The Writing's on the E-Wall: Personal Health = Eco-Health

I keep finding myself in doctors' offices with my family. We're mostly in the UMC system, so each office has the same electronic reader board that displays a new e-poster every thirty seconds or so. It's smart. We are an A-D-D culture trapped in a tiny room. The scrolling images help us not to go bonkers and give us lots of great health advice that we wouldn't sit still for anywhere else.

Apple, heart, lifestyle changes

Besides the A-D-D thing, I've always been a compulsive reader. If there's a printed word, I can't resist. It's astounding how many cereal boxes I've read as I sat there munching sugar-coated goodness.

So, as we sit waiting for doctors, I have no choice. I have to read. Really - I absolutely have to!

Scale, apple, shoe

What I've come to notice is that the health posters keep telling us the same things to help us live a healthy life:

• Eat better food
• Exercise
• Lose weight
• Lower your stress
• Avoid inhaling smoke

Woohoo! This one even has a pic of a bike!

Those messages play over and over. It's amazing how many times I've seen them without making this one simple connection - all of the eco-health-save-the-planet-climate-strike messages I read just as voraciously say the same thing.

Eat Better

• less and cleaner meat
• more locally-grown, chemical free veggies
• less processed foods
• less processed sugar (There goes my cereal box!)
• less food served in plastic, stryrofoam, and cardboard

Exercise, Be more Active, Lose Weight

• utilize people-powered transportation as much as possible (biking, walking, etc.)
• use stairs
• ride a bike
• get outside
• ride a bike
• garden
• ride a bike
• turn off the TV, phone, computer, tablet
• ride a bike
• get off your butt and on your feet
• ride a bike

(all about the boodie)

Lower Your Stress

• drive less
• sleep better/more
• turn off the electronics
• exercise
• eat better
• spend time with good people

Avoid Inhaling Smoke

• from tobacco
• from vaping
• from tailpipes (cars, trucks, lawn equipment, generators, boats, motorbikes, etc.)
• from coal power
• from natural gas
• from clearing forests

So, there you have it - save yourself and get the added bonus of saving the planet. Not a bad deal at all!

I pray that you are well and getting better. Thanks for reading, friends!

Heart of Lubbock Community Garden Pedal-Powered Pump Update

Last weekend there was a little time to do some upgrades and re-install the pump. It's now (a little) easier to pedal, the pump is more securely mounted, and the belt has stopped slipping.

I am a little concerned about the pump we chose. It's still very hard to turn, especially when it has water in it. I am hoping that it will loosen up with use. If not, everything else is good, so it will just be a matter of finding a better pump and swapping it out.

The bigger sprocket helped a lot. It's one that's normally sold to use with those nasty little gas motors that people mount to bicycles. (It was in our bike boneyard.) It made it necessary to lengthen the chain. Our first attempt at brackets allowed too much movement, so we swapped those for some flat right-angle brackets and stud hangers - much sturdier.

And then there was the slipping belt to fix. We needed to make the bicycle rim into a better pulley to cradle and grip the drive belt. After a few other botched attempts, we came up with the idea to put an inverted belt into the channel to make a place for the original belt. Yep, one of those underwhelming MH eureka moments happened.

Semi-instant pulley!

Well, that's it for now. We'll see if the pump loosens up. Right now it pumps a gallon for every five seconds of pedaling, but a minute will wear a pedaler out. Still, we are getting closer!

May your garden love water you harvested yourself and may all of your pedaling be fruitful.

Fossil Free Friday: Pedal Power and a Plow

 It's been a little while since we featured anything bike-like that's not really a bike, but this week, that seemed to be the theme of the internet meandering, so here goes.

Let's Plow

Have you found yourself thinking, "Man, I would trade all of these crappy old bicycles for a single carbon-neutral plow?" No? Is that just me? Oh well. This idea is still pretty cool. Click the link under the picture for plans and a video.

Turn your old bike into your new plow!

Whatever Floats Pedals Your Boat

 

So, maybe you're more of a boater than a gardener. Or maybe you're a tiny houser who lives near water. Or you just find yourself wanting to build something named after a French snail. If any of those describe you, check out the next creation:

 

Tiny House + Boat + Bicycle Drive = Something really cool that floats!

