Our mission was to pick up some Shoreklear to get rid of all the reeds choking our pond at the Half-Acre Homestead. Dodging corn kernels all the way, we found what we came for and a little bit more (of course). That’s the fun part about the Rural King: you never know what odds and ends you’re going to find that you can’t imagine living without. Pushing toward the back of the store we heard the seasonal cheeps of baby chickens coming from the stock tanks turned brooding pens.

We already have three ladies who inhabit our Backyard Bodega: Bertha, Bernice and Blue-Red. We picked up the three Auracanas last year with a friend and they’ve been happily laying their quintessential pastel-colored eggs ever since. Realizing chickens aren’t that difficult to care for, we couldn’t help ourselves when we saw the price of baby chicks was dropped down to just a buck each (minimum of 6 to buy). So we bought six more little pullets. Three are Rhode Island Reds and the other three are Silver Laced Wyandottes. We quickly divided a place for them in the Triple-B Bodega and these spring chicks seem to be interested in getting to know their bigger counterparts! With time ladies…with time.

Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Replacement seeds and of course some fun new ones were ordered through Baker Creek Heirlooms this year. We love all the wild new offerings that appear in the Burpee catalog and the others that stuff our mailbox each year. However, we really want to try and keep as many open-pollinated varieties as possible so we can save seed from year to year. We also want to avoid seed that is genetically modified or tainted with GMO genes. Luckily Baker Creek can fit both those requirements and host one of the largest collections of heirlooms from around the world.

Here is what we ordered for the spring and summer growing seasons (yes, there will be another order in the fall):

Tom Thumb Lettuce
Mignonette Bronze Lettuce
Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce
Merveille des Quatre Saisons Lettuce

Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce. Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seed

You can never be too sure what variety of lettuce you’re going to end up liking best so I always think its better to buy more than less in lettuce seed. The flavors and textures are so wide ranging so its better to try several different varieties at the same time. I’m really excited about the Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce. Dating back to the mid 1800’s, this French heirloom lettuce is a good grower in every season except freezing weather. I can’t wait to try the buttery leaves in our first homegrown salad of the year.

Di Firenze Fennel
Purple Podded Pole Bean
Red-Seeded Asparagus Bean
Garden Huckleberry

Purple Podded Pole Bean. Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

We have never grown fennel before so we’ll try our green thumbs with this licorice-scented bulb that is a favorite amongst Italian cooks. I can smell it already! The Purple Podded pole bean will replace a pole bean that didn’t do much around the Half-Acre Homestead last year while providing a pop of edible color that will not only look beautiful in the garden but provide some fun on our dinner plates too. While it’s not hard to get Everly to eat her green beans, purple pods should prove to be even more enticing.

Red-Seeded Asparagus Bean is an Asian “yard long” bean that is said to be both highly productive and beautiful. The very long pods grow to a freakish 24″ long but are said to be stringless and have small seeds. They’re said to be very resistant to heat, humidity and insects all while producing a bumper crop of tender and tasty pods. We can never have enough berries around the Half-Acre Homestead so we’re going to try our hand at Huckleberries.

Patisson Golden Marbre Scallop
Bennings Green Tint Scallop Squash
Bowling Red Okra
Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
Polish Linguisa
Basil – Lime
Stowell’s Evergreen Sweet Corn

Bennings Green Tint Scalloped Squash. Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

We like pattypan or scallop type squash so we’ll finally add a green and yellow version to our garden this year. Bowling Red Okra will replace our current outage of red okra seeds. The burgundy colored stems, okra pods and tinted flowers are stunning in the vegetable garden or flower bed. We are continuously struggling with spinach from year to year. Perhaps its the variety of seeds we have but they never seem to grow right and are often sloooooowwww growing. Bloomsdale Long Standing is supposed to be heat resistant and a large leaf spinach. It sounds better so hopefully it will turn out that way. Polish Linguisa will round out our tomato collection as a sauce tomato. Lime basil just sounds flavorful enough to through on some chicken this summer and Stowell’s Evergreen Sweet Corn will be our protest against GMO corn this year.

Of course we have a whole box filled with seed still but I won’t bore you with all that. Undoubtedly you’ll get to see the results of that over the course of the summer. I was able to keep this seed order around $33, down from a first tally of $69. I slashed and burned my list because if I could spend $500 on a yearly seed order, I really would. Now its time to start saving my own seed and slash the seed bill even more.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated varieties of plants that are often 60 or more years old. Most date back 100 years or more. Heirlooms are the truest plants, often showcasing eyestopping individuality and some of the finest flavors you can get in a fruit or vegetable. Aside from sticking it to large agri-business based seed companies who deal in hybrid or Genitically Modified seeds, heirloom seed can be saved and replanted year after year. You can read more about it here.

