TOOLS AND BODY MECHANICS FOR HARDWORKING WOMEN

2012 has started off a little ruggedly for me.  In mid-January my appendix and part of my colon were removed, and at the end of my 3-week recuperation, I had one great day where I worked out on our land with the house-building team.  The next day, I succumbed to further illness.  My compromised immune system made me vulnerable to influenza and then to pneumonia.  As I healed with frustrating slowness from pneumonia, I hoped I would be strong enough to attend the Midwest Organic Farming Conference – and I was (just barely).

I got to La Crosse, WI in time for the Thursday afternoon MOSES Rural Women’s Project on the tools and techniques that women can use to leverage their smaller body size and more minimal musculature to accomplish the farming tasks we want and need to.

The workshop was led by Ann Adams and Liz Brensinger of Green Heron Tools.  Ann brings a background in nursing and Liz has worked in public health before they both got into commercial gardening.  They searched for tools designed for women and found none, so they got a USDA grant to design some.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!

Why Do Women Need their own Tools?  Because we have:

• 40-75% less upper-body strength
• 5-30% less lower-body strength
• Smaller stature
• More adipose (fatty) tissue
• Narrower shoulders
• Wider hips
• Proportionally shorter legs & arms
• Smaller grips

Ann and Liz brought their first product to the demonstration:  the world’s first HERgonomic Shovel-spade hybrid designed scientifically and specifically for women.  I intend to order one of these puppies right away.

This weighs less than 4-1/2 pounds, which is light for a shovel.  The handle gives you many options for hand placement to keep the wrists in neutral position.  The diameter is designed to fit better and create less hand fatigue.  It comes in three lengths, so you can truly fit it to your needs.

Green Heron searches out tools that work well for women.  They have found a pruner maker in Japan, which because people tend to be smaller there, their tools are correspondingly smaller and a better fit for a woman’s hand.

They also have identified a wheel hoe that reduces back strain and adjusts to individual body size.

They also mentioned scythes, which are an amazing tool and can be ordered to fit your body from places like Scythe Supply.

Moving beyond tool selection, women need to redesign their techniques if we want to keep work-related injuries to a minimum.

Ann says the Number One rule is VARY YOUR TASKS.

We all get obsessed with finishing a job, but she says we are much better served by alternating between tasks.  Don’t do any task for hour after hour.  Find ways to break jobs into sections and switch tasks regularly.

We also know the correct way to lift heavy things.  We need to follow the rules about:

• Using your legs instead of your back
• Bend at the knees
• Keep your back straight
• Lift straight upward
• Don’t lift when you are really tired
• Women – try not to lift more than 35 pounds.  Our joints are looser, and we are more prone to sprains and strains.

That same loose joint thing makes us more prone to injury from heavy vibration with tools like rototillers and brush mowers.  Yes, I know, these tools cannot be completely avoided, but try to use break up the amount of time working with them and alternate with soothing, or at least different tasks.

A call for hands in the room found that almost every woman there was already familiar with herniated discs, chronic back pain, carpel tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, bursitis and tendonitis.

Learn some basic principles of body mechanics.

Check out Angie Hissong’s Shoveling 101

Watch Jennifer Hess’s slideshow on Ergonomics for Women in the Trades

Ann urged everyone to start a yoga practice.  I couldn’t agree more.

What are your favorite mantras for good body mechanics?  Have you had work related injuries?  What’s your strategy to avoid more injuries?

THREE REASONS TO LOVE ROUNDABOUTS

The first roundabout I clearly remember was the one where I looked in my rear view window to see the flashing lights of a police car I had unwittingly cut off within its circle as I approached the outskirts of Wellington, New Zealand. I was seriously jet lagged, bemused by my first day of traveling on the left side of the road and not sure how to navigate such a big, busy, circular road.

I had nosed into the roundabout without much sense of what it was or how it was supposed to work,  and come out the other side with a warning ticket.  That was 2003.  I now encounter roundabouts just about every day at some point, and I have learned to love them.

