According to the article, we’re seeing growing participation here in traditional local distribution models such as farmers markets and community supported agriculture, as well as growth of a new kind of model called Locally Grown, an online market that matches growers with buyers who can select, buffet style, what they want from individual growers and pick up their collective order at a central distribution point once a week. Restaurants around town are also carrying more locally grown offerings, and Athenians in increasing numbers are doing some growing of their own, in backyard plots, on decks and patios, wherever they can find some space and a bit of sun.

Craig Page, founder of the non-profit PLACE (Promoting Local Agriculture & Cultural Experience), says people are coming to local food for a variety of reasons: to support sustainable agricultural practices, to keep money circulating in the community, and, of course, for the simplest reason of all, taste.

I was going to talk about our little garden here at the ranch house and the joys of growing (and eating) our own food, but I got to poking around on the Web at the sites of a couple of the local food advocacy groups. Some people believe the Athens area has the capacity to grow 75% of its own food. But obviously, we all can’t pick up and move to a farm. In fact, as the 23% poverty rate in Athens will suggest, many here don’t even have even the smallest plot of land to call their own. But the plan, if the folks at PLACE, the Athens Urban Food Collective, and other local food advocates have their way, is to build a network of urban agricultural projects using vacant lots, public parks, power-line rights-of-way, and other under-utilized space around the city to give everyone the space to grow their own. Guidelines are available from the Athens Urban Food Collective for any person or group wanting to take leadership and start their own urban garden and there are educational gardens in the planning stages or already under way at an elementary school here, at UGA, and at other locations in the area.

Sounds good to me. I’m reminded of the Victory Garden, that fixture of World War II era communities across the country. Times were hard, the food supply was unreliable, many staples were simply unavailable. Community self-reliance was an imperative. Everybody grew something if they could, and shared the harvest with neighbors, and put up the surplus for the off-season. According to Wikipedia, some 20-million Americans produced about 40% of the vegetables consumed in the U.S. during that period. But, you know, from every story I’ve heard, those gardens produced more than simple nourishment. They became centers of community. Working those gardens large and small, people did more than survive. They planted hope. They harvested pride. They shared practical and cultural knowledge that made the roots of community deeper, individuals stronger.

Craig Page at PLACE and his fellow local food advocates are busy planting more than the seeds of ideas, here in Athens. They’re cultivating real change. If you want to find out more about the local food movement here in Athens, here are some links:

Read the article in the Athens Banner-Herald, “Strong sustainable food demand strains local supply” (they’re using a different headline for the online version): http://onlineathens.com/stories/072708/news_2008072700335.shtml

PLACE (Promoting Local Agriculture & Cultural Experience): http://localplace.org/

The Athens Urban Food Collective newsletter, Food Now Athens: http://localplace.org/images/stories/foodnowathens2.pd

The photograph is courtesy Magalie L’Abbé: http://www.flickr.com/photos/magtravels/

The ABC Evening News just reported that some folks trying to line-dry are running up against homeowners and condo associations that ban the practice. They’re being told that the sight of their skivvies on a clothesline is aesthetically unappealing and would lower property values.

For people trying to lower their carbon footprint or simply trying to save money, that’s a bummer, because the way you dry your laundry has an impact both ways. As reported by ABC, clothes dryers account for nearly 6 percent of residential electricity use. Add the 17 percent of people using gas dryers and the figure for dryers as a total fraction of residential energy use climbs significantly. Another way of looking at it, the average family household spends about a quarter of their total electric bill on drying clothes, or at least $100 a year. Letting the sun do more of the drying means less energy consumption and a lower utility bill.

If you live in Florida, Utah or Colorado and you want to line-dry, you’re in luck. Thanks to the advocacy efforts of groups like Project Laundry List and others, those states have passed right-to-dry laws. California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon and Vermont are considering similar legislation. But, in the meantime, it’s buyer/renter beware: your community covenant, your local zoning laws, and your landlord may not allow outside clothes drying, and those bans may be perfectly legal. It doesn’t mean you have to use your dryer; you just may have to get a little creative with your use of indoor drying space.

We use a collapsible wooden drying rack year ’round for skivvies, socks, and small stuff (setting it out on the deck in the sun), but during the winter and on wet days, we also hang damp clothes on hangers from the shower curtain rod and off shelving in the laundry room. On such days we also “par-dry,” that is, we throw the stuff in the dryer for a few minutes to take some of the wetness out before we hang. It speeds indoor drying time and gets a lot of the wrinkles out.

I don’t know what we save by hanging our clothes on the line, but I like doing it and am mighty glad I’m surrounded by neighbors who feel the same.

Here’s the link to the ABC news report, “Clotheslines: A Fight to Air Clean Laundry” - http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id
=5442780&page=1

Here’s the link to the Project Laundry List website - http://www.laundrylist.org/

We found the barrel at our local Earth Fare grocery store, pre-drilled and with all the necessary parts, for about $85 (with tax).

Having shopped around, we know we could’ve paid both more and less, but the package offered at Earth Fare was what we wanted at a reasonable price. Because the barrel was pre-drilled, the necessary parts had been included and we had the tools we needed on hand, the assembly and installation were fairly easy and took two of us less than an hour.

