Good morning!

I don't know about celebrating earth day as a one day holiday, but a reminder never hurt any one. We, here at our house believe God gives us the earth and all that's in it to be stewards of. We try very hard to be good stewards. We try to live eco friendly every day, not just one day a year. Some of the things we do here is of course grow our own veggies in the summer. We never use any chemicals when we do, we never have. Like last year this year we will have two plots in our yard. I would love to one day have some fruit trees and strawberry beds. Last year I found tons of wild strawberries growing in our yard and tried to cultivate them, but they didn't work so very well. We recycle. We have always recycled some paper and plastic, but a while back I found out our city takes even more types of paper and plastic and so we had to ask for another bin because I started to add more. This spring we started a compost bin. I have been wanting to do this for a while, but never made the time. My goal is to see how little garbage we can put out weekly for pick-up. Another project we are starting this week is bee keeping. We starting talking about having our own hives this past winter. Last year the honeybee population was so down where we live that it was hard to get pollination for our garden. God made a way for us to get started. A friend of the General's from work is a bee keeper and he offered to help us get going and gave us the info on how. We have friends at church who are bee keepers and sell honey for a living. I mentioned to them this past Sunday that we were going to start a hive, but it would probably be next spring before we could afford to buy all the gear. I got a call yesterday that this family is giving us a hive! I just cried because of the generosity! Thursday they are setting up the hive and the General's friend has already secured us bees! God is good. I wanted to get some chickens also, but that might be too many new projects in one year. We buy a lot of our clothes at the Goodwill, we also donate all our outgrown things to either friends who need them or the Goodwill. We buy a lot of our things second hand. My eliptical machine we bought used at a store in town that sells used sports equipment. One thing I have not done yet, but have been wanting to is bring my own bags to the grocery. Hopefully I will get some made soon. In the meantime I have a coupon for a free bag at Krogers and will redeem that today. We do not use convience foods very often. We usually cook from scratch here. We buy a lot of fresh foods so there is not a lot of packaging. I hang out our clothes when ever possible. It is not so hard to make these simple changes in your life. Go for it!

Sew Long for Now!