Still Surviving on the 18th day…

I am still very confused as a consumer. I don't know exactly how I determine the "real impact" of the food I buy. Is something grown without fertilizers 100 miles away better overall than something grown with fertilizers 1 mile away? What if the difference was 300 miles? Which one uses more non-renewable resources?
Or freezing… If I used conventional power sources and if the company that makes the organic food uses conventional power sources, does that negate everything that organic gains?

And that is where I am. Does Local mean anything if the local environment is still dependant on use of oil and coal? So what am I doing about it???

Nothing. I'm still working on my bathroom. Home Depot has a paint brand called Freshaire Choice (http://freshairechoice.com). I like the colors and it seems to be good, but again, I don't know how this is made. One of the biproducts could be dioxins. Or a specific filtration process may require the freshly-harvested skin from the face of an albino Tiger cub. Who knows???

The Trueblood Company (http://www.truebloodco.com/cabinets.html) is across the street from my house, so I'm going to solicit there for cabinetry for the renovation. Can't get any more local than that…

My garden is going like gang-busters right now. I've harvested well over one hundred tomatoes and am canning away at night to keep up.

Tomorrow is Thursday. My tub should be here soon…

Day 14 – A Bathroom at Rocket Speed

Food-wise, friends, I've been doing well. There are many questions left to answer, though I am ashamed to admit today that I don't know how to ask those questions. I will figure it out, in due time. I do my best thinking in the bathtub…

…ah yes. The bathtub. It's still on order.

The bathroom 1.0 had an exhaust fan that drew humidity up out of the room and deposited it in the insulation, between the ceiling and the roof decking. That no good. The fan is gone, as is seven or eight square feet of ceiling. Since Thursday, that hole has been patched, all wallboard holes have been patched, a first coat of oil-based primer has been applied to all dark areas of the bathroom, joints in the wallboard have been filled with joint compound, and more than half of the tiling has been completed.

The company I found to be the best fit for tile is American Olean (http://americanolean.com). All of their material (or at least, all that I saw) is made in the U.S. and their variety is almost endless. For those of us on the cheap, they have subway tile at a quarter a tile, which is pretty damn good. I needed square tile and that was only a little more for the "bright white" variety. It scores and splits easily.

Insofar as flooring goes, there is a "sheet vinyl" flooring made by Armstrong (http://www.armstrong.com) that stays flat without glue. That will be my solution for the bathroom. But why would staying flat without glue be a plus???

Because I was close to burning my goddamn house down instead of ripping out my fingernails and catching shards of splintered wood with my eyes when I tried to remove the old glued-down flooring… that's why! Simple is key to everything. If you need glue to keep something flat, then the good lord does not mean for that thing to be flat in the first place, so let it go on its merry way.

I will – boldly – estimate something for you now, Dear Reader. As today is Sunday, I will be done with the bathroom by the end of next Sunday, save the vanity and the medicine cabinet, which I have yet to source.

It has been very hot here these last few days. That leads to many outcomes. For one, showering outside in the heat is just fine indeed. For another, the chickens have slowed their egg production. I'm getting only two eggs a day at best and have none to spare at this time. The uncertainty of egg production has made this challenge that much harder.

Honestly, I'm impressed people made it this far as a species without giving out to something…

All the best.

Day 11 - The Way and the Truth

The Way is a method and the Truth is a goal. The Way and the Truth, in the same place at the same time, is the essence of humanity. Friends, I don’t know what I’m about to say, but I feel that the Way and the Truth are near.

I have met like minded people recently. I urge you to meet them too. You can find them at

http://www.dinegreen.com

. It seems that there is an association out there that has provided a Way. Through a series of test questions, a restaurant can earn a “green rating” which appears to align with what we’re trying to do here: be sensible. I’m honored to live in a little town outside of Philadelphia that has one of a dozen Pennsylvania restaurants that makes the cut to be certified.

But that’s a Way. What about the Truth? Well, dear Readers, you already feel the Truth a bit, don’t you? Like spider legs up the stem of your brain little thoughts crawled up wondering “but why does such a big state have only a dozen green restaurants?… there must be some out in the rural areas that are default green… it’s a .com, so it’s for profit… this is a self-selecting group that is green-washing…”. And we all lose hope again.

