Getting Busy

Last week started getting busy; I went to school one day, an all day doctors appt/errand run another, volunteered at the church to make banners a third. So what happened? I didn't make bread for three days or make granola or yogurt for a week, we ran out of milk and we ended up short of ready to eat food.

I am at the threshhold. I am out of many of the foods we eat which come in plastic, and have not found alternatives yet. Cheese. Meat. Cereal. I went to the store today after church and there was nothing to buy.

I am looking at buying local foods as well as plastic. I question what the difference is between 0.1g of plastic wrapping compared with the petroleum used driving those naked oranges 3000 miles. Thus, in the dead of winter in which I did not prepare for food wise, I am out of food options. There are next to no truly green food choices.

I bought a frozen can of apple juice concentrate two weeks ago for granola and when I got it home read on the label "From China". We live in the North East, arguably the home of the best apples in the country, if not the world, and we are shipping them in from China?!

I start school full time tomorrow. I will be heading up the organic certification of the entire Ag program (crops, pasture, dairy and veg production) as well as running the greenhouse and veg field production and taking a class. How am I going to be able to manage running a plastic less household while being gone 5 or more days a week? Next week I will be gone to a 3 day organics conference, what is my family going to eat?

I guess I am depressed about this. It is such a hard path. Everything in the entire store I normally shop in outside of a few limp veggies shipped in from CA is wrapped in plastic.

The good news is I have managed for the second week in a row to keep the plastic output down to one grocery bag full (not including recycling but including everyone else's plastic-4 people). I have only added a couple of new plastic bags. I started a double batch (4 loaves) of oatmeal bread, and we already had a great meal of baked Orange Roughy with sun dried tomatoes, basil and garlic (came wrapped in paper at the store), cappalini with homemade sauce from tomatoes out of my garden, and homemade biscuits. Everyone is full and there are leftovers. I am also going to start growing some food for us in one of the side rooms in the greenhouse. Call it a perk of running the place.

I am finding organization is key to this endeavor, especially meals. I think maybe it is time to resurrect the other blog to start looking at plastic free meals and recipes. This is worth it t me, but it is work. And sometimes, like all work, it gets you down. I can see how so many people decide it isn't worth the trouble.