This barrel has a two-piece, screw-on lid. If you’re shopping for a rain barrel on line, make sure you know what you’re getting: some barrel lids are not removable. The scrawl on the side says what the barrel used to contain, the aforementioned jalapeño-stuffed olives. We just turned it around and put the scrawl to the wall.

The hardware that came with our barrel is pretty typical of what’s in use with rain barrels, today. You need a hose bib (otherwise known as a spigot) to drain the water you’ve collected, and an outlet for the overflow when the barrel is full. This assembly uses a hose adapter for the overflow which gives us the option of attaching a hose to direct the overflow where we want it.

Our brick ranch has a typical residential gutter assembly: aluminum gutters and downspouts that empty onto concrete splash blocks.

The downspout had to be cut and shortened so the rain barrel could fit under it, and a flex-hose attached to the downspout so the water coming down the spout can be directed into the barrel.

A flex-hose is not the only way to do this, of course. Some assemblies incorporate aluminum diverters that look like an extension of your gutter. Note: measure your downspout before you purchase a diverter or flex-hose for your barrel, and especially before you cut any holes in the top of your barrel (if you have a sealed top). Downspouts, like gutters, come in a variety of sizes. Our downspout turned out to be too wide for the flex-hose included in our package and we had to go to our local home center for a larger hose.

Downspouts are held to the wall with gutter straps. The gutter straps are screwed into the wall and into the gutter. Depending on where you make your cut, you may have to remove the gutter strap to remove the downspout once you cut it.

If you leave the gutter strap in place while you’re making your cut (a good hacksaw will do the trick quickly), it will help keep the downspout from wiggling around. It also helps to have another pair of hands to help hold it steady.

We removed the concrete splash block, leveled the ground with a spade, and set in two concrete blocks to elevate the rain barrel so we can get a watering can under the hose bib.

This barrel has a two-piece, screw-top lid. We’re using only the screw-top, right now, screwed down over a piece of mosquito screen stretched across the barrel opening.

Once we got the rain barrel settled on its cinderblock perch, we hooked the flex-hose to the bottom of the shortened downspout.

By the way, we did do a dry-run set up of the barrel on the cinderblocks and measured everything before we cut the downspout.

We screwed the flex-hose cap onto the downspout with the same screws we took off the gutter strap we’d removed, piercing the aluminum by hand with an awl first.

The installed rain barrel, ready for action.

This piece of work was here when we got here. I’m thinking no self-respecting installer put this door in. Note the gap. Note the bracket, our attempt to keep the door from falling apart before we could replace it. Can you just hear the slamming? Because that’s what poorly mounted storm doors do no matter how much you tinker with them. And, of course, the gap, well you can just about feel the heat getting sucked right through it, can’t you?

And then there was the issue of the pets. Well, one pet, really. Smokey, the Basenji mix whose mission in life is minding the squirrels out back. Smokey arrived just after I had painstakingly replaced the screen (although, you might wonder why I bothered since the mosquitoes could fit a mack truck through that gap at the top) and she promptly tried to go through it (not shown here). Sigh.

So, cut to the chase (not the squirrel chase) and, ta-da! New storm door. A Larson Wood-Core Series Retractable Screen Storm Door. A beauty. Ever fall in love with a door? I’m in love with this door. It’s solid, it closes like a dream (because the installer did a beautiful job) AND there is no screen at the bottom for a pet to poke her nose through (or to crash through unthinkingly in pursuit of the perfect chase). The screen’s on top. The retractable screen.

Who knew they made such things? When you need fresh air, you pull the top window down and the screen follows. When you’re done, you pull the window back up and the screen tucks away leaving you nothing but the view. So, yes, we expect a few dog nose prints on the bottom glass, but no torn screens, and we like this door so much we’re ordering another install — same thing for the front entrance — and between the two I think we’ll see an impact on our heating/cooling bills, as well.

Now, it’s my turn to share the love:

1951 Ranch Redo - These adventuresome souls — Eric and Laurie in Corvalis, Orgegon — are doing most of the work themselves, and the results, which they are kind enough to share in the form of lots of juicy photos, are gorgeous.

Casa in Costruzione - No, she’s not Italian, but Virginia blogger Silvia has a cool blogspot. I visit often to see how things are going with their chickens. Yes, chickens. Way cool.

Eco-Ranch in the Midwest - I’ve been following houseblogger Denise and her family’s efforts to green-up their 1950s ranch house in the Midwest. Denise’s commitment to doing what she can right where she is has been an ongoing inspiration for me.

Homeowner’s Blog - Another source of ongoing inspiration and education, Paul Thurst and his family live in an older ranch in the Eastern Catskills. His blog chronicles his home improvement process, which he has also endeavored to make a “green” one.

Wedgewood Ranch - You have got to see the photos of Chris’s neighborhood (in Eastern Washington State) from “back when.” How many of us actually get to see how our ranch houses looked when they were first built? Well Chris stumbled on this cache of early photos of these ’50s era homes on his block and they’re a must-see, especially when set next to the same houses as they look today.

Here are the obligatory “rules” that go with these sorts of posts…
The ‘you make my day award’ works like this:

1) Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think and/or make your day.
2) Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3) Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news!