Tuesday, November 12, 2019

We Bought a Farm: Why lawns are BAD


It's truly CRAZY to me the things that I am interested in simply because I married the man I did and moved to the place I did.

JB put on a podcast one day about the downsides of having a lawn, and I was hooked. I wanted to tell the whole world to get rid of their lawn

Mostly, I get frustrated by this fact:

People are constantly telling us about ways to save the world and the environment. But when it really boils down to it, no one wants to do something that doesn't fit the cultural "norms."

Recycling is okay. We don't have to see the mess and sorting. We give it to someone else to do.

But anything that impacts the "look" of a neighborhood or a house? 

We are out.

For example: One of the biggest energy sinks in your whole house? The dryer. But nearly all HOA's outlaw clotheslines. Why? Because it looks "shabby" to hang your clothes to dry. I have written about this fact here and here.

Another thing that gets my goat are lawns. Did you know a lawn is a European invention and it is designed to show status? Think about it. Even today when we see a house with a good lawn, we think "Good people live there."

You can read a ton more about lawns and why they are bad for the environment in so many ways by clicking here. This article links to tons more articles about lawns.

Anyways, I've written often about how I am trying to drink my "Sphere of Concern." We are trying to focus more and more on the little things we can do to help our world instead of getting frustrated by things way too big to cause change in. We have decided to mostly eliminate "the lawn" at our house. A little bit of green space is of course nice for kids to play on. But what can we do to use our space for good?

Well, JB recently did this: 



One example of our Beyond-Organic methods of farming and gardening.
We place birdhouses and allow some nearby areas to become overgrown with shrubs. 
The shrubs are blackberries and Eastern Redbuds and Nanking Cherry. These provide food and shelter for the birds who then come and eat pest insects from our garden, which is just behind me as I took this photo. 
This is just one birdhouse of many. The kids paint the birdhouses. They each know which of the houses were theirs. This one is perfect for sparrows (even the non-native House Sparrow!). We place other types of birdhouses that have housed nesting Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows.

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