Really? Another gadget? Yep.

Today found me once again distracted from my day job... Good thing I work at a computer with the entirety of the interwebs at my fingertips. Well, all the non-blocked production-sapping interwebs - supposedly...

I just ordered another necessary accoutrement to our new lifestyle: cheese making equipment. I went to cheesemaking.com and bought the beginner set with the dvd and recipe book as well as the hard cheese kit and the gourmet kit. Now, if I can just find the cobbler kit... My rationale - my excuse for this purpose is that it's a birthday present to myself. Fshew, Trisa is off the hook. I am literally quivering with anticipation at the thought that my food mill kit and cheese kits are on their way to my house as we speak! Besides Trisa, Pi (yep, Pi), Roy, cobbler and wine, cheese is my very favorite. I'm passionate about cheese. I love everything cheese. Cheese.

We're finally getting the home-based infrastructure in place to make food that'll last us through the winter. It's odd that to our grandparents this would seem perfectly natural. So many of that generation were so self-sufficient. They tread lightly, so to speak, when it came to consumerism, self producing food, not wasting things, etc.

I've begun to analyze (please note: I use this term liberally here) the unintended consequences of our experiment. Here are some:

• Last month we threw out about 10% of the food we bought - In the past our average monthly food waste was near 45%. This is a 78% reduction in our food waste.
• We threw away about 4 bags of non-food waste. In the past we usually averaged 2-3 bags per week. There was one week that we had less than a bag to go out to the curb and so we didn't put any garbage out. This is a 60% reduction.
• Our recycle bin has been filled up once since starting (three months ago). I should say that we've filled it once over a two-week period and every other two week period it's been less than 2/3 full. Except this week - I've stuffed it full of some cardboard boxes ready for recycling. Before, we filled it nearly every two-week period. This is about a 30% reduction in our recyclable waste.

I am amazed at just how much we threw away that things came packaged in, or that went bad before we could eat it. The reduction of food waste has reduced due to us buying less food, buying non-packaged food, producing our own food and harvesting it the day we eat it, etc. So even though the food we buy costs more, we buy less, and spend less to produce our own small quantity. Check out how much we spend on a weekly basis to the right. It's the same (maybe a little more some weeks), but just about the same on average as we spent before. The resources we spend, like time and gas has gone up slightly to get the same end net results, but the waste reduction and the lower cost of the lower amount goods we purchase brings down the total net resources consumed -significantly. We never intended to save money, or reduce our waste. We never intended to spend more either, but thought that it was likely that we would. That hasn't been the case. In the end, more of our spent dollars are going to LOCAL producers who produce food and stuffs with a higher rate of resource use, but lower overall environmental and cost impact due to less transportation, less chemicals (virtually none), less packaging and so on.
I love that the dollars stay here, that I'm getting to know the producers and farmers in my community, and that they pay for people to practice a more healthy production cycle than big business uni-crop farms. I LOVE IT. Plus we're getting to know some great people in the process. Sam, the pasta guru is AWESOME. Deborah, she may or may not be real, but was really cool that one time. The blog followers - and the casual readers - have made contact and sent us links, told us of their experiences, and made suggestions or recommendations. The cheese kit is the very version used by a coworker and his girlfriend. This weekend we're planning on going berry picking with another blog follower.
So far it's been a great adventure. We're three months in as of Sunday this week so we've got three more quarters to go. I can't wait to try making cheese and pasta sauce and jam and jelly and more bread. I can't wait to review those products on the blog either. I hope they live up to my expectations.
That's all for now. Next blog I might have more to say about upping our production by renting out some farm land...
Mike