Earth Hour

Electricity allows us to do amazing things. But not using electricity can also be pretty cool.

Last night, we celebrated Earth Hour, a one hour period from 8:30 to 9:30 where we turned off all the lights and electric appliances in the apartment. People in their apartments, huge buildings, and even cities all over the world did the same thing (www.earthhour.org and pictures at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7969859.stm).

Big Ben goes dark for an hour last night

The reason? Well, we probably all use a bit too much electricity, and over-use of fossil fuels to make the electricity has harmful consequences such as climate change. Especially in Michigan, nearly all of our electricity comes from coal power plants.

But that was only one reason we we turned off our lights. Last year, living in Tanzania, the electricity would go out on most nights, leaving us in the dark. We always had a great time lighting candles or using our flashlights to play cards or read before going to bed early.

So last night at 8:30, we lit 4 candles and played board games for an hour. Sure, it was only symbolic in reducing our electricity use. But we had a great time playing games and re-living our days in Tanzania.

Oh, and Moshi had her first encounter with fire. She was very interested in the candle until she tried to sniff the flame. She learned pretty quickly.

Backyard Science

We have a local robin that loves windows. Every day the robin is around and spends 50% of its time flying repeatedly into windows. House windows, car windows, doors, you name it. Many birds fly into windows but that is becuase they don't see it. This bird seems to know the windows are there. Is it looking for a mate?

The robin taking off

Taking the first swipe at the window

Taking a rest on the window

Taking a second swipe at the window

Resting on the wire waiting to go at the window again

Backyard Science

We are all busy and sometimes we forget to stop and smell the roses. Well, the roses aren't out yet but stop and take a look at what is out and about. Arthur and I have been doing some backyard spotting and have seen some pretty amazing animals and plants in our neighborhood. We will post pictures of spring over the next few weeks. Today we noticed that the trees were starting to fill out and buds (the beginning of leaf growth) were emerging. They are quite pretty. For you further south the leaves might already but out. Send us some pictures of what is happening in your backyard.

Enjoy the two pictures we took this morning on our walk:

Spring has Sprung

Spring has sprung in Ann Arbor. Even though it is still 20 degrees at night the flowers are braving the cold to bring a little bit of color to Michigan.

Buying Green

These days we ware seeing a lot more "green" things around. Green seems to be the new in thing. But being green isn't always easy. The age old "paper or plastic?" still has us stumped and that can be equally true for other purchases we make.

We can't solved many of those questions but we wanted to pass on a resource that we use that can help cut down on the research and maybe get you some of those answers. The Green Guide, while sadly not in print any more, still has its on-line resources. One of their best resources is the buying guides. They review about 5 products in a category and give you their pick, the best for the price, and the greenest pick. That way you can balance your budget and get an environmentally friendly product too. It makes buying green way easier and they even give you a link if you want to just buy it on-line.

If this was too much information for you might just need a green beer. Check out this page. The winner for the greenest beer is Peak Organic and the person in the picture on the bottle is a friend of ours from the crew team at Dartmouth. So grab a beer and drink up and feel green at the same time.

Mapple Sugar Lesson

We decided to go back to our Northeast roots and go maple sugaring this morning. It was an interesting morning so we decided we would share what we learned with everyone.
It is maple sugaring month in this part of Michigan. What makes it a good month is you need cold nights (below freezing) and warmer days (above freezing). This conditions allow the sap to flow once the tree is tapped. So we went to a local park, Hudson-Mills, to see how it was done. First we learned some history of the fine art of making maple products. This practice started about a 1000 years ago when Native Americans started tapping the trees to produce maple products. We thought making it now was a task, but compared to how the Native Americans did it, our way is a piece of cake! Before all of this new-fangled technology they used a "pot" made out of a hollowed out tree. As you can guess you couldn't put this pot on a fire. So they heated rocks in the fire and put the hot rocks into the sap to get it to boil. Every day they had to continuously switch the rocks to keep the sap boiling. It took about a month to get the sap to boil down to maple syrup.

The wooden "pot" used by Native Americans

Since maple syrup is hard to store they made most of the sap into maple sugar. Anthropologist think the maple sugar was used to trade for other product. 900 year old maple sugar was found in New Mexico where there are no maple trees to be found!

It takes a lot of maple sap - about 40-50 gallons to make one gallon of maple syrup.

It takes 40-50 gallons of sap to make 1 of these bottles worth of maple syrup

After a history lesson we headed out to tap our own tree. Technology has made this process much easier. First you have to drill a hole in the tree.

The park ranger tapping the tree

You then "tap" the tree by sticking a spile (a metal pipe) into the hole. Then you hook a bucket (or plastic bag in our case) over the spile and wait for the sap to flow.

The bag after being left out for a day

We got to tast the sap and it tasted like lightly sweetened water. Sap is only 1-2% sugar. It also looks pretty much like water.

Pure maple sap on the left and maple syrup on the right

Once a day they go out and collect the bags to bring them to the stove. They dump the sap into a divided pan. The sap takes about a week to boil down to syrup. Then you have a delicious maple syrup and if you want to try the candy you have to keep boiling.

The stove with maple sap boiling away

If you want to try it for yourself you can follow these directions. If it seems too long of a process we recommend buying some local maple syrup and eating it on pancakes, oatmeal, or waffles!

How Cool is This?

In January we brought home our worms and set them up in their new home in our kitchen. We put about 4 inches of shredded newspaper in the bin to give them a home and food. Since then we have added about half of our food scraps each week into the bin (the other half as gone in our outdoor composter). We put in things such as banana peels, egg shells, and coffee grounds. Only two months later all the newspaper is gone and the food we put in a week or two later is gone to be replaced by new dirt. And I am sure you are all are wondering if it smells or not and the answer is no. When you open the bin it smells like dirt, not bad right? Worms are amazing...

January 2009

March 2009