You know, the Chevrolet automobile company is about to release an electric car. That’s about the best Way I can think of to take a strong step forward as a Civilization toward recognizing that Humans are part of the corporeal reality we call the Universe and we better damn well respect it. But I naturally feel that this new technology is a strong step while, at the same time, I know that Chevy does it because they have to in order to survive. Two minds are easy here: Markets and Progress - a new technology makes a change easy.

The Way that relates to eating locally isn’t Progress. It’s a Regress. We’ve been there before. We evolved from there. We evolved culturally away from there.

I realize that I’m not on the verge of stating the Way and the Truth. I’m here today to say what prevents us from getting there.

Deep inside every Western Culture Human, eating locally feels like admitting defeat. It feels like a failure. It isn’t Progress. It is admitting that our grandparents knew something we didn’t, and like the snot-nosed pricks we are, we pout instead of doing the right thing.

So we see the self-selecting group trying to move us back to Green Dining and we see a gimmick, and we see an attempt to be wholly self-sufficient as a heroic effort in the spirit of John Wayne or any other red-blooded American that pulled himself up by his bootstraps… And we don’t let ourselves see the wisdom that grew out of generations of living with the land.

What did I learn on day 10? The Truth is, or at least the truth must be, that profit is a dirty word. Profits come as long as we do the right thing. Thinking "well it's a business so of course..." leads us to failure. Business, government, green and the-old-way is all driven by people. And the Truth is from people. If people won't do it, whatever it is, then there is no Truth for us.

We live by our Man-made economy. We win by making that economy reflect what we want. When I choose to eat dinner out, I will eat at the Tex Mex Connection. When I eat at home, I won’t expect fresh apples in December or steaks in April. I can eat in season for where I live just fine.

So what do I do with the garden? I should grow a Paw Paw tree…

Day 9: Very Simple Changes

The Lancaster CSA is a farm share coop here in the Philadelphia region. Everything through that CSA is from within one hundred or so miles from here and most of it is organic. If I was to add to my diet, this is the way. Further, Merrymead Dairy is only about a mile from the Suburban Farm and, for four bucks, I can buy a gallon of delicious, local, whole milk.

I refuse to believe that humanity toiled for a hundred thousand years to move from the desert savannah to wondrous places like Butte, Montana or Jerusalem only to eat in the very same way we did back then. Nay, I say, and at the risk of sounding like I’m writing a treatise on the destiny of Man as a Capitalist, we differentiated our work in a society so some of us can focus on building flying cars while others grow the food.

So Jerusalem is mired in war and we don’t have flying cars yet. I’m sure someone is trying…

What do I spend my time on instead of putting all of my efforts towards subsisting? Well, I’m still showering outside.

If there is anyone out there that isn’t broke yet and feels like spending money, I’ve been impressed on how many U.S. made building materials there are out there. Same with hand tools. Have down-economy guilt? Build a three season room!

Day 7: The Saga of the Commode, Day 3

So now that we all know exactly where and when we are…

I have to start with my most favorite part of the day: the shower. No, I am not a wizard-carpenter that somehow got a new, fully functioning shower in my bathroom today. What I did do was set up the old tub – including the surround on the back and one side – facing into my deck from the ground. From there, I lashed it to the deck with twine and straps and hung a camping shower bag from the deck. The whole get-up was next to my clothesline, from which I hung a shower curtain. It is absolutely private and will serve well for the next two weeks.

But why two weeks? Well, because the American-made tub I chose takes two weeks for delivery. That’s not getting me down, though, because I have an awesome outdoor shower!

When we last left our hero, his indoor bathroom was nothing but bare studs. Throughout the day, the remaining joists were installed, all of the subfloor layers were put down, and most of the walls were put back up. I also moved the heating register to a more logical location of the bathroom, so I can put in a bigger vanity with more under-sink storage. This required only two trips to the hardware store…

The new general design for the bathroom is this: a claw foot bathtub in a corner of the room that is tiled from the floor to a height of eight feet. The rest of the walls will get wainscoting and a fresh paint job. A new vanity and low-flow toilet are in store, too.

But for food. What happened today? Shockingly, I had some frozen pizza that was already in the house. I had this at ten a.m. I haven’t been hungry since. So with all of the challenges of the weekend, there was little failure on my food journey. There is one more slight compromise to come, however. See, with a sense of accomplishment like that I have today, a tall glass of wine is pretty much required. To do this, I went over to the Cardinal Hollow Winery. There, a local guy named Chris makes wine in his basement from locally grown fruits.

