Little Ag in the Big City

Last night, we picked up our weekly allotment from the Grand Street CSA. We paid for the crop year in advance, and each week we get a share of what Woodbridge Farm produces. Local, sustainably grown, seasonal produce. Right now, there are lots of greens, plus rhubarb, strawberries, and some herbs. Later in the season there will be squashes and beans; in the fall, potatoes and pumpkins and apples.

After we weighed our greens and garlic scapes, we sat down to stay for a concert by the string quartet Ethel. The Offspring got to hear a bunch of fairly recent music, some composed by members of the quartet, and to experience a performance of John Cage's 4'33".

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This morning, I dropped off two bags of compost at the bins maintained by the Lower East Side Ecology Center at the Union Square Farmer's Market.

Some nice stranger clued me in a couple of years ago about keeping compost in the freezer so it doesn't get stinky -- a big improvement over keeping compost on the counter if you don't have a place to dump the stuff every day.

Why compost? It keeps a lot of garbage out of the dump, where it might take a few centuries to decompose. No Impact Man did a year-long zero waste project a few years ago, and others are attempting to follow his example, but even if you don't want to go that far, reducing the amount of stuff you send to the dump is a good thing.

How does composting work? You collect carrot leaves, corn husks, egg shells, apple cores, coffee grounds, tea bags, grain products, food scraps -- pretty much any vegetable matter. If you have your own yard, you dump it in a bin and let it turn into dirt. (More on what you can and can't compost: here.)

Depending on your composting philosophy, you might just move the pile every year or so, maybe toss a little dirt over it when you move to a new spot, or you might get a fancy bin and add ingredients in careful proportions and turn the mixture every day.

If you're adventurous enough, you can get a worm bin and compost on an apartment windowsill. I am not that adventurous.

There are other places in the city to take compost if you're not anywhere near Union Square. When we lived in Washington Heights, there was a neighborhood group that accepted compost on the stairs at Pinehurst Avenue and 181st Street. Poke around the community gardens and public parks in your neighborhood and ask around.

If you know of composting locations in the five boroughs and beyond, please leave them in the comments.

Water For Chocolate

Something else to consider about making ecological choices regarding food consumption: how much water does it take to produce?

Some scientists from the Netherlands wrote a report on the issue that includes this chart:
I know, I know, the print is tiny. I was shocked to discover that the item with by far the highest water footprint is ... chocolate, at 24,000 liters of water per kg.

The comparisons between items might be slightly more meaningful if they were organized by serving size rather than by weight, but still, after chocolate, meats are most of the the biggest consumers of water. In decreasing order:

Beef 15,500 liters/kg
Cheese 5,000 liters/kg
Pork 4,800 liters/kg
Olives 4,400 liters/kg
Chicken 3,900 liters/kg

Coffee, I'm relieved to discover, requires only 140 liters of water per 125 ml cup -- very low in comparison to meat and cheese (but how much per kilo?) but still nearly five times the water footprint of tea, at 30 liters per 125 ml cup.

I feel the need for more information, but I will be considering this information next time I'm contemplating a chocolate bar.

Green Ink

This is Johnny Collado.
Johnny wears his environmental commitments on his sleeve:
... and on the back of his leg:
The tree is an oak, and on his arm he wears bamboo, because of its versatility and environmental sustainability.

Pretty cool, eh?

Russell and the Gigantic Fish

Every once in a while, Whole Foods gets a really big fish.
Russell was also photographing this particular Big Fish. He's here to help with perspective: otherwise, how do you know it's not a really big picture of a little fish?
I guess somebody must buy this stuff. Or do they just put it out, and end up fileting it the next day?

A Moderately Successful Hike

There was rain in the forecast, so we decided to stay low and relatively flat, walking over some old Revolutionary War trails just south of Bear Mountain. We were getting pretty close to Doodletown when The Offspring stepped in a patch of wet leaves hiding a hole between a root and a rock and went down, twisting his foot.

We applied Advil and an ace bandage, Mom shouldered his pack, Dad helped him limp along as we turned around for the walk back out. The trail runs close to the road for a while, so when we reached the point of convergence, Offspring and I cut through the underbrush to the road while The Mate went to get the car and meet us.

The foot is still aching today, but the injury is fairly minor and should heal on its own soon. The Offspring said as soon as it's better, he wants to do the hike again and make it all the way to Doodletown. He discovered some of his own strength in pushing through pain on the way out, and he's learned that an injury doesn't have to ruin an outing.

Other bonuses: Mountain laurel was riotously in bloom in the low-lying areas. I don't recall ever seeing it like that, because by June we're usually up on the ridges, looking for breeze and a view into the distance. It didn't rain, despite the forecast, but because of the forecast, parking was easy and we had the trail to ourselves.

Also: we found, and harvested, some rhubarb growing wild. It turned out to be too tough and bitter* to eat, but the farmers-market rhubarb and strawberries we picked up on the way home made a really tasty pie.

Which, as I was eating it for breakfast this morning, made me think of my grandmother, who was a gentle, loving, kind person, and though not much of a cook made delicious rhubarb pie from a patch of rhubarb growing behind her house in Maine.

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*"Only by the wildest stretch of the imagination can rhubarb be included in this chapter [Fruit]..." -- Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, Joy of Cooking.

Paint on the Sidewalk

Two Bikes. No, Actually Three

A guy with a Brompton towing a trailer with two kids:While I was living in Cambridge (the English one) a few years ago, I regularly saw people, usually women, with two and sometimes even three kids on a bike, using some combination of front-mounted seats, rear-mounted seats, and trailers pulled along behind.

When I lived in Shanghai, many years ago, it was quite common to see a whole family on the bike at the same time, frequently also with the day's groceries. Dad would be pedaling, Mom sitting on the rear rack carrying a child, and a second child might be sitting on the top tube in front of Dad. Bags of vegetables or or a chicken with its feet tied together would likely be dangling from the handlebars.

The third bike? There I am with my Brompton, reflected in the glass behind that orange cargo bike.