Life in the Cheese Drawer

today i went to eagle bluff environmental center in lanesboro for a land ethic workshop that was put on by the land stewardship council. a couple years ago over give to the max day, i found the LSP and donated money to it, hence becoming a member. i get mailings and general info as well as invites to events.
i’m not the average LSP member: i don’t own acres of land; i don’t work for a conservation agency of some sort; i’m not going to college for a degree in environmental science or forestry (as tempting as that is…). i’m just your average joe schmo city dweller who’s concerned about the land and the environment. if there’s one thing that attending these type of conferences enforces, it’s that i’m not nearly the hippie i think i am. and that is something i need to work on.
since april is the home of earth day, i’ll just do a quick overview of the event, then focus on specifics throughout the month.
the day started with some nice snow and ice on the roads, as well as some fierce winds. i made it to eagle bluff just in time. the first speaker of the day was jen from the aldo leopold foundation, who spoke about leopold and his land ethic. 
after that, we were charged with a silent observation outdoor activity, and i went and did some listening next to some trees and brush that was starting to bud out.

 
back inside for some small-group discussion time on our observation and on a reading. 
lunch was fantastic! most of what they make is organic and/or local, with minimal waste. chicken, spaghetti squash, mixed veggies, and some apple crisp.
during the afternoon, i went to a session on forestry management and how to take advantage of programs that will help bring a landowner’s vision to fruition (with trees). 
next was a session on organic food, and i should have gone to the session on prairie restoration. the organic session was old hat, and i feel i could have benefitted learning about pollinators and how to help them out.
our final speaker was a professor at winona state who got a fullbright scholarship to help out farmers in panama, just to hammer home how global the land use epidemic is. 
and of course, supper was the finale – rabbit, veggies, asparagus salad, potato soup, irish soda bread, and lemon cheesecake. my first time eating rabbit! (seriously, it tasted like dark meat chicken.)
during april, i’ll try to post about each session i went to and see what else i can learn about each of them.
and i ended the day driving down through lanesboro for gas and coming up from the south through preston. good choice on my part, because i saw the spectacular sunset.

i donate some money every year to the land stewardship council, and as such, i become a member and get their mailers. i got one a couple weeks ago for “land ethic at work”, a day-long workshop at eagle bluff in lanesboro with speakers from the aldo leopold foundation*, a bunch of breakouts on different conservation techniques, and finishing off with dinner on the bluff. 
on the one hand, i love things like these. i love learning about more things i can do to expand my tree-huggerness and how to help out the earth. on the other hand, i HATE things like these – facilitated small group discussions?? lunch with people i don’t know**? a bunch of strangers that might stare at me because i’m not a (large) landowner, am relatively young, and don’t own any (useful) animals? (although i do garden regularly and collect rainwater from my roof; maybe that will help.)
but i decided i wanted to do it, and i applied for a scholarship to go. i got approved and it paid for my entire registration fees – $90! so now i HAVE to go. i’m gonna tweet about it and blog about it and maybe take some pics while i’m out there. april 2, i’ll be both uncomfortable and excited, and i guess that’s what life’s about, right? if you don’t step outside your circle occasionally, you can’t really experience things worth knowing. here goes nothing 🙂
*this dude is pretty cool. he noted birds’ migratory patterns in his wisconsin vacation home for his whole life, and pretty much documented that climate change is real by noting that birds that migrate based on temperature versus light have been returning to the area sooner and sooner. (i went to a speaker at rctc a couple years ago. one benefit of working at a college!)
**at least the food is included!

when i got my gazillion metric tons of lard (ok, i exaggerate), i knew i couldn’t use it all – i only make pies a couple times a year, and even then i use half lard, half butter. what to do, what to do.
after a google search, one of the options was to make soap. i decided to give it a try. i found a recipe for lard soap, cold-press method. while cold-press method involves less cooking, it does take longer for the soap to “cure” – almost a month-long wait after actually making the soap, versus a couple days. if i do this again, i’ll probably buy an old crockpot and try the hot-press method.

after some more research on soaps, it turns out that all-lard soap, while moisturizing, is very hard and not very latherific. i decided to add some coconut oil and castor oil to my mixture (castor oil helps with lather; coconut oil helps with softness).
the fat:

• 400 grams of lard
• 250 grams of coconut oil
• 50 grams castor oil

Lye solution:

