30 Days of Biking has returned for September! This Minneapolis-based event is open to everyone in the world.

The only rule for 30 Days of Biking is that you bike every day for 30 days—around the block, 20 miles to work, whatever suits you—then share your adventures online.

Yeah. That works for me. I participated in the original 30 Days of Biking in April, but didn’t quite make it to 30 days, because I had to take my bike to the shop, and they kept it for several days. C’est la vie. I’m doing it again. So far I’m two for two.

September is also Bike Commute Challenge month in Portland. Every year, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance sponsors this month long event, in which workplace-based teams compete based on the total percentage of commutes made by bike. I’m entered as part of my employer’s team, and plan to make 100% of my commutes by bike.

Work and life are already bringing challenges, frustrations and setbacks this month, but at least I’ll be getting out on my bike.

It’s very interesting, and some of what they predicted (the movie came out in 2004) has already happened.

But here’s one takeaway for me. There’s another reason for buying local, besides just feeling good about supporting the local economy.

I addressed the ideal of buying local in my Sustainability and Socks post, in which I concluded that buying local was not worth it for me in that case. In other cases (like the farmers’ market) I’ve found it very worthwhile.

But the movie had one really good reason. When oil really becomes scarce, we simply won’t be shipping products across the country, let alone around the world. It just won’t be an option. And we will need local options.

So if we develop local economic networks now, they will already be in place when we need them. But if we let local businesses die out, we may be stuck when the time comes.

Food for thought.

We’re now getting a handful of cherry tomatoes every day. But the really exciting news is that the canning tomatoes are starting to ripen! They’re just beginning to turn yellow.

These are Heinz 2653, specially bred for canning. I have frozen tomatoes before, but have never canned them, so I’m looking forward to it.

Post created on my Motorola Cliq.

The Couch to 5K running plan was developed by Cool Running. It’s a nine-week program that starts you off by alternating 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking, and changes the intervals gradually. By the end of week 5, you can run 20 minutes without stopping.  By the end of week 9, you’re supposed to be running 3 miles (or 5K) in 30 minutes.

I finished week 5. I ran for 20 minutes. But I don’t run a 10 minute mile. It’s probably around 13-14 minutes. I’m doing a 15-minute combined walk/jog mile right now, which is down from the 19 minutes per mile walk/jog I did at the beginning.

For week 6, the program puts you back on intervals for the first two workouts, and ends with a 25 minute run. I have to do the 25 minute run today. I’m a little apprehensive.

I don’t think I’ll be running 5K straight after nine weeks. The program has you running 5K (3 miles) in 30 minutes at the end. I don’t see that happening, so I may need a little more time to work up to actually running in a race (with the very simple goal of finishing).

So how do I manage the timing? I tried a similar program before, and carried a kitchen timer to time my intervals. This is not a good system.

Now I use my smartphone. I downloaded the C25K Lite Android app, which has all of the workouts pre-programmed. All I have to do today is click on Week 6, Day 3 and press Start.  The app dings when it’s time to switch between jogging and walking, and it shows on the screen which I’m supposed to be doing and for how much longer.

I do listen to music while running, so I have to set that up before starting the C25K app. Otherwise, as I found out, the program will stop if I switch to the music player during the workout. C25K Lite will not run in the background. The music player will. So start the music first (there is a premium version of C25K which will run in the background, if you want to pay for it).

Next, I start up my Endomondo training app. I originally downloaded this to track my cycling miles. It uses the phone’s GPS to track where I go, how far I go, and how fast I’m going. All of the information, including a Google map of my workout, is uploaded to the Endomondo site, where I can log in and view all of my workouts. I can also choose to let others view my workouts, or I can keep them private. For running, I just want to know how far I’m going, because the C25K app doesn’t track this. Endomondo also includes voice coaching, so it tells me when I’ve reached one mile, and how fast I got there. I can set an overall goal, too, and it will tell me whether I’m on pace to reach that goal in 30 minutes. Endomondo will also run in the background, so I start it up after I start the music and before I fire up C25K.

