…Which is the better way to live?  Silly question, in my opinion.  In fact, I’m going to go ahead and say that one is not “better” than the other.  We need both.  There are too many different kinds of people in this world for a one-size-fits-all lifestyle or environment.  But.  But, no matter where you live- in the suburbs, or the big city, or the boonies- there are ways to be a good steward to the Earth and ways to not.  And I do believe that some environments lend themselves to good stewardship a little easier than others. 

In my experience, living in an urban suburb is probably the most difficult place to execute a green/low impact lifestyle.  The city’s downtown public transportation usually does not reach into the suburbs, so unless you work from home, your daily commute to the office is most likely about 45 minutes, twice a day, in your vehicle.  Not to mention the commute to the grocery store and your kid’s school/activities. 

On top of that, your suburban housing situation is most likely a development of some sort, named after whatever was there before the houses and lawns {Pine Grove Estates}.  And on top of that, there is the social pressure to have a beautiful green lawn, this year’s paint colors on the walls, the cutest fiesta-ware for your weekly book club BBQ, and a two-car garage full of, well, two cars and various other material “necessities”.  I know these types of pressures first hand, and they’re tough. 

Image courtesy of nytimes.com

Good stewardship in a suburban setting is possible, however.  After all, that is exactly what this blog is all about!  You may not be able to ride the train to work, but you can carpool.  Your lawn can be just as pretty if you watered it by collecting rainwater instead of with the sprinkler.  Your BBQs can be a great chance to educate your community about some of your low-impact lifestyle choices.  Your two-car garage can have a hybrid in it.  Your home can be just as pretty {prettier!} decked out with homemade decor instead of trendy made-in-China crap. 

Downtown city living comes with a whole realm of different pluses and minuses.  On the up-side, you probably have the benefit of super-awesome public trans, or you can probably ride your bike to anywhere you ever need to go.  You probably have a farmer’s market not too far from your pad, or you probably even know a couple crazy people growing gardens on their patios/roofs.

The downside it that you live in a concrete jungle, breathing smoggy air and drinking chlorinated water.  I can’t relate to this situation very easily, so maybe some of you who actually live this way can enlighten me…It just seems unnatural to have to visit a park in order to see dirt or trees or rocks.  When everything is man-made around you, don’t you lose touch with what is real, gritty, and alive?  I think I would.  But then again, maybe you appreciate nature even more when it’s something you need to purposefully seek out.  When every day is a reminder of how fragile and rare nature is, maybe you think twice before dumping chemicals down the drain or tossing a plastic bottle in the trash.

Image courtesy of ffffound.com

I grew up in the middle of nowhere, in the woods, and I can attest to the fact that many, many country folk take the woods, lakes, trees, clean air, and plentiful fresh water for granted.  They change their fishing boat oil right there on the lake shore, and inevitably spill it into the water.  They burn garbage in their backyards, or bury an old broken refrigerator in the ground to avoid the recycling fees. The list of transgressions is long.

But the list of upsides to country life is also long.  You can live off the grid if you so choose.  You can raise your own food.  You can use the natural resources all around you to support yourself.  You can separate yourself from societal pressures and the pull of material things, and build a home that is centered around what is really important.

Image courtesy of Jason Kravitz

 Perhaps I am biased…ok, I am definitely biased…because Mike and I are choosing to move from the city into the boonies, and so I see country-life as the ultimate way to live simply and live greener.  But I stand by my original statement that we are in control of how we live, no matter where we live.

What do you all think?

What a nice surprise to log on today and find out that one of the blogs I read daily has featured Itty Bitty Impact!  Going Home to Roost is such a beautiful blog about all things handmade & homegrown {diy projects, seasonal recipes, organic gardening, and ways to live a simpler life}.  The first time I stumbled upon it, I couldn’t help feeling like Bonnie was my long-lost-soul-sister.  A big huge thank-you to Bonnie for sharing my blog with her readers!  Keep up the great work over there in North Carolina!

Have you seen this blog?  If not, hurry on over there!  Naomi Seldin is a terrific writer who focuses on “living well with less” in her articles for timesunion.com.  I have been a regular reader of hers for months now, ever since I found her on Twitter {follow her}…so I am beyond honored to be interviewed by her!  Thank you, Naomi!

