The Bountiful Sprout is in essence a web-based, local food co-op that allows its members to shop from home. Linking farmers and producers directly to customers, TBS keeps our farmers in business and keeps our food local. Now 60 families strong and growing every day, the Bountiful Sprout is quickly becoming our very own local grocery where we can find all we need and more without driving into San Marcos or Austin. And even better we are supporting our own, like Arnosky Farm, Morning Glory Farm, and Chisolm Beef, just to name a few.

We hear about our problems like the health care crisis, our lack of energy independence and climate change everyday, but let’s hear about some solutions. What most of us don’t realize is that the way we currently grow, process, ship and eat food in America is at the heart of all three of these problems. It now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. As Michael Pollan, author of the bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma puts it, “when we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating oil and spewing green-house gases.” In contrast, food eaten closer to where it is grown is fresher and requires less processing, making it more nutritious.

People now are paying attention to where their food is coming from and how it is grown. The bigger and more industrial our food system, the more vulnerable it is to catastrophe. The best way to protect our food against contamination, like the recent spinach scare, is to decentralize it. Markets for alternative kinds of food like organics, local, pasture fed, and humanely raised meats, are thriving like never before because they are the solution to the broken system in place today. Here in Wimberley, the Bountiful Sprout is our solution. Buying our food locally is one small thing we can do to change our health and our path to energy independence.

“It’s exciting to think that this could be the beginning of something huge in Wimberley. Wheatsville Co-op and Whole Foods started in just the same way!” says TBS member Terri Burney-Bisett gazing into her bushel basket with a smile. Members pick up their orders every other Wednesday at the Bountiful Sprout located on RR12 just south of Jacob’s Well Road, right across from Clifford’s Wine Bar.

The Bountiful Sprout has made it their mission to not only keep shoppers from having to go into Austin or San Marcos for groceries, but to keep workers here as well, creating new economic opportunities for our residents. Those interested in becoming producers for the fastest growing group of responsible shoppers in the hill country, please go to the website, www.bountifulsprout.org and join the Forum. There you will find a wish list of products members want to find at the site and buy locally. Together, we can bring home our dollars, our passions, and our hopes for the future of Wimberley.

Unfortunately, old house paint is not the only place you find lead. I was just buying a new sippy cup (all of the old ones I had saved that Aidan sipped on had Bisphenol A in them and phthalates to boot), and the box of our Think Baby cup said, “Lead Free!”… What? Someone actually puts lead paint on baby sippy cups?” Not only that, but on children’s toys both plastic and wooden. Any plastic or wooden toy that is painted, especially those made in China, should be tested for lead. If you have a toddler who may be teething on these toys, lead may not be your only concern, most plastic toys contain phthalates and bisphenol A, which has been labeled even by Wal-Mart as a hazardous substance.

What have we chosen for ourselves? The bottom line, is it more important than our safety and our health?

Quote of the Month: “Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.”  ~John Clapham, 1957


 

People ask me quite often how I think they should prepare for a future of food shortages and high fuel prices. Are we going to all lose an average of 30 lbs. like the people of Cuba after the Soviet Union cut them off? It depends, is it going to be a future where we have been visionary and acted ahead of events, or a future where we have let events overtake us? I don’t think you can compare our present lifestyle with that of a carbonless future. It seems impossible, but didn’t our President at one time, say, “we are going to the moon in this decade!”? Why can’t we say some 40 years later, “We are going to be energy independent in this decade with wind and solar power!”?

No one can predict how we will survive what comes, but what is vital to our survival is strong, visionary leadership, and the willingness to live within our means and our descending carbon quotas. Ours is a future where ingenuity and creativity will replace apathy, self-reliance will replace self-gratification and community gardens will replace golf courses.
I have to say that I’m actually looking forward to this dramatic shift in resources, I think it might just give us an invaluable sense of collective meaning and individual purpose, and that is something many of us have been craving for a very long time.

Quote of the Month: “We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.” -the slogan on t-shirts worn by people in the office of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights 

This is what we do: First we remove toxic chemicals from our homes safely, go to www.earth911.org to learn how to best dispose of all kinds of materials. Then, we start replacing our cleaning products with safe and green alternatives or even start making our own.

