Weeks 24 & 25 Of the Grand Experiment!!

Well you're just gonna have to wait on the Starbucks thing. The research is a bit round-robin at the moment.
Instead, just in time for your holiday shopping needs, I bring you:

!!! ECO SELLERS OF ETSY !!!

Yes kiddos, it's closing in on the winter holidays and I thought, "Hey, how about I share some of my Etsy shopping knowledge with all my blog peeps!". It's taken me years to weed out some of the coolest eco and green sellers on Etsy, but now it can take YOU mere seconds! LOL!

Plus there is the added bonus of knowing that the money you spend on your holiday shopping is going DIRECTLY to the crafter / artist!!
Not to the CEO of some huge company who has absolutely nothing to do with the making of the item you're buying.
PLUS, you also know who made the item. Not a giant machine, or conveyor belt assemblage system, and NOT some starving 6 year old forced to work for pennies a month.

How cool am I?!?!? LOL!

So let's get started ya? Each of the pics I'm posting here will link directly to the shop of the maker so you can pop right in and look around. Happy shopping!!

Some of these things are organic and totally new, some are made from recycled materials...

....some are reusable, replacing the evil disposable items in your home.......

....some are vegan...............

........some have a message.................

...............but all these items will help to save the planet in some way AND improve your life!

See how much I love you guys!

Now...as for the eating / buying thing. Buying handmade or used, as you can see, is no biggie now. I even have a couple of trade sites up (one on facebook the other a ning site) to REALLY boost the 'out of the crap stream' idea! Again I say..."Barter and trade = awesome!"

But the eating thing...well local is getting harder as the weather changes. We've found a few sources for items that are local and have been 'put up' for the winter months. (Canned, jarred or dried.) So that'll help. But this is definately the more difficult part of this experiment. I'm baking my own bread now, and we have a TON of dried hot peppers from our own garden, and the City Market is stocking up on local items like eggs and cheeses. Turkey and chicken are easy to get from local farms....organic even! But MAN am I glad I gave up red meat! Farm raised beef is HUGELY expensive around here! Sausage is pretty cheap and easy though...pork AND turkey. The big thing is going to be the fresh veggies and fruits. We SHOULD be able to get apples, pears, potatoes, carrots and other root veg for a while yet. So that'll help. OH! We kind of cheated a bit too. When we were up north this fall, we picked up pure maple syrup and some Maine jams. Well they were local at the time!!! LOL!

Anyhow. That's the score this time.

Hopefully I'll make some headway on the Starbucks thing soon.

Keep tuning in folks!

(PS...here's the barter sites)

http://barterfreak.ning.com/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=340041107860

Weeks 20 - 23...and A REALLY Cool New Swap Site!

So....During the weeks I have been 'away', here's a few observations I need to post.
1) Acadia National Park in Maine is breathtaking and awesome. If you ever have the chance to hike, bike, walk or wander there...GO! For the love of all that's amazing GO!
2) Maine...as far as I can tell, all of it, is unbelieveably eco. Recycling bins everywhere, tea and coffee houses that compost their tea bags and coffee grounds, travel cups and reusable bags as far as the eye can see,.....LOVE it! If it wasn't so riculously freaking COLD for so LONG every year I could see living there. But it is so....
3) There are states, and Maine is one, where local is assumed. If you ask "is your seafood local".....well they look at you like you just popped out an extra head. Of course it is. Even diners use cage free or local eggs. Weird. GREAT, but weird.
4) ..........I really hate the cold.

