Hi folks!

Call me sappy, but it’s true: One of my favorite signs of Spring is the sight of pewter-colored sap buckets hanging on the sides of old maple trees along a scenic muddy road in my native Vermont.

The photo above depicts an early American sugaring scene. Though many technical advancements have come into play, such as sap tubes, vacuum pumps, and reverse osmosis machines, key elements of this native scene are still prevalent in our modern sugaring experience.

The basics of sugaring are still the same:

• Tapping maple trees (although other trees have sugar-laden sap, maples are the sweetest and the sappiest)
• Hauling and collection of sap
• Boiling sap in a metal vessel (or do like the Abenakis and hollow out a log and supply it with fire-hot rocks to boil off the sap; or let the sap evaporate in the air until only sugar remains. For more Native American sugaring lore and history click here!)
• Maintaining a fire
• Gathering of community around syrup making

Those things are all still true. Go to any sugar house and you will see family and neighbors gathered around a sweet-smelling steaming boiler, usually being maintained by a core group of sleep-deprived people!

Here are the basic how-to’s for DIY maple syrup:

1. Find a maple tree at least 10″ in diameter
2. Number of taps depends on the size of the tree: 10″=1 tap; 18″=2 taps; 28″=3 taps, etc
3. Drill hole 1.5″ or 2″ deep. Try to drill above a big root or below a big branch, about waist-height without snow
4. Tap on the SE- or SW-facing side of tree first
5. Angle the hole upward so the sap flows down
6. Collect the sap and boil it down until it thickens into syrup

By the numbers:

• 40 gallons of sap=1 gallon of syrup
• Each tap can generally yield 5-15 gallons of sap
• Maple syrup has a boiling point of 7 degrees F above the bp of water; Therefore the syrup is done at 219 degrees F

Or you know what? You can skip the boiling if you’re short on time and fire and just collect it to sip or make sweet ice cubes.

Have fun!

-Holly Rae Taylor, Compost Maven

Hi folks,

We are very pleased to announce a new partnership with a terrific local food organization: yourfarmstand.com. Home Ecology is now their food pick-up site in Shelburne.

Here’s how it works: go to their website, create an account, select which local foods you want, and then select the pick-up site most convenient to you. And if that happens to be Shelburne, then we’ll see you at the store! This is a great way to support participating farmers, bakers, cheesemakers, etc. and at the same time find out what’s available for local foods.

Bon appetit!

Holly, the compost maven

I made this dish for Thanksgiving dinner, substituting almonds for hazelnuts, and it was as good as the picture looks! A friend of mine gave me a half gallon of maple syrup recently so it was great to be able to use some of it here. It was delicious and beyond easy to make.

What did you bring to dinner?

-Holly, Compost Maven

….

This recipe came from Tara Parker-Pope’s NYT Well Blog:

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds brussels sprouts

1/4 cup olive oil

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon (or 10 grinds) black pepper

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. To prepare the brussels sprouts, remove any yellow or brown outer leaves, cut off the stems and cut in half.

3. In a large bowl, toss the brussels sprouts, olive oil, salt and pepper together. Once all of the brussels sprouts are coated in oil, spread them into a 9-by-13-inch (or larger) baking dish or sheet tray to roast. Note: You may want to line your sheet tray with foil for easy cleanup because the caramelizing process leaves a sticky residue.

4. After 15 minutes, stir the brussels sprouts with a spatula or large spoon to even out the browning. After 30 minutes, stir in the maple syrup. (Steps 1 through 4 can be done a day in advance; store covered in the refrigerator. Continue with Steps 5 and 6 right before serving.)

5. Continue to roast the brussels sprouts for about 15 more minutes, or until they are fork tender (about 45 minutes total roasting time).

6. Toss the roasted brussels sprouts with the hazelnuts and devour!

Yield: Serves 6.

(Cool view outside our Time Square hotel room…Empire State Bldg peaking out over the far rooftop)

Hi folks,

It was our turn to shop and shop we did! Anne and I traveled to New York City in mid August to find some new products for the store at the New York International Gift Fair. Which was way more than a gift fair. It was everything, including pet stuff, garden, bedding, jewelry, clothing, decor, stationary, handmade items, and massive amounts of cookware. We had a ton of fun and found some really terrific things to bring back to you all. Our goal was to flesh out our kitchen, tabletop, and home decòr categories.

Here’s Anne at her favorite booth: Zen Zen fair trade home goods.

The one in the middle is Andrea, owner of Zen Zen.

The crown jewel of our trip is a toss-up between the fair trade Zen Zen and some really gorgeous Finnish cookware by Iittala.

It was great to meet all the people and hear the stories behind the products. Stop by the store and we’ll give you an earful!

