Kickoff Day

It's January 1st, 2008. I am a mother of three young kids and for the past few years my husband has been growing progressively more eco-centric (he prefers eco-conscious).

In some of his endeavors:

• changing light bulbs,
  
• installing programmable thermostats,
• recycling,
• using rechargeable batteries,
  

I have been a willing and supportive participant.

In others:

• the often overflowing compost pain, er pail, in my kitchen,
  
• the storing of non-recycleables in hopes that some day our town will start recycling them thus filling up our garage to the point that I can barely get out of my car, (he got rid of those after the town repeatedly ignored his multitude of phone calls on the subject, but he's still working on it)
  
• the restriction on any new item coming into the house that require batteries,
• the desire to return any gift that we don't "need",
  

I have been dragged into kicking and silently screaming. Why? Well, I'll tell you.

I'm a stay-at-home mom. It's the career I always wanted. It turns out it's also the most challenging, crazy, stressful, rewarding job I'll ever know. I have three children, ages 4, 2 and 7 months. Needless to say there is always someone wanting/needing something from me. I am never still. Even when I'm sitting, I'm waiting to hear one of them call me. And sitting is rare, after all there's laundry and dishes and toys everywhere. It makes me a bit crazy but it's life as we know it just now. So while my husband is willing to sacrifice a little order in order to do right by the environment, my need to simplify and manage chaos far outstrips my willingness to go the distance.

However, in the spirit of making low impact changes that do benefit the environment, and consequently my family, I've made some personal changes. I try to use Method products for cleaning when the item being cleaned doesn't involve blood, vomit, or poop. I try to buy organic produce and meats. I turn the lights off. I reuse our plasticware. I save energy by running the vacuum cleaner only once a month. Okay, that's really just laziness but it does save energy! I also am doing more reading on how I can be more personally responsible for my impact. I canceled our subscription to the Sunday newspaper, which I admit I was only getting for the crossword puzzle and never reading. I started subscribing to Kiwi Magazine which offers up many great tips on raising my kids in a low-impact and environmentally healthier manor. And I try to curb my ingrained need to consume simply because I can, instead of because I need.

One thing I've taken away from moving towards an environmentally friendly lifestyle is that it's way easier if you have no kids and if you have a lot of money. It requires time, research, planning, and you must be willing to spend more on things that you could buy cheaper from Chile and China. As I've already established, I don't have a lot of free time to go driving around to smaller grocery stores where the locally grown products are more likely to be (right now I use a grocery store that delivers). Researching these products and prices at different stores to find the best item for my needs while managing my wonderful but frenetic children sounds daunting at best. Planning my trip to keep the gas usage on my mini-van, as well as my trips out with the kids, to a minimum will require more of the time and research that comes in such short supply around here. And while money isn't tight we are going to have to send all three of these tiny people to college one day so I'd like to have something left over at the end of the pay cycle.

So here's my question...

Can a middle-class mother of three young children successfully locate, purchase, and feed her family from locally grown seasonal foods for one whole year? For the sake of my children and this planet, I think we should find out.