Moments...

It is the beginning of the month so, once again, I have a slightly different Moments post.  This is a reflection on the month using the goals suggested over on Slow Living Essentials, so here are mine for February and head on over to see what others have been up to.

…nourish some time before Christmas I started to buy raw milk from a local farm to make yogurt.  I had met the farmer at our local farmers market a few years ago but had yet to take the plunge and buy the milk.  I was given a cheese making book and a few items to make cheese with by my mother for Christmas.  It was the perfect present and she was unaware I was already making yogurt.  I have made several different cheeses, including cream cheese, feta, mozzarella and the best, for me, Halloumi.  I am not sure I will make feta that often again it was fiddly and tasted odd, the cream cheese was great but made too big a quantity, the mozzarella I have made several times and is very quick and easy, but the Halloumi is just wonderful.  It tastes nothing like the stuff I buy in the shops but nonetheless it has a wonderful taste.  I suspect that this is down to the milk I am using, it is probably not the same as they use in Cyprus where this cheese is usually made.  Making my own works out so much cheaper and as the milk has only come from five miles down the road the distance it has had to travel is considerably less!

…prepare in the Winter months we love to eat soup.  It makes a welcome addition to our picnics.  Last year I started to batch cook a large amount for freezing with veg I have bought from our local Farmers Market, our market is monthly, this year I have been doing the same.

…reduce early in the month my husband went to our village recycling point with our recycling and returned with a child's bike that had been abandoned there.  He spent a couple of days working on it, buying a few small pieces that he did not have, and we now have a bike that my eldest can ride.  We bought him a bike last year which is a little on the big side, that too was secondhand and a very good price.  For now he will ride the smaller one, until he has grown a little.

…green we have lived in our house for eleven years.  Slowly, over that time, we have been redecorating each room.  The most recent one to be decorated is a bedroom for my youngest.  We finished painting it and building furniture for it a while ago and it is in real need of a new carpet.  Our income has been precarious over the last year so we did not want to make any large expenditure, now that my husband has returned to being an employee we are confident in our income.  We visited a local carpet shop and came home with some samples.  The choice was between 100% wool or a wool and acrylic mix.  We spent some time deciding and researching which was the better of the two.  We knew that we really wanted the 100% wool carpet but had to be sure that this was the best option for the room and not just based on our desire for natural materials.  We have opted for the 100% wool.  The carpet in the room is a very old and worn wool one which has now been cut up and put in the compost bin to assist the decomposition by keeping the contents warm.

…grow I finally got round to buying myself a new calendar for garden planning.  Last year I gave biodynamic gardening a go for the first time.  It was in the main successful.  It was an unusually warm summer for us last year, the hottest in the eleven years I have been at my house.  I would like to give this method a few more years before deciding whether it really does work.  What I really love about it tho is the framework it provides for me to ensure that I make time and spend time in the garden.  As you only do particular tasks on particular days it does not feel onerous and overwhelming.  A gardeners work is never done!  I have spent some time planning, and buying seeds and am all set to go for the this year, here is hoping it will be a good one…..

…create we made a wee felt snowdrop fairy for our seasonal table and lots of birthday cards.  The first part of the month, for me, was taken up with a shawl that I knitted for my mother for her birthday.  This was my first shawl and I was really pleased with how it turned out, my mum loved it too!  The pattern is Guernsey Triangle.  I have also been knitting up two cardigans which are still work in progress.

…discover last month I posted about my quandary regarding the future of my eldest's education.  At the moment he is home educated and I was unsure if I should continue once he reached the age, in the UK, where he as due to start at Secondary School.  I have spent this month reading and researching about education from the age of 11 both at home and in a school.  I have talked to friends, had some wonderful comments from fellow bloggers and talked to my family.  I still have more thinking and reading to do but I feel a little clearer now as to what my options are and how I feel about them.

…enhance regular readers of my blog will now that I occasionally post about home education and what that means to me and my family.  One of my biggest worries about home educating was how I would feel with the adults, the parents of any children my own children made friends with.  I had always considered myself to be someone who finds it hard to be part of a big group, who doesn't make friends easily.  I have come to realise that this is not actually true, yes I am not keen on big groups but I do make friends.  It takes time and effort to build a true friendship.  I now have a small group of people who live near to me who I can truly count on as friends.  I really feel that I am part of something, I am really comfortable with all these people and want to spend time with them.  This last month I have managed to do this, and it has made me realise that if you really value a friendship you have to work hard to make it work but it is worth it.

…enjoy the absolute highlight for me this month has been spending a few days with my whole family.  I have two younger brothers, one lives near my parents, the other nearer to me.  We are spread out, busy people who rarely come together and spend time together so when we do it is really special.  This is the first time we have all actually been together since the birth of my nephews last year.  It was my mums birthday, a special one, her only request was for us all to come and spend a weekend with her, how could we refuse?

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...continuing from my usual moments posts...

