This is my second year as a member of the local CSA project, Soil Born Farm. Every week I get a box of fresh fruits and vegetables from the Hurley Way location, which is near my home. I ate the tomatoes and peaches before I could get the camera out — so good!

Soil Born has a farm stand this year, and they’ve just announced expanded hours, Tuesday through Friday, 3 to 7 p.m. while the extra tomatoes last. Soil Born’s farm stand is at 2140 Chase Drive in Rancho Cordova, next to Hagan Park. After all the fresh tomatoes are sold, the stand will resume regular hours, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays for the rest of the season.

A sampling of the goodies from this week’s CSA box, with the eggs I collected from my pet hens this morning:

Last month when it looked like nuclear winter around here because the smoke from wildfires blocked out the sun, I was pretty much trapped in my home. I worked at home for a couple of days, but the air quality was so bad I upped all my asthma medications and still found myself thinking about taking a trip to the emergency room.

As a lifelong asthmatic, I can attest that air quality is something that’s pretty important to me. I am the in the “sensitive groups” the air is unhealthy for on days like today.

To put it another way, I am the canary in your coal mine.

But as a person whose trying to live a “greener” life, these unhealthy days, which also often coincide with Spare the Air days, present me with a real conundrum.

On days like today, we should be walking, biking or taking public transportation, or possibly telecommuting. But what do you do if anything except driving to work in your car with all the windows up has the potential for putting you in the hospital?

I’ll tell you what you do: You drive.

But you make some choices, or at least *I* do. I put off errands I don’t have to run, until the air quality is better, and maybe I can even take my bike. (I extended the deadline on a couple of library books to allow this, and that’s easy to do online. ) I skipped running errands at lunch, and brought my lunch instead. And that grocery-store run after work? Not necessary today.

In all, I’ll put eight miles on my car today, and although it should be zero, I’m already a little ahead of the game because I’ve always chosen to live close to work to increase my transportation options.

When I can breathe outside, I will again look at those options. For today, since telecommuting wasn’t an option this time, I’m a reluctant prisoner of my car — but since I’d have to be driven to the ER if I got sick, there’s really not much of an option.

On the surface, buying a litter box doesn’t appear to have anything to do with making greener choices. But it’s a small example of how once you start looking at things differently, you can make different choices.

A few months ago, I got an automatic litterbox. This particular model takes replaceable trays made of cardboard, into which you pour a measured amount of litter crystals included in the box. Each of the trays with litter comes over-packaged in a large box, and with two cats it appeared I’d be buying two packages a month.

I liked the autobox, but hated the waste (and the expense) of the replacement cartridges.

I did some digging around, and found a couple of people who sold permanent trays for the device. Much better! All I needed to do was empty, clean and refill, no more disposing of excess packaging, no more tossing a cardboard tray.

Good enough, except … the litter the autobox uses is almost impossible to find except in the package with the cardboard tray, and other brands won’t work with the scooping mechanism.  I know this is on purpose — the bars of the scoop arm need be spaced only a little wider for any crystal litter to work. And that would mean you wouldn’t have to buy the company’s litter — you could buy any brand you like.

I have managed to find a bulk supply of the proprietary litter, so I’ll be getting out to that store when I can. But in the meantime, I was facing two unhappy cats and had to pop for the wasteful refill tray.

Whodathought open-sourcing would be important for the greening of a litter box?

Everything I do isn’t as arguably over-the-top  as adopting a flock of backyard chickens. And this is one of those times, when tapping into services that are already there and making a different choice mean small changes that add up.

Let me back up.

I am an online book-buying addict. While my book-buying habits are no doubt making the bottom lines at Amazon and Powells healthier, my house was filling up with books I never got to — and eventually gave away — and empty boxes that ended up in the recycling can. Since I’m not one of those people who loves to hold onto books, what’s the point? I read them, I’m done.

Instead of spending money, having books shipped and having boxes and packing materials to get rid of … why not use the library?

