Katie at Cosmos alerted me to today, October 15, 2007, being designated as Blogging for the environment day. I'm participating by listing a few things that we do here at the One Acre Wood.
Eeyore has a complex drip irrigation system for watering all our little gardens here on one acre. He started with his tiny 'meadow' where he nurtures native plants as well as some non-native plants, and has branched out to include our renter Tiggers and my gardens as well as the plants in my Mom's yard.
He's been working on this system for some years with parts of it being on timers and parts manually turned on and off. By allotting 30 minutes of a small amount of water once or twice a week to the different areas, we can enjoy some gardening in the high desert without using excessive water.
E. has also directed some of the rainwater from the gutters on our roof into an ancient, underground cistern that was here on the property. He has directed other gutters into barrels to use for plant watering.
The third thing we do is to shred every bit of waste paper that comes into the house. This includes junk mail, old grocery store receipts, those annoying covers they put on magazines etc.
The first way we use this paper isn't practical for everybody, but it may strike an inventive chord of your own. I've occasionally mentioned our potbellied pigs, as well as our chickens. Both the potbellies and the chickens bed down in shredded paper rather than straw! This has been a boon to our female pig, Suki, as she seems to be allergic to straw.
When the pig and chicken houses are cleaned, the paper goes into the compost. Excess paper also gets tilled into the compost where mixed with leaves, pine needles and manure, it makes excellent compost for our plants. In this way, we turn many pounds of paper into fertile soil.
These are some of the things we are doing in an effort to preserve the environment. I also catch cold water that runs from the hot water tap prior to its heating up, to use as water for my house plants. I'm hoping to glean some ideas from other bloggers to incorporate into my daily routine.
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