Free Mulch!

Today, we took our new Yard Chipper out of its box and put it to work. (And I broke it all in one day.)

Um, can you say LOVE?

Here at our little Urban Homestead, we have tons of trees. They are beautiful and also a pain in the butt. One of the reasons they’re a pain in the butt is that they regularly drop large branches. Usually during storms, but sometimes just for kicks. When I say large branches, I mean that I have friends who have trees that are smaller than these branches.

These branches accumulate in the yard. We haul them into a pile. And then, after a year, we have a huge pile. In the city, we can’t burn our pile. So, if we need to have tree service, we pay the tree service people to haul it away. This is expensive, but we’ve done it. Otherwise, we could chop the branches up into the 3 foot lengths required for city pickup, and pay the city to pick it up. Expensive and labor-intensive.

Add to this nonsense the fact that we have a high need for mulch around here. Mulch is also expensive.

Enter the Yard Chipper. Yeah, it was like $150. Yeah, that’s kind of a lot. But, um, hello? FREE MULCH! Just in today’s work, in which I nearly obliterated our backyard brush pile, it’s easily paid for itself in terms of money saved in haulaway charges, and money saved in purchasing mulch.

Even more, it’s another step towards being self-sufficient. We have the source for all the mulch we could possibly need or want right here in our yard. Why buy it from the store?

In case you’re wondering, our chipper is a Yard Machines electric model. Most of our yard equipment is electric. It will handle branches up to 1.25 inches in diameter, though it’s more realistic to say that it’ll handle straight branches 1.25 inches. Anything bigger, we cut up with our chainsaw (rechargeable cordless electric Ryobi) and add to the woodpile for use in our outdoor fireplace.

Urban Homesteading

As Randy and I turn our minds more and more towards homesteading here in the city, I thought I’d add a new category here on the blog called, gee, “Urban Homesteading” with the eye towards starting up a new blog if it seems appropriate.

An interesting thought about slavery and racism.

Considering that even antislavery whites were, by and large, still incredibly racist, and didn’t think that blacks could or should mingle with whites, and would never, ever, be equals with whites, I wonder if the cause of racial equality was actually helped by slavery.

No, now before you leap to your self-righteous exclamations, read what I’m thinking here.
I’m not saying slavery was a good thing. It was horrible. The idea that one person could own another person is abhorrent. I’m not even saying that the above thought is RIGHT. It was just one of the many bizarre “suppose that…” thoughts that kick around in my head on a daily basis.

But.

Without slavery, would blacks have lived in America? Not many, anyway. Thus leaving whites to continue in their strong opinions that blacks are an inferior race.

What’s the best way to not have your preconceptions challenged? To never be in a situation that challenges them. What’s the best way to have your prejudices changed? To see that they’re wrong through your own personal experience.

Without ever coming into regular contact with blacks, I doubt that American whites would have ever really thought about them, and when they did think about them, it would have been easier to keep their prejudicial thoughts. But being in contact with blacks allowed them to start to realize that they were just people, just like the rest of us.

Now of course, this argument falls completely apart when you look at race relations in countries that never had slavery…. but it was an interesting idea to kick around in my head yesterday.

Another thought, and one shared by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, is that slavery would have come to a swifter and less bloody end if the North had just allowed the South to secede. Northern states would have been under no obligation to return runaway slaves to another country, the slave system would have been destabilized, and would have fallen apart on its own.

(In the end, I’m not a fan of Lincoln. I think his decision to invade the south and force them to remain in the Union was the beginning of our mess now – he completely trampled on the rights of states and waged an Unconstitutional war.)

reading

you know, I love American History so much more now than when I was in school.
I’m reading the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. I keep thinking I want to post excerpts of some of the best passages, but I’d be posting the entirely of pages 1-50, at least, and I’m pretty sure that is illegal, lol.

So just go get it and read it yourself.

But my favorite recent quote is “Guess What? States had the right to secede.” (I’m only as far as the Civil War, which wasn’t a civil war at all since there were not two factions fighting for control of the government, but might actually be more appropriately named the War for Southern Independence. I could even get behind the War of Northern Aggression, to be honest.)

I actually didn’t realize, based on what was taught in school, how brutal the North was. The resentment in the South makes more sense now.

10/27. Halloween Cookie Making.

10/28 is over at Miss G.

10/29 is also over at Miss G.

10/30 is over at Boulevard Designs.

 

10/31 Birthday Party

11/1 socks for Etsy customer

Seed Savers Exchange Trip

Wally really loved it. I just wanted to throw out a few pictures from the weekend.

10/19 At the Zoo. Yeah, and if you thought crawling into the prairie dog tunnels with your 1 year old might work out because she’d surely start crawling towards her brother, who came up with this brilliant plan, well, you would be wrong.

10/20 Halloween Treats. From Hell.

10/21 Hard to photograph your camera strap

10/22 Science Center

10/23 Genna was so happy to be able to reach the TV buttons in the hotel room.

10/24 Vintage apple tasting at Seed Savers Exchange

10/25 LHF

10/26 Fun Bag. Will be listed at Etsy this week.

Living History Farms Halloween

It was a lovely evening, and my friend Jill was participating in the storytelling, so we decided to head over to Living History Farms for their Halloween fun.

Wally loved getting his picture taken at all of the displays. Added bonus: no long lines like we had last year. Yay. Another added bonus: Genna slept through the whole thing.

Zoo Day(s)

Last week, we went to the zoo on Monday and Tuesday. It was so beautiful out, we couldn’t resist.

We spent a LOT of time with the ducks. Of course, they were one of the five animals not locked up safely away from the Halloween decorations. Stupid zoo.

Ran into Sarah D’s crew on the train, Wally was thrilled not only to get to play with friends, but to get to play on the playground stuff, which I don’t typically allow.

wondering

if everyone’s suffering from change-of-seasons internet ennui, or if everyone’s just really offended that I started engaging in political discourse here and on Facebook.