I’m heading out for the woods and rivers and won’t be online for several days.
But when I get back…get ready for details of the Em and Laura Project!
Community Supported Healthcare
June 22, 2009 at 11:16 am (Community, Musings)
I wonder what it would take – if would even be possible – to create a truly community-supported health center that would achieve all of the following:
- Provide basic healthcare – office visits, immunizations, birth control, in-office procedures (biopsies, vasectomies, mole removal, minor stitches, etc.), and simple lab work (urinalysis, blood draws, ob/gyn, bacterial cultures, etc.), and referrals to specialists
- Offer appointments and walk-ins on extended hours, maybe 6:30am-9pm, 365 days per year (or close to it)
- Pay an adequate number of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, and full support staff a competitive living wage
- Be funded by the surrounding community on a “subscription” model. You pay a monthly or yearly fee to the clinic, and you can partake of all the services of the clinic all year for free, or a minimal co-pay per office visit. No insurance would be accepted or billed; the idea is instead of paying a middleman, you support the clinic directly.
Could this work? Could it be entirely outside of the current insurance setup? If there was no insurance billing, would it save money or drive away potential clients? Would Americans go for this? How many practitioners would be needed? How many subscribers would be needed to support this? What if you added a chiropractor and/or physical therapist into the mix? Often, those aren’t covered by insurance anyway, so you might get some people to subscribe for that service only who would help to support the rest of the clinic.
Make one thing beautiful
June 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm (Changing habits, Musings)
Going into this weekend, I was pretty tired of the eternal To-Do list. Items might change, but I never really catch up. And some items never change: clean the kitchen, weed the garden, clear off the dining room table, do the bills. Gah.
I wanted out of my rut this weekend, so I decided to ditch the to-do list and instead focus on making something beautiful. I decided to start with the front flower bed. Flats at the market are $8 – don’t need to make that offer twice! And black-eyed susans were 4/$10. And supposedly perennial, too. Sold!And as luck would have it, my favorite garden store was demoing a meat smoker by offering surprisingly large samples of smoked pork butt, homemade salsa, potato salad, and curtido. Beautiful!
Got home and started puttering, and before I knew it, I’d planted the flat of flowers – mostly in the front bed (let me just pull this grass and clover and elm seedlings out to make room), and also in the shade planter on the back deck (hmm, none of the herbs overwintered…better yank those…), and because I had a few left, I scanned the garden and planted them smack in the middle of my line of sight. That happened to be the edge of the rutabaga bed (just let me toss those last scraggly turnips that didn’t get harvested last week and hey…are those volunteer potatoes? Looks like dinner to me…). And oh, heck, why don’t I plant up this empty pot of dirt on teh deck with the last couple things from that flat? And move the rest of the junk off to the end of the deck where I don’t have to see it? I’ll put it away…later. But at least now I don’t have to look at it.
Dinner’s in the sun oven (baby potatoes and rutabagas, a couple bulb onions, brussels sprouts, and asparagus with a little schmaltz and seasoned salt), so while I’m waiting, I’ll put away this stack of cookbooks (huh, if I wipe down the coffee table, the living room will look really nice…) and take a shower. And if I wash those last couple pans, hey, the kitchen is also beautiful!
I’m glad I decided to ignore my to-do list today. Making things beautiful was much more interesting.
Sweet potatoes
June 20, 2009 at 4:32 pm (Greenhouse, Organic gardening)
I’m going to be trying to grow sweet potatoes this year. I’ve ordered five varieties from two sources. I’ll keep you updated on how they go!
- Beauregard from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. “One of the most popular sweet potato varieties. Dark red-orange skin with moist, sweet, orange flesh. Quick maturing and well adapted to difficult growing conditions. High percentage of usable roots. Excellent choice for cool season areas.” (Planted late May? Early June?)
- Centennial from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “Early. Semi-bush, normal leaf, copper skin, pale orange flesh, long, skinny roots, adapted for heavier soils, above average yield.”
- Ginseng Red from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “(Heirloom Variety) Early. Large, semi-bush, ivy leaf, pink skin, light orange flesh. Can produce one super large root. “
- Red Ivy Leaf from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “Early. Semi-bush, green colored ivy leaf, deep pink skin, light orange flesh, average yield.”
- Ringley’s Puerto Rico from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “(Heirloom Variety) Early. Average vines, ivy leaf type with pale, off-cream to tan colored skin, apricot flesh, average yields.” (Planted these June 18-20)
Sand Hill specializes in heirloom sweet potatoes. I ordered the “Northern Special” – a random selection of short-season varieties. I forget if I ordered 25 or 50…I think 50. Hmmm…might have to move some squash…especially since the peas are still going gangbusters in the greenhouse. I’m planting some in there and some outside under black plastic mulch to compare how they do.
Learn to make pie crust!
June 18, 2009 at 11:26 am (Preserving Traditions)
Are you daunted by the thought of making homemade pie crust? Come join Preserving Traditions on Sunday, July 12 for a sweet lesson. Our teachers, Mary Wessel Walker and her dad, Jim, will lead us through making a real lard-and-butter pie crust and tart cherry pie filling. (If you don’t care for lard, you’ll be able to use butter or shortening in a separate mixer.)