Finally, I start up C25K Lite, select the correct day, and press Start. Every workout starts with a 5-minute warm-up and ends with a 5-minute cool-down.  I walk/jog primarily on the streets in my neighborhood. I started out by going away from my house for about half the workout time and then turning back toward my house. I’ve gradually added more distance; I’ve added a section through the park and a few more blocks out away from the house over the past several weeks.

Even though I’m not on track to run a 5K race in September, I’m pleased with my progress in this program. It would be nice if Cool Runnings recognized that not everyone is going to run at a 10-minute mile pace (especially if they’re really starting from the couch), but the method does work. I look forward to completing the 9 weeks and then working my way up to the full 5K.

First, we biked down and picked up her friend. Then the three of us biked to the local Izzy’s restaurant (for which we had a coupon) for lunch.

Then we biked home for presents, cake and popsicles.

She also requested hot dogs, fries and home-grown zucchini for dinner. We were happy to oblige.

I couldn’t be prouder.

Let’s take a look at the back, then, shall we? The previous residents had a swing set in the back yard. They took the swing set and left a large sandy area. I built a four by four square raised bed a few years ago, and tried square foot gardening, but I never got around to putting anything else back there. The square foot garden and the sand eventually become overgrown with weeds.

Earlier this summer, I cleared out the weeds. A neighbor gave us some strawberry plants, which we put into the old square foot garden. I would have liked to get a truckload of soil and/or compost to fill in the rest of the sandy area for gardening, but that wasn’t in the budget.

Then, I heard about this book in a Mother Earth News newsletter: Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens. I found it in the library catalog and placed a hold. It came in fairly quickly, and I immediately skimmed through it. The Easy-Care Bag Garden especially caught my eye. For this garden, you start by buying several bags of soil, cutting them open, and planting directly into the bags. No truckloads of soil, digging, tilling, etc. (here is an article by the same author which details a similar plan)

The garden plan in the book calls for eleven 40-pound bags (40 lbs=1 cu. ft.) of soil to start with. I decided to start smaller — I got two double-size bags instead. I also got several bags of medium bark to make paths. We already had weed cloth to go under the paths.

I started by laying weed cloth directly on top of the sand. The sand has gotten pretty well packed down over the years, so it doesn’t shift too much any more. I put rocks along the edge to hold the weed cloth down and to provide a barrier to keep the bark inside the paths. Then I filled in the path areas with bark mulch.

I put my two bags of soil just across the path from the strawberry bed, end to end. I poked several holes in the underside of each bag for drainage, and then cut the top side open for planting. If you try this, don’t cut too much! You have to leave enough bag there to hold in the soil.

I decided to plant peas, lettuce and kale, all of which are good fall crops. Yes, it’s still summer. You have to start fall crops in the summer, or they won’t mature before the first frost.

I put a makeshift trellis in one bag for the peas. It’s just some old bamboo sticks lashed together with some twine woven between them. The peas are bush peas, so they won’t climb too much, but they do need a little support.

Then I planted — a row of pea seeds along each side of the trellis, and then in the other bag, four short rows of lettuce and kale.

I do water these more often, as if they were container plants. The soil dries out faster because it’s aboveground. But they’re growing just fine; in fact, the peas are doing better than they did in the front yard.

I also started a compost area next to the bag beds. I’m following a method learned from my friend Dan — it’s almost-sheet-composting. We dig a shallow, one-foot-deep pit each day, put the day’s food scraps in it (just fruit and veg scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds), chop them up a bit, and bury them while simultaneously digging the next day’s hole. The scraps apparently decompose within a couple of weeks (I dug up the first hole, and all I found was a bit of onion skin with a sticker on it). In Dan’s yard, they also attract a large number of worms, but I’m sure that will take a while for us. We’re also mixing the sand with the soil underneath as we do this, and gradually building up the soil for next year.

There’s more open space to fill up next year, too — this is only about half the space I really wanted to use. The only problem is that planting more space means more time spent caring for the garden!

• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 cups dry white rice
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup diced, cooked chicken (and by diced, I just mean cut or torn up into pieces. Don’t stress.)
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce (I use low-sodium)
• 1-2 green onions (scallions)
• 1-2 cups frozen veggies (peas and carrots work well)
• 2 eggs

Get a LARGE skillet with a tight-fitting lid. I use a chicken fryer. It’s like 14 inches wide and 3 inches deep.  A large electric skillet might work well, too. If you don’t have a LARGE skillet, I suggest halving the recipe.

Pour the sesame oil into the skillet and heat over medium-high heat. I might use a little more than 2 tablespoons. You want enough that all of the rice gets coated. So add the rice, and stir it around until it’s all coated with oil. Then keep pushing it around until it starts to turn brown. You want to get most of the rice starting to brown, but without burning any of it.

At this point, pour in the chicken broth. Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat to low and put the lid on. Let the rice cook for 20 minutes, without lifting the lid.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix the diced chicken with the soy sauce. Slice and/or snip the onion into small pieces and mix with the chicken and soy sauce. Let the mixture sit until the rice is done cooking.

If you’re using frozen vegetables, pour them into a colander and thaw them a bit by running warm water over them. Let them sit, too. If you want to add fresh vegetables, you may want to sauté them a bit while the rice is cooking. I usually use frozen veggies, but this time I also used fresh zucchini. I cut it into quarter-slices (slice in half lengthwise, then halve the half lengthwise and slice) and did not sauté or otherwise pre-cook it.

After 20 minutes, check the rice. If it’s fully cooked, go ahead and add the chicken mixture and mix thoroughly. Add veggies and mix again. Keep the pan on low, and put the lid back on for about five minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, beat the two eggs with a fork to break the yolks (as for scrambled eggs).

After the five minutes, turn the heat up to medium. Open the pan and push all of the rice mixture to the sides of the pan, leaving an empty space in  the middle. Hit the empty space with a bit of cooking spray, then pour in the eggs. Let the eggs set for a minute or two, and then gently scramble them until moist but mostly set. Don’t worry if some of the rice or veggies gets in there. When the eggs are mostly set, mix them throughout the rice.

Serve hot, with additional soy sauce. Feeds 4-6 people.

So what was the point of doing the car-free challenge, then?  Well, at first I just wanted to do something to encourage other people to try going car-free. So I asked for volunteers to go car-free for one day, and I matched those days.

But it turned out that many of you are already car-free or car-lite, including some of the people who volunteered.

It was also a response to the BP oil spill. I’ve been deeply saddened in recent months by the price we (as human beings) pay in order to be able to drive motor vehicles and use oil (and coal) for other things.

Professor Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University told NBC News that if every American drove 30 miles less per week, it would cut our country’s oil consumption by 20 percent. I think it’s do-able. And I hope that by blogging about my life, others will realize it’s do-able, too.

Which brings me to the benefits of having done the car-free challenge.

• Encouraging or inspiring others. Shetha said, “I have to say you’ve been motivating me to make more of an effort too.”  Other friends actually complimented me on sharing my frustrations — it’s somehow encouraging to know that I get frustrated sometimes, too. I hope that the car-free challenge series helped others as well.
• Increased fitness. I’ve been working on my personal fitness this summer anyway. I’ve been doing the Couch to 5K running program, rather than doing cycling workouts, but cycling to various places during the car-free challenge helped with my fitness level, too. And when I almost made it up the long hill without stopping, I really knew that my fitness level had improved.
• Time with kids. My kids like to ride,too, and I took one or more of them with me several times. They’re the main reason that I have an Xtracycle, after all!
• More blogging! I blogged every day for ten days because of the challenge. It gave me motivation to post.

What about the negatives? Well, I did get frustrated and sick of the whole thing. And I haven’t been making an effort to bike or walk anywhere since then. So maybe being 100% car-free is not for me. I know that I can do it if necessary. But I’d rather not.

We’d probably be good candidates for a car-sharing system, like ZipCar, but they don’t have any cars out our way (and yes, I’ve told them I’m interested and suggested locations).

Living in a different neighborhood might be better for us. We could move someplace with better access to stores and services, and/or where ZipCars are available. But most of those neighborhoods are also further from our workplaces.