I’ve had a lot of time to think over the weekend about the next steps of this trial. Starting tomorrow, I’m cutting the grain ration in half and adding in fruits and veggies from the local farmers markets.

This Damn House – Just Fixing the Leaking Toilet

The “addition” to the house, which houses the kitchen and main bathroom, is still older than most houses, being built in the 19-teens. The floor joists have two foot centers, on average, but range from 22 inches to 28 and a hair. The decking clocked in somewhere around two healthy inches of old planks, plywood, luon, and whatever else they stuck in between to “level” it. Save a small edge left along the non-load-bearing walls, it’s all out. It’s eleven at night on Saturday.

With that, a partition wall that housed the plumbing for the tub is now on my front porch. The tub is in the backyard. The vanity…on the deck. The toilet went missing hours ago and is assumed to be armed and dangerous.

To fill in the literal gaps in the framing, I’ve hung a dozen or so 2 x 6 cross beams off of American made hangers I found at Home Depot. The strap I bought to hold up the pipes was also U.S. made. Same with the Milwaukee hole-cutting bits. I purchased well today. I still have three more beams to install, but I needed to stop with the outdoor cutting to give the neighbors a break. Rest easy, neighbors, until seven tomorrow morning, when I fire up the saw again!

Once those beams are in, I can lay the three sheets of decking I bought today to start creating a semi-safe work surface. Then back to the store for Hardy Backer to fix the wall I demolished today and pave the way for tiling. Also, need to get the rest of the flooring and find the replacement tub. That’s the plan for tomorrow: be able to shower inside…

…unlike tonight. As I said, the old tub is in the backyard. Hang the hose over the side and it’s just like life at a hunting camp! Now off to my tree stand to hunt the deadly groundhog, who devoured my entire bean crop over the past three days.

Amazing what happens when you try to stop a leak in the toilet.

1:00 p.m. on Day 6: The House Throws a Curve I Won’t Handle

Note I didn’t say “can’t”, but I’m done with this for today. See, first thing I did today was pour a footer to hold a joist to support the toilet. Why? It was previously unsupported, that’s why. Then, as I pried deeper into the mess, I notice that the tub surround is obviously not waterproof, which is evident from the disintegrating board around it’s enclosure.

This “fix the toilet” job has turned into a full rebuild of the bathroom.

No biggie. I can handle…wait…what’s that? There is only one shut off for the water in the house? So now I don’t have access to water? My one staple that has seen me through thus far?!? Ok. Screw it. This weekend has become a hiatus from the food project. Back on the menu is anything I have in the freezer or fridge (that’s still good) that can get me back to a place where I have running water. No ordering out or going to the bar, no more from the grocery store. Just get the food I need to not drive the circular saw into my thigh.

I wanted to tell you all as soon as fact was known.

Day 5 – This Damn House

What happens with two threads on the same blog combine? Well let’s see…

On the fifth day, it is clear to me that my body has almost completely adjusted to the diet. I don’t like it, but it did. Once I have time to think about amending my methodology, I’ll have to do so, but now, I have a problem.

The toilet in my main bathroom was leaking. This much was clear. I had changed the wax ring in the past, so I had an inkling that there was a soft spot down there somewhere.

I’m going to spare you, dear Reader, all of the details. Toilets are taboo. Things go down there that we don’t talk about. Just let it be known that I determined that the flooring had to come up. Once the flooring came up, then the piece of luon had to come up. Under that, there was the half-inch plywood had to come up as that was rotting and soft as well. Under that… well, little else had to come up.

See, I should have expected to find exactly what I found. After the work in the basement and with the wiring upstairs (not to mention that stucco wall upstairs… oh and the rage rises inside me again!!!), why would the bathroom be “clean” under all the layers of paint and sheet vinyl flooring? I found old pipes, open on both end, various wires, broken cinder blocks, all under the remnants of the original hard wood floor, which was rubbery soft – where it existed – and missing in most places. “Ah ha!,” I thought, “there’s my problem right there.”

Tomorrow, over most of the floor of the bathroom, I’ll try to build up the two inches and more of floor to get back to the level that meets up with the living room. I’m not ambitious on this job…

…I am used to the amount of food, yes, but I’m still very hungry. And right at this moment, late in the evening, after a day of demolition, a cheap beer and take-out sounds really nice.

The 4th Day: You Only Cheat Yourself

I felt different this morning. Not hungry, but tight and edgy. Two poached eggs, a piece of toast from the local sourdough, and a cucumber fashioned yet another satisfying breakfast. I packed up six crepes (one batch, so one cup of flour, one egg, and one cup of milk) to eat at lunch.