I used to use the library all the time. When I was growing up, almost every day in the summer I’d ride my Schwinn to the Clunie Libary in McKinley Park and lose myself in the stacks. The biggest reason was that I loved to read, but it was also true that the Clunie, with its vast stretches of cool flooring, was also a much more pleasant place to hang out that the oven that was my upstairs bedroom in our home on 47th Street.  (During the school year, I spent almost every lunch hour in the classroom turned library at Sacred Heart … and yes, I was one of those geeky kids.)

Despite all those formative years as a dedicated library patron, I lost interest in libraries after college. A couple years ago I gave a talk at the downtown library, but the auditorium is actually outside of the stacks, so I didn’t think about it much. Then last April, I was asked to give a book reading in the tiny Del Norte County Library in Crescent City, and while in there, I realized that was the first time I’d really been in a library in more than 20 years.

That just didn’t seem right.

But did I hustle over to the closest branch of the Sacramento Public Library first chance I got? Nope. Like any blogger, I scoped it all out on the Interwebs … and discovered that a few things had changed since they got air conditioning at the Clunie. Like how you can apply for your library card online. And how you can have books sent to your closest branch for easy pickup. And how once you’re in the library, you can use their computers for free, or bring your own laptop for access to fast, free Wi-Fi.

Oh my.

A month later, I’m a regular at my local Arden-Dimnick branch, although not the way I was in the old days. I’m a reserve-online-pick-up-and-run patron. But that’s still greener than ordering the shipping of books I never intend to keep — cheaper, too — so I was pleased with myself for putting the library in my lifestyle mix.

Except … I was driving to the libary.

Easily fixed, that.

Although I just can’t do the bike-commute thing when it comes to work, I have been working to use my comfortable commute-style bike for as many errands as I can … and the library, it turns out, is the perfect bike trip. It’s just a couple miles away, and an easy ride down mostly shaded streets with bike lanes and litler traffic. A truly pleasant trip, not just to the library but for me, back in time.

It’s a different house, a different bike, a different library branch. But once again, riding my bike to the library has become one of the great pleasures of summer.

You don’t have to have a hybrid to get good gas mileage, but you do need to be prepared to feel like an ant on the same road as dinosaurs … aggressive T-Rex sporty SUVs in the fast lane and lumbering brontosaurus family SUVs in the slow lane.

In the middle? Me, in a Mini Cooper Clubman, feeling small even next to Toyota RAV-4s and other “Cute Utes.” Next to a Suburban? I looked them right in the bumper as they lumbered by.

You need to stay on your toes when you drive an itty-bitty, because other drivers can’t see you very well from the cabins of their massive land-yachts.

I swear, at times on I-5 I felt as if I were driving in a canyon, with massive passenger vehicles forming moving walls on either side of me. Fortunately, the Mini is a BMW underneath the retro-Brit packaging, with enough vroom to get you out of any situation quickly and nimbly. You’ll need all that vroom and more when the dinosaurs drift into your lane without noticing you, time and time again.

Their days are numbered, though, and all the gas stations we passed is the reason why.

Straight freeway driving, Sacramento to San Diego, we made 38 mpg, and would have done even better had we stayed under 65, which frankly would have been a suicidal decision with traffic down valleys moving at 80-plus. Still, that was one 13.2 tank of gas (albeit premium).

Funny thing, though, it didn’t really seem that anyone driving a massive SUV was doing anything to improve the horrific fuel efficiency of their vehicles.

Go more slowly to save fuel? No way!

If any of the people driving those massive fuel-suckers had heard you can improve your fuel-efficiency by driving at 60 mpg or less, there was no sign of it. Out of pure self-defense, we went with the flow, changing lanes to let the 90 mph folks zoom by us as they loomed alarmingly quickly in the rear-view mirror.