Tiny Pedal-Powered Electric VW's

Y'all know me as a guy who wants a small electric car - the Citicar. [I had to bring in a Citicar somehow!] But my love for electric cars started at a very young age. And I hate to brag, but I owned scads of electrics cars as a kid. And they were awesome! (I still have most of them.) They were tiny electric slot cars like these:

 

Why am I reminiscing like this? Well, I was perusing Autoblog.Green this week and ran across a photo of VW's Electric Transparent Factory. One of the photos showed two people powering a pair of slot cars by pedaling electric unicycles. Are you finding it hard to visualize? Then click here: Pedal-powered slot cars at the VW factory!

 

I know a little guy who has a birthday in July - we may need to break out the old slot car track and build a few of these DIY Bike Generators from Instructables. I feel a carbon-free, pedal-to-the-metal car race coming on! (A mesquite-hugging dork can dream, can't he?)

 

May you find inspiration pedaling you to betterment!

Lubbock on a Bike AND Arugula Gone Wild!

Super busy at the day job and life in general, so I'll keep this one short.

Yesterday marked one month down in the 2016 National Bike Challenge. I logged 130 miles in May, which isn't that impressive, but considering that I never ride over 5 miles per trip, not too shabby. That's about 9 gallons of gas not bought or burned. Striving for better! (Thanks, Spencer. for pushing me to ride more!)

The days I rode are in blue. Please join me in the NBC!

 

On to the garden:

 

 

 

See, arugula is taking over! Does anyone want some fresh arugula?

The stray red-leaf lettuce is trying to be arugula-rific!

Sweet peppers are almost ready - 4 so far.

 

For me, each attempt at consuming and releasing less carbon leads to a better life. I find that I love bicycling and I love gardening. Life is indeed better outside, and outside is better when you are not polluting it. Who knew?

 

May you find joy in things that make the world better for all.

 



 

Carbon Munching Garden Pics

Not a lot to say today, so I will let you see how the garden grows.

This is what arugula flowers look like. 

All of the arugula plants exploded this week with tall stalks and flowers.

I (literally) tried drowning my roly-poly sorrows in beer this week. Not one little crustacean was harmed in any way, but I did enjoy the rest of the beer and the roly polies have not shown themselves. Weirdness!

The food-is-free-planter exploded - mostly arugula.

One gecko has returned to the compost box. Stubby, it's always good to see a friend!

The big honking celebrity tomato stays green.

Three little sweet peppers!

The front-porch planter fit right in.

It's hard to beat a squash flower for a final pic!

Quick and unpictured:
The new pallet garden is struggling so far. Probably a poor compost to soil ration - I overdid it with the compost.
I am learning that ollas are my favorite approach to gardening. If you garden in a dry place - try it!
Hoping to build two more pallet-lumber raised beds for the front yard soon.
Planted black garbonzo and calabacita seeds this week. Hope!
The romaine and celery still show great growth daily.

May you know the joy of growing your own!

I'm Digging this VermiCompost Idea (Literally and Pun Intended)

I hate to admit it, but I am a miserable failure when it comes to vermicomposting. Mostly, it's been a lot of heat, a lot of drought, and whole lot of worm death - poor, brave, little guys gals dual-gender invertebrates!

But, I've been thinking about a plan to be successful without having the worm composter in the house. (Not everyone likes the idea of worms in the kitchen.)

I had something like this in mind

The plan is simple - a normal dual or triple bucket setup, but mostly buried in a shady place. That way, the worms get to live at a stable temperature with really great insulation. My garden will get the benefits of vermicomposting and I won't have to deal with all the senseless worm death at my hands. Definitely a win-win situation.

But you know me - the guy who writes much faster than he builds (and I'm a pretty slow writer.) So, I have not actually tackled the project.

But I do check my email. Today I received an email from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. The email featured a new product that caught my eye. It's not the same idea as mine, but it's pretty darn close.

Uncle Jim's WormFeast!

 

Bury it, throw in your scraps, let your native worms do all of the composting work! All that for $29.90 and free shipping! It looks like the Mesquite Hugger may be trying Vermicomposting again soon. The WormFeast doesn't really allow you to harvest the compost or compost tea, but it does fertilize the immediate area around it while breaking all your scraps down into a much more earth-friendly substance. Place it in your garden and you have some good stuff happening down in the dirt!

 

Now, where did I put that over-used debit card and the posthole diggers this time?

 

May all your digging be worthwhile and may some wiggly invertebrates do the dirty work in your personal carbon reduction!

Frankensteen Gardening: Re-Animating Veggie and Lumber Scraps

This is so simple! Buy the right veggies. Eat them. Put the scraps in a little water and give them a little sun. Watch them grow.

