on cleaning clothes

I no longer use a washing-machine powered by electricity. Instead, I have developed a series of buckets in which I clean my clothes, a system that works fairly well. To start, I fill up an old cat litter bucket – one that is clean, squat, and wider than the average contractor's bucket – with the clothes I wish to wash, a dollop of detergent, and water. Usually, I allow this brew to sit for many hours out on the deck so that the soap and water can impregnate the fibers and make cleaning easier. Such long soakings (which make up phase 1) work fine in summer; in winter, however, they find me cleaning my clothes in the evenings, the cold and the dark conspiring with the dirty, frigid water in which my garments have been sitting to make for a miserable task. Now, I process a load in one go, the wash and the rinse cycles following one another closely rather than being spaced out over an entire day.

I agitate the clothes in the squat bucket by poking one side down with a long bamboo pole (a broomstick will also work during this, phase 2), forcing the items down on one side, which pushes them up on the other and allows me to mash the garments thoroughly. After I see a particular shirt or item for the third or fourth time, I put aside my stick and drop a skinnier bucket into the squat one (skinnier in that its bottom goes all the way down to the bottom of the wider bucket), this one with many holes drilled into its bottom and sides. I sit on the top of the skinner bucket, thus forcing the water from the clothes using my own weight. Once I am satisfied with this rudimentary straining, I take the skinnier bucket back out and resume poking at the clothes with my poker, rotating them around and around until they seem well agitated. (The water at this point will be oily, brownish, and filled with tiny particles of sweat, skin, and dirt.) I usually agitate and strain at least three times before dumping out what water I can and moving on to phase 3.

Phase 3 involves putting the skinnier bucket back into the squat bucket but then flipping both over together so that the water runs out. Then, I sit on the bottom of the squat bucket, using my own weight to strain the clothes against the skinnier bucket (which, again, has holes drilled into its bottom and sides). This forces much of the remaining water out of the clothes; I get even more out by rocking back and forth and by shifting position on the bottom of the squat bucket, which allows trapped pockets of water to escape onto the wooden deck, which must be swept off afterward to keep it from rotting quite so quickly. I generally give the clothes a visual check at this point, and a close smelling, to see if they need a third rinse or if the are clean enough to move on to phase 4. This last phase involves taking the wet items from the squat bucket and hanging them up to dry on my clothes-spider, a retractable hanger that perches at the edge of the deck far enough from the house so that the water dripping from the clothes does not seep into the foundation or moisten the siding. I usually leave the clothes there to drip their remaining moisture onto the grass; if I am lucky, they get an additional from the rain. Once the clothes are mostly dry, I move them to lines under the roof of the upper, front porch, where they are allowed to dry fully before being taken in, folded, and put away.

Cleaning clothes in the manner described above takes more time than with an electrical washing-machine; it uses virtually no electricity, however, it is all but silent, and it provides the washer with a good upper-body workout. The cost for the buckets, soap, and poker is less than $20, but the ability to wash one's clothes – without electricity or undue physical strain – is nearly priceless. Regain a slice of independence through honest effort! Mahalo.

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lazy organic gardening

(Most of the knowledge passed on in this article comes from a few dozen Organic Gardening magazines I found in a dust-and-cobweb-covered stack in the barn. While printed in the late 1970s and early '80s, they contain timeless wisdom and much good advice.)

Throughout the spring and summer of 2012, this author has been conducting an experiment in lazy organic gardening (LOG). Among the benefits of LOG are a decreased workload, a drastic reduction in gardening-related stress, and three gardening plots nearly indistinguishable from their neighbors, wildflower-filled fallow fields. The inspiration for this method came in part from the Tao Teh Ching, specifically verse 7, in which Lao Tzu (via Jonathan Star, who provides the best translation of the text I have yet found) asks what an individual could do that the universe has not already accomplished for him, or her. Liking the sound of this notion and attempting to put it into practice, I started by digging out the plots to sixteen inches before setting in a three-inch-thick layer of composted leaves and grass, to which I added generous handfuls of bio-charred bamboo (wood-charcoal works just as well) before piling the dug-out soil back on. When planting, I applied thick layers of mulch around each newly-transplanted seedling (mulch was mostly cut grass with some leaves and twigs mixed in). (Next year, I shall raise my seedlings in a cold frame in hopes of a greater success rate, which this year was a dismal 15%). Then, I stepped away and waited, watering the plots (partly via small-scale drip irrigation) only when the first six inches of soil dried out.

Among the benefits of thick and early mulching include almost no weed growth and preservation of the soil's inherent, natural moisture balance. Bio-charring contributed to the vigorous and healthy growth of those few plants that survived my poor seedling-raising protocols, among them crook-neck squash, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, string beans, and green peppers. Pollination occurred quickly at both plot sites (two near the house, the other across the stream), given their proximity to large growths of jewel-weed, native and healing grasses (plantago lanceolata, p. major, taraxacum offinale, oxalis acetosella), and patches of wild blackberries that attract legions of industrious honey-bees which have made this little valley their home. At no point in the plants' life-cycles did this whorphan pull weeds, pick bugs, or apply chemical agents; the plants were left at the mercy of Mother Nature, who was fair in her attentions, sending pest-eating paper wasps to patrol the crops but also blighting a number of plantings, among them the cabbage and broccoli, which were completely destroyed. (This was an attempt to put the Taoist verse referenced above into practice by allowing the universe to grow the plants and to keep them healthy.)

For next year's growing seasons, I plan to take things further by trying a no-till method in which seedlings are transplanted directly into small, watered, composted holes in the lawn itself. Furthermore, I shall plant directly into the plot I made by dropping a four-layer-thick pad of cardboard (pizza boxes) onto the lawn and covering it with twelve inches of grass and leaves. (The original foot of material has composted itself down to just few inches, which I have covered with another foot of the same.) I aim to find (and perpetuate) varieties that grow well both in this clay-filled soil and in the local atmospheric variances, which include high summer heat, soggy springs and falls, and windy, cold winters. The ultimate coup for this lazy organic gardener would be to make tame crop species wild again so that they would offer their bounty to anyone passing by, blessing the bodies of persons-in-the-know with organic roughage and healthful trace minerals and strengthening the immune systems of persons brave enough to eat unwashed produce straight from the ground. Such is the life of the organic whorphan, he who would rather watch his plants get eaten alive than break out noxious chemicals; but to pump complex compounds into the soil and the air would be to try to do for myself what the universe has already accomplished, which, for now, is an abundance of fresh, organic vegetables. Huzzah, and, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit