Heidi Voss

The most common items I found were plastic bottles, bags, & candy wrappers. I care about my community and can show that through helping to keep it clean.

I am grateful that I had the day off, and I was able to drink my coffee and read, all while listening to the beautiful rain and thunder. Oh, and the cat was sleeping on the couch next to me!

I often walk around the neighborhood, and because the weather's so nice I run into a lot of people I know, so we enjoy catching up. Yesterday I spent at least 90 minutes working on a new pollinator garden. It's hard work, but well worth it when the bees, butterflies, birds, etc., appear!

The food, protein and vitamins, we get from beef, pork, poultry, and farmed fish, require an enormous amount of water and grain to raise. Also, the methane produced by cattle in particular is several times over more potent than CO2 in contributing to global warming. The runoff and contamination from farms, especially the large corporate farms, makes its way into ground water, increasing the nitrogen levels of our ground water, lakes, streams, and wells. Years ago I went with a relative of mine to a large corporate hog barn in western MN, where he worked in the evenings to pick up a little extra cash. One of his jobs was to give the hogs of a certain age antibiotic shots "to help them grow". What I saw on that visit was pigs of varying sizes crowded together in clean pens in a climate controlled barn, with feed and water, but no access to the outdoors. The squealing was deafening. Their eyes were huge, and they looked stressed. I never ate any pork after that. I grew up on a small family farm. The animals we had spent a lot of times outdoors rooting around in the grass, dirt, and mud. The pigs at that corporate barn were miserable. I have been eliminating meat from my diet for several weeks now, and I feel great! Hopefully my cholesterol levels will look better, and maybe I'll even be able to eliminate my medicine for hypertension.

I enjoy oatmeal with blueberries, walnuts, and maple syrup for breakfast. I've made dishes with quinoa, brown and wild rice, a variety of beans, or pasta as the base. I'll add lots of sautéed vegetables, a healthy oil, and a number of different seasonings and spices. I like low sodium soy sauce or Worcester sauce to give the flavor more depth.

I hemmed up a pair of jeans. I put patches (made from some remnant fabric) on a shirt that had a couple holes. Looked kinda cool!

Whole foods generally have more vitamins and fiber, and often just taste better. They also typically have less sodium and sugar. Processed foods take more energy to produce.

I try to approach all of my actions with environmental impact at the forefront. Some other things I do are buy my laundry detergent in bulk from the co-op, use a bar of hand soap on stains and presoak in a small amount of cold water, and use a drying rack indoors and my clothesline outdoors when weather and air quality permit. I’ve gotten better at mending and altering my own clothes as well! 😁