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The Global Climate Changer Who Lives on My Street

Shrinking and Greening at the Shorb Homestead

Shrinking and Greening at the Shorb Homestead

by Terril Shorb

Here are some things my wife and I have done where we live to shrink our immediate, negative effects on local nature, and to invite local nature to again feel right at home.

1) I live within two miles of my place of work, so I have the option of walking instead of driving and I drive an average of 12-14 miles per day, a reduction from my previous commute in Northern California of 20 to 40 miles per day. When I do drive, I watch carefully for local wild creatures crossing the roadways as part of their daily lives.

2) I drive four-cylinder vehicles, as I have since 1972. My cars have included two VW beetles, a Fiat X19, a Ford Fairmont (family gift), a Subaru Loyale, and a Nissan Frontier light truck—all 4-cylinder vehicles that got an average of 25 miles per gallon.

3) We have encouraged the self-reintroduction of native vegetation in our lot in Prescott. This includes native grasses such as blue gramma and side-oats gramma, shrubs such as manzanita, turbinella oak, mountain mahogany, and local native trees such as pinyon pine and alligator juniper. We have no domesticated grass for lawn and merely maintain the non-native trees and shrubs that were here when we arrived.

4) We provide safe habitat for local fauna, including thirty-five species of birds (quail, finches, scrub jays, ravens, hairy woodpeckers, flickers, warblers, titmice, hummingbirds, to name a few), insects and arthropods (cicadas, ants, bees, wasps, beetles, spiders, including tarantulas), reptiles such as alligator and fence lizards, mammals including peccaries, foxes, deer, raccoons, skunks, golden-mantled ground squirrels, white-throated packrats, mice, chipmunks, and coyotes. We have no perimeter fence, though the leach field is fenced with large-mesh wire to exclude javelina but allow birds and small mammals access to plant life within. We have safety strips of fabric hung over our windows to alert flying birds to the danger. We keep water pans filled with fresh water in both the front and back yard areas, which is especially important during our continued deep drought.

5) We have created a small, social network with two other sets of neighbors. This includes regular socializing, sharing food, watching over each other’s homes when away conferring on local challenges to our neighborhood, including the specter of a development in our midst that would harm sensitive habitat. We are drawing up papers for a neighborhood homeowners’ sustainability association.

6) We have a small garden (8 x 17 feet) to produce a small portion of our diet. This reduces by a small amount the footprint of our diet, but some local wild creatures are fenced out, so it represents a loss of habitat to them. We are planting native nut trees such as pinyon pine and long-lead acorns to provide forage for wild life and some food for ourselves.

7) We partake minimally of manufactured entertainment, though we do watch a couple of hours of television daily and watch DVD movies on occasion. This is to balance our time such that we are spending more time out in nature and less in the artifice of manufactured entertainment.

8) We keep a "Calendar of Wings" which is a casual form of nature field note keeping. Each day we note any significant—to us—comings or goings of species of wild creatures, plus passages in floral life such as buddings, flowering, fruiting, shedding of leaves. This record goes back ten years and allows a wonderful "movie" of both the remarkably reliable cycles of creatures and their life-ways, and also of the changes that may be tied to global climate change, such as earlier budding of plants or earlier arrival of migrating birds.

9) We watch our diet and purchase available local foods, as available, such as a CSA and local seasonal Farmer's Market. We buy organic foods, as available. We try to consume very little pre-packaged "kit" meals, and stay away from foods that have genetically modified organisms within.

10) We exercise daily, faithfully. We walk in the town square at least once and usually twice daily, to gain 30-60 minutes of brisk walking for our health. This also keeps us in some touch with local social life, as we see people we know, and also wave to local homeless people who frequent the park.

11) We support local businesses, where possible. We shop in locally, independent businesses, such as bookstore, shoe repair, a regional food store, a regional gasoline dealer, local accountant, local computer expert. We continue to boycott Walmart, as we have now for seven years.

12) We participate in local, civic affairs. We are regular commentators on city and county and sate business, especially where it affects the regional natural environment. We helped a local candidate for State House of Representatives run her campaign. We offer educational events for local conservations organizations, such as Audubon, Prescott Creek, Highlands Center for Natural History, and the Open Space Alliance.