Before I could get to lunch, though, I had to make it through the round of coffee and donuts provided for our all-day meeting at our contractor. It would have been harder – maybe impossible – but they bought Duncan Donuts, which taste like paint and road grime. Still, they are donuts and, thus, delicious.

Lunch was cheesesteak wraps. They looked delicious. But the whole wheat and spelt additions to the white Daisy flour really make the crepes tasty. After the first bite, I didn't long for a sandwich at all. I could have used a Coke, though, instead of the cucumber I had for dessert.

But I was unable to graze today. I had to have everything at once in the standard 3-square-a-day method to fit in socially with my coworkers. It would have been very easy to explain if I was a body builder, like some I know, that eat their weight in egg whites each day. I would not be confused with a body builder. We of the Suburban Farming community are lanky and beer-fed. So it wasn't easy to explain, at ten a.m., why I was famished.

Lunch came around at noon and we spent the time talking of my odds of simply surviving. My odds of what I would call success are, of course, nil.

After work, there was a happy hour for a long-time coworker who is moving to a new job in a new location. It was at a local yuppie bar – very clean and family appropriate. It's one of those places that got very popular once Applebee's survived its birth… the bastard child of Big Boy and Musso and Franks. Or Friendly's and the Carnegie Deli, for your East-coasters. I had spent the last hour driving back in heavy traffic from the contractor's office, seeing a dozen places each for pizza, hoagies, and beer. Probably more like twenty places for beer. I was feeling very weak and left to put the challenge behind me. I didn't say goodbye, but the ladies know I love them all.

Zipping home to try and keep this feeling of satisfaction going, I hurriedly changed into my U.S.-made Roundhouse Overalls and went to the corn. An ear was ready…

…or ready enough for me. It could have matured another few days, but just because it was something different, it was perfect to me. I backed that up with a portion of spaghetti and sopped up the rest of the sauce with my last allowed piece of bread for the day.

Biting into that corn, I took a deep breath and remembered every store front that I so wanted to stop in on the way home. Just a slice or just one (huge) cheesesteak. I kept thinking, "this is easy… millions have less than this every day and are fine… if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself." It's hard to ignore those things that I know I am missing. These small entries are littered with them.

My mind turns to what I'm actually trying to accomplish here now, if anything. I realized quickly that the garden itself wouldn't cut it. Am I trying something local now? Or organic? Hmmm. Anybody out there have any idea what I should be doing now?

Day 3: Hallucinations and Nonsense

Has your heart ever been broken by the one you love leaving you? It has happened to the Suburban Farmer many times. Dear Reader, think back to the very first time it happened to you. What was it? High School? College? There was this one point that I'm sure you remember: you can see her right in front of you but you'll never be together again. And remember that night, lying in bed alone, when you know that just yesterday she was lying there with you? In your relative infancy, you start to think of time as a road where, if you just turn around, you can walk back to that same spot again and maybe do better next time. Somewhere out there in the world that night, she still existed, but you could not have her. Know that feeling?

That is how I feel about pizza right now. Last Sunday, I could have gone out to the store and picked up my favorite guilty pleasure: a Tombstone Supreme Pizza (I'd pick the olives off). There are still pizzas out there to be had. But I cannot have one…

Good thing that I've hardened myself against heartbreak or else I'd be wandering the grocery store right now… the creepy ex-boyfriend of the pizza in the freezer case. Anyway, what does this tell me? Those recent clichés about Love and Food (look at any recipe book shelf in the local bookseller and you'll know what I mean) are, like all clichés, based on something. In this case, like in many cases, we've kinda forgotten what they're based on. We are food. I think we are all in love with food, but are taking that fair beauty for granted.
Come to think of it, old clichés are losing their luster as well. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" doesn't mean a hell of a lot with a McDonald's in every town. And as food chains have gone more high class, there is truly good food close to everyone these days. Except for Wyoming, anyway.

I'm digressing from the meaning of this little story and will get myself back on track. I slept well and got up, again, very hungry. I had half of yesterday's batch of thin pancakes left over and that was my most delicious breakfast. Come 10:15 a.m., I was again very hungry. I moved into the "grazing" method of eating very smoothly. I had a portion of my lunch (the eggplant with some tomato sauce) then and once 1:00 hit, I had the rest (a mixture of collards, rainbow chard, jalapeño, and shallot boiled together) and a hard boiled egg.

