Sustainable Living

Since we have moved to Lubbock where there are NO farmer's markets, ONE healthy restaurant, hardly ANY organic vegetables and fruits that are actually fresh and pretty much no desire from the overall population for a change, I have desired moving to a more sustainable way of living for our family.  The community does not seem to have much to contribute, so I have sought out other sources to move towards a more eco-friendly, do-it-yourself way of life.

This is obviously a very slow process, as I have been thinking about it for about two years, but my first step was the chickens, who provide us fresh, organic eggs.  We control their diet and know exactly what we are eating when we eat their eggs.  My second was giving the chicken all food and waste we would have thrown away (to eventually form some sort of compost - coming soon!)

My next step will be a series of making my own products.  I will start gathering all needed ingredients on friday for my first endeavor: making my own toothepaste.  I will be using a recipe from Control the Chaos, an American mom's blog who lives in the Netherlands.  She makes many things herself, including laundry detergent and shampoo and this is just step 1.  So, stay tuned for my toothpaste making and how the family likes it.

I hope to someday get to growing and selling our own fruits and vegetables out of the house like these people in California.  But we'll see how the Lubbock weather cooperates.  Plus, we need our manpower (Sayed) back here to do all the labor! ;)

And THEN, if I become super accomplished, SOME-day, I plan to buy one of these:

and convert it to bio-diesel, making my own fuel out of vegetable oil!  But that is way in the future when I won't have three children under three!

(sorry for all the links today- just lots of ideas that I didn't want to copy and paste :)