Welcome to the Friday open thread for the Living Simply group. If you are not familiar with our group, the basic idea, from our profile, is:
A group to explore and share sustainable, simple living ideas among fellow progressives. For the urban, rural, or wannabe homesteader, this is a place to share information to simplify everyday life. Sustainable skills such as gardening, food production and storage, do-it-yourself projects for the home or farm, and backyard chickens and other livestock, as well as eco-conscious philosophies such as cooperative living, eco-cities, the Slow Food movement, and being a mindful consumer are but a few potential topics of interest here.
First things first. If you missed the diaries posted this week to the Living Simply group, we had, in order of appearance:
Gustogirl's Holiday Scrimping-St. Patrick's! diary, full of helpful tips for stocking up and reducing the grocery budget. And recipes, oh yes, there are recipes!
la motocycliste's lovely how-to diary on growing Trashcan Potatoes, which was not only rescued by community spotlight but also hit the rec list (I have to think that things are just alright with the world when there are pieces about growing urban potatoes on the rec list, don't you think?)
puzzled's Thursday piece on the Hedemonic Treadmill, which brings up some interesting thoughts to ponder on why buying stuff makes us happy (and how we can be happier living more simply).
Also republished to the group for handy reference was the DKos disaster preparedness primer, the original of which was authored by AlphaGeek and subsequently republished by Seneca Doane. This is a seriously lengthy piece of work--originally published as a series--but an invaluable source of disaster preparedness information. There's also some handy tips to be gleaned for day-to-day sustainable living, as well. Another diary republished diary to the group was one of wide eyed lib's most awesome foraging diaries. If you're not familiar, wide eyed lib's pieces are a treasure trove of information. It doesn't get more simple than free, foraged food...
If you missed the discussion, we're going to attempt to post a diary every Thursday evening. No set topic as long as it's pertinent to the Living Simply group, just a regular scheduled time so folks can expect at least one diary a week on the same day and at the same approximate time. Please note that this does not preclude posting at other times--contributors, feel free to post a diary for publishing whenever it is most convenient for you--but if anyone would like to take a Thursday spot, just let me know. Looks like next Thursday, 3/24 is spoken for.
Weekend projects, anyone? I know that it's warm enough across a large portion of the country to be getting gardens ready for spring and planting the early crops. That's what I should be doing, but I'm heading off to a poultry show (no, we don't walk the chickens around on little leashes, in case anyone is wondering...and yes, I've been asked that question in seriousness before. Teehee...).