• jess_m
      • hello Jess Meltzer
      • Username: jess_m
      • In response to: "What do you do on the side?" When I'm not raising my two young children, working at odd jobs, gardening, and cleaning/managing the house I write.
  • jess_m's latest answers
    • Reading '"The Omnivore's Dilemma" changed the way I feed my family and myself.

      • Even though there are so many books that have had an impact on me, few have caused me to make an outright lifestyle change.

        Learning more about industrial farming practices and how harmful they are to not only the animals but also to all of us and the environment (a thing I already knew intuitively but was able to ignore by and large) made me take a long hard look at my lifestyle and what we choose to spend our money on and ways to support our community and sustainable practices.

        With my husband currently laid-off I'm not able to stick to my resolutions as much as I had been over the last two years but we try to buy almost all of the meat we eat from a local farm in town. We pick and freeze quarts and quarts of berries from another local farm in the summer. I made and froze a bunch of applesauce from locally picked apples this fall and will do so again next season. In addition I keep expanding our garden every year to grow more and more of our own fruits and vegetables and look forward to getting a small flock of laying hens when my children are a bit older and better able to help care for them. I make a concious effort to buy as local as I can when I purchase staples and other foods from the grocery store (wild caught shrimp from Maine, King Arthur flour, and so on).

      • answered by jess_m on 02/16/2009
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    • You'll find "Mother Earth News" atop my toilet

      • Today's prompt is an easy one for me. I love magazines and would subscribe to many more if I thought I could actually read them all!


        Mother Earth News
        This is one of the four magazines that we get and one of two I read front to back. It has tons of great articles and ideas on sustainable living, homesteading, gardening, energy efficiency, information about where our food comes from and probably more information on chickens and why we should all keep a few laying hens than most people care to know about.


        Time
        Time is the other magazine we get that I read cover to cover. Since I don't watch the news anymore it's a good way to get some idea of what's been going on in the world from a source other than the Internet.

        We also get Utne Reader and Mother Jones. I always find thought provoking, interesting articles inside both but don't usually manage to read everything.


      • answered by jess_m on 02/14/2009
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    • Happy without my cell phone

      • I only have a cell phone because my husband insisted that I get it for safety reasons. I have to admit I am glad to have it and enjoy the camera feature as well as the comfort of knowing I can make a call if I need to and that my son's school can contact me if they need to but other than that I can and frequently do leave it or at least turn it off. I don't like always being accessible. There are times when I need true down time. When I say I want to be alone I really mean it. I don't want to be getting calls when I'm enjoying some down time.

        Maybe I'm just weird that way ;-).

      • answered by jess_m on 02/12/2009
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    • My fear of Puking

      • I've had the fear as long as I can remember - probably stems from my parents giving me ipecec when I was 2. Why this was the recommendation…

      • answered by jess_m on 02/11/2009
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    • My advice

      • Live for today, for this very moment that you are in. Be here and now.

      • answered by jess_m on 02/11/2009
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