Doing my bit for the environment

I had prepared another childhood memories post about schooldays since this week all the children seem to be going back to school but it was a bit on the long side and I thought you'd probably not be that interested in settling down to read 5000 words and that something less wordy might be better so here goes...... 

I recently signed up for a weekly vegetable box (actually a bag in our case and you'll be pleased to learn that the bag is used to line our under sink bin and not tossed away) from a local farm whose produce we have been buying regularly at farmers' markets and at the farm gate too.  This was today's offering -all organic and mostly grown locally on the farm with the carrots coming the furthest being from a farm in Devon - see the lovely red earth still clinging to them?!  The invoice that accompanies the selection has the dates of all the local farmers' markets at which they will be along with an article written by the farmer's wife and also a poem - this week's article was about consuming less and whether or not economic growth requires us to consume more and if so at what cost to the environment and the poem was Unharvested by Robert Frost (last week's was Ode to Autumn by Keats - I think this is a lovely touch don't you?

Lunch today was a cauliflower/courgette/broccoli and carrot cheese with wholemeal scone topping and very nice it was too and the air miles involved - zero!  It made a pleasant change not to have runner beans as a vegetable today!!!

I got this book from the library  on Monday and have enjoyed reading the essays as well as looking at the patterns but it seems it is not easy being green not even when it comes to knitting which might be seen as the ultimate green past-tme using only a couple of sticks and no energy other than that of the knitter!

Is it better to use cotton which is produced using tons of pesticides but which will rot down when the garment is no longer needed?  Is wool the best option but then think of the noxic chemicals that sheep are regularly dunked in to prevent fly strike and so on.  If you were able to obtain organic yarns what would they have been dyed with even vegetable dyes usually require some sort of chemicals as mordants to endure the dye takes to the yarn.  I wonder if it is possible to be green in the twenty first century - we can't go back to the stone age and even if we could would we really wish to do so?

Love this little teddy with a buttoned back so that you can insert a rice filled bag warmed in the microwave (but is a microwave a green option or not and would the rice be organic?!)  I guess what it all boils down to is doing the best we can in whatever small ways we can and hoping for the best!  So I will continue to support local farms with my veggie box and will use up the yarns I already have rather than go out and buy eco-friendly (or not) ones.

Thought you might like to see a recent visitor to our garden - sorry the photo is a bit blurred but I didn't dare to open the door first!  This chap was just outside the back door taking a drink from the bowl of water which is there to disguise a drain cover and which Thomas likes to drink out of and the blackbirds to bathe in.  He is the second fox we have seen in the past week or so  the other one was a younger fitter looking one in his prime - this one had a back foot missing but it didn't seem to be bothering him at all.  The badgers will soon be in the drive crunching the hazelnuts every night if last year is anything to go by so you can see we are doing our bit for wildlife here too!!