Line Drying in Winter

I have been line drying my clothes for quite a while now. It started in college and I was too poor to pay for drying my clothes. (Because really, beer was more important than soft dryer-dried clothing!) When I moved to California shortly after college I found myself poor, and simply unwilling to pay so much to the dryer, so I continued hanging dry my clothes. And in arid and hot California waiting for clothing to air dry was rarely an issue. Even when I was forced to hang clothing inside to dry.

But now I live in Michigan. The state where the sun never shines. OK, that is a little misleading - the sun is shining brightly right now, but it is rocking 25 degrees outside. That is my problem. How do you hang clothing outside to dry when it is below freezing? Or when it is raining?

Let me back up a bit too. I live in a subdivision. However, I am lucky and can hang out clothing to dry. Apparently the bylaws in most subdivisions forbid line drying clothing. (According to laundrylist.org - which has an awesome energy and cost calculator for washing and drying laundry; check it out!) Who'd a thunk something as simple and basic as drying laundry would be regulated by neighbors!! Good Grief!! But I digress ....

FM absolutely hates my line drying clothing. In our last house we compromised and a small line was eventually hung in an out of site spot in our back yard. But our current house does not have an "out of sight" spot, and therefore we went round and round about my laundry line.

He flat out refused to put one up for me. So, left to my own devices, and trying to respect his feelings and be true to me (finding that balance everywhere in my life!) I finally made a small line just outside my walk-out basement door. It works great; it is convenient to the washer, holds a full load of laundry, and is relatively hidden by shrubbery and the house.

But it is outside and in the elements. And lets face it, MI has plenty of elements to interfere with outside line drying! So now I am trying to figure out a way to bring in this line and still manage my laundry needs for a family of four. And keep the wonderful FM happy.

And What About Meat?

My immediate family is not vegetarian; we usually eat meat at one or two meals a day, and only have a meat-free meal one day a week or so. These meet-free meals are not conscious choices, they just happen. Lately I have been forced to contemplate the impact of our meat eating choices. There simply has been way too much chatter out there in the universe regarding not only the ethical aspect of eating meat, but also the environmental aspect.

First, some background on me. I grew up on a farm where, during various points in time, we raised chickens, beef cattle, and hogs. This was a very small operation, as farming was my dad's "hobby," but still we had 100 hogs all throughout high school, and as a junior high student I frequently had 25ish hens for egg laying.

Our neighbors, however, were all full time farmers, eking out a living from the land. One neighbor had a dairy farm. Another neighbor had a decent poultry flock, selling eggs at farmers market as well as butchered chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks - which I frequently helped kill and clean. So, I am intimately familiar with the small, Mom & Pop method of raising animals.

But the small farm operation is becoming a rarity. Large "livestock mills" are taking over our livestock production. Computers are making it easier to automate feeding, milking, cleaning, butchering and virtually everything related to taking care of and processing animals. My "reality" of farm life is really an outdated mode. (which says a lot about my age as well as the development of our food chain!)

I am forced to rethink my values. My knowledge of what happens in the large farms is really unknown. Yes, I have seen documentaries, and heard stories. But really, that is all second hand. I do not *know* how these animals are treated and raised. And this is beginning to bother me. On many levels.

I do care about how the animals are treated. I do not expect livestock to be catered to like a family pet, yet I do expect the food I eat to have been treated with respect and care ... like all our animals were on the family farm. We named some, simply because you notice personalities after taking care of them every day for months in a row.

When one was acting "different" I took the time to see if it was sick, which in hind sight, sick animals were really rare on the family farm. But they were kept clean, and fed and watered almost individually. They were able to roam outside, and come inside for shelter if the weather was cold, wet, or hot. They were able to eat grass, bugs, or whatever their "natural" diet should be. Granted we fed them grain (a whole 'nother topic of discussion) and other supplements, but they were allowed, heck - encouraged - to eat on their own too.

So, now I am looking at the rows and rows of meat in my local grocery store, and I am becoming more and more turned off. Where did this stuff come from? What kind of life did it have? And how much of the animal was cast aside as "by-product" because we Americans only eat the prime cuts of meat. Lets not even get into the carbon footprint of raising these animals, because that is a big issue I am dealing with too. Large farms concentrate waste in small areas. Sigh.

I do like meat, and I cannot imagine changing that part of my diet right now. And, what would that do to our economy too? If a large sum of people stopped consuming meat, what happens to our farmers that are part of that food chain? I have thought of only buying local meat, from farmers I know and trust. And using the entire animal. But what IS the entire animal? Do I make headcheese from a pig? Do I pickle heart and tongue? (Well, I actually do like that, but liver, blech!!)

Anyway, I am just contemplating how I am going to rectify my dietary concerns with my ethical concerns. It is a big issue to contemplate and come up with an appropriate response, one that I feel comfortable with. Because right now, I do not have a good answer.