It's still a good thread, I have been reading all along, it has and will benefit me and how my life affects others. Great God, I'm going to try alternative milk! A bit out of my comfort zone. Do they sell in half pints? Lol
How to fight climate change... for reals.
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I just did some reading online, the alternative "milks" are fine, but, what happens to the cheese industry?
tlc1976
Minister of Fire
Same here. I mow with a mulching conversion and that’s it. I don’t water, fertilize, insecticize, aerate, weedwack, leafblow, bag, etc. It is what it is. Aside from a manual weed whip for remaining tall grass around the steps. I mow over the leaves and they end up in the soil. If it goes brown it will come back. Only year it went brown was 2018.
Our lawn goes dormant every summer for 2 months, then greens up in Sept. or Oct. depending on when the rains start.
Americans have been drinking less and less milk since 1974, but more than compensating it with cheese and other dairy. We eat more milkfat than ever.
Poor vegan cheese is IMO a big issue. I have been shopping around for cheeses to use as ingredients (i.e. parm, cheddar, etc).
As for just 'eating fancy cheese' that will be a rare treat for me after 6PM.
I did not see a good reviewed cheese when searching, that's why I mentioned it, every action has a reaction, ah shoot, I love cheese
Here's another part, check out Vermont natural coatings, best wood finish for certain projects, made from whey
EbS-P
Minister of Fire
Government will keep propping it up when prices crash. Buying excess production and store it. It’s a cycle I’m not sure we have the will to break.
Milk yesterday was $1.65 a gallon for 2% here eggs $3.30 a dozen. Milk is the only thing that’s gone down the past few months
Poindexter
Minister of Fire
I am not sure how "bad" 2 cycle string trimmers are. I bought a fairly nice (consumer level) one several years ago, but it has been down for two summers now and I can do without. I have enough tied up in carb adjustment parts and new fuel system parts that I could have just bought a new one, and I am ticked off about that. I just hate to send this thing to the dump, it is less than 7 years old, but it is also not economical to repair.
For the money I spent the fool thing ought to be repairable, but has proven to not be. Likewise I can't really only trim around my raspberries and serviceberries and honeyberries with just a string trimmer, the last couple inches of lawn need to be hand pruned so I don't kill off my fruit bearers.
Last summer I didn't trim anything. This year I have hand trimmed a couple times. The idea of buying a corded electric unit and having to deploy and recover my existing 100' extension cord repeatedly is more or less without luster.
I do agree with @Ashful that some OPE, especially the handheld stuff, will remain oil powered for the foreseeable future. I can't see parking a largish EV in the forest and then running a heavy and expensive extension cord to drop trees. I like to park my truck far enough away that the truck is not at risk if the tree falls in an unintended direction. Big EV plus very expensive cord plus new saw, not economical for me.
On my lot, 8-10k sqft, a gas trimmer is handy because I can just walk around and put the trimmer away. Mine is just large enough that running a corded electric trimmer is possible, but trimming by hand is more or less a time wash compared to deploying and moving and moving and recovering the 100' cord.
The one thing I will do different on our next property is raise my cordwood kilns up high enough off the ground that I can get my 4 cycle lawnmower deck under the edges and not have to trim them.
With a lot not much bigger than mine a corded electric string trimmer is just not time efficient. I do need to keep the plants down near my firewood stacks so the cordwood is dry enough to burn in time, but I am not otherwise convinced that trimming is really a necessary thing to do.
For the money I spent the fool thing ought to be repairable, but has proven to not be. Likewise I can't really only trim around my raspberries and serviceberries and honeyberries with just a string trimmer, the last couple inches of lawn need to be hand pruned so I don't kill off my fruit bearers.
Last summer I didn't trim anything. This year I have hand trimmed a couple times. The idea of buying a corded electric unit and having to deploy and recover my existing 100' extension cord repeatedly is more or less without luster.
I do agree with @Ashful that some OPE, especially the handheld stuff, will remain oil powered for the foreseeable future. I can't see parking a largish EV in the forest and then running a heavy and expensive extension cord to drop trees. I like to park my truck far enough away that the truck is not at risk if the tree falls in an unintended direction. Big EV plus very expensive cord plus new saw, not economical for me.
On my lot, 8-10k sqft, a gas trimmer is handy because I can just walk around and put the trimmer away. Mine is just large enough that running a corded electric trimmer is possible, but trimming by hand is more or less a time wash compared to deploying and moving and moving and recovering the 100' cord.
The one thing I will do different on our next property is raise my cordwood kilns up high enough off the ground that I can get my 4 cycle lawnmower deck under the edges and not have to trim them.
With a lot not much bigger than mine a corded electric string trimmer is just not time efficient. I do need to keep the plants down near my firewood stacks so the cordwood is dry enough to burn in time, but I am not otherwise convinced that trimming is really a necessary thing to do.