Each participant will take home a ready-to-bake cherry pie! You’ll need to bring the following:
- One generous quart of fresh tart cherries (we’ll pit them at the Grange)
- 2 cups of sugar
- A stick of butter (4oz)
- A pie plate
Also, let us know if you can bring any of the following:
- A cherry-pitter, either mechanical or the handheld plunger type
- A food processor with a steel blade
- A rolling pin
…and let us know if you prefer not to use lard. We’ll have vegetarian/vegan options on hand for you.
Cost is $5 (free for members of the Grange). Space is limited! RSVP at http://cherrypie.sign-up-sheet.com/
Sunday, July 12
2-4:30 pm
Pittsfield Grange
Simple Pump and pressure tank
June 16, 2009 at 9:54 am (Uncategorized)
And update on the Simple Pump installation: yes, you can use it to fill the pressure tank. It was actually quite easy to fill the tank up to 40psi. This gives decent water pressure in the house for one or two toilet flushes or quite a bit of handwashing, drinking water, and dish-rinsing. The system of putting a 1-1/4″ PVC pipe though the wall of the basement as a “hose conduit” works really well. The hose threads through very easily, and when I pull the hose out, I just pop a PVC cap on each end, and it keeps air and critters out.
Caveats:
- The fittings on both ends are male, so I had to modify the (special drinking-water-certified) hose to have female adapters at both end.
- I wasn’t able to get it to fill over 40psi, no matter how long I pumped. It’s possible they didn’t install the correct check valve, but I think this is just the limitation of the pump.
- 40psi gives good water pressure for about 4 gallons of water, then you have to pump it up again. It may or may not be very useful, ultimately – though I do find that it’s much easier to rinse with the sink sprayer than with a pitcher, and cleaner than using a tub of water (especially for one-off washes of hands or single dishes).
- You can’t unhook the hose from the pump to the tank when the system is pressurized, so it’s not terribly convenient to switch between tank-pressurization and pumping-into-a-bucket. Hmm, maybe if I used one of those Y adapters that let you attach two hoses to one spigot?
- The hose would freeze pretty quickly in the winter if it were just lying on the ground.
Final verdict: Yes, it is possible to charge the pressure tank using the Simple Pump, but it may or may not be worth the effort. A longer test is in order, I think; if we get around to doing a non-electric weekend this summer, that will be a much more realistic test.
New well and Simple Pump review
June 14, 2009 at 9:00 am (Food security, green living)
Last summer, we were told that our well was getting up there in years and would soon need to be replaced. So we started a New Well Fund, and by this spring, we’d saved up enough to have the new well drilled.
Out here in the boonies (only 5 miles from “civilization” like cable, natural gas, city water, and Meijer’s), we are plagued by power outages. It’s better than it was a couple years ago, when every heavy rain would kill our power for hours at a time, but we still lose power for 8 – 72 hours about once or twice a year. And as you probably know, when you’re on a well, no power means no water. We keep jugs of water in the house, but we decided that an even better solution would be to have a hand pump on the well.
We opted for a Simple Pump. The beauties of this pump are many. It needs no priming. (Older-style pumps require you to pour water into the pump before it will start to draw water, so you’re out of luck if you’re completely out of water, or your priming water is frozen). The pump won’t freeze in the winter – you can use it all year with no modifications. It installs alongside your existing electric pump, so there’s no switchover between electric and manual. In fact, both can be running at the same time. And supposedly, you can run a hose from the Simple Pump to the pressure tank in your basement, charge the pressure tank, and continue to get water flowing out of your faucets. I need a male/male hose adapter, and then I’ll try this out and report on how it goes. [Update: here's the review. The verdict? Possible but maybe not preferable.]
For pumping into a bucket or hose, the Simple Pump is very easy to use. I can operate it with one hand, though I prefer the balance of using two hands. Our well is about 100’ deep, and it takes 5 strokes to get the water going, then an additional 10 strokes to pump a gallon of water. There are two handle settings; the other setting makes pumping easier, but you get less water per stroke. I actually found that setting too easy at our depth, like riding a bike in first gear downhill. A child could definitely pump water, and because of the hose attachment, you could use the pump action to move the water rather than relying on hauling buckets.
The cost of having the Simple Pump installed during new well installation was $1300 (parts and labor). That was a bit steep, especially on top of the $4300-5000 for a typical well installation, but we think it’s worth it. Cribley Well Drilling did the installation; they said this is the 6th or 7th they’ve done this year – so apparently, lots of folks are thinking this is a good idea. It might be something that a group of neighbors could pitch in for, or perhaps a church or Grange.
I also have to say, the quality of water from the new well just floors me. Our old well was at least 40 years old, we think, and the steel casing was starting to disintegrate. We used a whole-house sediment filter and a Britta pitcher filter, and the water tasted like iron and stained everything. Bathwater was gray from suspended manganese sediment. From time to time, I would switch to store-filtered water for drinking, and it tasted so…clean. (Although even the old well water tasted cleaner than chlorinated city water.)