• 80 grams lye (sodium hydroxide)
• 228 grams distilled water

measure everything out, and use a completely separate container for mixing the lye (apart from your food – i went to goodwill and got a used bowl, pot, and whisk for this endeavor). mix the lye into the water (this is apparently VERY IMPORTANT as every website i visited had in call caps LYE INTO WATER, not WATER INTO LYE). lye is pretty acidic. i wore goggles and latex gloves while i mixed. mix until the water is clear.
the lye also gets pretty hot, so while you’re letting that cool down, melt the fats on the stove in your old and busted pot. once they are about the same temperature, although i think my thermometer is wonky and i didn’t have them the same temp, mix the lye solution into the fats.
now you’re supposed to use a stick blender to mix it up, but i thought, eeeeehhhhh, why waste my stick blender attachment? i’ll just whisk it…. yeah….. after about 15 minutes, i got my stick blender out and went to town. it only took another 5 minutes or so to get to the “trace” stage, where if you drizzle it, it’ll leave a trace on the top.

 

mixed in my lavender and rosemary mix as well as a little lavender oil and purple coloring. pouring it into a bread pan, and now it’s sitting in the basement waiting 1-2 days to turn out and cut before curing.
update to come when it gets turned out!

first, the RCTC campus is closed tomorrow, so i get a free day! woo!
second, with this cold snap we’re having (we seem to be having quite a few this winter), there is an actual positive side to this: the emerald ash borer might be drastically reduced due to the cold, which your ash trees will be severely grateful for.
i’m hoping the mountain pine beetle that is overtaking the black hills trees, mostly ponderosa pines, and basically killing them will also be affected by this. the last couple times i went out to the hills, i read up on how the bug is spreading throughout the hills, and the only thing that can really stop them is extreme cold – it will kill the larvae. unfortunately, there hadn’t been extremely cold winters in SD in a while; the beetle kept propagating.

The first recorded outbreak in the Black Hills occurred in the late 1890s. An estimated 10 million trees were killed during this outbreak. Approximately five outbreaks have occurred since that time though none has reached the same magnitude. The outbreak in the early 1970s resulted in the loss of more than 440,000 trees. The last outbreak occurred from 1988 to 1992 and resulted in the death of approximately 50,000 trees. Beetle populations are increasing and are expected to continue to increase during the next five years.

– http://sdda.sd.gov/conservation-forestry/identification-biology/

 
i took this picture in 2010 – you can see how some of the trees on the hillside are brown while the others are green. the forest rangers (i would love that job!) have been taking photos of the progression and when you visit mount rushmore and take a tour through the information side of it, you can see the damage the bugs have done to the hills over the last 20 years or so. pretty disturbing, loads of organizations like www.TheToolBoss.com are trying to raise awareness and to prevent the worst.
turns out that once the beetles are in hibernation, they can tolerate temps down to -30. i’m not sure if SD got down to those temps or not, but with -24 predicted here, hopefully SD will get down to those temps at least sometime this winter.
so, while you’re complaining about this arctic front that’s whipping through the midwest, think about the trees that are being salvaged from a bug infestation. i’ll gladly go through some character-building chilliness to help out a few trees! but then that’s the tree-hugger in me 🙂

i am pissed off at the idea of earth day. maybe it’s because i grew up in a household where recycling, reusing, and composting were second nature, but why aren’t people more aware of what’s happening with the climate and dwindling resources, especially potable water? why do we only allot ONE DAY to awareness of this subject? EVERY DAY should be earth day.
yes, i’m passionate about the environment – if we don’t care for the environment, THAT’S IT. no need to worry about health care, gun control, autism, civil wars, etc., because *poof* we’re goners. part of the reason i’m so passionate about devil’s syrup? look at what monoculture (corn and soybean) farmlands are doing to the earth – erosion and diminishing water tables.
so: one day? not going to cut it. i know people who don’t recycle because they just don’t care – they say one person isn’t going to make or break it, so why should it be them? WHY NOT YOU? – something like this STARTS with one person. one day of the year to focus on the earth is not going to convince these people to start being a little more environmentally conservative. not even a month, a lá black history month or sexual assault awareness month, is going to do it. we need EARTH YEARS, aka, every. single. day.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  – Margaret Mead

happy earth day.