Read the full interview here.  Read the part about pulling off a green wedding here.

I am really excited and honored to share this with you all!  Jonathan at We Live Simply interviewed me for his Five Questions With series the other day.  It was so nice of him to share my blog with his readers and followers.  I am extremely grateful for his interest in what I’m doing, and the exposure he gave me. 

Make sure you check out his blog– it is a daily read for me now.  His posts are always original, thought-provoking and inspiring.

Thank you, Jonathan! 

I received a really nice letter from a friend and reader, Cheri.  She shared with me some of the things her family does to decrease their daily impact on the environment.

All of the items on her list are easy to implement into our lives– there’s really no reason not to.  But because I know, from experience, that unless green lifestyle changes are easy as pie to implement, we ain’t gonna follow through with them, folks!

So, I have decided to not only share her list of great ideas, but to also do the things on the list.  Check back soon for a video series of me demonstrating the items on Cheri’s list, so that you can see how it’s all done, and hopefully also try it yourself.  I will begin to post the videos next week!

• I don’t use the hair dryer until my hair is mostly dry – then use it just for a minute for a final style.
• I make my own laundry detergent
• Dry our clothes on our drying rack
• Make my own salad dressing {reduces plastic bottles coming into the house}
• Recycle plastics, glass, tin, paper {reduced our outgoing garbage to a bag a month}
• Grow our own veggies, and batch cook – for example I’ll cook a big batch of rice/beans and freeze separate portions for later meals….and cook from scratch as much as possible.

• Take my stainless steel mug with me – if I need to stop and get a cup of something I’ll have them put it in my mug
• Mend clothes – I’ve even gone so far as to turn frayed collars on my husband’s shirts
• My dad only uses recycled paper in his printer – he gave me his schedule the other day printed on the back of an old bill – made me smile
• After I bring the water to a boil for pasta, I put the lid on the pot, shut off the heat and let the pasta cook – it only takes a minute or so longer.  If I am cooking something for a longer length of time (stew or soup) I put another lid on top of the lid that matches the pot.  The extra insulation conserves energy.
• After I boil the water for my morning tea {I don’t like to microwave water – I know – weird}, I  pour the remaining boiling water over my oatmeal and set it back on the burner {which has been turned off, but is still warm}.  In ten minutes my oatmeal is cooked.
• We use shopping bags I made for grocery shopping.  I plan to make some lunch bags too, out of fabric for those times we take a picnic lunch somewhere or travel.
• I wash and re-wash baggies.  Haven’t bought any in years.
• We are a one car family
• Instead of buying cleaning products {even Seventh Generation} – baking soda and vinegar will clean just about anything.
• I use a shampoo bar made by a friend of mine instead of commercial shampoo {which has tons of chemicals in it and comes in those pesky plastic bottles}
• And…{I’m inordinately proud of this one….} I use the dashboard of my car as a food dehydrator.  I bought a bushel of apples for $6 from a neighbor down the road and after I got tired of saucing and pie-ing them – I sliced them, dipped them in diluted lemon juice and put them on baking racks and spread them across the dash.  We get plenty of full sun here and they were dry in a little over a day.

Thank you so much for the inspiration, Cheri! {Check out Cheri’s encouraging and refreshing blog…she writes about gardening, simple living, family, and faith.}

Maple Moon Sugarbush is starting to wrap up its 2010 sugaring season this week.  My family and I will be pulling the taps out of the trees and washing up all the equipment soon.  We made about 25 gallons this year, which means we have plenty for our Sunday pancakes and to replenish our friends and familys’ supplies. 

It has been fun for me to share this long-standing tradition with you all.  Please let me know if you have any questions about the various steps in the process {tapping, collecting, boiling, canning}.

Since boiling can take all day, we’re usually canning late at night.  We’re all exhausted at this point, but knowing we’ll be waking up the next day to pancakes and fresh maple syrup helps us push onward.

We use mason jars for our syrup because they’re reusable, and the syrup looks so beautiful in them.  The lids are boiled in water, and kept hot until they’re screwed on.  As they cool, the jar seals.  The syrup doesn’t need to be refrigerated until it has been opened for the first time.

