My Fridge Goes Accoustic: Week 2

Oh the demanding blog life I do lead! A week after the most modern labour-saving device has been virtually removed from my life (it still serves as a discernable place to display magnets) and I am spent! The power that has ceased being sucked out of my wall socket is now being sucked out of my daily rhythm. This seems to be an integral part of the radical paradign shift I believe is necessary if this lack-lustre environmental movement is going to take hold. So onward I press!

My fridge has taken on new life! The existing insulation is quite convenient and snow...well that is free and abundant in this part of the world.

Now I don't know if my karma was off or the moon was not in my favour, but after weeks of sub-zero temperatures the mercury decided to go up 20 notches the day I started to depend on frozen air. While I basked in the mini-February thaw and rode my bicycle to work sans-long underwear, I thought about the contents of what used to be my freezer melting away on my front lawn. When I got home that day it I realized it was not the thaw I had to contend with, it was the Toyota Tercel-sized squirrels who inhabit most of Hintonburg. There they were, scattered across my front door, the plastic-bag remnants of the frozen-end remnants of most of the bread I had eaten that winter. I guess I didn't need it anyway, I do work at a bakery. The squirrels got to eat some delicious rye-whole grain sourdough and I got rid of those weird butt-ends of the bread that I didn't know what to do with in the first place.

Once the temperature went back down, the freezing part of this master plan was a cinch. But the refridgeration part was a different story. The system I had initally implented proved to be dismal at best. First thing, I had read somewhere that leaving the fridge door open a crack is the best way to go. Much like a carbon offset, this really just sped up the rapid warming of the cooling system that I tried to put into place. Despite the fact that I had to change the dirty snow water every 5 hours to keep my flaxseed oil from going rancid, and my loaf of spelt sesame bread became soggy all over, the snow-in-the-crisper-drawer method has not got me all the way down. So, putting full faith in my ability to fix this warm slushy mess, I boldly purchased a tub of organic yogurt and a litre of goat's milk for my morning yerba mate. Now I couldn't let these delicious investments go off, so I promptly gathered all the plastic vessels (yogurt tubs, used ziploc baggies etc.) I could find. Fortunately, I have little faith in municipal recycling programs and keep such items around in case I can find a way to give them new life. I filled them with water and plopped them in the snow overnight.

You know something? I've been tired of bending over to find my food in the fridge ever since I moved into this place, and since the freezer was unoccupied it was time for my yogurt, crisp new carrots and purple kale to find a new home. Once the ice-blobs had frozen I put them in the freezer section with all my cold food scattered around them. I have to say, it's pretty cold in there! And I don't have to bend over to a) search for food in the (newly dark) cavity or b)reach my hand into the cold wet snowy mush that I used before.

Some people have asked me what I'm going to do in the summer. Since my house will be warm I'll get to switch off the electric heater that keeps me toasty right now, and plug my humming white beast back into the grid. I'll just switch from warm to cold in the energy that I suck.

Now I think we all know this blog is about more than just fridgeless living and ice-blob making. It's a way for me to dispense my disillusionment with urban environmentalism. We are constantly being overpowered by greenwashed corporate messages telling us to buy the new more energy-efficient version of the latest widget we already have, but we all need to step back and take a look at actually making some change to your daily lives. I'm not saying go unplug your fridge and turn off all the lights and sit around chanting mantras, but maybe just think about the impact of the things you buy, or the power that you use, or the food you eat. I am by no means changing the world, in fact the power that I'm using to run the computer at which I type my blog about powerless fridges most likely cancels out any power-reducing gain....but it's forcing me to think in new ways and that is more powerful than any greenwashed granola bar I could find in the organic section at the Superstore.

I suppose my rant is over for now. Stay tuned for more updates on my fridge! Watch for more reflections on some of the other urban homesteading projects I have on the go (I can thank my friend Gabe Camozzi for that inspiration) they include: home-made yogurt, sprouts, sunflower shoots, vermiculture, the strange soymilk machine I found at a thrift store, and my tireless efforts to power the Button Brigade into a profit machine!