I don’t suppose I NEED this, especially considering I live in an apartment, but I certainly WANT it.

Backyard Retreat – Ideas – Dwell.

I’ve been working on something for a long time, and finally got around to making it happen.

Freshly is a way to find out what farmers’ market is near you, open, now. It’s driven by trying to remember when the markets are open, and where they are on which days. I wanted something that would keep me out of the supermarket when I just wanted to pick something up on the way home.

I’ve started with three cities I know well, New York, Toronto, and San Francisco. All the market information has been gathered by me now, but future markets can be added by anyone. At a glance you can see the markets nearby, and show what’s open now, tomorrow, or in the next week.

In the immediate future as I beta test, I want to get Freshly mobile optimized, then start expanding the offering including showing what’s in season at each market, and hopefully getting to the point where the farmers’ who will be at a market can show what they’re bringing that day. I’m very happy to have got to this point, thanks to the developer Chris Casciano.

Sign up and I’ll let you know when you can use Freshly www.shopfreshly.com

Nest | The Learning Thermostat

I’m certainly not the only person to talk about Nest this week, so I won’t try to dig too deep into it. I just wanted to note it, and comment on how nice it is to see design coming to the forefront of those hidden pieces of tech. Thermostats have been incredibly difficult to use ever since they became digital, it’s nice to step back a bit to an old style without a ton of buttons.

Problem is, I could never remember when the markets were open, or where they were. I got around this by just making a google calendar with all the markets listed by day and time. It worked pretty well, so I figured I’d go a step further and share with everyone by making a site.

Sign up now and I’ll let you know when it’s live.

Missy and I have launched the new Hello, Burrow site. This is our labor of love where we post sustainable design for your home.
Follow us on your newsreader, or on twitter, and check back often. We try to post something every day.

We think it’s pretty badass, and we’re working really hard to find great stuff, we hope you’ll like it.

Check it out »

I couldn’t have said this better. We’re spending too much money on products that don’t last when there are better options that have been available all along.

This is a binder clip. You can buy 60 of them for $4. If you, at any time, have more than 60 open bags that need closing you’ve opened too many bags. They are stronger than any clip you’ll buy specifically designed for that purpose, and they’re made out of metal, not plastic, so they’ll last forever. You can buy this one box of clips and never need to buy another clip again.

http://www.thesundaybest.org/2010/05/keep-it-simple.html

See also: http://lastyearsmodel.org/ I’m as guilty of upgrading my phone as anyone else, but my last phone was an original iphone, so it lasted almost 3 years until I got the Nexus One. I’m getting better!

They’re very interesting, especially some of the old family style rules like “It’s better to pay your grocer the doctor.” A lot of them touch on local and chemical free eating as well, and a surprising amount of just plain enjoying the food ideas.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/11/magazine/20091011-foodrules.html

Apparently the rising air temperatures in Czech Republic are lowering the quality of Saaz hops, used in pilsner beers.

We’ve got to do something!

Our garbage levels are still pretty low here, but the recycling and compost situations are dire. If we had a yard, I would have made a backyard composter, and that would have kept us going for quite some time.

Following the steps I talked about previously, garbage would increase at about a full bag every two months, recycling could be stored indefinitely, given the space. The only problem area would be things that couldn’t go in a backyard compost, the meat products basically.

One thing that I noticed here was a reduction in an already low trash output level. Take out was non-existant for the extent of the strike. That is a huge trash producer, so this is a pretty healthy thing to cut out. We also became even more aware of the things we were purchasing on grocery trips, and only had one major trip to the store in that time. In all that, the only real wasted food was a pineapple, sadly forgotten and let to go past prime. It was a reminder than it had been shipped all the way here from Costa Rica, just to go to the bin. I feel badly about that, and will start watching out for those few things we buy that are from very far away.

Overall, we made it through alright. I’m happy trash pickup is coming back, the fruit fly population is sure to drop, and the streets will look much nicer. I am saddened by some of the actions of people in my neighbourhood, dropping things on the ground carelessly, and in one case, pulling an entire newspaper box’s contents to the ground.

I only hope we have collectively learned something about our own trash production, and as a city can do something to reduce it for the future, to the point we’re no longer putting any waste in pits.