Next, go to our own, Green Home Cleaning Resources page, for links and more information about greening your cleaning.

Or, if you’re not so inclined to do it yourself, call Shannon at Healthy Helping Hands, an organic cleaning service, at 512-586-5196 and they will clean your home for you, organically and safely.

Quote of the Month: “We now have solid scientific evidence that a variety of environmental agents can adversely affect the nervous system [of developing children]” 

— Scientific Consensus Statement on Environmental Agents Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorder (published on February 20, 2008. Signed by 50 international health professionals and scientists.

To learn more about these movies and to find more books and websites on these subjects visit www.greenguru.org. Let’s build a boat, a lifeboat, right here in Wimberley. Let’s look to the town of Willits, California for our inspiration, and go to www.relocalize.net/groups/wimberley to get started. Marc signed us on over a year ago and we’ve watched new groups start up in towns all over the world. What can YOU bring into this next year that is for our community, is your resolution to eat fewer brownies or is it to eat locally? Is it to exercise more or to build communities, co-op’s, and gardens?
Happy Holidays, from the green guru and may your new year be bright green!

Quote of the Month: “…I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.” –Lone Man, Teton Sioux

In an area 800 miles north of Hawaii a plastic soup twice the size of Texas known as the Texas Gyre is there to remind us of this fact. Plastic never biodegrades, with exposure to sunlight and the elements it may become smaller and smaller but even on a molecular level it remains too tough for biodegradation, and it is eaten by unsuspecting animals in the sea that mistake it for food. The scary thing is that the North Pacific gyre is only one of five similar high-pressure zones in the oceans, together these plastic wastelands cover 40% of our oceans, and that amounts to one quarter of our planet’s surface! For the entire scoop on the soup and what it’s doing to our environment, the green guru strongly urges you to visit: www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml or just google Texas Gyre.

If plastic is toxic when you heat it up, when you freeze it, when you make it and when you burn it, then why, shouldn’t we all be asking, are we still buying it?! Why are we still buying food packaged in it? Is the convenience of disposable forks and bottled water really worth the destruction of our oceans and our bodies?

Quote of the Month: “Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated, and it’s a very small amount, every bit of plastic ever made still exists.” Captain Charles Moore, dedicating his life to researching the North Pacific Gyre and its effects.   

Their plan is to build two 1400 sq. ft. buildings outfitted in solar panels made by Unisolar that stick on the metal standing seam roof in long sheets between each standing seam. They will also collect all necessary water plus some off of these roofs into a tank hidden inside the corner of one building. The solar will be grid tied to PEC, but will undoubtedly cover the cost of powering their geothermal heating and cooling system and all necessary lighting requirements. Even though they will probably have enough rain water collection potential to bottle cloud juice and sell it at Glenn’s, they will only have a ten thousand gallon tank, which will take care of all of their landscaping needs and provide a water pond feature in front of the building that will become a habitat for birds and butterflies. In order to offset the building’s need to remove trees they plan to buy trees and plant them on site as well as give them to the city of Wimberley to plant elsewhere. Look at it this way, while you’re building your GREEN home and need to store your stuff, your couch can be living green long before you will!

The green guru would like to ask the City of Wimberley to strongly encourage this kind of offsetting and green decision making of all new development in the city limits. At the very least the new developments we approve should collect and be able to provide their own electrical and water needs. It’s the only way to grow in a sustainable way. Why not? Building green is cost-effective, better for our environment and just plain smart.

Quote of the Month: “While the environmental and human health benefits of green building have been widely recognized, our comprehensive report confirms that minimal increases in upfront costs of 0-2% to support green design will result in life cycle savings of 20% of total construction costs — more than ten times the initial investment. In other words, an initial investment of up to $100,000 to incorporate green building features into a $5 million project would result in a savings of $1 million in today’s dollars over the life of the building.” Aileen Adams, Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs

•    Disposable diapers contain traces of dioxin, an extremely toxic by-product of the paper bleaching process. It is a carcinogenic chemical, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals, and it’s banned in most countries, but not ours.

