We really have been doing things....

[gailmom.livejournal.com]

We have had a busy week, (there are two toddlers jumping on my bed as we speak, and gryphynshadow  is off to pick up the 5 year olds from school) but we haven't been entirely idle, just not out in the yard.

I found and purchased a cold water bath, tongs, and a ton of mason jars along with some rings and lids off of Craigslist. This involved listing what the lady had for Miss J, having her look them up on the internet, proclaim us interested and then contacting the woman to arrange to goink her canning stuff. Our dining room has a big pile of boxes in it now, and eventually we are going to have to figure out where to store them. We don't need them now of course, but I'm told that at the prices one can pay for canning supplies, keeping an eye out now is a good thing. :)

Miss J has been working her laptop into a lather, visiting a permaculture forum, finding sources of heirloom seeds, and I don't even know what else. She's been happy as a pig in manure, so one assumes she is learning nifty things and lusting seeds and will remain content until next weekend when we go to put in the chicken pen.

The plants she put in are doing well (I'll try to add a picture when I'm not supervising bouncy children). The red onions are happy, though the yellow seem to be less enthusiastic. The broccoli is getting taller, we have a....something...growing from a seed that J thinks may be a pumpkin and is therefore letting get large enough to be identified before removing or relocating. The brussels sprouts seem less excited, but haven't died either, so that's ok. And we've quite a bit of rain, so the compost is no longer pathetically dry.

I don't have an update on the strawberries, believe it or not I haven't been over there and I don't remember if J gave me an update on those.

It was suggested (via internet searches) that to jump start our compost pile (one just needed water and is heating up now, but the other is being stubborn) one should save human urine. This led to an interesting realization that I actually don't know if I can do that. I'm on blood-to-brain barrier crossing drugs. I know they pass into breast milk, but I don't know if they would pass into other bodily fluids, and until we do some research, we can't risk contaminating the areas ground water with my partially processed pharmaceuticals. Hey, it's possible I'm a bio-hazard! wee!

This conversation came on the heels of an online discussions with laughingturtle  about humanure and composting toilets. Now, I personally think it's despicable and gross that we use drinking water to remove waste from our homes. I fully intend to install a humanure toilet in my home at some point. I also am realistic enough to say that sometimes one has to compromise one's ideals to compensate for living in the suburbs and not the country. When I do convert one of our bathrooms, I intend to leave the original plumbing (minus the toilet) in place, use a composting bin that allows me to capture the compost 'tea' for disposal down the remaining black-water toilet, and NOT use the resulting compost on our edibles, only on the ornamental sections of our garden. After all, what is the point of organic gardening if I then put drugs on it? Plus, of course, there is the issue of "if we don't do everything safely, how do we expect the movement to get outdated laws about grey-water and humanure and other things overturned"? I firmly believe everything we do has to be to a level that I would be willing to have it put in the paper for local lawmakers to use in making their decisions. If my lot is an example of why permaculture and all it's attendant projects should be legal, I'm doing it right. :)

The modern day permaculturist has some interesting conundrums to deal with.