What’s in the ground:

This is the point of the season where you begin the painful process of learning how to let go. Although your peppers and your tomatoes still have many more good weeks ahead of them, I’m sure you’re looking at those squash plants that are beginning to weaken around the vine, or those cucumbers that are starting to fry, and you are saying, “I can get one more crop out of them.” But alas, the season is moving on and it’s almost time to start making room for those fall crops like another round of collards, kale and broccoli. Although it may not feel like it now, if you don’t get a good jump on getting those crops in the ground, you won’t have enough time to get them to mature into the fall months. And as a seasoned gardener can attest, there’s nothing better than a late fall crop. So begin the act of reconciling that the season is moving on, and in the next two weeks start to make room for those fall crops.

What’s going on in sustainability:

I hope that my past few entries brought some amusement and some awareness of the bounty and beauty of the homestead life. So I don’t feel bad about doing a little advocating for this installment. Over the past few months as I’ve delved deeper into the homestead life, I’ve found myself in conversations with people who are intrigued by what we are doing, yet somewhat defensive of their own lifestyle when the conversation turns toward their own sustainable practices.

Everyone wants to be sustainable these days. But as I’ve witnessed in the two very key areas of waste and conservation, the corporate powers of the consumer culture are writing a narrative about sustainability that is skewing the data and leading people astray. Now, I intended to do a lot of research and get a bunch of statistics together to back my argument. But as Homer Simpson once famously quoted, “Statistics! You can use statistics to prove anything. 60% of all people know that.” So I’ll go with observation and common sense.

The number one reason why I am writing this entry is in furious opposition to that infernal device that supports to hyper active middle class, the dishwashing machine. Many years ago I vowed never to own one for a whole host of reasons. The first being that weird taste that infects every item on the racks when just one piece of plastic is introduced into the cycle. Then there are the whole issues of the massive energy and water usage. Now every time I bring this up to a sustainably minded middle class person, they point out that dubious statistic that more water is saved by running the dishwasher than by washing by hand.

I’ll make a confession, I did just google this query and I got a whole host of answers. Many times, the ones in favor of dishwashers are somehow attached to studies done by people who manufacture dish washing equipment. The one argument for using the machine is always the same. A machine usually uses 4 gallons of water while a tap emits 2 gallons of water per minute. Meaning that unless you can wash all your dishes in 2 minutes, loading up the dishwasher to full capacity is more efficient. But ponder this. Most people who are sustainably minded enough to wash a dish don’t just let the water run the whole time they wash. And after the dishes are washed it’s usually left up to the brilliant method of air drying rather than the energy it takes to heat up the machine, thus leaving that nasty plastic taste. And furthermore, it’s always been my observation that you never put a soiled dish in the washer. So you rinse your plate off first, basically cleaning it, then put it in this machine. It’s madness.

And the madness continues with that fact that most dishes don’t even make it to the dishwasher in the first place. In a bizarre combination of the cheapness of plastic products and now the dubious claim that almost everything under the sun is recyclable, I’m now beginning to often encounter people who will claim it’s more sustainable to recycle their wares rather than run the dishwasher! This claim is usually made with the giddy, almost childlike wonder of the magical process that is recycling. We don’t know how these products are reconstituted or the percentage of waste that actually is made into something new, but we’re told it’s sustainable so we do it with glee. The common sense facts are that it takes a ton of energy to run the trucks to pick up the recycling, the machines to sort and repurpose into raw material, and the fabrication of a new product. This whole energy stream could be eliminated if we just remember the other two R’s, reducing and reusing.

But that was before sustainability made it’s way into big business. Now don’t get me wrong. I think the most important way to create a sustainable society is to do it through jobs and industry. But it’s not going to be easy. And right now huge corporations are shirking the needed sacrifice by promoting this misinformation amongst a professional population who wants to do the sustainable thing as long as it fits in with their schedule and budget.

Well, nothing is going to change if we approach the problems of waste and resources with such injudicious energy. I know it may be hard to solve the problem with everyone devoting their lives to the homestead lifestyle as much as I have. But really we don’t need that. We just need people to look for answers with a little more depth than the Nightline news story that is followed by a Maytag Commercial. And for goodness sake, just wash a dish.

That’s all I got. Until next time, this is the note from the urban homestead.