If you’d like to learn more about heirloom gardening, you should pick up a copy of a brand new book on the subject. The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables: The 100 Easiest-to-Grow, Tastiest Vegetables for Your Garden by Marie Iannotti.

If the 250 pages of scintillating photographs of heirlooms don’t have your taste buds watering and your green thumb twitching, I’m not sure what will. Iannotti gracefully shares her 100 favorite heirlooms, treasures that should be kept under lock and key. She also shares the wonderful stories that round out the unique history of each featured heirloom.

Don’t let the title fool you either. This book should also be a prize for any gardener with more advanced skills. I give it two green thumbs up!

Now you can win a copy of the book along with a spectacular heirloom garden prize pack including 35 packets of heirloom seeds and a bareroot tree! Click the link to head to Timber Press and enter The Heirloom Garden Giveaway

What’s your favorite heirloom fruit or vegetable to grow?

I won’t give too much away but I have to give props to former NYC firefighter Kevin Shea for taking an arm-chair idea and running with it. I find it especially funny that his neighbors just don’t get it and actually detest the idea. You can be sure though they would be the first ones knocking on Shea’s looking for refuge or help. Special thanks to the crew at Science Friday for bringing this story to light! Watch the video below and then share your thoughts. Would you live in a geo-dome? Do you have an unconventional home that is easy on the environment and your pocketbook?

The idea behind rail travel is not a new one. The first examples of rail travel began in Greece around 6 B.C. Grooves embedded into limestone rock provided a guide for wagon wheels pushed by slaves to traverse a 6 kilometer trail without leaving that trail and damaging the surrounding landscape. The idea slowly progressed from wooden rails laid on top of the ground to the current iron rails of today. In 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed opening up the western United States for settlement. The railroad also greatly reduced the amount of time and cost it took to ship goods from the east coast. Between 1896 and 1910, it’s said that 95% of all inter-city transportation was done by rail. In 1920, rail travel reached it’s pinnacle, transporting 1.2 billion passengers. But a nearly tripling in rail fares that year led more Americans than ever to look at the automobile as a cheaper, more self-sufficient way of travel. Rail travel saw another surge beginning in 1939 but it was still only half of ridership seen in the 20’s. By 1970, airlines were transporting almost 75% of travelers while trains carried a mere 7%. Amtrak was created during this same time period by the U.S. government to balance out transportation options and relieve traffic congestions on roads and highways. But since then, railroads haven’t had a huge impact on travel. It’s just another forgotten way.

Now, that forgotten mode of transportation is coming back to haunt us.  This isn’t a scary haunting but one of those friendly spirits that appears to tell us we messed up writing off rail travel a long time ago.  But, we can change that and some of our lawmakers are hoping to do just that.  On November 6th, the Senate voted 70-22 to fund Amtrak with $11.4 billion for the next 6 years.  That’s a fairly sizable increase to the government run, for-profit, railroad compared to years past.  Is it enough to save passenger rail travel and encourage more to use the service?  Only time will tell and the House still has to put their stamp of approval on the measure.  President Bush and his administration has dallied with the idea of shutting down Amtrak and opening passenger rail travel to privatization.  Under that plan, each railroad would have their own opportunity to provide passenger rail service, just like they did in the old days.

Rail travel requires about 20% less energy than traveling by car or plane making it more environmentally friendly.  Trains can run in bad weather when planes might not be able to fly or when roads might be too hazardous and nerve-wracking to drive.  Trains provide you with more leg room and you don’t have to deal with breathing that stale, recirculated air.  You can get up, stretch your legs and walk around.  Not to mention the fact you can actually see major portions of our country by traveling on a train.  The scenery is always changing!  So, if you plan on flying or driving this holiday season, take time to think about how it would be different boarding a train.  Think about the environmental impacts, saving you headaches of early check-ins and security lines and most of all, the relaxation you’ll experience on your journey and most of all avoiding the $3/gallon gas prices.  If you’re really passionate about it, book a trip on Amtrak or write your local Congressman or Senator a letter to let him/her know your support for rail travel.

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It seems like we will never see prices dip to the levels they were at four or five years ago. I can fondly remember filling up my gas tank in Phoenix with prices hovering around $1.50 a gallon. I can remember when the price climbed to $1.75, people were outraged. But here we are nearly double that amount in a five year period and everyone seems as calm as a Hindu cow. How does that happen? How do we just seemingly ignore the fact that the situation with oil is getting way out of control both with prices and with future supplies? It frustrates my wife and I a lot, so we’re trying to do what we can to limit our demand on oil.