...reading these picture books*, with a short review here, 52. Sparkly Shoes and Picnic Parties by Sophie Tilley, 53. Grandma and Grandpa's Garden by Neil Griffiths, 54. When Dragons are Dreaming by James Mayhew, 55. Going Swimming by Frances Lincoln, 56. Bop's Hiccups by Joel Stewart, 57. Friends by Eric Carle, 58. A Big Operation by Richard Scarry, 59. Peepo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, 60. Oliver and the Noisy Baby by Nick Maland, 61. I am not sleepy and I will not go to bed by Lauren Child, 62. Jack and the FlumFlum Tree by Julia Donaldson.

* Joining in with 300 Picture Book Challenge

Sustainable

Welcome to the August 2013 Natural Living Blog Carnival: Living Sustainably. This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Natural Living Blog Carnival hosted by Happy Mothering and The Pistachio Project through the Green Moms Network. This month, our members are talking about steps their families have taken, or hope to take, to live more sustainably. We hope you'll find inspiration for your family's journey towards sustainable living, and share your tips with us as well!

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We humans are a highly successful species, we have utilised the earths resources far more than any other species and we dominate the food chain and the planet.  If we carry on doing so at the rate we are I wonder how long we as a species will last and what it will do to the earth's resources.  If we are to ensure that they are around for future generations to make use of we need to be wise in our usage, but how do we measure what is wise.

Forty years ago recycling was virtually unheard of in the way it is now, there were not recycling banks or places to take materials that could be reused, repurposed or recycled.  Forty years ago consumption was totally different.  Promoting recycling is a great idea in principle, if it means that less raw resources are used up then it should be a winner but is it not actually better to buy less, just what we need rather than what we want. In our consumer driven societies this does not sit well.  We do recycle as much as it is possible to, to the extent that we only put a rubbish bag out for collection every six to eight weeks but we are also mindful shoppers.  We only buy what we need and we are conscious of packaging when we do purchase, especially food.  We don't buy clothes that are only worn once, we make careful purchases which will last many years.

The food we eat is not only purchased with packaging in mind but also the season.  I remember as a child what a treat it was to eat oranges at Christmas time, this was the only time they were available to buy in the shops in the northern hemisphere.  Similarly strawberries were only available in the summer, apples in the autumn now we can buy all these products and more all year round.  They are shipped, air freighted and driven hundreds of miles around the world before they get to our door.  We grow as much as we can on our small patch of land, this provides us with a small amount of vegetables and fruit for some weeks in the summer and autumn.  What we cannot grow we have delivered from a local farm co-operative once a week.  We look forward to the change in the seasons and the new fruit and vegetables that this brings.  The rest of the food we buy is bought in a local town, we use small independent shops as much as possible and buy as locally produced food as much as possible.  I write a menu for our lunches and suppers based on the vegetables we have in the garden and delivered.  Our food shop is based on the ingredients to cook the menu and we have virtually no food waste as we don't buy anything we don't need, we are not tempted by the reduced bargains unless it is something on our shopping list.  I cook every meal from scratch with mostly raw ingredients, we do buy a few processed items such as pasta and mustard.  We are mostly vegetarian, I am but the rest of my family do eat some meat, what meat we do buy is always direct from the farmer at a market.

When we moved into our house over ten years ago it was the middle of a very cold winter.   We had a basic central heating system that relied on a open coal fire being lit to warm the rest of the house which took some heating as it was poorly insulated.  Our coal bill was really high that first winter and we knew we needed to do something about it to reduce the cost and our reliance on coal.  We replaced the open fire with a wood burning stove which we heat with scavenged wood, branches that have fallen from trees, in our local area.  We have installed solar water panels to heat our water, and improved on the insulation in our house in the cavity walls, the loft and under the floors.  We also have a gas boiler which we rarely use.  We have a warm and cosy house and very, very low energy bills.  We would love to take our house off grid one day by installing a wind turbine we are in the process of researching this to work out our options particularly for storing energy for the (rare) windless days.

We live in a small rural village which has a bus service.  The village has good services such as a small library, a shop, a post office, an outdoor pool in summer, a sports hall and a school.  We are home educating as a family and there are no other families, known to us, in our village who are doing the same.  All our home educating friends live some distance away, none on our bus route.  Currently we have two cars, one my husband uses to get to work the other we use to get us out of the village.  If we are going some distance we often use the train.  I would love us to only own one car but it would hamper our ability to get to home ed events, there are six buses a day and if we miss one it is often a two hour wait for the next!  We have home ed friends who don't have cars they all live in big towns with really good public transport networks, we have a train line at the end of our garden but the three train stations near us all fifteen plus miles away.  We try and mix our use of the car and public transport as much as we can as a compromise.

All our decision making in the past and in the future has been and will continue to be mindful.  We carefully consider our options, the impacts they may have, the cost to the environment and our bank balance.  We have not made them because they are what we should be doing but because we believe in them and we hope will leave the world as a healthy place for our children's future.

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Visit Happy Mothering and The Pistachio Project to learn more about participating in next month’s Natural Living Blog Carnival!

