Living in Suburbia

I love our neighborhood. We have a park that is perfect for running, rollerblading, walking, playing sports, or climbing on the jungle gym. We are an easy mile walk to Main Street. The houses are not huge, but not too close together, either.

Our neighborhood is also very attractive to all sorts of door-to-door people. We get:

• Salesmen: lawn care, pest control, home improvement, books, magazines, and (of course) Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout hoagie sales. The last two don't bother us as long as we know the kids.
• Religious groups traveling in pairs: Jehovah Witnesses to Baptists, often on Sunday mornings when the heathens are home. What they don't know, is we often go to an evening worship service.
• Political Groups: the kind that won't leave any literature behind unless you first give them a donation and sign their forms. Hmm...
• Entrepreneurs: people who can identify a specific need and have a short term solution -- ideally one that does not cost us anything.

Last week we had one of the latter people knock on our door. A high school-aged kid, roaming around the neighborhood with his dad and a pick up truck saw our old treadmill next to the trash. He asked if he could have it for scrap metal. Since we had been planning on taking said treadmill to the scrap metal heap that weekend, we were glad to give him that PLUS the pile we had been collecting in the garage.

They were thrilled to have metal to add to their collection. We were thrilled to have it out of our house. The last time I explored collecting money for our scrap metal I was told I needed 100 pounds of it. Instead, I often give it to the last person in line. This saved me the drive to Trenton.

A win-win for everyone -- including Mother Earth.

Trash Walk

Most mornings after the bus picks up Ashley behind our house, I take a 3/4 mile stroll through the neighborhood and take the long way back to our house. Most mornings I see litter (especially along Bergen Street where the backs of the houses face the street instead of the fronts). Most mornings I tell myself to bring a bag with me to clean up the litter.

Today was the day I finally remembered to bring that bag.

Part of me felt guilty carrying a single-use plastic bag with me, after all I've really been trying to cut down on our collection. This was particularly true as I passed a fellow committee member who has been much more successful with his efforts to ban plastic from his life than I ever will be.

Other part of me, the part that was happy to be doing something nice for the neighborhood won out. The overall pile was not very big, but on Monday when I take the same walk, I'll be happy to not see the same old trash AGAIN.

If we each do something small, together we can save the planet.

Small Changes to Help the Environment

There are many websites out there with tips for helping the environment. This is just a short list of small things we are doing. Please share with us what you are doing to help save the planet for the next generations. Together we can make a difference.

1) Just say no to plastic bags! 

Once I started to think about it, buying one item and getting a plastic bag for it just did not make sense under most circumstances. Sure there are times it is raining out, and you want that extra layer of protection. I'm thinking about those times you pop into a store for one item (for me, it was making a copy of a key) and you leave with that item, plus a bag. Do you always need that bag? Even better...bring your own bags and cut down on the clutter in your home. Support NJ Senate Bill S-812 to have a 5-cent fee on all single use bags by clicking HERE.

2) Handkerchiefs

Don realized he was carrying tissues and napkins for those times he needed to blow his nose (or the times Ashley had a sneeze). The tissues and napkins would then end up in the laundry, making a giant mess. His solution was very old-school: carry a handkerchief. If it ends up in the laundry, it is no big deal, plus he is not wasting paper.

3) Cat litter containers

It seems every couple of months, Don comes up with a new use for those cat litter containers each of us cat owners accumulate. Cat lovers know these -- they are big enough to seem useful, but how? We use one as a trash can, another to collect recycling, a third for composting, a fourth for gardening tools (who cares if it gets dirty?), and a fifth one he attached to the back of his bike to carry milk cartons back from Halo. This week he figured out a way to attach a lock to one to make it seem more protected (yes, if someone really wants in, they will find a way). Here is a link to many more uses for these containers.

4) Live Local

Support the local businesses near to your home. Chances are you are already meeting these local business owners at church, school, in the park, etc. By supporting their businesses, it helps them to be able to continue living nearby.

5) Attend a local Eco-Fair

As luck would have it, I'm on the planning committee for the Living Local Expo taking place March 23, 2013 from 12-4 at Lawrence High School. Come out to learn more ways to live local and help the environment.

Cherry Grove Farm

I recently wrote about the community composting program at Cherry Grove Farm. This was our third Sunday dropping off compost. Best as we can tell, we are the only people depositing our food scraps. As someone at Cherry Grove Farm pointed out to me, many of their customers already compost. I'd like to encourage my local friends to drop off your food scraps and keep them out of the trash heaps.

Before school started, Ashley and I toured Cherry Grove Farm. They offer community tours each Friday afternoon at 2 PM. You can also schedule a tour for a school group for a fee. 

The farm consists of 230 acres of certified organic farmland. I should have written down the numbers when I was at the farm. Please forgive my faulty memory on the exact numbers. They have approximately 60 milking cows (two of the "girls" were about to have calves when we were at the farm), and another 40 Hereford cows. All are grass-fed. Only the Hereford are being raised for dinner.

Our tour coincided with the time the cows come home to be milked. Farmer Kelly made it look easy. He shows up at the same time each day on his tractor and the girls line up to be milked. After running a bunch of tests, the girls are milked around 3 PM each day, which is open to the public to watch. There is also a 3 AM milking, but I suspect no one turns out for that milking.

The cows both mow and "fertilize" the pastures. As one pasture gets low (after a few weeks) the girls are rotated to a different pasture.

In addition to the cows, the farm also has 1000 egg-laying (i.e., not for dinner) pasture raised chickens. Come on Wednesdays for the best supply of eggs, since the farm is closed on Tuesdays.

The farm tries to be sustainable. They encourage local tree cutters to drop their wood at the farm, this way the tree surgeons avoid paying a fee to deposit the trees in a landfill, and the farm uses it to heat the store, the cheese facility and Kelly's farmhouse. A win-win for all as everyone walks away thinking they got the best end of the deal. 

For someone who grew up in Paramus, and has lived in the area for *gasp* nearly 25 years now, I am still amazed a farm of this size (400 acres of land) is able to survive and thrive only a couple of miles away from I-95 and Route 1. The cheese is available in many local stores. Inside their store, they support local businesses, such as our neighbor, Dan the Mustard Man, winner of the worldwide mustard competition.

Located on Route 206, just north of Lawrenceville Main Street (and a few miles south of Princeton), come out and support a local business until "the cows come home" (you knew I couldn't resist that!).

A composting we will go

For a while now, Don and I have been thinking the next step in our becoming eco-friendly should be composting. Trouble is, the more we read up on composting, the more confused we become. Composting sites range from it is super easy (just toss it all in a pile in your back yard) to it is a science and you must have the right proportions of food to yard clippings to leaves in order for it work properly. 

My hunch is successful composting falls somewhere in-between the extremes. After all, doesn't most of life fall in-between the extremes?

Members of Sustainable Lawrence have been working with the township to set up a pilot program where a truck would circulate around the neighborhoods and pick up composting from each family, similar to how they already pick up our trash and recycling. Princeton is currently running a similar pilot program. 

If the town supported composting program goes through, that would be the ideal. It would accept everything that was once alive -- from the normal compost items (such as egg shells, tea bags, and leaves) to pizza boxes and weeds that currently end up in our trash.

While that fight continues, Cherry Grove Farm on Route 206 (2.25 miles from our home) recently implemented a community composting program. We collect our food scraps all week in a container of our choice (we choose an empty cat litter container) and dump it in their grey trash container. The farm adds in grass clippings, natural "fertilizer," and their own food scraps. The mess and stench is contained to their property (for which I believe our neighbors should be grateful). Best of all, we are not cluttering the landfill with something that can serve a better purpose and is expensive for the township to haul away from our curb.

It has only been two weeks thus far. The farm only accepts drop-offs from 10-2 on Sundays from now through November. Yes, there is a downside to everything. On the other hand, maybe this will help us to develop a good, life-long habit.   

For more information about the Cherry Grove Farm composting project go to: http://www.cherrygrovefarm.com/2012/08/community-composting-at-cherry-grove-farm/

Main Street, part 2

After an intense month of studying Main Streets, and interviewing unsuccessfully for the position of Executive Director of Lawrenceville Main Street, I've gathered some thoughts as to what I would need to have within a mile of my home to live car-light.

• Library -- we go nearly everyday to our local branch
• Church
• Small grocery store -- something with more than junk food in it so I can pick up a few items
• Ice cream shop
• Card shop with small gifts
• Schools -- growing up in Paramus I didn't realize the luxury of walking to the middle and high school, especially with after school activities
• Park -- for Ashley to play in, for running, cycling
• Entertainment -- community theater, art gallery
• Locally owned restaurants that are reasonably priced

The ideal probably does not exist. Princeton is pretty close to perfect -- the high taxes, though, dampen its perfection.

Newtown, PA also has a lot to offer, but the high school is not near any homes.

Wish Media, PA had the high school closer to the middle school as their Main Street has a nice combination of businesses and services.

Of course as a Disney fan, the term "Main Street" makes me think of Disneyland. Main Street, USA has a town hall, opera house, bakery, restaurants, shops, mailboxes, and Ragtime Robert at Coke Corner. No schools, though, which probably adds to its feeling of perfection in the eyes of children.