We live about 12 miles away from the city in a small, relatively rural bedroom community. We both commute into town to work but we’re really trying to plan our trips smartly. Before we head to town, we think about where we have to go and what we have to do. Then, we plan our route making one big circuit. Not only does it save you the frustration of having to drive back and forth from one place to the next. It also saves you gas! While 12 miles into town and back hardly seems like a long trip, we’ve programmed ourselves to believe it is. That 24 mile round trip will burn one gallon of gas in our Nissan Maxima. That number makes me cringe, thinking about a 1 gallon container of gas being thrown out the window. When we come up with something we’d like to do in town, we try to think of other things we can accomplish if we’re going to burn the gas to get there. It’s a great, easy technique that we’ve found works really good to make a dent in how much gas we consume.

We’ve also started talking about trying to buy a hybrid car. Our 1999 Nissan Maxima gets about 26 miles per gallon city driving and 31 on the highway. That’s really not bad compared to some other “energy hogs” driving on our roads today. Considering a Toyota Prius hybrid can get 44 miles per gallon, we’ve got a long way to go! We can’t afford to buy a home in our area because prices are way out of line for first time home buyers. So, we’re thinking about investing our money in vehicle that will save us from the pain at the gas pump.

I’ve been doing some research on hybrid cars and I’m just really not impressed with the way auto manufacturers are finding ways to save us money and energy. Chevy has announced a new hybrid Malibu but it’s only rated at 24mpg (miles per gallon) in the city and 32 on the highway. That’s just a 2mpg increase over the normal engine. That hardly seems worth it! Ford’s hybrid Escape SUV get’s about 34mpg in the city, 30 on the highway. That’s pretty decent but the price seems too high starting at $25,075. Buying American would be nice and I’d feel better about supporting some of the last remaining manufacturing that goes on in our country or at least supposedly does. But it seems like once again, the foreign automakers are leading the pack on hybrids. Hopefully American automakers will get their act together or just like our oil reserves, they’ll dry up.

Here’s some cool resources I found on the web while doing my research. The Fed’s fuel economy website gives you details on the current tax credits associated with buying a hybrid car:
Federal Fuel Economy Website

To find rebate and incentive programs offered by your state you can head to the U.S. Department of Energy website:
Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center

And, for those of you that would like to see some side by side comparisons of hybrids, head to the website by the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Hybrid Center

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The first and most obvious way to travel green is by putting some careful thought and consideration into your trip.  This can be as simple as running your daily errands and considering a gas-saving route to complete them.  If you’re going to be hitting the road, heading to Grandma’s house, you can make sure that your tires are inflated to proper pressure, pack a little lighter and make sure to use that cruise control set around 65 or 70mph to get the most out of your gas mileage.  You could also rent a hybrid car for your trip.  Most of the big rental car companies now offer hybrids and will even teach you how to use them if you’re feeling intimidated about the technology on-board.  There’s now one whole rental car company that rents nothing but environmentally friendly cars in California and Phoenix, AZ.

But with the current green movement underway, there’s now all sorts of environmentally friendly ways to travel about.  You could plan to visit green cities.  One city that’s consistently ranked tops for it’s green way of life is Portland, Oregon.  The city is surrounded by nature, has a great mass transportation system, plenty of parks and open space and a host of environmentally responsible hotels and restaurants.  What could be better?  If Portland, Oregon isn’t in your trip planning future you could look for green hotels at any destination.   There’s now a Green Hotels Association, where innkeepers can pledge to make a difference with their property. You can check out a listing of their members by clicking this link to the Green Hotels website.  If you can’t find a listing for a green hotel in the area you’re headed there’s some steps you can personally take at any hotel.  The number one suggestion: don’t have your room serviced every day.  The wastefulness of washing every room’s sheets and towels once a day when the same people are staying in the room is ridiculous.  You don’t wash your stuff at home that much, why let the hotel do it!  Also, take your own bottles of soaps and shampoos so you don’t have to use the ones at the hotel.  If you do use them, take the leftover with you and get the most out of it before throwing away the packaging.

If you’d like to literally lend a helping hand to the environment and have an unforgettable trip, there’s several groups offering ecological experiences.  One based in Flagstaff, Arizona takes on projects for places like the National Park Service.  You volunteer your time to the task at hand and pay a fee that covers food and expenses, usually for a week at a time.  You can log onto the Wilderness Volunteer website to get an idea on what kinds of trips they have to offer.

Last but not least, when you head out of the house for that trip, shut it down!  Lights are essential to make your house look lived in while you’re away.  But, put those lights on timers so you’re not wasting electricity 24/7.  If you haven’t already, change the bulbs to compact fluorescents.  That will also help you save the cost of energy.   You should also unplug electronics that always suck power, no matter what.  These are your VCR’s, DVD players, televisions and most of all…your computer.  If you’re not going to be home to read your email for a week, turn it off!  There’s so many fun, new ways to tread a little lighter when we head out to travel.