My lovely wife and my not-so-lovely self have been discussing veggie re-animation a lot lately, so she started with Romaine lettuce a little while back. In a short period of time we had a pretty amazing little plant, so I transplanted it into the food-is-free planter. Overnight it was mowed down by a marauding herd of roly polies. We cried a bit, and then she started over four days ago.

Celery with four days growth

Romaine lettuce with four days growth

The top view

If you want to learn more and want to Frankensteen your own veggies, here's a link to get you started: 17 Plants You Grow from Kitchen Scraps. There are lots of similar articles, but I chose this one based on the blog name - Black Thumb Gardener. (Be sure to check out the DIY concrete planter on that site.)

 

I also built a planter holder to hide my not-so-lovely 5-gallon bucket planters this weekend. All of the wood came from a house being re-animated about a block away from our house. Mostly rafters and floor boards.

 

 

This pallet and those two boards became a pallet planter too. More on both of these to come. The local alleys have provided nicely of late.

 

May you stand in your garden at midnight and yell, "It's alive!" (It's very invigorating, but the neighbors will wonder.)

Tiny Munching Invaders: Roly Polies in the Garden

It's good to be back in spring!

 

In our front yard, we have a recycled Food is Free planter where we grow food to (theoretically) share with the neighbors. If anyone needs a tomato or a pepper or whatever, they can come by and grab one. But last year, the little patch o' heaven wasn't really productive enough to do much sharing. We are hoping for better this year. 

 

 

However, the sharing has started early this year, and we are trying to figure out what to do about it.

 Nope, it's not Swiss cheese arugula - someone's been munching.

 

We have been invaded by roly-polies! (aka pill bugs, and lots of other names)

 

Over the last few days, we have learned a lot about these rather cool little creatures. First, they are not bugs. They are land-based crustaceans. (I think we should rename them crusty pills or pill crusties.) And, like everything else, they are great in moderation, but they are not so great when there are lots of them. And we have lots and lots and lots of them in the Food is Free planter - we created a little roly-poly Paradise City and they have populated with abandon. They like moisture, wood to munch on, and rotting vegetation. We added lots of water, lots of compost, and lots of wood mulch. Yep, it's Party in the Planter 2016. They usually just munch on the dead stuff, but they go after the live stuff when their numbers get high. And their numbers are high! It's time for a mass exodus.

 

Link here

 

What's a gardener to do? Our first attempt is in place - we made a honeydew list assault by slicing up a melon to work at attracting the roving hordes of crusties. I checked it yesterday morning and found the hordes to be lacking, but I am going for the Patience approach and let the melon get over-ripe. I will keep you posted.

 

Not too hordish yet.

 

May you not need guns to protect your roses, and may the crustaceans be your beneficial friends.

 

Bonus roly poly trivia:

 

There is a Roly Poly Japanese girl-pop band!

 

Mesquite Huggery Stuff in Lubbock this Weekend

Yep, it's a crazy busy weekend in the LBK this weekend - arts festival, wine festival, secret society of introverts avoid-a-thon, etc. In the midst of all that, I wanted to throw out a reminder for those of you who like gardening and locavorism and teaching kids about the world outside.

More info here

Good luck! (There's not a lot of info out there.)

More info here

May you have a phenomenal Saturday regardless of where you end up!

DIY Instructables Project Daydreaming - Plus a Challenge to You

The list of stuff I want to build:

a longtail cargo bike (and here)

a 275 gallon rain barrel

a geodesic greenhouse

a front porch stand (for the self-watering pickle bucket planters)

a trials bicycle (to jump curbs - not buildings)

a successful worm composting setup

The projects I want to finish:

The ElectroPigeon(s)

 

The electric Mazda pickup

The dream project:

A solar-powered, electric VW Microbus Ford Econoline

 

So, what triggered all of this daydreaming? Well, besides the usual overactive brain thing, Instructables has two contests going right now that have definite Mesquite Hugger appeal - the Urban Farming Contest and the Bicycle Contest 2016. Yep, bikes and urban farming - what could be better?

 

Urban Farm Prizes

Bicycle Prizes, you Nutcase!

 



The challenge?

 

Well, I'm giving you a big heads-up on our second annual Mesquite Hugger Augustructables contest. That's the one where you have a chance to create the coolest earth-loving thing you can find on Instructables, send in a pic and a brief description, and have the opportunity to win a really crappy prize -we are a very low-budget operation around here. What's the prize? We do not know yet. What are the rules? Ditto. When is the deadline for entries? August 31, 2016.

 

May you build your earth-loving Instructable project and may we all be winners for it!