Now...as for more recent news....
I am an agent of chaos, as many of you are aware, but I recently got an UGLY wake up call. (No this really doesn't have to do with my normal blog at this point, but I think I need to get it out.) Normally I am a firm believer in the 'change is good' philosophy, but this past weekend I found that seriously tested.
I went back to some of my old stomping grounds in the DC Metro area.
Some (MD Renn Faire) were still as wonderful and as much home to me as ever. Others...well let's just say I am dealing with the shock.
Murphy's Tavern...my old home away from home, still has amazing food and real Irish music...but now it's become a VERY strange thing. A hangout for the frat set. It was packed, which of course is good, but it was a really different crowd. Took about an hour for me to adjust to that. But I suppose anything that packs the house and allows a great pub to prosper is positive. I suppose.
But what has happened to Crystal City Underground is appalling. Crushing. All uniqueness is utterly gone. Now it just looks like every other mall. It's just underground. Geppi's is gone. The cafe' is gone. There is now a Dunkin Doughnuts, a Hallmark Store, a Starbucks and a food court. A food court. I know, to most of you, this may sound like random rambling complaining...but to a few who remember...you get it. This was a huge chunk of my life. I worked at Geppi's, ate at the cafe' and bought papers and magazines at the little newsstand. It was a Morlock tunnel and all the people who worked there were odd and a bit crazy. It was special.

Now it's just another mall. I'm STILL processing this one. Change is still good. Even necessary...but now I understand how it can be painful. In ways I never imagined before.
Thank you universe. I guess I needed the lesson.

As for the usual fare of this challenge...I have to say I LOVE getting things at the MD Ren Faire. I picked up some badly needed items there and each thing was bought directly from the maker. Soaps and lotions from Blessed Scents, AWESOME pottery items from Dancing Pig Pottery and Tessem Stoneware and a TON of bulk herbs and spices from Her Majesty's Herbes (I THINK that's the shop name...I just always go to the same spot. :)). I'm slowly getting rid of all the mass produced herbs and spices in my cabinet. I just have to pick up a few more lockable bottles. That is something I highly recommend. Bulk herbs bought from a reputable source tend to be fresher and you can be more sure of organic content, GMOs and the like.

OK....now for the cool new site! Many of you already know I'm a barter freak. I have a FB Barter site and a Ning Site for open barter. I trade often on Etsy.com and after this year long experiment is done I plan on spending some quality blog time on the barter and trade 'industry' that is rising.
SO...trust me when I say this swap site is cool!
http://swapworkshop.com
They also have a facebook thingy to like...
http://facebook.com/swapworkshop
Aaaaand a twitter of course!
http://twitter.com/swapworkshop

Seriously....I can't WAIT for all the trading!!! :)

So...next week(ish) I will be back with my research on Starbucks. Are they as eco / free trade as they say? Stay tuned!

Cool bags for all the eco shopping you're gonna do!

null

That wierd little 'NULL' up there, is the link for THIS. DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(You KNOW ya wanna!)
Copied via The Alternate Consumer One of my new favourite sites!
September 21, 2010 search
Ecozuri Forget Me Not – a Tired and True Review + Great Green Giveaway
by Maureen @ 2:29 pm 17 comments »


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Experiment weeks 16, 17, 18 & 19

Yeah....I know....I'm a total blog slacker.
It's been hard to kickstart my brain lately. But here I am, with another exciting installment of "Things America Doesn't Want Me To Do"!! Yes ladies and gents, this country is NOT set up for this experiment. The amount of research and 'ducking and dodging' I've had to do is, frankly, staggaring!!
The container garden has had it's ups and downs based on the screwy weather around here, but that was nature. And when it comes to nature I expect pretty much anything. (Being PREPARED for it is another thing altogether. LOL!)
HOWEVER.....as far as the buying local / recycled / handmade thing has gone.....
Well let's just say the multitude of other factors has been daunting. The grape thing, the Monsanto thing(spits on ground), and the CRAPTON of intervening crafting factors! OY! Where did you buy your supplies?
Is your cotton organic? Is your coffee fair trade? How do you keep your chickens? Did aliens supply your pesticides?...Everyone who wonders why it REALLY takes me so long between postings, now you know. I'm doing more studying and research than I did in my ENTIRE school life!

In any case....here are some of my more recent lessons and observations.