Poindexter
Minister of Fire
One of my children is lactose intolerant in a noisy way that easily passes through closed doors. I have personally tried more or less all of the lactose free cheeses currently on the market, and they all suck. A few of them are ok as slices or chunks straight out of the fridge as a snack, but once you get to melting them, game over.
I did try a vegan diet for 30 days, mostly out of curiosity, I think in or near 2007. Fake foods are fake, I don't see any point in wasting time on them. When you crave bacon, just have some real bacon; because none of the substitutes will ever measure up. For sushi I was cutting up extra firm tofu into fingers, get some sprouts on there, wrap that with a strip of nori and go bananas with the soy and wasabi.
I am likewise willing to make an exception for burger patties. We make burger out of everything, beef, elk, deer, antelope, why not black or soy beans. Praise Jesus beer is a vegan food item, I don't know of anybody with two neurons flapping in the breeze to make one spare synapse arguing that yeasts are animals. The strict vegans I know that don't use honey or eat eggs or wear leather shoes uniformly drink beer.
At the end of the 30 days I looked at the leftovers in my fridge and the best recipe I could think of was tofu fingers sauteed in freshly rendered bacon fat. Those were delicious; and the bacon was good also. I am still prone to ordering tofu as the protein in my curry or Pad Thai.
I have never been satisfied with fake foods. If you are craving cheese or bacon, my advice is to have a little bit of the real stuff and then go back to tofu and twigs.
The thing about both cheese and bacon, partly, is the dietary fat. If you are craving bacon every Saturday and just can't do without, consider wild caught Alaskan salmon as a regular part of your diet. Salmon, especially reds (sockeye) and King (king), have abundant fat. Avocado is another, though avocado require a great deal of water and grow mostly in drought stricken California.
Friends do not let friends eat farm raised salmon. That is some gross BS. Just look at a filet of wild caught and a filet of farm raised side by side. If you canna tell the difference you are signed up to date some extremely ugly women because you likely can't distinguish between a kilt and a woman's skirt either.
You might also consider sodium. If moving to a vegan diet is upstetting you, look at what your daily sodium intake is before and after the switch. While I consider both to be "gimme" vegetables, both french fries and potato chips can provide abundant sodium that might be missing from your new improved intake.
Poindexter
Minister of Fire
In case anyone is wondering here, and I am quite a ways off topic, pink salmon is good cat food, chum salmon is good dog food, and silver salmon are for people in lumberjack outfits with no actual chainsaw output on their flannel shirts. Silvers are not bad fish, but I certainly do not seek them and would never bother to can them. If I could afford to buy belly meat of king and not deal with the rest of each filet I would do that with kings. Since I have to deal with the entire fish, red/sockeye is where it is at.
To get back on topic, the wife and I are talking (again) about selling the big (5 bedroom) house walking distance to an excellent elementary school to a family that needs such a thing, and the carbon footprint that goes with; so we can buy a smaller place (smaller carbon footprint) that meets our needs with no kids at home.
To get back on topic, the wife and I are talking (again) about selling the big (5 bedroom) house walking distance to an excellent elementary school to a family that needs such a thing, and the carbon footprint that goes with; so we can buy a smaller place (smaller carbon footprint) that meets our needs with no kids at home.
I used a corded trimmer for many years.... or rather used it very rarely.
I got a Black and Decker Lithium trimmer a few years ago, its quite light, and it has never run out of juice on me. My jobs might be 20 minutes run time. A battery would last 30-40 mins I think. If I had a bigger task, I would just get a second battery to swap in. There are cheap, high capacity Chinese ones on amazon. Two batteries would certainly last 60 minutes if not longer.
We think very alike on these issues. In my 20s, I described myself as a 'vegetarian who eats bacon'.
For me, the 'vegan before 6' concept works because it means that I can still have non-vegan food 'when I want' for dinner. The time restriction means that such foods are naturally restricted, so I can't 'slide' back to eating them all the time. It also matters to me that I don't want to be restricted when visiting friends homes for dinner, or going out to dinner at a restaurant, neither of which happens often enough to be a big part of my diet.
I personally find the 'fake foods' in my grocery store (like all the morningstar stuff) kinda gross or unsatisfying.
But fake food shave come a LONG way since 2007. This has enabled me to find some products that ARE good substitutes. As I have said before, I think Impossible burger is head and shoulders above similar products, as a nearly drop in replacement for ground beef. It cooks slightly differently, but if I tweak my recipes, I can usually make a finished product (e.g. meatballs, bolognese) that when served to friends they cannot distinguish it from beef. Good enough for me, I can still eat a nice burger or steak when at a friends house or in a restaurant. Similarly, this week I find the Whole Not Milk to be an essentially perfect drop in for whole milk in my diet (reviews suggest that some people's taste buds disagree).
That said, I think I found a decent fake parmesan this week (I really like parmesan as a garnish), but fake cheddar, motz or fake bacon... NOPE.
For the record, there is a vegan restaurant in NYC that specializes in fancy fake food. Their double bacon cheeseburger is amazing, and completely vegan. No idea how they do that.