The water from the new well tastes decent right out of the tap. I’ll be curious to see if that lasts; the well was just bleached, after all. And I know that the plastic (PVC?) lining is not the best thing to be in contact with drinking water, but well water is 55 degrees, and plastic leaches the least when it’s cold. And honestly, after drinking rust flakes and fine particle sediment, I think I’ll risk it. The well driller said we should be able to quit filtering the water completely, too.
So all in all, I’m really pleased. The service from Cribley was fantastic (they even ran a PVC conduit through the basement wall for the hose to charge the pressure tank), the water is great, and the hand pump is everything I’d hoped for. I’m also wondering if the country curse of “iron in the water” is a misnomer, if the iron is actually your disintegrating well casing.
Amazing food work in Ann Arbor: Food Gatherers and Growing Hope
June 12, 2009 at 12:51 pm (Community, Food security, local food)
I dropped off my first produce donation to Food Gatherers of the summer (19 lbs of turnips and greens) and got caught up in conversation with Dan, the head gardener for Food Gatherers. We chatted on the edge of a huge garden – or small field – of proto-produce: spinach, peas, 300 tomato plants, with room for hundreds of square feet of winter squash. If the plot was less than an acre, it wasn’t by much. In addition, there’s another plot out back with collards, cauliflower, and other brassicas. They call this the Gathering Farm.
The idea is twofold: They’ll distribute some of the goodies directly to clients and to the non-profits Food Gatherers serves. But they’ll also send large shipments of produce to the DeLonis Center, where Food Gatherers runs a kitchen skills training program. The participants there will process the tomatoes and such into tomato sauce and other heat-and-eat foods and freeze them. These products will then be distributed to shelters through the winter, when fresh produce is scarce
They’re also partnering this year with Growing Hope to establish community gardens in Ypsilanti, called the Faith and Food project. The basic idea is that Growing Hope helps churches and other neighborhood institutions with the logistics of turning city lots into vegetable gardens. The gardens are tended by the neighborhood and congregation, and food is shared out among them. But a bunch of that food is also earmarked for Food Gatherers, to be distributed to people who don’t have a garden in their neighborhood.
Man, I’m proud to live in this area. And inspired, too. I’ve been thinking that now that Preserving Traditions is up and running pretty well as far as monthly workshops go (I’m set for topics and presenters through 2009), I will focus more on the community-building side. Specifically, getting the community kitchen up and running. I want folks to come to view the kitchen as an extension of their own kitchen, where they can come and do larger food prep/preservation projects that they may not have the space or equipment for at home.
Things I really should write about
June 7, 2009 at 5:13 pm (Cooking, Musings)
- TT Supper Club Saturday night. I don’t even know where to begin. So much fun. Such fabulous food. I really, really wish you’d been there.
- Adventures in Food Bastardization! It started by realizing that chicken salad, cole slaw, and potato salad are more or less the same idea, with different main ingredients. (And mayo need not be primary among them…) So…why not make a salad that combines all three? It worked quite well. Started with a base of finely-shredded cabbage and carrots and a bit of raw kraut, marinated in kraut juice. Then added diced cooked chicken and potatoes, chives, chive blossoms, and sage blossoms. Dress with mustard, a little mayo, and enough kraut juice to make it salty and not gloppy. Quite nice. Though in the future, I might just do chicken/potato or chicken/cabbage.
- Next bastard food idea…potato/zucchini pancake + meatball?
- The rye field is gorgeous.
- My brassicas have aphids. I shall cry now.
- I made chicken stock in the solar oven on Friday.
- Soon I will begin experimenting with schmaltz. (This chicken fat kind, not the other kind.)
- I whined about cooking dinner all week. Then today, I made soup, meatballs, veggie pancakes, and am about to go help the boy making dinner. Well, at least I know there’ll be good stuff to eat for lunch this week!
How we save energy
June 5, 2009 at 4:44 pm (Energy, carbon budget, green living)
I thought I’d list thethings we do as a matter of course to save energy. You can use this list as a resource, an inspiration, or ignore it completely; just please don’t use it as a springboard for guilt, unless guilt actually motivates you to change.And especially don’t guilt-trip if you’re un/underemployed and just trying to get food on the table.
But if you can put aside a few extra bucks, a lot of this stuff gets at 30% tax rebate until 2010, so now’s a great time to make some of these changes. I’d dearly love it if you would find one or more things on this list that make you think, “Hey, I could do that” and then take 3-6 months to work it into your daily life. If you really commit to doing just one or two at a time, five years from now, you’ll be doing all this and more and it won’t even seem like a drudge.
I do recommend writing out all you do to save energy, though. It sure surprised me to write all this out…it’s become so natural that I don’t even think about it any more.
And please, won’t someone write the “Energy Savings 102″ book? It seems like lots of people say “change your lightbulbs” or “throw away your fridge and furnace” but there’s not a lot out there describing realistic steps to take in between. Well, maybe this is the beginning of that list, and y’all can add your own comments of additional steps to take.
Details, details… Read the rest of this entry »