As some of you may recall I gave up red meat as my new year's resolution. 50/50 health and ethical reasons. My intention was to eat more fish (an ethics minefield by the way) and poultry. I picked up a few pieces of reading material on fish and poultry to determine what I should be eating and where it comes from and all that.
Yet again I am driven to say "HOLY CRAP!".
Check this out: http://www.fishonline.org/advice/avoid/?item=2
It's an extremely useful sit on fish you should avoid and fish you can eat with both a clear concience and no fear of toxins or heavy metals. (Oh yes, these are legitimate concerns!)
Honestly the entire site is very cool. Click on a fish on the list and a little side bar comes up describing WHY it's on the current no no list.
So once I found the lists, things got a bit easier. Some of my fishy faves were on there so I was forced out of my foodie comfort zone......EVERYONE should have to do this at least once! I discovered some amazing new flavours and textures for my cooking! It became a game of trying to always get something different, and while there are some things I now KNOW I don't like, there are now new things I know I DO.
So...that takes care of the piscean aspect of my experiment. The list changes by season and depending on who's being a baaaad fisherman that month, so keep checking in on it.

Now....poultry. Ok, I have to admit I'm STILL doing research on this one. There are sooooo many different things to look into! I've made a little checklist for myself, and I have to admit I've only found ONE company that even comes close to covering it. Here's the list. Cage free; grain or wild fed; no anti-biotics, growth hormones etc; cruelty free. (Honestly, as far as EGGS go, I really do buy only local. I'm lucky enough to have a few really amazing and VERY eco farms close by.)

Free range vs Cage free : Believe it or not, if a company / farm has a little door in their massively overcrowded cages that leads to a little dirt run, they can add a "Free range" label to their poultry?!?!?! UGH!
Organic: MINEFIELD!!!!! Are they FED organically? Are THEY organic? What kinds of things are being fed to them/ injected into them??
Cruelty Free: Seriously, this shouldn't even be an issue by now.....but it is. There are still some VERY unsavoury practices being employed by the big factory farms. (For those of you that don't know, 'beak trimming' is still all the rage. Factory workers either cut or burn away the majority of each bird's beak so that they don't peck each other in their cramped quarters and damage the meat. Having that big opening where a beak was leads to infections, breathing problems and all MANNER of nastiness. Thus the 'need' for MONDO antibiotics.)
And then there's this one....
Feeding: Are the birds being allowed to graze on foods they would NORMALLY eat? Are they lovingly grain fed? Are they at LEAST being allowed to remain vegitarian?!?! Non-cannibalistic??? (Yes cats and kittens, our food is being fed...well...itself, very often. Chickens raised on the flesh of other chickens. Can zombie chickens be far off?)
So I'm mostly eating farm raised turkey. Shadybrook Farms to be precise. A local farm is now selling their chickens for consumption as well as their eggs....but I KNOW those birds, so it's a bit hard to eat them.
Man...I don't WANNA be a vegitarian! :(
Anyone who wants my now AWESOME recipies for turkey meatballs or sweet turkey chili, lemme know! LOL!

Now as for the material aspect of this little excersize in self torture...it's going a bit better. I still have the occasional slip, and e-bay can be as dangerous as Wally World, but I'm getting MUCH better at spotting the professional sellers. Etsy is back on my buy list for supplies as most of the yarn there is either hand spun, hand dyed or recycled. I'm also re-opening my own old shop soon! So watch for that! (I'm broke folks! LOL)
The steampunk thing is actualy easier than ANY genre I've ever been involved with as it's still mostly thrift shopped, hand made and cobbled together items. Even the 'High Victorian' really pretty clothes are made by someONE rather than some company! LOVE IT!
The Barter site is going well (JOIN NOW!!! http://barterfreak.ning.com/ ) and I'm drawing more and more folks into the idea of trading the things you have but don't want for the things someone ELSE has that THEY don't want! LOL!
Skills for things, crafts for poetry....it's thunderdome in there!
So....before the porn spam comes....lemme know what y'all think so far. I'm about halfway through this and I'm curious. Are there things YOU would like to see me address? What research have YOU done?? I LOVE hearing from you guys!
Chime in!