After a couple hundred miles I was used to it, speeding up and moving over, or zooming around the big beasties to improve the safety of my position on the road. By the time I pulled back into my Sacramento driveway yesterday afternoon, the test Mini had 1,100 more miles on it, and I was utterly convinced that we once again can fall in love with comfortable, nimble and powerful little cars, without compromising anything but our sense of entitlement. (The Clubman is the Mini’s new station wagon, so you can even put your stuff in it!)

If you insist on driving a dinosaur, please …. slow down. It’ll improve your fuel-efficiency, and give you a little more time to look out for the ants you’ll be seeing more of, as people again realize that bigger isn’t better any more.

The other night on “The Daily Show,” a segment made fun of a man who lived completely off the grid – in a mud hut, with almost no clothing, eating whatever he could find, from plants in the area to road kill to garbage scrounged from Dumpsters.

That’s one way to live greenly, but I’m not at all interested, and I can’t imagine more than a dozen people in the country would be either (and one of them’s the Unibomber).

For me, the Year of Living Greenly has been about making choices that make contributions both large and small, seeing which ones are effortless and which ones have enough of a payoff to make them permanently.

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs? Easy. Done.

Putting wash out on the line to dry? Can do, will do, some of the time. Not feasible when the sun is blocked by the smoke of a thousand wildfires, but otherwise, sure, especially in the summer. That line-dried smell, though, is overrated. If you live where the air stinks, the sheets will stink. (Which is why I didn’t line-dry on the smokey days.) Doing.

Making fewer car trips? Not hard at all, nor is walking to the post office. Done. Biking? Love it, but the whole locking up the bike thing is a pain, as was the time my brother and I came out of a store and his bike was gone. (Yes, it was locked.) Sure, that can happen to a car (his truck was stolen, too), but it’s really not encouraging to have to call a friend to pick you up, either way. Doing.

Taking the bus? Hmmm … I can barely get to work on time as it is. Not done. Likely, not ever. Taking the bus adds a hour to my commute time, which is currently about 15 minutes a day. My choice has been to live close to work (four miles) and shift my work schedule off-commute to stay out of stop-and-go traffic. Not gonna, sorry.

Buying less, reusing, recycling? An unqualied success. Who knew all the crap I had in my garage? I don’t have to buy anything! Doing.

Planting a large garden, and bringing in some backyard hens to eat the waste and contribute eggs, color and compost? The hens are a blazing success. The garden I’m still working on, on bed at a time. In progress.Doing and done.

Eating less meat? Not hard as all, as is choosing to pay more for sustainably, humanely produced meat. Instead of buying XXX amount of environmentally unfriendly, cruel factory-farmed meat, I buy X amount of humanely and sustainably produced meat. Done.

OK, but given that meat is always a more carbon-unfriendly choice than a meal made of vegetable proteins, why have any meat at all?

Because I find when I go 100 zealot about something, I’m 100 percent likely to stop doing it within weeks. Small sustained changes and small, permanent decisions that don’t make me feel either smug or put upon are likely to be maintained.

Which brings us to … flexitarianism. From Slate:

There’s never been a better time to be a half-assed vegetarian. Five years ago, the American Dialect Society honored the word flexitarian for its utility in describing a growing demographic—the “vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.” Now there’s evidence that going flexi is good for the environment and good for your health. A study released last October found that a plant-based diet, augmented with a small amount of dairy and meat, maximizes land-use efficiency.

In January, Michael Pollan distilled the entire field of nutritional science into three rules for a healthy diet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” According to a poll released last week, Americans seem to be listening: Thirteen percent of U.S. adults are “semivegetarian,” meaning they eat meat with fewer than half of all their meals. In comparison, true vegetarians—those who never, ever consume animal flesh—compose just 1 percent.

Yeah, well, there I am. A flexitarian. Making choices that change things in little bits … knowing that little things all add up.

***

If you’ve noticed changes to OurGreenCommunity.org, you’re seeing our response to suggestions to make it easier to find what you want, connect with other people and help others become more green through groups and forums.

