Eye Opener: Photo Essay

I struggled a bit to come up with a topic for this photo essay blog! Since I'm back at home for a week, I wanted to do something here, but was having a hard time thinking up an idea. I really didn't think my family was all that environmentally friendly, so I decided to go on a little search to see what I'd find. I was pleasantly surprised! I would say that the topic of this photo essay is Ways to Be Environmentally Friendly. Cliche sounding I know, but, I feel like I was slightly narrow minded when it came to this topic. I tend to think of only the most common ways to be green, like recycling or not using plastic bags or water bottles, but it can be so much more than that if you open your eyes! So, here is what I found...enjoy :)

 

This is the apple orchard we have. Obviously, it doesn't look like much since it's the end of November, but instead of buying apples, we grow our own! My dad makes apple cider out of them and for Thanksgiving, I'll be making apple pie with them!

 

At my house, we heat with a wood stove. So, my dad goes out in our woods and uses the dead trees out there for firewood. Instead of buying wood, we use what we have on our land. 

 

Now, I know this just looks like a pile of cans. Which it is! But I didn't really think my family did a whole lot of recycling. While we don't recycle everything, we make an effort to recycle all the soda cans that we use. 

As I said before, we use a wood stove to heat out house. So, we don't just dump the ashes out, we reuse them. In the winter, our road can get icy, so we throw them on the road to prevent sliding around. It works great and is better than buying those toxic salts. 

This picture doesn't show a whole lot, but there's obviously no way I could get a picture of our well underground! We have an underground water well, so any water that we use comes from this. I think this is awesome, considering how much we've been talking about water in class. There are so many contaminants and chemicals in water that we are unaware of...I'm thankful that I don't need to worry about that when I'm at home! 

Mmmm salsa! One of my favorite things. The best part is that it's homemade, made with locally grown veggies and peppers. My dad has been making it for years and it is amazing! 

Now, this is for sure my least favorite picture but I thought I should include it still! It's frozen venison from the deer my dad just shot while bow hunting this past week. We had talked about in class how venison is so good for you since it doesn't contain any hormones or added junk. I thought it fit right in with this topic of being green and eating environmentally friendly. 

This is a picture of our garden. It doesn't look like much (same as the apple orchard) since it's the end of November. But this year for Thanksgiving we are using the potatoes from it to make mashed potatoes...so good! We also grow all sorts of other vegetables and herbs in it.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my photo essay blog. It actually turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be. It's amazing the different ways that we can be environmentally friendly without even realizing it! 

* Photo credit Ruthanne Juza