MEAT and lead poisioning (what a nice combo!)

So after my last post on food goals, I got some helpful info from several folks, including Chelsea, Ashes, Di, and Liz!

As far as locally-raised meat goes, Ashes mentioned that she buys from Karl Baer, who sells @ the Ypsi FM during the summer and evidently still sells out here every other weekend! I tracked down his phone number, and I'm going to call him and find out some more info! I also looked up some farms on Local Harvest (great site, by the way) and found a few more meat/animal product farmers. Haven't checked them out extensivley but I will be excited to:

Imagine Cattle Company- Belleville, MI

Mira's Egg Farm- Ann Arbor, MI

Firesign Farm- Whitmore Lake, MI

Casa Del Pollo Contento- Dexter, MI
 
Also, thanks Liz for the article about lead and Urban Gardening! I will definitely have my soil tested, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that you could still grow things in raised-bed gardens, if you line them with lanscaping fabic that helps block the lead from being absorbed. It also said you could treat your soil with lime, but I don't want to raise the pH any higher than it already is- that could affect the types of plants I'm able to grow successfully. Plus I think Michigan already has a pH of 7ish, which is supposed to mitigate lead absorption.
 
So while I still want to get our soil tested to make sure, it seems like I will be able to grow something, in some way, as long as I am up for pitching in a little extra bit of money-good to know :)
 
I was reading some interesting books I got from the library on vegetable gardening. One topic I am interested in learning more about is root cellars. I think my mudroom is cold enough that it could totally store some root vegetables for a few months- Ashes and Sara and I had apples in there for at least a month or two and they were totally good!
 
Hmm.. so many exciting things to think about! :) Thanks for all the input- it's great to be able to share information with fellow foodies and hippies.

Kitchen and Mudroom remodel

Kitchen and mudroom tile is finished! Here is a before pic:

We ended up being able to use the $20 tile that my mom gave us (the yellowish one thats in the mudroom), and then we just picked what we thought was a complementary beigey tile for the kitchen. Jim (Mike's uncle who did all the work!) thought we were short a box of yellow in the mudroom, which is good because he started to think about how he could sub in a few of the beigey tiles and came up with this pattern- which we loved! So even though we found the missing
box o' tiles, we decided to have this pattern any way,
to help "connect" the two rooms.

We still need to seal the floor... I hope that will be
happening today. When I say that, I mean I hope i have the energy to do that today.

Overall I really love the tile that Jim put in.
He did a great job! Here are some after pics:

If you live in the Southeastern
Michigan region and you are looking for someone to help out with home projects, Jim Jakubowski is a great doer of stuff!

see info-
Next project- Paint the kitchen & mudroom!
We decided to go with a yellowy color called... something Daffodil. Since we are using No/low VOC paint, our color options were a little limited. We really liked most of the FreshAire paint colors from Home Depot, so we decided to go with that line of paint. I might paint the mudroom first, because a) it will allow me to feel like I am accomplishing something and b) then if I do not love love love the yellow, it will not have to go in the kitchen.

I did some work outside today too. Could not figure out how to get the lawnmower going but I DID get the weedwacker going! :) So I did some driveway trimming and wacked some of the weeds
on the front walk. Looks marginally better- how satisfying!