•    They also contain TBT, a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals.

•    And they contain sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer, which becomes a gel-like substance when wet, studies have shown that with prolonged use of disposables baby boys scrotal temperature is increased and this effects the physiological testicular cooling mechanism important for normal spermatogenesis.

•    There are an estimated 27.4 billion disposable diapers consumed every year in the U.S. This makes roughly 3.4 million tons of waste in landfills per year.

•    Disposable diapers generate sixty times more solid waste than cloth diapers and use twenty times more raw materials, like crude oil and wood pulp.

•    The resource that the disposable diaper industry was arguing they saved was water, but in fact the manufacturing and use of disposable diapers requires 2.3 times more water than cloth diapers do even with all the extra laundry you do.

•    New biodegradable brands such as Seventh Generation, offer only slightly better options, they aren’t bleached in chlorine, a process used by the leading disposable-diaper companies that emits toxins into the air and water. But contrary to popular belief, no diaper — not even biodegradable ones — can break down in an airtight landfill.
Here are the options I encountered looking for the perfect diaper system:

•    The old-fashioned cloth diaper with a cover that your grand mother and mother both used. I bought cloth diapers made from organic unbleached cotton to use for burp cloths, and diapers, we use these for all kinds of things and they are invaluable. With a cover that is a good fit they are an inexpensive and easy solution to diapering without pins.

•    Cloth diapers with adjustable closures like KissALuvs and Under The Nile that can be used with or without a cover. The KissALuvs are my favorite without a cover for when I’m home with the baby and can change him often. They are soft and natural cotton, easy to fasten and a really good fit. For covers that will work with these diapers go to www.cottonbabies.com.  

•    All in Ones, cloth diaper in side with a leak-proof cover built in like BumGenius whose one size fits all or Imse Vimse that is made in Sweden with organic cotton. These are good options for an all night diaper because they are so thick, but a little pricey for your only diaper solution. I use them at night and for nap time. My only complaint was that they seem a little harder to get clean and used a not so natural material next to my baby’s skin that works well to keep them drier at night and prevent diaper rash. My favorite is the Imse Vimse all in one made with organic cotton.

•    The g-diaper is a perfect solution for those who really like the convenience of disposables but want to do something better for the earth. Available at www.gdiaper.com, these diapers are a fantastic and easy alternative to disposables. The inserts are completely flushable so nothing goes into a landfill and the cloth covers are easy to clean and make for great diaper covers for other cloth diapers as well.

Quote of the Month: “But now, says the Once-ler, Now that you´re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” -Dr Seuss

•    The Whatever Café is a must for an organic breakfast and coffee. Don will fix you up with veggie fed eggs, bacon and sausage, an organic omelet made to order, gingerbread pancakes and more. And it’s charming to see all the personal coffee mugs stored on the shelf ready for their owners each morning. Thank you Whatever Café for serving Wimberley healthy food and bringing us the small town hangout we all crave!

•    Welcome The Leaning Pear, boy did we need this place! They serve local cheeses, local organic greens and a BBLT (bacon, brie, lettuce and tomato sandwich) that is to die for! You can’t miss the rainwater tank out front for their garden and other landscaping.

•    Linda’s Fine Food is going green, they have a garden as well, they compost their food scraps for it, and they encourage you to bring your own to go containers.

 
•    Now, Clifford’s Wine Bar is what the green guru calls a dark green on the green scale. Not only are they planning their seasonal menu to be 100% organic and local by this June, they are already halfway there! They use homemade bread, veggies and greens from our local organic Montesino Farms, one organic wine all the time, local Texas wines and Ruta Maya organic fair trade coffee. They have also started a vegetable garden in back, you can’t get more local than that!
In order to be truly green, a place of business needs to think of all the impacts it creates by being in business, not just its menu and Clifford’s has done this. They have minimized packaging by sending leftovers home on their plates to be returned, having individual cloth hand towels in the bathroom, and using green cleaning products. Thank you, Lisa, and all at Clifford’s for being here. To all the locals above: your green-ness is GREATNESS!

Quote of the Month: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing one obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller