Happy Earth Day!

It's Earth Day today, and in an effort to do my part in preserving our gift I am sharing the things I am currently involved with. My garden is a huge part of my earthday celebration. We have always grown our own food, and for years raised all of our meat and had milk goats. I usually can and freeze for use later as crops seem to produce a bounty of goods at one time. I also have dried zucchini and ground it up to make zucchini flour to use in my zucchini bread. There are so many wonderful ways to creatively be a good steward of our planet. I now only garden a small area, in a raised bed. I use drip irrigation and mulch to conserve water and I compost. This year I bought some tomatoes in peat pots which are directly planted in the ground so there is no waste or trash from plastic containers.

I think one of my biggest weaknesses is Costco, which I feel is not the best at being an earth friendly company. They over package things, package some perishable foods in over sized packaging which you can never eat fast enough. But for some reason I love to shop at Costco. They carry some very cool things. Last week while I was shopping I saw that they had a composter for sale, Oh wow, an easier, smaller way to compost. It was only 99$ so I bought it. Today, my husband is setting it up for me, an appropriate way to ring in Earth Day. I keep a plastic milk jug with its top cut off in my sink and as I chop or peel I just add the pieces to the jug and I can easily carry it out to the composter to empty. I have always had the giant pile of stuff that had to be covered and turned and watered. This is all self contained and has a handle to turn it weekly! Yippie, I can't wait.

As my garden grows, and my fruit trees start to set fruit I will be thinking of all the good uses I will have for my new crop of "black earth".