Happy Thanksgiving!
We would like to take this opportunity to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all our regular readers. We will be taking a short holiday until the December 1, 2008 so we can enjoy some time with family and friends.
For any of you who may read Maya’s Online Gratitude Journal, you know that life in the neighborhood has been busy. We are especially thankful for and proud of our neighborhood teenagers, and younger people. They adopted us and we adopted them, so to speak during the summer. Since that time the kids have become a big part of our daily lives. Maya has kept everyone up on their adventures so I won’t go too much into the impact they have had on the neighborhood and those of us who interact with them daily.
However, I do want to say that while all of us “card carrying AARP folks” (to quote Maya) have been involved with the neighboring kids, we have been able to carry out many projects we would have missed otherwise. Their first project was to create solar energy for my greenhouse. As a shameless plug for the kids, they used the program listed on the right sidebar of this blog to construct the solar panels.
Since the first panel was completed and installed, the kids and the AARP-ers have built and installed solar panels on all the out buildings for three blocks. Additionally, as you may be aware, the kids have built a huge greenhouse at the foot of our ridge, implementing as much “green energy” as possible. They have dug trenches and placed watering pipes underground for geodesic (thermal) heating of the water for the greenhouses, installed solar panels, and built a huge cistern for water collection. We aren’t totally off the grid, but we are finding that our bills this year are less than in years past, even with a 20% hike in electric rates and a 25% hike in water rates.
Aside from saving money, we are doing a little to save the planet. Of course, we know that we can’t do it all by ourselves. But, we are trying to do our part. That gives us something to be thankful for over these blessed Thanksgiving holidays.
Our crusade to go green is just a part of the plan. Our primary concentration is on growing healthy foods for the family. With rising costs and less certainty of the safety of the foods we import and eat, we have found that growing our own vegetables saves us money in several areas. We don’t pay the high cost of imported vegetables and herbs. We are saving on trips to the grocery market by using less gas. We have fresh organically grown food that we know is safe. And, perhaps, the greatest reward has been the wonderful sense of community that has developed around our neighborhood that extends across four generations of neighbors working together to help one another.
We have a lot to be thankful for, all of us, especially those of us older neighbors. So, from all of us on the ridge to all the readers and subscribers, we encourage you to take action to do your part for your family, friends and our planet. It is remarkable to me that a vegetable/herb garden and a greenhouse has brought a neighborhood together and given us a sense of community that is beyond anything I could have imagined.
Happy Thanksgiving! See you December 1st.
Happy, J.D., and all the neighborhood