Main Street

I try to keep our blog very upbeat and fun. I have some thoughts that I want to share that deviate from my normal pattern. This is the first of the blogs where I will address social issues rather than fun things to do in our area. It also answer the "elephant in the room" question of "you haven't been updating your blog, so what have you been doing lately?"


Earlier in the year I interviewed for the position of Executive Director of the Lawrenceville Main Street. Sadly, I did not get the position. Perhaps even worse, the position went to a friend, hence the reason for bottling up my feelings and only sharing them with people who nearby when it happened. A couple of months later, it still hurts.


When I learned the former director was retiring, I wasn't even looking for a job. I was writing a couple of articles a week for the Lawrenceville Patch, volunteering a bit and keeping everything running smoothly at home. The more I interviewed for the position the more I fell in love with it. Unfortunately it took until after the final interview before I could articulate to myself what I loved about the position. Yeah, bad timing as I did not sell myself well enough to get the position. Also bad because I've idealized that position and it makes it harder to find a new one that is nearly as good.


The experience made me think a lot about what I want in a Main Street. Specifically what would need to be walking distance from my house in order for me to be able to leave my car at home. For my purposes, walking distance is within a mile, ideally with sidewalks or wide shoulders.


The topic became a little more timely today as I read the following NPR article:


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/04/16/150586667/americans-do-not-walk-the-walk-and-thats-a-growing-problem?sc=tw


Americans do not walk and that's a GROWING problem -- get the pun? 


I have a pedometer. I often walk 10,000 steps a day, including runs. Yesterday I walked and ran 17,185 steps. The day before it was only 4,024 (we took a road trip to Delaware). To walk in suburbia often means exercising. How much better would life be if we could walk to more errands? If our walks had a purpose? If we could leave our cars at home and get out and walk?


When most people don't get a dream job they continue their job search to find an even better one. We used the rejection to look into moving someplace cheaper -- just about any place is cheaper than NJ. Don is fortunate in that he can transfer to a different office within Comcast, so as long as our search was within a commutable distance to Mount Laurel, NJ or West Chester, PA we were fine. The dream began with "if we could sell our house in Lawrenceville and buy a new home without a mortgage, what would that be like?"


The search took us to two states: Delaware and Pennsylvania. The search ended with us deciding to stay in Lawrenceville at least a little longer.


Wilmington, DE -- we focused on the Brandywine section of town, not downtown
PROS: cheap property taxes ($2,000 a year), nice communities, no sales tax, highly rated school district, an active Roots and Shoots program for Ashley, one hour from our parents, a wonderful church (we attended a service in Wilmington), excellent library system


CONS: no Main Street area near the schools, no chance of Don biking to work -- even though the distance is shorter, no Wegmans, most of my life would still be in the car to run errands


Media, PA -- my favorite town
PROS: fabulous downtown area complete with a trolley to Philadelphia, excellent schools, possibly bike-able for Don, still within that hour to where our parents live, vibrant downtown


CONS: no houses for sale, taxes not as low as Wilmington, could not live in one house and be able to walk to both the middle and the high schools


West Chester, PA 
PROS: excellent schools, bustling downtown, college town, friends live nearby, Don's office is in the town


CONS: farther from parents, not much parking, not pedestrian or car-friendly, grocery store separated from town by giant signs saying "do not cross street," higher taxes


Wayne, PA
PROS: excellent schools, friends live in town and rave about it


CONS: Main Street has a four-lane highway going through it, I felt like I was in a mall with a bunch of cars (about half the places seemed to be corporate America stores and restaurants and half were individually owned), the houses we saw were pricier than other towns, higher taxes.


Phoenixville, PA:
PROS: new middle school being built next to a new high school (one house = walking distance to both for Ashley), terrific free charter school in town


CONS: 90 minutes from parents, only way to get to Phoenixville from Mercer County is via the PA Turnpike, could not tell if town was on the way up or the way down


Kennett Square, PA
PROS: mushroom capital of the world (just kidding!), vibrant downtown with lots of activities, near Delaware (no shopping tax)


CONS: mixed reviews on the school system, still not bike-able for Don's commute, we had troubles finding a reasonably priced lunch, it is 75-minutes from family


If you really did read all of my ramblings, a lot of it came down to how un-bike friendly Pennsylvania is in general. New Jersey and Delaware toggle between being 10th and 11th in the country for bike friendliness. Pennsylvania ranks in the middle. The roads are too narrow. There are No Crossing, and other pedestrian un-friendly signs. As much as I loved some of the downtowns (especially Media) we still would not be able to live without a car.


We want to live someplace where we could live car-light, yet still have a garage and a driveway (i.e., not ready to move to a city). A smaller yard and a smaller home would be great.


Who knows what the future will bring. For now we are proudly living in Lawrenceville.