Please take some time to enjoy the posts our other carnival participants have contributed:

Green?

Welcome to the April edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival - Going Green cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month, we write about going green and environmentally friendly living. Please check out the links to posts by our other participants at the end of this post.

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When it comes to labels, those that apply to people that is, I find them difficult to apply none more so than that of being green or environmentally aware.  This is not because I don't agree with it as a principle but rather that I fear that some choose to apply it to themselves because it is what they think they should be doing.  But should I be critical?  If it means that more people are recycling is that not a positive step, well of course it is, but if we are truly signing up to being green should we not extend this further and look at other areas of our lives.  That does not mean that it has to be an unreachable goal, it is about paying more than lip service and thinking mindfully when we make decisions.

We do recycle, we compost food and garden waste, we buy products with little or no packaging and we have reduced our rubbish and put out a bag for collection every eight weeks or so.  We grow some fruit and vegetables in our garden, those that we buy are locally grown, where possible, and seasonal.  We have solar water panels to heat our water and have insulated our house to reduce our fuel bills to a minimum.  We used washable nappies, I breastfeed.  We are considering ways to reduce our water consumption and would like to install a wind turbine in our garden to take our house off grid.  Does that make me green, perhaps it does but all these decisons have been made because they felt right to us, we were considering the impact of our behaviour when making them. We own a dishwasher, take baths rather than showers and we have two cars.  Two cars is there anything wrong with that, or a dishwasher or taking baths not showers?  Some critics might say there is.

We made a conscious decision to become car owners.  They are cars with low emissions but cars they are nonetheless.  We recently had to make a decision concerning one of these cars, it failed a test that is required by law where I live.  It needed a considerable amount of work doing to it before it would pass, money that we were not sure we wanted to spend.  So we tried to sell it, unsurprisingly no one wanted to buy it so we ended up selling it for scrap.  I would like to believe that it will be stripped of its parts and recycled completely but I am not sure if that will happen.  I have to take it on trust that that will happen in the same way that anything I place for recycling is actually recycled rather than placed in landfill.  We had another decision to make and that was do we replace the car or just have one.  We live in a rural area it would be difficult to live with one car but not impossible.  My husband is self employed and his work takes him all over the place, often at short notice, it would make planning our lives much more difficult.  It might mean that we could not join in with many of the home educating activities that we currently go to as we could not get to them on public transport.  We had to strike a balance and we decided that for now, we wanted to continue to own two cars.  We wanted to continue to be able to do what we were currently doing.

As we negotiate our path through life we can choose many routes.  We must make decisions that feel right to us, that are mindful and fit with our own beliefs and practices.  But to be green or environmentally friendly or whatever you wish to call it we must care.  It is not about offsetting one set of behaviours against another we must care that packaging is wasteful, or that using less water or energy is a positive step.  When we live simply I believe we have the capacity to do this.  We are not tied up with meeting our own unmet needs by filling our homes with the latest must haves for example.  We have the capacity to consider the impact of our decision making and leave the world as a place for our children's future that we too would want to live in.

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Thank you for visiting the Simply Living Blog Carnival cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. Read about how others are incorporating eco-friendly living solutions into their everyday lives. We hope you will join us next month, as the Simply Living Blog Carnival focuses on Daily Lives!

• Green Renovating: A Lot, A Little, Not So Much - Laura at Authentic Parenting ponders about the many things that have an impact on eco-friendly renovating
• Growing Native in My Flower Beds - Destany at They Are All of Me takes the guilt out of her flower habit by switching from high maintenance flowers to native plants which not only lessens her gardening load, but also benefits the local wild life.
• Baby Steps - Kellie at Our Mindful Life shares how her family became more sustainable, one step at a time.
• A Greener Holiday - Sara from Family Organic discusses the overwhelming amount of "stuff" that comes with every holiday and talks about how to simplify instead.
• Forcibly Green--Obligatory Organic - Survivor at Surviving Mexico talks about her family's evolution from passive to active green and sustainable living.
• Giving It Away - Juliet Kemp of Twisting Vines writes about the role of Freecycle, the giant karmic lending library, in her simple and green living.
• Simply Sustainable - Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children discusses her family's attempts to live in harmony with the earth by living simply and more sustainably.
• How Does Your Yarden Grow - Alisha at Cinnamon&Sassafras writes about an ongoing permaculture project, converting her grass lawn into a mower-free paradise.
• Green? - Is it about ticking the boxes? sustainablemum shares her thoughts on what being green means in her life.
• Using Cloth Products To Reduce Household Waste - Angela from Earth Mama's World shares how her family replaced many disposable household products with cloth to reduce their household waste.
• Going Green in Baby Steps - Joella of Fine and Fair shares some small, easy steps to gradually reduce your environmental impact.
• Are You Ready To Play Outside?! - Alex from AN Portraits writes about gardening, and playing in the dirt, and how it's O.K. to get dirty, play in the dirt, play with worms, for both adults and kids.