Learn. Live. Love. An occassional glimpse of the Kaisers

Everyone’s going green these days. While “saving the earth” was a fad thing to do in the mid-1980’s, it seems the current green movement has more push behind it.

I’ve always wanted the country dream, where I have a little 5 to 10 acres, grow much of our own food, make use of alternative energy, and try to leave as little of a human footprint as possible on the earth. Our 1950’s Cape Cod style home on a half acre in town doesn’t quite fit that profile!

I thought maybe we needed to work towards selling this house and seriously getting some land outside of town and really making a go at green. Sounds groovy, right?

Nope. We’re staying put.

We live close enough to work that I can walk, so we don’t have to have two cars. If we lived in the country, we’d have a second car, and as a family we’d be driving more than twice as much as we do now. That’s not green! We’d also be spending money on that second car that we could be spending on alternative energy or gardening components.

Moving is not an efficient process. There’s a lot of energy and waste associated with moving, period. The process of moving would also take more dollars away from our green projects.

People need to learn how to live greener on less-than-ideal lots. Most people can’t pick up and move out of town to a couple acres to start their green ways. They are restricted to their current home, landlocked, in town, operating under specific zoning laws that probably don’t allow chickens in their back yards!

For what it’s worth, I’ll post here as we embark on major projects. I’m certain we’ll find some useful, practical ways of going green that don’t exactly fit the “back to the land” stereotype.