Blog » January 2008

Hi everyone.  Meet Boot:

 

Her head is not always upside-down like that.  It's just that she likes to keep very clean, and she was preening during the whole photoshoot.  That first picture, of course, is from when she was a wee beepy thing, in a season we like to call "Spring".  Look how green it was!

Here are some important things for you to know about Boot:

1. She is an Indian Runner.  Sometimes these ducks are called "bottle ducks" or "bowling pin ducks" because they stand up so straight and tall (like in that baby picture).  They don't really waddle; instead they jog along quite smoothly.  She does not stand up as straight as some runners, because A) she was raised with normal ducks instead of straight-up ducks (peer pressure, dontcha know), and B) she is pretty chill.  She'll stand up right straight when she's scared, but usually she's pretty happy and stands only part-straight-up.  
2. She is missing the webbing on one foot.  She was actually named Boot before this happened, but at some point in her teen months, she managed to get the webbing sliced through on her left foot.  She never limped, and so we didn't even notice until it had already completely healed.  She doesn't seem to care, and as far we know the other ducks don't give her grief about it.
3. When Indian Runners are excited (like lettuce is being handed out!  Or we're filling up a fresh wading pool!), they stand in place and hop back-and-forth on their two feet.  It's awesome.
   
   
4. Boot is the most adventurous of all our ducks.  She only weighs 1.5 lbs (2 lbs in the middle of laying season), but she is always the first to venture through the snow, or up onto the porch, or through the woods to the stream.
5. Even though she is so small, she lays 3oz eggs (that's 150% the size of your average chicken eggs) just like the bigger ducks.
6. She thinks you are a sucker.  She will take none of your guff.

Check it, ya'll.  A big pretty flower.   I grew it myself!

The stalk is about 2 feet long, and I am concerned that at some point soon it will realize that it is absurdly top-heavy, and the whole thing will topple over in the night.

The sky really was that color this morning, and the snow really was that blinding.  "Hey," you might say, "isn't that what white balance is for?"  Hmmph, I say.  Go tell it to Ansel Adams.   

The Coppermine Trail leads to Bridalveil Falls, and the path was so well tramped that we left our snowshoes at the trailhead and did the whole thing bare-footed.  Not THAT kind of bare-footed; are you crazy?  It's January!  Bare-footed as in "just shoes", no snowshoes or crampons.  We had to cross bits of ice along the way to the top.

Please note that this picture does not depict some sort of "Leaning Tower of Aaron", but rather a "Holy Crap it's cold and hard to hold the camera straight with mittens" incident.

The Falls at the top are great, and actually easier to get to in the winter than in the summer (when the weather is warm, you have sheer slick granite to walk on instead of sticky snow).

 "Hey," you might say, "that ice looks like pee."  Well, yes, it does.  Even more so in person, in contrast to the deep-blue ice of the rest of the falls.  I assume it has to do with minerals or dirt or something in the water.  A quick Google search gives me no answers, though it does point me to a product page for "Yellow Ice Shuffleboard Wax".  I am going to go out on a limb here and make the bold assumption that these falls are made of neither shuffleboard wax, nor pee. 

The whole area is pretty wet in the summer, which results in lots and lots of icefalls in the winter.  This is apparently a destination for ice climbers.  In my world, ice is not for climbing.  For me, this area is a destination for trail mix*.

* I accidentally typed that as "trail mixz", which is maybe even better.  MIXZ in da hiz-ouse (or, more appropriately:  biz-ackpack)!  Give a shout-out to the raisins and my main man Chocolate Chipz!

Over at TreeHugger, there's a post about SC Johnson's new "GreenList" label.   TreeHugger contends that this is a classic case of greenwashing -- the Greenlist Certification was developed by SC Johnson, so of course they pass with flying colors.  The products are not what most people would label "green", however.

If you read through the Greenlist website,  it's a decent program.  Basically, all raw materials get a 0-3 rating (3 is "best", 0 is "will kill you and your dog"), and they try to make sure that all their products are using 2- and 3-rated products.  So, for example, Windex has been reformulated so that it no longer uses a 0-rated solvent, so it spews fewer VOCs into the air.  And the company made the radical move of using brown instead of bleached-white paperboard for packaging.  (And who rates the ingredients?  Why, they do!)

However, a pretty leaf label does not magically turn "Toilet Duck" into an earth-friendly cleanser.   Glade Plugins will never be anything less than completely foul.  It should be a crime to call that smell "vanilla".  

I started out writing this post thinking, "I dunno, TreeHugger was a little harsh.  At least they're doing something".  And then I got to the "Get the Facts" page on SC Johnson's site, where, in response to a question about whether Glade Plugins have ever started house fires, I read: 

No. It's an example of the kind of irresponsible urban legend that gets forwarded around the Internet and disparages brands.

Oh, CRY ME A RIVER, SC Johnson.  Poor you and your poor disparaged brands.  Those kooky internet forwards sure are hurting your business.  (It did not help that the next page I read was how they're so green they've received awards... from the President!) 

That is, frankly, not a great reason for me to conclude that they are only greenwashing with this silly label, as opposed to actually committing to real change.  GreenList may be a fine program, but it's not fine enough to convince me.  

Over at Pentagram, DJ Stout has redesigned Dairy Today (an industry magazine).  The old magazine looked like... well, it looked like every other trade magazine.  The new one does not.  It's enough to make you want to subscribe.

Along with the great new typography and candy-colored backgrounds, every cover has a cow glamour-shot.   It's so great.  Click through to the original post -- there's a hilarious video of the crew trying to art-direct the cows for the photoshoot.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:  Adventure Chicken! 

