Backyard chickens, take two. Minus the foxes.
This year’s flock: 2 Cinnamon Queens, 2 Buff Orpingtons, 1 White Rock, and 1 Production Red.
*We bought these chicks at local farm stores (well, as local as farm stores can be to St. Louis City), not directly from the hatchery, but these breed descriptions are good!
As is the way I hear about most things, I was listening to NPR’s On Point this week, talking about Household Cancer Hazards. Specifically, they were referring to a study from the Silent Spring Institute that looked at a variety of frequently used household cleaners, sunscreens, beauty products, air fresheners, and more. They posted a detailed fact sheet with a summary of their findings here.
Generally speaking, the authors looked at these products in different ways, combining “conventional” products into a single sample, and “alternative” products into their own individual groups. Part of the rationale was to keep costs of the study down by combining 42 samples into a single treatment group, but in some ways, it’s almost more informative as a single product may not cause health risks, yet the combination of that product with another product could yield some risk.
USA Today reported “chemicals that disrupt hormones or affect asthma were found in all 42 of conventional products sampled, as well as in most — 32 of 43 — of the alternative products billed as safer, including some by Seventh Generation, Jason Natural Products and Aubrey Organics.” Forbes also reviewed the work, citing “lab tests detected 55 chemicals of concern–including parabens, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), antimicrobials, cyclosiloxanes, glycol ethers, and fragrances–in the conventional product samples tested and also found 41 concerning chemical compounds in all but 11 alternative products. Very few of these chemicals were included on product labels.” The Forbes article and the original On Point link both include a list of the 11 products tested that contained none of the target chemicals.
The On Point interview with the authors was enlightening, as always, but they made sure to point out that people shouldn’t be quick to throw away all their cleaning supplies and switch back to baking soda and vinegar. Moderate use of some cleaning supplies is fine: they’re mostly concerned with the aggregate level of chemicals found in households today and the fact that we, as a society, could stand to reduce them to a degree.
The authors did point out that triclosan is found in quite a few different cleaning products. It’s used primarily as an antibacterial agent, however it’s currently under review by the FDA because it also acts as a hormone mimetic. For the most part, using antibacterial products is no better than a proper washing with soap and water, so it’s a component that could be limited from many products.
Their primary example came from fragrances. Their Summary Fact Sheet said that “Sunscreens and fragranced products — including air fresheners, dryer sheets, and perfume — had the largest number of target chemicals and some of the highest concentrations.” So as they put it, if you can get the same function you’re looking for without additional fragrance, that’s one way to limit your exposure across a wide array of cleaning products (i.e. if you can get unscented deodorant or fabric softener, even if it’s a “conventional” product, it makes a difference).
Brooke’s made something of a push over the past few years to try and reduce our use of chemicals around the house, partially for health reasons, but mostly out of cost. A bottle of 409 is pretty expensive when compared to a spray bottle of baking soda and white vinegar. On the other hand, Brooke’s homemade dishwashing detergent doesn’t clean quite as well as a cheap box of conventional detergent (though she’s still experimenting with the mix).
In general, it’s a good idea to evaluate the products we all have around the house, getting rid of ones we don’t need and keeping the ones we do. I’m exposed to enough chemicals in the laboratory environment already: I don’t need it at home, too.
Though we don’t have the massive yard we had up in Iowa (and all the mowing to go with it…), we do have some space with which we can toy around. While a chicken coop and a garden of some sort are still in the plans, for now, we’ve got some back yard toys for Meg.
Last summer, she was content to play with a bucket of water, splashing about for hours on end. Now that she can move around more, Meg very much enjoys going down the street to our neighborhood park to go down slides and use the swings. Her daycare has a pretty nice playground area as well, so it’s nice that we’ve got the space in our yard to facilitate something along those lines. On nights when it’s nice out and we want to BBQ, it’s even better, as she can entertain herself in the sandbox, rather than having me hold her while trying to flip burgers.
Regardless, Meg got a swingset from her “Mimi” and “Poppy,” a sandbox from her “Aunt Dadum,” a tricycle from her “Aunt Mal,” and a small slide from us for her birthday last weekend. Now that the weather’s been so excellent, she can go out and enjoy them!
Personally, my goal at this point is to have so much of the yard taken up by playground equipment and farm implements that I won’t have any mowing to complete when the time comes. 🙂
Using up some odds and ends for this one: macaroni, spinach, egg, and cheese. Not bad for what it was!
“Cheebubba and pies” for Meg’s birthday dinner! She mostly just ate ketchup, though…
Oh, how I’m looking forward to having our own eggs again…. In preparation, my version of an Egg McMuffin: egg, bacon, cheddar cheese, and green peppers. We also had smoothies, but they didn’t get in the picture. Meg put her smoothie on her table in the kitchen, walked to the other side of the room, sat down and said, “Watch smoo-wee, Mama?” Apparently, “smoothie” and “movie” are the same to an almost-two-year-old.
Hard to believe, but 2 years ago…oh…right about now, Meg was born. And just like that, we no longer have a baby, but instead have a little girl running around.
Last week was pretty busy, in general, but thankfully I think we were able to enjoy the celebration yesterday. Brooke made an excellent cake (additional post forthcoming), and soup, and all kinds of other things. Mallory and Rachel came over Saturday to help get the bulk of the work done while I entertained Meg. Our family and some friends came over, crowding into our living room to help celebrate the day. It would have been nice to be outside, but it was about as good as one could ask for with an early March birthday.