I’m going to be active in two new groups: GreenOnWheels, focusing on small cars, green cars, motorcycles and scooters (why this? Because I’m also an automotive reviewer) and GreenerEating, focusing on sustainable and environmentally friendly food choices, especially those that won’t cost you a bundle.

Honestly, I can’t believe I care about this, but I do: My whites are dingy. And my dishes aren’t really all that clean. Why? Because I’m using “environmentally friendly” products.

Products that cost more and don’t do as good a job as the ones I used to? That’s the kind of change that’s truly difficult to embrace.

To be fair, there wasn’t a problem at first. I switched over to recycled toilet paper without any problems except for spending a little more. Paper towels, I switched to real towels whenever possible and recycled paper when not possible. All good. For window- and mirror-washing, vinegar and water in a spray bottle did a better job than the blue stuff. For almost everything else, Dr. Bronner’s Pure-Castille Peppermint Soap (at varying concentrations) did just fine, good for everything from washing counters to washing dogs.

But the laundry was getting pretty dull. Colors were losing their brightness and whites were turning gray.

And even though I have a relatively new high-efficiency dishwasher that always did a pretty good job, stains were not being removed from my white everyday dishes.

The only thing that had changed, of course, was the soap I was using. Could I make a compromise here? I bought the other standards — Cascade and Tide — and started using them in rotation with the more environmentally-friendly products.

The upside: Everything looks a lot cleaner. The downside: I’m using Cascade and Tide again.

But only every few washes. In the meantime, I’m looking for an alternate solution.

Update: Grist does product testing on all the “green” laundry detergents.

Agatha, Beatrice, Charlotte, Harriet, Hester, Hazel, Isabella, Paloma and Viviana.

They’re my pet chickens, and they beyond a doubt offer more entertainment and benefits relative to the very minimal effort put into keeping them than any pet ever. They’re easy to keep, affectionate and fill my refrigerator with beautiful, fresh organic eggs. They recycle green kitchen trimmings, and they eat bugs. They’re quiet and amazingly clean.

What more could you want?

By popular demand, here’s more information on my chicken set-up. Click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

Picture 1: The entire operation

For anyone with basic carpentry skills, my chicken area would have been an easy do-it-yourself project. As it was, I had a couple of guys come over an put it together for $400, including materials. If you have lumber leftover from another project, you could save even more.

On the left (At No. 2) you see the original coop, $119 at a garden center. The one I wanted was $270, but that was more than I was willing to spend. Two months later, the plastic shed I was originally looking at was on sale for … $119, display model only. So I put the bigger shed in the yard and moved the smaller one next to the compost bin, where it’s now used for storing the chicken feed and supplies. I think the run overall is something like 6 feet by 18 feet. By day, the chickens have the run of the larger, but still fenced, garden area, which is about three times larger.

Right now a tarp provides shade on the side and a piece of particle board does the same on top. Before winter, those will be upgraded with a higher-quality tarp/wind and rain shield, and a piece of fiberglass roofing.

Picture 2: Inside the run

A chicken’s eye view inside the run. You can see the food/water containers at No. 4, and free-feed oyster shell calcium (for stronger shells) at No. 6. No. 1 is the storage shed, so you can see where you were and where you are now.

You can get a glimpse of the open space behind my house through the gaps in the fence. For winter I plan to drop in a something behind the coop to block the wind and rain. For now, though, the additional ventilation really helps on these hot summer days.

There’s plenty of room inside the chicken run for nine chickens, but of course they’re only locked in the run at night, for safety. Once I’m sure the dogs will leave them alone — they don’t show any interest, really — the hens will additionally get the run of the larger fenced yard outside the garden gate.

Picture 3: Inside the coop

As with the run itself, a person with basic carpentry skills could have knocked together something easy from scrap lumber for the coop.

Instead, I picked up a plastic storage building from the hardware store. It works great, with a roof that lifts up and doors that swing out for easy egg-collection and coop cleaning.

The two cat carriers are the laying boxes, although I’m looking for something more shallow so I can fit three laying boxes in. The hens like these fine, though, so maybe I’ll just let them be.