So for now, we’ll be sticking with our current set-up: An Xtracycle, an assortment of kids’ bikes, and a minivan.

Thank you to those who participated in the car-free challenge. I’m working on rounding up comments and/or blog posts from all of the participants and will be posting or linking to those soon.

So when Farmer Haley tweet a link to “Factory Farms Exposed” on Kansas Grains, I decided to take a look.

Kansas Grains is a blog “for Kansas corn and sorghum growers to share information among one another and with the public.”  Their web site links to the Kansas Corn Growers Association, the Kansas Corn Commission, the Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association and Kansas Ethanol Information.

Author DeEtta Bohling is a communications specialist for the Kansas Corn Growers Association and Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association.

On the surface, the post makes sense. Bohling explains that a big farm may also be a family farm (rather than a corporate farm).

The 20-cow dairy involving a husband, wife and three kids is a family farm. But so is the dairy owned by two adult brothers who milk 3,000 cows, which involves their families and 15 employees.

She also writes that there are reasons why animals are confined rather than being allowed to roam free, and that it is not standard practice to treat animals inhumanely.

I put a link to the post on Twitter and asked for comments.  Wendy said, “Kind of smacks of ‘formula is better because it’s scientific’ to me. I always consider the source, on both sides.” Agreed. That’s why I took a closer look at the blog and the author of the post, both of which are obviously tied to the conventional farming industry.

I also got “is that a joke?” and “there are no easy answers.” VelvetAckbar said, “looks like greenwashing. the chicken farmer in Food Inc. was a ‘family farm’ *under contract to tyson.*”

I haven’t watched Food, Inc., and don’t plan to (I pretty much know what it says and have no desire to see it on video). But I had that thought, too — family farms are often under contract to big corporations; that’s why “98% of all farms are owned by individuals, family partnerships, or family corporations.”

However, there are corporations, and there are corporations. VelvetAckbar mentioned Tyson; critics often point to them as one of the villain corporations (although I note that they do have a “Supplier Code of Conduct” on their website). But there’s also Darigold, Inc. It’s a dairy products corporation. It’s owned by the Northwest Dairy Association, a cooperative of more than 550 milk producers, and that’s where the milk comes from.

Darigold produces rbST-free milk (no growth hormones). For those of us in the Pacific Northwest, Darigold products are also local. As for their treatment of cows, here’s a Seattle Weekly article. The whole thing is a good read, but scroll down to the “He Does a Cow Good” section to read about one of the Darigold farms.

Getting back to the Bohling post, her best comment  is at the end:

We all make choices. Only you can make the best decision for yourself. Be informed and ask questions.

Indeed. Whether you’re shopping at the supermarket or the farmers’ market, the best thing you can do is ask questions. The farmer at the farmers’ market may not be organic-certified, but they may be following all or nearly all organic practices anyway. Or, maybe you are OK with a judicious use of conventional farming practices.

Either way, you can find out what you’re getting, and/or ask for what you want. If the supermarket doesn’t have what you want, ask if they can get it, or go to the farmers’ market and ask around. If you’re not sure where your brand name items come from, you can go to the company’s website, write them a letter, or give them a call.

What do you think? Is there a middle ground here? Do you feel informed about what you eat?

Photo by eierea on Flickr. Used via Creative Commons licensing.

I’m too tired tonight to recap the whole thing, but I will be doing that, soon — lessons learned and all that.

Today I did run that errand at the bottom of the Long Hill, and it wasn’t so bad! I only had to get off and walk a couple of blocks, which is much better than I’ve done before. Maybe the running I’ve been doing lately helped.

And then we attended our local National Night Out party. The kids and I rode bikes, and my husband walked, so that was a car-free family outing.

Our youngest isn’t experienced enough to ride herself to the park yet, but I thought she might want to ride once we got there, so I towed her bike along behind. It’s yet another of the cool things you can do with an Xtracycle!

We also had fun blowing bubbles, listening to music, and watching a live snake presentation.

It was fun. But I’m glad to be at The End.