We’ve decided to start getting rid of crap. We’ve established four rules for each item:

1. If it can’t be theoretically sold on eBay, it is to be thrown out or donated somewhere.
2. If we were to move next month, it should be worth packing up and moving.
3. Any item may be deemed “sacred”, which is non-arguable; But all sacred items must be added to a ranked list. (This list may have limitations imposed on it at a later date, hence ranking by importance)
4. Once purging is done, equilibrium must be maintained (New items brought into the house must be met by an equal amount of riddance).

We went through our books and some other crap in the attic today. We have chalked up 16.328 cubic feet so far.

Some notable riddances:

• The set of DIY encyclopedias (from at least 2 decades ago) that I bought for 2 or 3 bucks at the Library book sale a year ago. They’ll likely be going back to the library.
• An unmarked video cassette tape that Melissa mysteriously unraveled without explanation
• Two shark fin cable modems
• A LaVeyan Satanic Bible & the Complete Illustrated Old Testament Bible
• A large (7′) DVD rack

Melissa and I both think this round of purging wasn’t particularly painful — just carving away at the easy stuff for now. The difficult nitty gritty stuff is yet to come still, when we get to the basement.

*UPDATE*

• Purchased 3.450 cu.ft. (kitchenware)
• Purged 9.385 cu.ft. (table, baby cereal)

New total: 22.263 cu.ft.

Categories: Sustainable Living
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Root Beer, version 1 (1 June 2008)

Boil the following ingredients:

6 oz Sassafrass tea extract (Saffrole free! This is important!)
1/4 oz Anise seeds, ground to a powder
2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 qts water
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature and add:

2 qts water
1 tbsp Vanilla Extract
4 drops Wintergreen Essential Oil (dissolve in 2 tsp of Honey first)
Ginger bug(*)

(* The ginger bug is a wild yeast culture grown with sugar and grated ginger root — I’ll do a separate post about growing that. It’s necessary for fermentation.)

I’ve let mine brew for 6 days so far, and cracked open my first bottle yesterday, and second bottle today. I have one last bottle in the fermenter (a cabinet) right now, which I’ll pull tomorrow, to see if 7 days makes a difference.

The flavor is pretty good - the molasses flavor is a little too heavy, but it carbonated well and had a nice foamy head. I’m going to try using half as much (1/8 cup) next batch. The wintergreen wasn’t prominent enough, so I’ll try increasing that by 50% (6 drops). The sassafrass flavor was very abundant as well, I can probably scale that back a little bit. Beyond those three alterations, this was remarkably good for a first batch — if I were to give it to someone without telling them what it was, they would surely know it was Root beer.

So changes for version 1.1:

• 1/8 cup Molasses
• 6 drops Wintergreen extract in 3 tsp of honey
• 4 oz Sassafrass tea extract

Categories: Foodities, Sustainable Living
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Yesterday, the City of Richmond held an Earth Day celebration down at the old Piano Factory on 1st st. There were a bunch of booths about varying conservation-related topics. It really could have been called “Liberal Day.” There was lots of great information, some neat demonstrations (such as the one by Safari Steve from Silly Safari Station, who was both silly and entertaining) and giveaways.

We received a flying-disc (”F***bee”) made entirely from recycled plastic, two fluorescent bulbs (60W equivalent and 75W equivalent), an assortment of reading material about sustainable living, hiking in Richmond, and my personal favorite: a free flowering Dogwood from the Arbor Day Foundation.

Dogwoods happen to be my favorite tree. They look absolutely beautiful in the springtime. The one we got, I have no idea how old it is, but it’s about 2.5 feet (almost 1m) tall. It seems pretty healthy. The arbor day people gave us a little brochure on tree-planting, which was very useful considering I’ve never done it before. If you’re interested, here’s the digest version on how to do it:

1. Remove any packaging from your sapling and let it soak in a bucket of water for 3 to 6 hours. This helps to loosen up the root structure. No need to agitate it or anything, just let it soak.
2. When ready to plant, find a location that has both good soil and room for the tree to grow. The particular location I picked was 10 feet from the property-line fence and 10 feet from our garage. Dogwoods aren’t particularly big trees so I thought this would be ample room.
3. When you’ve sited your plant location, mark a radius of 1.5′ out from that point, and turn all the soil. The tree needs to be able to not compete with grass and other weeds. I completely removed the sod and threw it in our compost heap.
4. Determine how deep the sapling was planted previously - If you look at the trunk, there’s probably a visible line of discoloration. That was my guess as to the depth. It looked reasonable.
5. Dig the hole deep enough in the center so that the tree can be COMFORTABLY (i.e. “not crammed”) into that hole. Mine was about 1.5 feet down, and 1 foot in diameter. The roots should have ample room in both width AND depth. (Note: You don’t need to dig out the whole area where you turned the soil — just enough for the tree can fit comfortably)
6. Hold the sapling in mid-air so that the bottom of the root structure touches the bottom of the hole, and use your other hand to gently pull some of the excavated soil back into that hole. You want the sapling to stand up as straight as possible. You also may want to use work gloves, unless you really like getting dirt under your fingernails. Once you get enough soil in the hole that the tree can stand up on its own (a few inches deep should be enough), you can let go of the tree.
7. Fill in the rest of the hole as best as you can with whatever soil you have available, then water it immediately. I used the remaining water in the buket where I soaked the sapling.
8. OPTIONAL: apply mulch to the area where you turned the soil. Don’t let the mulch actually touch the tree (I’m not sure why, but that’s what the brochure said), but apply it generously. This will both prevent competing plants, help the tree retain moisture, and a number of other things. I used some compost from our compost heap.
9. If you have a dry weather period, you should water the tree regularly. This is only necessary during its first year. After that it should do well on its own.

The Arbor Day Foundation is currently giving away 10 trees of your choice if you join the ADF. There’s a $10 donation to join, but considering that you’re getting 10 tree saplings out of it, I’d say that’s a good idea! We would do it if we had somewhere to plant them all, but sadly our yard isn’t big enough.

Categories: Sustainable Living, This New House
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