What I do need is to put some perches into place inside for better roosting. My neighbor cut some bamboo for me, but again, my lack of skills and tools means I’ll have to get someone over to put the roosts in.

Now, I leave the roof and the right-side door closed. For winter, I want to cut a simple door in one of the front doors and put a light flap over the hole. That’ll make the coop better able to protect the hens from the elements. For now, though, the extra ventilation works great.

The chicken routine:

Every morning first thing I let the chickens out into the fenced garden, and make sure they have ample fresh food and water. I usually give them the green kitchen trimmings at this time, too. This takes about five minutes, 10-15 if I hang out and pet the chickens, which I usually do.

I check for eggs a couple times in the morning when I’m at home, and check at lunch when I’m at work. Under optimum conditions, I get six eggs a day. Last week, I got nothing for four days, because of the extreme heat and the smoke from the fires (I was worried that I would lose chickens, they looked so miserable). I should get far fewer eggs in winter. Although you can use lightbulbs to trick their bodies into continuing to lay, I’ll probably just let them do what come naturally for them.

At night, I lure them back into the run with a couple handfuls of cracked corn and a couple verses of “Good Night, Ladies” (click for the Buffalo Bills version from “The Music Man.”

Weekly, I take all the old hay out of the coop and run with a steel rake, put about a flake of fresh hay down and put the old stuff in the compost pile. That takes about 10 minutes.

I buy grass hay by the bale (10-12 flakes to the bale, $20 a bale)and organic chicken feed ($20), cracked corn ($22) and oyster-shell calcium ($12) by the 50 pound bag. A bag of feed lasts 6-8 weeks, and I have enough calcium to last forever. I use cracked corn as treats, so that will last a long time, too. The greens they get are leftovers that would have been thrown away or put directly into the compost bin.

Does it “pencil out” over the price of buying even free-range organic eggs? Not on a purely financial basis, at least not until the set-up has been up and running for a couple of years. But on balance, I’m very happy with my little flock and would recommend the experience to anyone.

As far as breeds go, there’s no doubt the Rhode Island Reds are my favorites. They’re the most outgoing overall and the most attentive to me, and they’re the steadiest layers of the lot, putting down one pink-brown egg a day, almost without fail (heat wave aside). The Americuanas are interesting for their colored eggs, but they’re the most aloof from me and the flock, and their egg-laying is erratic. Somewhere in the middle are the Barred Plymouth Rocks and the Delaware, in terms of friendliness and steady egg-laying. I can’t figure out the Buff Orphington at all. Harriet is pretty, but she isn’t very bright or friendly, and she doesn’t lay much. That may be just her, though.

My neighbor Judy came to the same conclusion independently of her flock — the Rhodies rule. It’s interesting to note that she raised her hens from chicks and I bought mine as young layers, and yet we rank our preferences the same.

The chicken coop (click on the picture to see it larger) was finished a couple weeks ago, and the chickens took to it right away. They settled down and started laying, three-four eggs every day. The three Americunas are not as regular with their pretty green eggs as the other three hens are with their brown ones, but already I get enough eggs to cover my needs and even give eggs away.

Like my pet rabbit, the pet chickens are a great way to dispose of green waste from the kitchen. They’ll happily eat any veggie trim you give them! I scattered orchard grass (from Western Feed, I already buy it by the bale every few months for the bunny) on the dirt of the chicken area. They love to pick through that and the hay is easy to rake up and put on the compost pile along with their droppings. Garbage out, eggs and lovely compost back — it’s a great deal!

After covering the pet-food recalls last year and finding out how everything that can’t in any way pretend to be food for people or pets ends up in livestock feed, I haven’t exactly been thrilled with the sacks of “laying blend” available locally. Fortunately, I found a humane, organic and sustainable chicken operation in Yolo County — Lucky Bird Farm — and asked them for a source of organic chicken feed. They pointed down Highway 99, to where Modesto Milling provides the goods. I’ll be heading south soon to get a supply for the next few months. I love how once you start looking for answer to greener living, people are so happy and willing to share information!