Notice the chicken in the bottom right of that picture.  What is she doing there?  What compelled her to walk all the way up the path from her house, and then turn down the side path towards the propane tank?   Chickens don't even like snow, or being apart from their flock.  Those paths have 18" walls -- she couldn't see over them (and even if she could, it's all just snow).  She found her way home eventually, but that is truly one adventurous chicken.

According to NextEnergyNews.com, there are plans afoot to build a big 30-story tower-o-farms in Las Vegas.  Part food production, part tourist attraction.  

I am a sucker for futuristic farms, especially in tower form.  Look how great that artist's rendering is!  Look at those tiny little lab coats!  Frankly, the article is a little sketchy, what with zero references to actual companies involved (and doesn't this seem more like a Dubai project than a Las Vegas one?), but still!  I love it.  

When we lived in New Zealand, we took the bus everywhere and pretty much always had a bag (backpack or otherwise) to carry a map, snacks, and other essentials.  Often, when we bought something at a store, they would make us take a bag (rather than just putting the new shirt or whatever into our own bag), even though we had a reciept in case someone thought we were stealing.  It always struck us as odd, especially because in NZ grocery stores,  they don't bag your groceries for you -- you do it yourself, into whatever kinds of bags you want.

Well, apparently the inanity has crossed the pond.  There's a post over on Consumerist about a shopper being forced to take a plastic bag at Macy's.  Basically, the clerk told the customer that she had to have a bag, otherwise they wouldn't let her out of the store.  Poppycock, really, because what are they going to do?  Detain you for not-shoplifting?  But still:  what lame customer service.  You'd think Macy's would be up on the trends and be marketing fashion-forward* reusable bags.  But I guess not.

* I got a yarn catalog the other day that touted a line of yarn (100% acrylic, ick!) in 37 "fashion-forward" colors.  Now I fear that all of the yarn I already own is fashion-backward.  (Fashion-rearward?)  So sad. 

If you're like me (and, let's face it, of course you are!), you need yourself some thick socks in the winter.  And if you're a knitter, then you think to yourself, "Hey, I can make thick socks instead of paying $19/pair for the nice wooly kind!".

Let's face facts here:  if you're a knitter, it is very unlikely that you will spend less than $19 on the wool for your nice thick socks.  You will make your way to your local yarn store and you will swoon at some baby alpaca or hand-painted merino, and then you will buy $19 worth of it to make your thick socks.  Now, there are other benefits to making your own socks -- they'll fit you perfectly, you'll know how to repair them if you get a snag, and they will look totally awesome.   But they will not save you money.

A big issue for us cold-footed northern-dwelling outdoorsy-types is that most sock recipes call for (wait for it!) sock-weight yarn.  Sock weight yarn is super thin (only one size up from 'lace weight', in fact), and is great for making thin-yet-warm socks that most people need for wearing inside dress shoes.  But do I wear dress shoes?  No, I do not.  I wear big thick boots all winter.  Thin socks do not become me.  

I have been looking for many moons for a sock recipe that called for worsted weight wool, and finally I have found one!  Enter Thuja!  Actually, Thuja entered the world more than two years ago (in the Winter '05 issue of Knitty), but that is neither here nor there.  Thuja entered my house last night, and I am very excited to knit a  nice pair of thick socks.   So for anyone else out there who is looking to knit socks that are both warm and thick:  Thuja!

This week at webmeadow HQ, we got another foot of snow.  We love snow, because we figure:  if it's going to be so freaking cold out, at least there's slippy slidy stuff to play in.  However!  In the winter we run up against a tricky problem:  compost.

Compost!  You know the stuff -- also known as "I am voluntarily choosing to have food rot in this pretty crock on my kitchen counter".  You put your food scraps (onion papers, dead lettuce leaves, etc) into the pretty crock each day, and when the crock is full, you take it outside and add it on the big compost pile in the yard.  Then you add grass clippings and raked leaves and whatnot to the same pile, and next spring, out comes lovely fresh dirt for your garden.  It's the ciii-ircle of life.

That's all well and good in the summer.  But in the winter, when the going gets tough and the tough get snowing, trudging out to the (completely buried) compost pile every day when the little scrap bowl filled up was just not cutting it.  We needed long-term storage, so that we only had to make the full compost-trek once a week or so.  The obvious answer was to start storing the scraps in the big blue bucket under the sink.  But, hey, you know what happens if you keep 3 gallons of food waste tucked in a plastic bucket for a week?  Yowch.  Not pretty, and very smelly.  

Here is our incredibly low-tech and yet completely-awesome solution:  wheat bran.  Not Bob's Red Mill kind of wheat bran, but Poulin's kind of wheat bran, which comes in 25lb bags for about $6.  

(Look at that drama!  Bran in the snow!)

We sprinkle a generous layer of bran on the bottom of the big blue bucket, and then every day or two, we add a new layer of bran on top of the scraps.  It absorbs the weird oogy liquids that come out of rotting foods, and allows us to leave the compost festering under the sink for at least a week without any ill effects.   

 

Nothing smells, and the wheat bran will compost with the rest of the food.  A field guide to the above picture:  a layer of wheat bran covering:  two grapefruit halves (empty), a few paper towels, and some sort of be-stalked thing in the corner.  V'GER, is that you?

In fact, if you're like us (and do far more eating than lawn-mowing and leaf-raking), the wheat bran will probably help with the fact that you never add enough of that all important "dry matter" to your compost piles.   So, until spring comes:  add bran to your compost, and only venture out into the snow for sledding*!

* And feeding the ducks.