Regardless, it’s been a wild two years and I’m sure it’s only a prelude to what’s to come. We’re looking forward to what’s ahead!
Happy birthday, Meg. 🙂
In an effort to try to monitor our physical fitness (or lack thereof), we opted to get a few pedometers so, at the very least, we know how much walking we’re doing every day. The goal is 10,000 steps in a day, which is, on average, around 5 mi. On our first day, you can see we didn’t quite hit that…
Part of the issue I’m having is in placement of the pedometer. It comes with a ~4 in strap with a clip on the end, so it’s easy to put in different places. These particular pedometers operate on two axes, so you can’t just leave it in your backpack or purse: you have to have it in a vertical position, not horizontal. As such, on the first day, I put the pedometer in the small change pocket of my corduroy pants. The second day, I put it in the change pocket of my slacks, however that pocket is down inside the main pocket, not up higher on the hip. On that day, I recorded over 10,000 steps, though I don’t think I really doubled my steps over the previous day. On Friday, I tried clipping it to my belt and having it hang into my left pocket and I was back down to around 5,000 steps again.
My guess is that the constant motion of my legs, due to over a decade of drumming, could affect the pedometer, but I probably won’t know that until further data comes in. These pedometers save 7 days worth of data, but I’m recording it in a Google Docs file so we get a more “visual” interpretation of our progress.
Today, I’m wearing a dress shirt, so I have the pedometer clipped up on my torso, hanging down underneath my shirt. This is the last position for a pedometer I can think of, and probably isn’t all that good of one, as your torso tends to stay more “stable” and feel less movement than your legs do. That’s what a few years of marching percussion leads to, at least…
Anyway, I’ll probably post from time to time on this. It’s my first time trying to use a pedometer. Brooke used one after we first got married but stopped using it. We figure that if both of us are using one, it’s easier to hold each other accountable, at least to some degree.
Still, it’d be nice if there were a GPS and Wifi-enabled one that could upload the data to some remote server once a day. Sure, I could use my phone for this purpose, but it’s quite a bit bigger than these pedometers, and most people don’t want to clip a phone to their bodies… 😛
I should note that Brooke doesn’t agree with various aspects of this post. My opinion and mine alone!
Brooke and I have had more than a few conversations about the “birth control mandate” controversy from the last few weeks, where the Obama Administration required under the Affordable Health Care Law that all employers, including Catholic Hospitals and Universities, are required to provide birth control as part of their health care coverage to employees. Various Catholic organizations, and others, protested this requirement, so the Administration compromised in allowing these organizations to avoid paying for the coverage as part of their contracts with health insurance companies, however, the insurance companies themselves would need to provide the coverage to the employees of these organizations.
While some felt this compromise was an example of the Administration deftly maneuvering around a touchy issue in an election year, others felt it still went against the rights of the employer to deny coverage they deem to be immoral.
It was this “immorality” part that yesterday’s On Point Radio show on NPR took on, interviewing a Pro-Life representative, a Pro-Choice representative, and a Bioethicist about the issue, from a moral, non-religious standpoint.
One of the callers caught my attention as making my point better than I could ever hope to make it. Sadly, there’s no transcript, so I can’t put it on here verbatim, but it transpired late in the podcast. An employer called in with a hypothetical situation, based on one of his employees’ experiences. He was quick to point out this was a “Devil’s Advocate” kind of position, but it illustrates what concerned him about legislation currently moving through the House and Senate that would allow employers to “get around” what the Obama Administration had put in place and deny coverage under a “conscience amendment.”
Suppose that an employee is under their employer’s insurance. That employee finds out that they are pregnant, and further finds out that they are having a child with Down’s Syndrome. The employee decides to go ahead with the pregnancy and delivers the baby. As this actually happened, the employer (the caller) had access to the bill, or at least, what the insurance company ended up paying: right around $300,000.
So, on a moral ground, the employer could say “You know, I think it’s immoral to make other people in this company’s insurance network fork over the $300,000 to pay for this hospital visit. It’s okay if you, the employee, want to give birth, but it’s immoral for that cost to get shifted over to the insurance company. You, the employee, should have to pay that $300,000. That’s your right to pay for it, but it isn’t your right to make your insurer pay for it. On moral grounds, I don’t think you should have had the baby.”
Again, this particular employer wasn’t advocating this position, but it’s illustrative of what a law like this would allow: employers could deny any coverage they thought was immoral. That means a company run by Jehovah’s Witnesses could disallow blood transfusions to its employees. That means a bigoted employer could deny AIDS treatments because you’re a homosexual. That means an employer (or insurance company), like in the hypothetical above, could say an abortion was more moral than the delivery of a disabled child. And that means a Catholic organization could deny birth control to women with ovarian cysts, likely dooming them to infertility.
That’s why this mandate exists and that’s why it’s necessary: not to force companies to do something, but to ensure that the morals and/or religious ideology of companies and employers aren’t foisted upon you, the employee. It’s freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Even Protestants recognize that favoring one religious community will affect another.
People, as a group, have a right to health services. It isn’t up to the employer which services you are allowed to get: it’s between you and your doctor.
Let’s keep it that way.
I made caramel corn. Andy wanted to take pictures….