Last week with the heat wave I worried about the hens. About a third of the run is well-shaded, but still … it was hot. With constant access to cool, shaded water, they did just fine and never stopped laying. I’m sure they’re glad for the break from the triple-digits for a while, though. (And aren’t we all?)

I continue to be delighted with the addition of the backyard layers. The chickens are fun, easy to care for and much, much quieter than many a neighborhood dog. One of the hens, the Barred Plymouth Rock I’ve named Charlotte, is also quite the little love bug. She follows me around, likes to be held and enjoys being petted, especially getting a little scritch in the spot where her neck meets her body.

Since I started writing about my little flock, I’ve been hearing from others who are also new to chicken-keeping. Once you have the coop and run set-up and your garden growing to use the compost and get trimmings for the birds, chickens will eventually pencil out in terms of lovely fresh eggs and entertainment, especially if the humane treatment of animals matters to you as it does to me.  If you’re handy, you can get set-up for a lot less than I spent, since I had to pay for both materials and labor.

Because chickens don’t lay forever, I’m already planning for next year. My neighbor is raising a half-dozen chicks  — two Americuna, two Silver-Laced Wyandottes and a Rhode Island Red — to add to my flock of hens when they’re large enough. The practical option for “worn-out” layers is to make chicken pot pie out of them, but I’m thinking that’s not going to happen here. At least not to sweet Charlotte.

Want to attract a crowd? It’s easy: Drive a GMC Yukon Hybrid. I did exactly that over the weekend, taking GM’s attempt to keep everyone quasi-happy to San Francisco and back.

People stared as if I were riding on a two-headed llama. The parking attendants at the hotel in SF where I was having a business meeting fought over who’d get to drive it, asked to poke around in it after they brought it back out and finally asked for my business card so they could read the online review later.

On the way home, I stopped for coffee and came out to find a crowd around it.

“Is it really a hybrid?” said one of the gawkers.

Yes, and it says so in no less than eight places, some in letters six inches tall.

Reactions were mixed, to say the least. Drivers of the Toyota Prius tended to look at me sideways on the freeway with an air of, “Oh, who are you kidding, lady?” Except, the looks were sideways and deferential because they didn’t want to make my angry, considering that I was driving a vehicle that could crush them like an overripe organic strawberry, hybrid or not. Most people in parking lots asked about the gas mileage (around 20 mpg) and the price ($50K plus).

Oh yeah, and how does it drive?

Like a massive SUV, that’s how. And I’m always kind of amazed at two things that may in part explain why people like SUVs so much, despite the fact that I personally always feel as if I’m driving a wallowy hippo:

1) When you’re driving a massive SUV and you put on your turn signal to change lanes people tend to get out of the way. This may be because they assume you can’t see them — although the sight lines on the Yukon are pretty good, considering — or it may be because they figure anyone who’d drive a massive hunk of glossy black metal the size of a Manhattan studio apartment has absolutely no problem with throwing his weight around.

2) When you’re driving a massive SUV, you start realizing that, in fact, you eventually do have absolutely no problem throwing your weight around. And having “Hybrid” on the sides doesn’t make you any nicer.

I don’t like the person I am when I drive a big SUV, but your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Last night, we took the Yukon Hybrid out to dinner, since my brother wanted to check out the big beastie.

“Really,” he said, “if it didn’t say “hybrid” you couldn’t tell the difference. It’s more of an “earth-bully than an earth-fu …[you'll have to finish that yourself, this being a G-rated blog].”

And I guess that’s the point. People who like driving around in big, powerful, well-equipped SUVs might be able to feel just a little bit greener about driving a hybrid Yukon. And people who hate big SUVs will not warm up to a hybrid earth-fubully, no matter what.

But if you do get a chance to drive one, be sure you’re in a mood to talk to strangers, because I guarantee that strangers are going to be in a mood to talk to you.