An Unexpected Environmentalist

There was a time in college when I would encourage passengers of my car to throw all their trash out the window. I would affectionately call my passengers "my little litter-bugs."

The person that I am now would beat that person up. I have become some sort of environmentalist. I hate to use that label because I hate being pigeon-holed into any one perspective. I mean, I do still shop at Wal-Mart and smoke cigarettes. That's why I say some sort of environmentalist. I am my own special breed.

I don't know why the change has come about. Maybe because I live a simple country life now. Maybe because I am a mother and now feel some sort of responsibility to preserve the earth for my daughter to enjoy. Maybe a combination of the two. Whatever the reason, I find myself concerned about things that never used to worry me, like landfills and coal mines. I worry about how much trash I throw away and how long it will take to decompose. I plan on building an energy-efficient home with solar power and tank-less hot water heaters someday. I am contemplating switching to cloth diapers because I worry about the chemicals used in disposable diapers. Honestly, who knew I could be this person?

The biggest concern for me at the moment is our food. With the recent outbreaks of food poisoning in our national food distribution chain, it's hard not to be concerned about what we are eating. Add to those concerns the amount of fossil fuels burned to move our food around the country, and the amount of toxins released by the trucks, and the amount of preservatives we consume unknowingly - well, suddenly it all concerns me.

But my concern about our food is something I can actually do something about right now, which is refreshing and encouraging. For produce, meat ,and eggs, I hope to produce much of what we need ourselves or buy fresh from local farmers. We will be planting a manageable garden this year - our first year we planted way too much and it got out of control and we had a lot of waste. And, hopefully, we will finally be able to get some chickens this summer. Large scale chicken farming is creepy business, and chickens raised properly produce much healthier eggs and meat for us to eat.

Producing our own food is kind of a passion for me right now, the chicken thing especially. I have read Living with Chickens by Jay Rossier cover to cover a few times. At one point, I was excited to go to bed just so I could read it, like it was a gripping novel with a surprising plot line.