Big Blue

A couple of years ago, two blue barrels washed up on Grandma and Pop-Pop's beach after a storm. These barrels are often used as floats for docks, so Pop-Pop figured someone would come along and claim them, but nobody ever did. Luckily, we came up with a way to repurpose one of those barrels.

Meet Big Blue.

With some wood reclaimed from a broken picnic table the former owners of our house had left to rot, that blue barrel became our composter. Hubby cut a lid out of the bottom of the barrel and used some piano hinge and latches to make it open and close. It spins on a metal rod drilled through the center, so we can easily turn it. And he made it just the right height to get the wheelbarrow underneath when we are ready to transfer compost to the garden.

Big Blue is already getting filled with our kitchen scraps and some leaves we raked up. We're looking forward to adding some compost to the vegetable garden later this season.

When we cut the opening for the lid, we discovered what the barrel had originally been filled with. It was soy sauce, of all things. Now every time I dump the compost crock I get cravings for Chinese food.

Mommy

Greener, One Step at a Time

Life is interesting. It constantly presents us with new opportunities to learn and grow as people. Of course, we are often so busy getting through the day that we miss those opportunities. For example, my kids have been off for a week and the only thing I've really done with them is take them with me to the grocery store. The grocery store is 45 minutes away, so it took all afternoon, but I could have done much more.

This is where we are starting from. When we moved from New Jersey to the Adirondacks we were leaving behind the two-working-parent, crazy-kids-schedules, suburban lifestyle. Or so we thought. It seems you can take the family out of the lifestyle, but it's a bit harder to take the lifestyle out of the family.

Our goal is to learn to live more eco-friendly. We want to eat more natural, healthy food and appreciate where the food comes from. We want our home to be free of chemicals. We want to become more closely connected to the earth.

Except the teenager. She wants to go shopping.

Like every big goal, we've got to break our green goal down into baby-steps. This blog is a journal of those baby-steps. And maybe documentation of some opportunities to learn and grow that we didn't miss.

Now I'm going to play with the first grader.

Mommy