That was the first time I had one of the green eggs hard boiled. It peeled really easily. I was surprised. Generally, I hate hard boiled eggs for the sole reason that they make me feel like an ape trying to knit a blanket.

The softball game I was to play in was postponed again due to rain, so I came right home at 5:30 and got into another half batch of thin pancakes (this Daisy flour is absolutely delicious). I've felt awake and alert all day and this grazing has helped a lot… along with getting the calories up to an adult level.

But as I sit here – satisfied – I realize that I could not have a bigger challenge than tomorrow. I will not be at my normal place of work, but working from a contractor's office 25 miles from my Suburban Farm. Normally in these situations, it's a cheesesteak with pepperoni lunch. Thinking about that now, I am enticed, and again thinking about pizza.

No. I shall juice the quarts of grape tomatoes I have in preparation for late year canning, read another few essays out of Wampeters, Foma & Granfaloons, and sleep until the next morning, dreaming the whole time, I'm sure, of my lost love.

Breakfast: ½ cup flour, half an egg, ½ cup milk, a tablespoon of blueberry butter
First Lunch: A slice of bread (as crumbs), half an eggplant, two tablespoons of sauce
Second Lunch: ½ cup of collards, same of chard, half a jalapeño, a small slice of shallot, and an egg
Dinner: ½ cup flour, half an egg, ½ cup milk, a tablespoon of blueberry butter
All day: a ton of water

A Necessary Recalculation on Day 2

The morning started poorly. While lying in bed, just as the alarm was to go off, I was wide awake, thinking “I’m really hungry and tired.” That’s when the guilt set in. Millions, if not a billion people on this earth survive day in and day out on less than 700 calories a day. I go for one day (along with the day-long mental torture of knowing that I won’t be really adding to that caloric intake) and I’m complaining.

But I got up and had two scram led eggs and half a cucumber for breakfast. Also, while searching around the cupboard of canned sauce, I found one remaining jar of salsa from last fall made entirely out of garden produce. Score. A little of that on the eggs and, again, not a bad breakfast. I felt okay after that, took a shower and went to work.

That’s where the trouble started. I was in at my desk at seven a.m. as usual and realized that I had meetings from 8:30 straight through to 1:00. “Ok”, I thought, “a lunch meeting.” Throughout the morning I was hardening myself against the idea of sandwiches and brownies. But it didn’t matter anyway as the food never arrived at noon. Everyone was hungry and that was fine.

The next challenge was at two o’clock. I had just finished my lunch of a hard-boiled egg, cucumber and zucchini, when I went to the work baby shower of a dear friend of mine. There was cake and Cherry Coke.

Around this time I was starting to get a little worried. Tomorrow is the make-up date for our last softball game getting rained out. I had been feeling a little drained all day and was thinking a lot about bed. Very unlike this upbeat Suburban Farmer. I thought that, besides the little pasta and bread, I might need to add another small supplement to push me up to at least 1200 calories a day. The cake, I thought, would be a good start.

But no, I would have to stick to the rules. The rules, as they were, were under assault. The next hour contained a meeting with another small celebration, which included ice cream.

I don’t work in Candyland. It was just a really good day.

With the help of some friends, I quickly located the most proximal purveyor of Daisy Flour, which is milled very close to here of local grain. There is also a local dairy here (part of a conglomerate) that isn’t local, but has local cow milk (at least when I worked there they did). I combined one cup each of those two ingredients with one of my eggs and made a batch of crepes, or as my Granma called them, “thin pancakes.” Adding this to my day, which was almost exactly like the previous day, will get me up to around 1000 calories.

It was kinda neat how the idea for crepes popped into my head. My Granma was an old farm girl from Michigan and raised three kids on the farm. She never had much money, but she worked like hell and did alright. She’s the one that I think of when I’m canning. Today, as I was thinking of what would be the minimum to add to my diet to get to a survival level, I thought of the easy recipe that she taught me years ago for thin pancakes.

So the experiment continues. A quick recalculation from the pilot day of the “clinical trial” and I’m back on track. Now, if I go out and get a bunch of fruit from the local farmer’s market, maybe I can make a fruit topping for the crepes…

Missteps and being Woefully Unprepared on Day 1

It set in around 7:15, after I had started up my computer at work, opened my email, looked at my calendar. Behind me, on my desktop, was my French Press and coffee cup, the latter standing out from its surroundings as it is bright yellow with brown "WMU" logos all over it. My friends, I cannot drink coffee.

