IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THE PLOT

  The worldwide farmers’ suicide crisis was the tip of the iceberg.  Wanting to know more about it led me to discover agribusiness, multinationals, mono-crop cultivation, high-fructose-corn-syrup, genetically modified organisms, terminator genes, global warming, disappearing honeybees and on and on.  The horror-movie-type-reality is that our species is destroying the Earth!   It is time to change the plot.

  And this why in the past year I have gone from simply being interested in sustainable development, to wanting to take what concrete steps I can, big or small, to help save the Earth by reducing my family carbon foot print.

  I am lucky enough to have my own backyard and while I am no master gardener, I do manage to grow a few herbs such as basil, parsley, mint and thyme for use in my kitchen.  I have been collecting all biodegradable foodstuff generated in my home and returning it to the soil for quite sometime now.  Also, since this past April I have started hanging my washing outside and I reckon that I’ll be able to continue drying it al fresco well into the autumn.

Of course we recycle paper and plastic, though I am looking for ways to use less of it altogether.  But in a quiet, meditative moment, I felt that there must be more I could do to lessen my impact on the environment and that is when  I came across a piece by Steven Hopp in Barbara Kingsolver’s “ANIMAL,VEGETABLE, MIRACLE.” It gave me the inspiration to expand the scope of my save-the–earth-efforts.  What those proposed efforts are, I will explain in a minute, but first let me quote Hopp:

Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars.  We’re  consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen- about 17% of our nation’s energy use – for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use. […] But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of total used oil used for our food.  The lion’s share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate.  Each food item in a typical U.S meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. […] If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of local and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels a week.  That’s not gallons but barrels.

         

And this is what I want to do — reduce the amount of fossil fuel-thirsty-foods my family consumes by using local products as much as possible.  I have also given myself — and my family — the challenge of turning part of our small suburban backyard into a vegetable plot, and growing our own dinner.  Hence the title of this endeavor:

A NEW PLOT

 Efforts To Help Save The Earth, One Home Grown Meal At A Time

I would welcome advice and help wouldn’t go amiss either.  In fact I would love for other kindred spirits to take up their spades and join me.

Esmeralda Williamson-Noble

ps. I would like to try making my own mozzarella. Apparently it can be made in the kitchen in half an hour, the basil I have already, all I need for the salad now is the tomatoes. I'd better get busy.

Please email me at: esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com