business of Being Born in its entirety FOR FREE: http://quicksilverscreen.com/watch?video=45525
Though you might not be able to make it full screen, the film is well worth it.

Kentucky Derby 134: Another beauty bites the dust: Has it taken me almost 30 yrs to realize that maybe horseracing is a barbaric sport?

So, I came off the road just in time for the 134th Run For the Roses. The Kentucky Derby is huge here in Louisville, bigger than Christmas. And what a Derby it was. The favorite, Big Brown, blew past all the other horses to win by several lengths while the only filly in a field of 19 colts, Eight Belles, the horse my mom and I sat squealing for from our armchairs, ran her little heart out behind him, coming in 2nd, only to break both her front ankles just past the finish line and knuckle down on the track where she lay and was euthanized within minutes of finishing the race.

And somehow, this was not really newsworthy. The announcers mentioned the "ill-fated filly" but continued with the celebratory coverage for Big Brown's owners, and we sat there stunned. It's funny what we humans consider a tragedy...bc you know if she'd come in 1st, and then come down, she would be given some kind of respect for having died racing so her owners could make a bunch of money off of her talents. Reporters would have been all over that. But, as it is, she came in second, so her unbelievable death - dying by racing her little heart out - was a side note to the big winner, who brought people the most money...cause you know it is all about money.

I haven't really watched horse racing since I left KY years ago to live in NYC, and I just find it ironic that the year that I leave NYC, to study how people are living sustainably (or not) in America, I come home to watch the Derby and the horse we are rooting for dies on the track...from, I presume, being bred for an unsustainable career running as fast as she can so that people could bet on the likelihood of her winning the race. We are a strange species and I feel very sorry.

Rest in Peace, Eight Belles, beautiful girl. You ran a magnificent race and now you are free. I hope your spirit is soaring.

Where oh where are my cajones?

WHAT is this fear I have of disappointing people??? Have I always nursed this anxiety or has it been growing over the years? Is it just manifesting now bc I am making decisions whose ramifications matter much more to me than any so far in my life?

I have a prenatal appointment tomorrow and I am practically in sweats about it. Why? Bc I know something that they don't know - that I am going to try to give Bailey her birth at home, naturally, with help from people who help babies get born. Every appointment, i feel as if i am making small talk and smiling just to cover up the truth, and when i imagine what kind of reaction i would get if i told them that what my real plans are, I panic.

(A little backstory - No doctors will assist homebirths in KY, so it will be a midwife and/or doula coming to the house. Everyone I've talked to has said Don't tell the doctors you're giving birth at home! - all to do with litigation and liabilities...and so the doctors themselves don't want to know. Mine have seemed completely uninterested in natural childbirth in general. Not the most reassuring situation, let me just say, and i am sure that it adds to the stress of being about to give birth for the first time.)

I am all worried about how the doctors will feel if I tell them we're giving birth at home, how the rejected midwives will feel when I tell them I chose someone else to go with, how anxious Mom will be about something going wrong, how trapped I could feel if i get afraid, and then how responsible we will feel if something does goes awry...and I start to feel paralyzed.

Maybe this is Part 2 of my learning to trust the Universe and the Creator, and to believe in my own self-worth. People make decisions every day that are right for them and not right for somebody else. Right now I am trying to make a nice open space to provide the best birthday ever for this little girl, and to take the time to search and discover before making our decision...People can wait.

Is this the same kind of fear I have of being in crowds or of interviewing people on the street? Why do I not have this fear on stage? BC I can hide inside a character? BC i can hide inside of good work? I think there is something really important for me to learn here...like, where are julie's cajones in real life? I want to find them, quick!