See, it started then because having a three egg (and nothing else) breakfast is still pretty nice. Especially when your eggs are as delectable as those raised on the Suburban Farm. I did have a foreshadowing pang, however, when I went for the strawberry jam and realized that I couldn’t have it.

Then, to start things off as well as possible, I left my lunch at home. So, on the very first day where I was to eat only from my garden, I had to run out at eleven to get my lunch. But since I was home anyway, I used my small pasta serving then to have spaghetti. I thought this was a good idea as I was to play my first playoff softball game later that evening.

And what a game it was! Without any sort of physical exercise or practice, I found that all you have to do to play like a Spartan is to eat like a Spartan. The fire in my belly had me turn out two hits in the first two innings. Then the lighting came and the game was delayed until later in the week.

But, playing sports, even at this lofted corporate beer-league level, does take something out of a person. Especially if that person is used to eating like a normal, middle-class American. Water doesn’t quench a thirst the same way Gatorade does (props to U of Miami on figuring that one out).

The other thing I can say I learned today is that modern life is based around and intertwined with our culture of convenience. When I forgot my lunch, I could have just gone to the cafeteria, but that’s breaking my rules. If I lived further from work, I’d have been in real trouble. As it was, it took me 45 minutes to go from desk, to home, eat, and back to my desk… and I live less than two miles from the gate!

Day 1 is going to close out with eggplant, collard greens cooked with a jalapeño, and a nice, big glass of water. Tomorrow, I buy a cow. And plant a coffee tree.

A synopsis of today's menu:

Nature’s Promise Whole Wheat Linguine: 210 calories / 1.5g fat / 7g protein

My homemade tomato sauce: guessing…

1 medium tomato: 28 C / no fat / 1.5g protein / 250mg Potassium

1 tbsp green pepper: 3 C / no fat / no protein

1 slice-equivalent of an onion: 4 C / nothing else in there, either.

Collard Greens: 49 C / 0.7g fat / 4g protein / 220mg Potassium / 30mg Sodium

3 eggs: 222 C / 15g fat / 19g protein / a lot of cholesterol. But mine are free range…

Eggplant: 35 C / no fat / 0.8g protein / 121mg Potassium

Bread (crumbs for the eggplant): 120 C / 0.5g fat / 4g protein / 150mg Sodium

Probably 20 glasses of water.

…reasonable

[numbers courtesy of the internet]

Terrible Fears of my Most Awful Mistake

So, as I've been analyzing the situation more closely over the past week, I believe that I will most certainly die if I try to live only from my garden. Why? Well, because nothing is ripe yet. Also, I won't be able to harvest reliably for a full month no matter when I start this challenge.

In order to try to keep aligned with my intent, I am going to make the following adjustments:
1) Tomato sauce that I have canned is now within scope. I know that I didn't grow vinegar, so to speak, but everything else in there is from the yard.
2) A very small amount of grains will be added: two pieces of locally-sourced bread and a little pasta each day max.
3) I can shamelessly rob from my neighbor's garden so long as he doesn't notice.

By doing this, I will be able to start now with those very few things that have ripened (zucchini and grape tomatoes) and will still be in the experiment when the rest ripens.

You may begin calling me a cheater now, if you like.

Independence Day

Sad as it is, it is the state of affairs today: economy is king. So in the spirit of that, how did we spend our Nation’s Birthday?

All clothing I wore today was made in America, the hotdogs served at the parade were made one town over, I read a Hemmingway novel, worked in my Liberty Garden (retronym), and I didn’t impulsively buy foreign-made crap at Kitchen Kapers. Instead, I’ll wait 2-4 weeks for delivery for responsibly-made goods.

Also, good readers, I’m gearing up for my own ill-advised foray into Independence. Beginning a week from tomorrow, I will attempt to live off of the food produced in my backyard only. I will try for one month to see if it is possible.

Water is an exception as I am not earnestly attempting to murder myself. Beer, coffee, tea, Kool-Aid, and the rest are off-limits. I solicit from you other reasonable exceptions. Though the goal is to eat only that which I (and my chickens) produce, I also want to succeed in going a full month without doing permanent damage to myself or limiting myself so much from those things that I love that I tempt myself to failure. It is for this reason that an exception was made for the feed my chickens will eat, as if I try to free-range them only over this time, I will most likely not have enough eggs to get through the days.