The first taste of syrup blows your mind.  It is silky, buttery, hot, and tooth-achingly sweet.  If you grew up eating Aunt Jemima or Log Cabin syrup, you need to run out right now and find yourself some real maple syrup to try. 

One of my favorite traditions growing up was to heat up a small sauce pan of syrup, and then drizzle it over snow.  The syrup hardens on the snow and makes maple-taffy.  It changes your life, that’s how delicious it is.

Maple syrup is a golden gift the trees give us every spring…a true miracle of nature.  The most amazing things in life are this way, it seems…you can’t quite wrap your mind around them.  And even after you learn the science of how it works, you’re no less awed by it…on the contrary, it seems more like a miracle than ever.

Boiling is my favorite part of the syrup making process.  It is also the most tedious of all the steps.  My dad is the boiling master, but Mike has been slowly aquiring the skills from him over the past couple seasons {we plan to carry on the tradition someday with our own kids.}  The first step is to measure the sugar content of the sap.  This number gives you the approximate time you will need to boil before achieving syrup.  The lower the sugar, the more water you will need to boil off.

The sap is pumped up to the “sap house” {the building that houses the evaporator and all the wood that is needed to fire it} from the underground tank, and is held in a large metal bin.  We slowly pump it from the bin to the evaporator, where it begins to heat up. 

As the sap cooks, it is pushed through the separate compartments of the pan, so that the sap that has been boiling longer doesn’t mix with the new sap that has just entered.  New sap constantly pumps in as the older sap boils down.

The depth of the sap in the evaporator pan is crucial…if it dips too low, the syrup will burn.  My dad uses a stick with notches cut into it to constantly monitor the depth of the sap in the pan.

The job of the “firer” is to keep the evaporated stoked with wood and at a consistent level of hotness.  It is a coveted job, glorified by our dad so that from the moment we were old enough to swing an axe over our shoulders {at about eight years old, to the horror of our mother} we begged to be chosen as the firer.

{I suspect we were tricked into doing many chores as children by this same method…make the chore into a task of honor and importance, and suddenly you have two little people fighting over who will get to do it.}

We chopped wood into small enough pieces to be fed to the evaporator, and heaved the pieces into the roaring fire.  The heat was delicious against the chilly spring air, which helped us forget the splinters we were inflicting on our little hands.  The maple steam billows from the pan and fills the entire sap house, leaving your face moist and warm.  It’s so thick and delicious smelling, you try to eat it, but it disappears.

The final step of the boiling process is to finish the cooking in the “finishing pan”- a small pan over a little gas stove, where the temperature can be more easily controlled.  The risk of over-cooking the syrup is high at this point, and constant monitoring is needed. 

As soon as it is done, the syrup is poured off into a tall cylinder and then filtered through lambs-cloth, which catches any impurities that rose up during the boiling.

The first taste of syrup is so close at this point…everyone knows it, and starts to hover around. {Stay tuned for the final step in the process: canning & tasting!}

When all the trees are tapped, we wait for the buckets to fill with sap.  Some years, when the weather is right, we’ll need to collect twice a day, because the sap is flowing so fast. 

The ideal weather for a good sap run only happens during a small window of time every spring {usually lasting a week}.  It needs to freeze at night, and then warm up to about 50 degrees during the day.  This is a tricky weather combination, but the best syrup is made during this window- a beautiful amber color and buttery taste.  Earlier in the spring, the syrup turns out very light in color, and less flavorful.  Later in the spring, the syrup is darker and thicker.  You know the season is over once you start seeing bugs floating in the sap when you go to collect it.

As I explained here, we don’t tap as many trees as we used to, because we do all the collection on foot now.  Instead of using horses to pull a sleigh with a tank on it, we now set up “collection stations” throughout the woods {large Tupperware bins}, and we dump the sap into these bins. 

The sap gets funnelled through hoses down to an underground holding tank.  It’s kept cold in there until we have enough to boil.  Since sap only has about 2% sugar content, it can take about 40-50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.  Our evaporator is very large, so we need at least 300 gallons of sap before we start boiling, or else we run the risk of burning the syrup in the pan.

A quick synopsis of how maple syrup is made can be found here, along with some neat old photos.

Our “maple mascots”, Charlie Brown and Schroeder, keep a look-out for us while we work.