I also hear you on the salmon. I have a friend who grew up in Seattle, and he struggled to find good salmon out east here. For years he would excitedly order the salmon dish in fancy restaurants, and then be unable to stomach what came out. I too have made a rule to never order salmon in a restaurant, bc while I (a yankee) can find the result edible, it has never been particularly enjoyable.
When my friend visits, we hit the fish monger and get some wild King salmon and grill it for a treat.
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
There is so much cheese being stored underground it will take decades to run out.
1.4 billion tons are being stored in Missouri.
I really like the Daiya brand faux mozzarella cheese. Since it's mostly made from cashews it works great for making home made basil pesto. Not sure if it's "green" or healthy, but I like it. I'm the "noisy" kind of lactose intolerant. It doesn't cause me to have anaphylactic shock or anything, but you know... These days I just have cheese on sandwiches, on top of a dish, etc, and don't eat too much at a time, and definitely not late at night!
I do wonder whether the common knowledge that processed food is bad for you would also apply to fake foods (that are by definition processed).
Anyone with more knowledge than me here?
Anyone with more knowledge than me here?
Ashful
Minister of Fire
^This. And unlike @tic1976, I do fertilize, pesticize, aerate, overseed, and pretty much follow a schedule as regimented as any golf course. If you don't have a single weed in your yard, you enjoy the pleasure of not mowing for most of July and part of August, at least in this part of the country. While neighbors are outside mowing and choking on dust in the heat and drought of July, just to mow weeds while the grass is dormant, I just sit back and watch.
All of which unfortunately have high carbon footprints. Turning at least part into a meadow would provide a more restorative habitat.
www.greenamerica.org
Turn Your Lawn into a Meadow
Turn your lawn into a carbon-capturing meadow that's good the the climate, beautiful, and low maintenance.
I just read a article about the new hydrogen powered train in Germany, the Coradia ilint, sweet
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Capitalism at work. For decades, residential consumers have favored low up-front cost over repairability. Manufacturers have little choice but to respond to this demand.
I pretty much assume any non-pro OPE bought since 1990 is throw-away, which is why I pretty much only buy pro-grade stuff, to the point of favoring old used pro grade (eg. my Stihl 036 PRO and 064 AV) over new consumer or farm grade. Most pro stuff is still repairable, because again... manufacturers responding to customer demand.
I'm coming to realize that. But I'm not sure meadow is a realistic solution, as we all know the only way to really practically ensure a weed-free lawn is to ensure all neighboring lawns are also void of said weeds. Meadow on part of the property only increases pressure for abatement on the lawn that's remaining.All of which unfortunately have high carbon footprints. Turning at least part into a meadow would provide a more restorative habitat.
Turn Your Lawn into a Meadow
Turn your lawn into a carbon-capturing meadow that's good the the climate, beautiful, and low maintenance.
I've been converting more and more lawn to un-kept wooded space, instead. Planted over 100 trees 2013 - 2020, and many dozens of shrubs and ground cover, to make more than an acre of bedded gardens. This temporarily increases my need for mulch, but as each area fills in and matures, I eventually let it go wild, only having to really deal with the front 10 feet or so of the perimeter. It has since become occupied by pheasant (rare, for this area, anymore), turkeys, thousands of smaller birds and bats, as well as fox, skunk, and squirrels. These areas are maybe only 40-50 feet deep x 200-300 foot wide "hedgerows" at the property lines, but they do reduce the need for lawn care.
Two years ago, I needed help. The lawn maintenance industry came to my rescue. Chickweed was taking over,so some 2-4,d was needed, hopefully cured
huh, I don't need to mow (my weeds) at the height of summer. Yes there's grass, but there's more weeds.
But in the drought and heat here of the last month or so I don't have to mow either. And even if I have to mow once per 6 weeks, that's negligibly more than no mowing at all.
In TN the (non-treated) lawn was dormant too in summer (though I have mowed in 104 F at 100% humidity... walk-behind on a steep hill. Frequent breaks were needed...)
Bottomline, it's generally green (though now it's nicely yellow...), I can walk on it, the kids can play ball on it, chipmunks like it better (raccoons too because of the grubs...), baby rabbits (slightly bigger than the chipmunks) come out and feed at dusk.
I enjoy seeing robins dig out worms, I enjoy seeing grey catbirds hunt the little white butterflies and moths, I like seeing the Northern Flicker eat the ants in the lawn. I enjoy seeing the neighbors' bees on the clover (now if he would only pay me back with some honey - I miss my dad's honey, but I can't import it here...).
I do not like that the deer eat all my hostas at the end of the summer. But whadda ya do. No fence going up in the front yard.
All that might happen in a manicured lawn. But it'll be much less, and possibly bad for the health of the animals.
I note that my woodshed gives similar enjoyment: many bugs go in and out of the sun-heated front. It is in essence one big insect hotel (google that).
The baseball catching net in front of it is the jump-off point for the cat birds who sit there, pick off an insect, and go back.