Cheers!
Holly, the compost maven

Hi folks,

The local food movement didn’t just materialize. Rather, our collective journey back to what pre-industrial cultures have always known about living in harmony with nature was blazed by lots of people and traditions, including Yankee ingenuity, Victory Gardens, Deep Ecology, A Sand County Almanac, Scott and Helen Nearing, hippie communes, the Shakers, All Creatures Great and Small, Walden, and the Whole Earth Catalog, just to name a few.

Add to this pantheon the work of Joan Gussow, who blazed a path for living in a connected way while in a traditionally disconnected environment. Joan Gussow has been writing about food policy and the relocalization of the food supply since the early 1970’s. In 2001 she wrote This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, just in time for the rest of us to catch up and hop on the local, slow food movement.

Here’s a great little video of Joan:

Joan Gussow Interview from Shelley Rogers on Vimeo.

Happy canning!
Holly Rae Taylor, Compost Maven

In a Plan B economy, i.e., post-peak oil, biking plays a prominent role for obvious reasons. And in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Coast disaster many people are recommitting themselves to biking as a way to personally make a difference. I’ll speak for myself but I think this is probably universal: there’s a spiritual benefit to biking as well. Not only does biking instead of driving to work diminish my carbon footprint it makes me really, really happy. I’m of the mind that bliss is actually good for the planet on some energetic level. To me, that’s the upside to a potentially scary and unknown Plan B and to the recession: it’s getting people back in the garden and on their bikes, and connecting with each other in community–all bliss-inducing activities.

The great news is that more and more people are hopping on the bike wagon. Here’s an excerpt for an article in Mother Earth News: “World bicycle production, averaging 94 million per year from 1990 to 2002, climbed to 130 million in 2007, far outstripping automobile production of 70 million.” Read the full article here.

Catch you on the flip side!

-Holly, Compost Maven

Hi folks,

There’s a terrible irony in celebrating 40 years of Earth Days and Green Up Days while the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is creating an enormous environmental disaster.

Taking action:

Green Up Day: Greening Up our local environment is something we can all do.  It just feels good to be able to make a difference.  Saturday, May 1 is Green Up Day.  Stop by Home Ecology to pick up a handful of green bags to fill with trash.  Call 802.881.0276 for more information.

The oil spill: What can we do about the oil spill?  Check out this website for ways that you can help.

Here’s our very own Green Goddess, Shannon Dufour-Martinez, holding up a green bag at Home Ecology.  Read the article in the Shelburne News here.

I grew up in Vermont and we always participated in Green Up Day.  I liked pitching in and making a difference, even on such a small scale in a small town (350 peope!) and in a very small state.  I think that the action-orientation of the day makes me like Green Up Day even more than Earth Day.  Is that wrong?  Which do you like better?

Find Home Ecology on Twitter @home_ecology and join us on Facebook at Home Ecology

Find me on Twitter @compost_maven

Stay tuned for more news about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  We’ll be watching that closely and blogging and tweeting about it.

In good tilth,

-Holly, Compost Maven

Our Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, has created a sea change in federal policy that gives cyclists and other non-motorists a place at the table in transportation planning and in the selection of projects for federal $$$.  This should come as very good news for cities like Davis, CA which, if you can believe it, has more bikes than cars!  Thanks, Ray!

Happy trails!

Holly, the Compost Maven

On the Net: http://www.bikeleague.org/blog/2010/03/lahood-you-have-a-full-partner-in-ray-lahood/

]]> http://community.myhomeecology.com/2010/04/14/bicycle-lahero/feed/ 0 http://community.myhomeecology.com/2010/04/12/baby-chicks-please-rush-2/ http://community.myhomeecology.com/2010/04/12/baby-chicks-please-rush-2/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:25:03 +0000 Compost Maven http://community.myhomeecology.com/?p=145

Martha Stewart in August, 1976. Photo by Susan Wood

Hi folks,

As if I needed one more reason to LOVE Martha Stewart, she recently had a tv show dedicated to raising backyard chickens.  Raising chickens is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint, save money, help your diet and food security, and add to your compost pile!

Turns out Martha’s been raising chickens for 30 years and even did a big magazine cover story about it back in 1994.  What can we say, she’s always ahead of her time because 16 years after that article Susan Orlean wrote her now-famous article in the New Yorker called The It Bird.  Susan caught hen fever at a county fair after she moved away from Manhattan.  It was fun watching Martha holding a conversation with Susan while a big hen napped on her lap.  And you should see Martha’s chicken coop: it’s imaculate for one thing, and looks not unlike a Hampton’s luxury beach house.

Here’s the link to that show, where you’ll find all kinds of useful tips for raising chickens and preparing eggs.  And check out www.mypetchicken.com for even more info about backyard chickens.

And remember, if you do decide to raise chickens in your backyard, all the pine shavings used in bedding your chicks make amazing compost!

In good tilth,

The Compost Maven

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