The woods are quiet
except for the birds singing
and the ping-pinging.”
-Maple haiku, by Tonia

A very long time ago, when the world was new, Gitchee Manitou made things so that life was very easy for the people. There was plenty of game and the weather was always good and the maple trees were filled with thick sweet syrup. Whenever anyone wanted to get maple syrup from the trees, all they had to do was break off a twig and collect it as it dripped out.

One day, Manabozho went walking around. “I think I’ll go see how my friends the Anishinabe are doing,” he said. So, he went to a village of Indian people. But, there was no one around. So, Manbozho looked for the people. They were not fishing in the streams or the lake. They were not working in the fields hoeing their crops. They were not gathering berries. Finally, he found them. They were in the grove of maple trees near the village. They were just lying on their backs with their mouths open, letting maple syrup drip into their mouths.

“This will NOT do!” Manabozho said. “My people are all going to be fat and lazy if they keep on living this way.”

So, Manabozho went down to the river. He took with him a big basket he had made of birch bark. With this basket, he brought back many buckets of water. He went to the top of the maple trees and poured water in, so that it thinned out the syrup. Now, thick maple syrup no longer dripped out of the broken twigs. Now what came out was thin and watery and just barely sweet to the taste.

“This is how it will be from now on,” Manabozho said. “No longer will syrup drip from the maple trees. Now there will only be this watery sap. When people want to make maple syrup they will have to gather many buckets full of the sap in a birch bark basket like mine. They will have to gather wood and make fires so they can heat stones to drop into the baskets. They will have to boil the water with the heated stones for a long time to make even a little maple syrup. Then my people will no longer grow fat and lazy. Then they will appreciate this maple syrup Gitchee Manitou made available to them. Not only that, this sap will drip only from the trees at a certain time of the year. Then it will not keep people from hunting and fishing and gathering and hoeing in the fields. This is how it is going to be,” Manabozho said.

And, that is how it is to this day.

{Ojibwe Legend}

Sweet, buttery, sticky, wonderful maple syrup has been made in my family for 23 years now.  We do it the Manabozho way:

Drill a hole in a tree,
Put a “tap” in the hole,
Hang a pail from it,
Collect the sap when the pail is full,
Boil the sap in an “evaporator” {a huge pan over a huge fire} until it becomes syrup,
Can the syrup in mason jars,
Eat.

Back in the day, we used to tap 1,100 trees on our land, pouring what we collected into a big tank on a sleigh, pulled by a draft horse.  It was a lot of work, but we never thought of it that way.

There are too many wonderful things about syrup-making for it to really be considered “work”.  The smell of the air as the woods wake up for spring.  The sound of the sap as it drips from the tree.  The satisfying soreness of your arms after a long day of hauling heavy buckets.  The story-telling, snowball fights, pranks, and laughter.  The maple-steam billowing from the evaporator.  And of course, the first taste of syrup: hot, sticky, and worth it.

Even though we have scaled the operation back in recent years {we no longer have our horses, so we do all the collection on foot now}, syruping is still a beloved family tradition that brings us together, no matter what, every spring.

Some of our trees are large enough to hang two or three pails on.

When all the pails are hung, the woods fill with the soft sound of the sap dripping into the pails…ping, ping, ping…

Don’t let any snow get in the pails…

Make sure you save enough energy to have a little fun…

If you have a few maple trees on your property, I would really encourage you to try making some syrup!  Please feel free to contact me directly for more information about the process.  I would be happy to help you get started.  toniasimeone {at} gmail {dot} com

Stay tuned for the rest of the Making Maple Syrup series, coming soon!

Now this is what I’m talkin’ about!!  Have you heard of the No Impact Project?  It’s genius. I couldn’t wait to share it with ya’ll as soon as I found out about it.

In a nut shell, one family decided to make small changes every day in their lives to reduce their impact on the environment…and over time, all the small changes kept adding up…until one day they woke up and they were making zero impact on the environment!  This is exactly what Itty Bitty Impact is all about, so I am thrilled to find a family after my own heart who tried it, and succeeded! Every small step we take is a step in the right direction.

Oh readers…please watch the video, visit the site, feel inspired, and perhaps even take the challenge yourself!