Thursday, October 23, 2008

I am doing fine

This is from left to right, darren, phil and me. they come up to my sight to hang out and see my awesome pad.

This is what we in the family call "west chicago". thats for you dad. i even did the whole west chicago voice when my and my roomate were cooking it. so whenever we fry random things on the skillet he asks if we are going to be making some west chicago.

Thats my roomate on the far right. to his left is his friend, and then two other volunteers david in the plad and andrew at 12 o'clock. just enjoying a nice dinner at our aparment


look at the joy west chicago brings to his face!

October 16, 2008
First of all happy birthday dad. You’re a great man and I am happy to have you as a father. So just to clear some stuff up, no I am not dead. Sorry I kind of fell off the blog universe for a while but in all actuality I kept waiting cause there wasn’t really anything I wanted to say. I Am done with recapping my day to day and try to just put down thoughts as they come. To be honest they just were not coming. It was kind of the same old same old day in and out. Start the day, go to work, research some stuff for any kind of project that I could do with my organization and coming up empty.

Quick ideas I was bouncing around on involved dabbling into some cash cropping. This type of marry gold that is being purchased by a pharmaceutical company that uses the oil for different types of medicines. They offer to buy the oil at a set price so there is no risk about the price falling at the end of the harvest. It had some promise to it only it just ran out of steam. I had my partner all sold on it to a skeptical point but closer then I have sold him on anything else. Finally I convinced him enough to peak his interest to the point he asked me to do a forecasts on the profits that could be had. He also made it clear this would not be a seminar to that we would show others how to do this but would be a business for him. The project ran out steam once we hit our first obsticale that we need a plant that can process the seed from the mary golds and turn it into oil. We assumed we can use this plant in Balti to the south of us but we were unclear if we could use the same machine that would do this with sunflowers and make it work for our needs. It’s a Russian company and I can’t talk to them in Romanian. My partner just kind wussed out on calling them and we left it at that.

Also tried to push for combining three different crops on one plot of land. The first would be a walnut orchard. In between the walnut trees would be plumb trees along the same rows. And in between the rows would be the mary golds. In the plan it would allow a person to take out credit to pay for the different inputs. Because to take out credit requires you pay it back really quickly if not in one year be able to pay it back you need a quick returning investment. So you use the cash crop of mary golds and get your investment back and use that money to fund your orchard, where after 4 years you can begin recouping your investment. If that whole thing doesn’t make sense I am talking with my host brother about how he needs to cook these cookies in the oven and he keeps interrupting me. … [end thought]

10.24.08

Ok im back on board. Today is moving a long a good pace. Let me see where I last ended… uh huh. Ok so I was explaining some of the things im trying to do at my work without success. Ok well recently im really starting to pick up pace on this whole composting idea. I have been bouncing around with this for sometime and only receiving crap from my partners. I decided against including them. I have this book lasagna gardening by patricia lanza that my wonderful mom sent me that has some great tips on composting and then sheet composting. Sheet composting is just like using organic materials used in composting put layering them where you are going to have your garden. You start with we newspapers as the first layer then build up from there, using things like peat moss, yard clippings, leaves from trees (in the fall) and so forth. You alternate the layers and as long as you use a decent ratio with the high carbon (green things living or were living) and low carbon (dead things like fallen leaves, corn stalks…) your little compost pile decomposes by heating up then leaving you with wonderfully fertile soil.

On top of this wonderful “black gold” as it is referred to by some, it helps reduce landfills by up to 60% all organic materials were disposed of properly by composting. I hope to encourage its use by using high school students as the median. I started carrying around my book and having people ask me what it is. I tell them and then give them my pitch to hopefully get them excited and so far its working. I am going to start collecting materials this week. I have found news papers, and going to buy garbage bags so I can rake up all my ingredients for my compost pile from the park. I also found out where I can buy peat moss or hopefully can and will be going to there to check on the price. I will fotograph my experiment and document how I did it with the kids. Then wait for the garden to do its thing this winter and wait for the spring to have freshly decomposed fertilizer. We will compare the yield from this fertilized organic composting gardening with normal gardening and see if there is any difference. If there is we log results and show others how.

Also I have started finally volunteer groups at the highschools. Plenty of stress and adventures to be had just getting the attention of the kids, and putting up announcements and talking to classes all in Romanian to get them interested. Really difficult but im glad I did it! There is about 20 kids showing up from one school. We meet on Sundays at 2 and from another school we will see as in we have our first meeting tomorrow. But with this brings promise of doing good by empowering the youth to develop their own ideas and projects and them we will implement them. I learned a lot since my last group and I hope to have even more success with this one.

That’s really all I have going on. Im researching butterfly farming for my partner.. there is not even one here in moldova that we have found out about, and we would raise them like a cash crop to sell at weddings kinda like throwing rice you release them at weddings for good look or something. It would be interesting to say the least if it would take off.

I love living here in this apartment. My day to day life is much improved, im happier, independent and enjoy having a roommate who I can cook with and play games with during down times. I started doing sprints again to get back into shape. My partner dropped the news that he might be going to Moscow this spring for a few months to find some work and money because its just cutting it where we work now. He will also take a month vacation in November so my life will get a whole lot slower at work, if that is even possible.

I dunno what life has in store for me in the coming months, but as long as I have more good days then bad I call them a success. That will come with positive thinking, and a drive to really be content with my life as it is. I have a guitar now, I will begin picking that up as a hobby, and then starting in the next couple of weeks I will take harmonica lessons twice a month.