Living Green Expo

Today me, Nick and my brothers went to the Living Green Expo at the State Fair grounds. It was a collection of booths and exhibits on how to make your life, garden and home more friendly to the environment. Going green is super cost effective and is worth the time and investment not only for you wallet, but for our world and natural resources. Tyler called me a hippy, which is kinda true, but whatever!

My main purpose for going was that I wanted to learn how Nick and I could start a compost pile. We have so much gardening space that a compost pile would really help our garden, especially the vegetable garden, and would cut down on waste. Hopefully once we are all moved in and unpacked we can get one up and running.

The other main thing I wanted to get information about was a rainwater collector. Instead of getting water for the yard and garden directly from the city (and thus having a higher water bill each month), you can collect rainwater and reuse it for around the house. We saw basic ones that are big blue, recycled plastic, barrels that weren't very nice looking. Then we found one that can be made to look like your house, with trim and wood and a hand pump. They were more costly but were the nicest looking and can also be attached to the gutters, which will keep the water from puddling near your foundation. In the long run the rainwater collector pays for itself and saves water. This will be a project for down the road, but would be a great, green addition to the yard.

Nick's purpose for going was that he wanted to learn everything, and also scope out potential jobs. Nick wants to get a wind turbine so we can use our own wind energy. He got a lot of good ideas and wants to build his own. My ideas is that we should start small and see if we can build one that can power the pump for our pond since there is no electrical source near our pond. We'll update everyone and see if we can make it happen!

The highlight for me was getting a free native plant. Native plants to the area are integral to having healthy soil because they have an extensive root system which keeps the ground fertile. I am silly, and dorky, but plants make me really happy! So all day I was smiley because I was carrying around my cute little plant. I also got a bunch of packets of seeds for free which also excited me. I will have to find a place to plant them!

It was a really fun time. Even Tyler and Dylan enjoyed themselves. We also got reusable shopping bags that we are going to try utilizing so we can cut down on extra bags each shopping trip- especially since we are going to be buying more groceries and cooking at home instead of going out now that we have the house to work on. Once we move in we are changing all of our lightbulbs to CFLs, and once we buy the new furnace we will get an energy efficient one. we also learned of places that reclaims wood work, hardware and doors from old homes and resells them, so we might have some luck there when we start trying to restore the house, but that won't be for a while. Hopefully we will have some more green-updates soon!