As many people know, a certain fun day called Halloween is coming up, and on occasion from now until Halloween, we will try and offer some green Halloween tips. So, for the first of our Green Halloween installments, Our Green Year will talk about pumpkins.At the ranch, we have bought one pumpkin so far. We bought it from the organic store so that we could get one that was completely organic, but that is not where our green pumpkin ideas stop. First, we empty out the pumpkin and turn that into some awesome pumpkin pie filling. We had some of this for Thanksgiving and it was great. Since there are five people here, pumpkin pie is going to be welcome for the next few weeks as well.
Also, last week, Layla saved the seeds, baked them and then served them as a great treat for our Thanksgiving guests, and to our birds. For our future pumpkins, we will be doing the same. Feeding birds pumpkin seeds is completely safe, and even Dr. Ellen Dierenfeld who is a nutritionist at the St. Louis Zoo says they accept pumpkin seed donations after Halloween to feed the animals.
Naturally, we will make Jack-O-Lanterns, even though we do not get trick or treaters because we are so far out. After the Halloween season is done, we will compost all of our pumpkins so that they can help the soil for our garden in coming years.
We also took all the refuse out of the garden today and moved it into compost to help give the dirt we will use in the future some extra nutrients.
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HAPPY SIX MONTH ANNIVERSARY TO US! This is a great day for us because it means we have hit a half-way point for Our Green Year. As of today, we have had 180 posts, appeared on two TV stations, three radio stations, two newspapers, some blogs and even a couple websites. We have also had 5,779 hits as of this post, which amounts to about 963 hits per month. Not too shabby. Thank you to everyone who has come by our blog and offered their comments, and thank you to everyone who is helping to make this a great initiative that can inspire others to go green as well.
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In regards to global warming, here are some startling numbers from Discover Magazine.
$1,873,000,000,000 - The cost of climate change world wide by the year 2100 if nothing changes from this point on. This includes costs due to real estate losses because of rising sea levels, drought and hurricane damage.
1.13 x 10(to the power of 14) - That is the amount of heat that hits us from the sun every second, measured in BTU.
40,000 - The amount of carbon dioxide generated by humans in billions of tonnes, which the oceans have absorbed. However, studies show that the oceans...may be reaching their limits in this regard.