(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/purplemattfish/3534851444/

Lucky me.

Roundabouts are becoming almost as common as potholes.

That’s a good thing.

Quite simply, roundabouts provide drivers an efficient, safer alternative to traditional four-way intersections governed by stop signs or traffic signals, says David Noyce, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of civil and environmental engineering.

1.  Roundabouts are Safer.

An expert in transportation safety, Noyce directs the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Laboratory at UW-Madison. From Jan. 22-26, they discussed their roundabouts research in Washington, D.C., at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting, which draws more than 11,000 transportation professionals from around the world.

“People say they’re unsafe because it’s hard to judge the gap,” says Andrea Bill, TOPS traffic safety engineering research program manager. “But even if something happens, your risk of a fatal crash goes way down. We saw video of a driver traveling the wrong way, but everyone was driving through the roundabout so slowly, people could stop. There’s time to slow down and react.”

“The right-angle crash is one of the most severe crashes,” says Bill. “Roundabouts take away this possibility because drivers are always making a right turn. The crashes are less severe.”

 2.   Roundabouts are cheaper

While the initial construction cost of a roundabout varies site by site, its maintenance is cheaper than for intersections with signals.

I haven’t seen any studies about how much more soil they bury under asphalt, and that ought to be considered too.

 3.  Roundabouts are greener
Every bit as important, roundabouts reduce vehicle emissions and use less gas.  According to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, In one study, installing a roundabout in place of an intersection with signals reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 29 percent and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent. In another study, replacing traffic signals and stop signs with roundabouts reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 32 percent, nitrous oxide emissions by 34 percent, carbon dioxide emissions by 37 percent, and hydrocarbon emissions by 42 percent.

Constructing roundabouts in place of traffic signals can reduce fuel consumption by about 30 percent. At 10 intersections studied in Virginia, this amounted to more than 200,000 gallons of fuel per year.

What do you think about roundabouts? 

Let us know!

FINISHING UNMILLED TIMBERS FOR OUR HOUSE

Yesterday Doug and I started our new one-day-a-week routine of working with the crew building our new house, Underhill.  Thursdays is all we have for February because Doug is teaching genetics at University of Wisconsin-Platteville Monday thru Wednesday and Fridays, and I am juggling three writing projects – all with March 1 deadlines.

Doug (on right) works with Brad and Prairie finishing one of the main beams.

Whole Trees Architecture and Construction has agreed to let us work with the crew as much as we can.  We’ll keep track of the time we put in and get a deduction for our labor when the final costs are tallied, and that’s good because building a house – even a little one – has a big price tag.  But it’s also good because nothing feels better than building your own shelter.  It must be hardwired in our DNA.  Most mammals do it and so do birds – even fish and insects.

It just feels GOOD on a primal level.

It felt especially good yesterday.  The sun was shining and the task at hand was finishing the surface of some of the timbers that will make the houses frame.

Doug worked with an angle grinder to smooth out rough spots and round the places on the logs where branches reached out.

I came behind with an orbital sander and smoothed out scratches, nicks and the tracks other equipment have left on the limbs.

This was an amazingly satisfying job.  As I worked my way along the surface of each timber, I was thinking about where it will be in the house.  Several are trees that will be in prominent places that I can well imagine.

As each piece is done, it is moved out of the work area.

One massive piece will hold up the northwest corner of the house.  We will pass it every time we come and go.  The more I worked on it, the more I love its burly form.  It reminded me of the neck of a powerful draft horse when every muscle is engaged.

The next post I worked on was the wonderful tree that will be part of our bedroom wall with branches that arch across the span of the room and brace into the post on the opposite wall.  I gave that delicately branched timber extra TLC.

While I was working on that one, the sun sank behind a bank of clouds and the wind picked up.  I barely noticed.

Suddenly the day was over.  The finished timbers were stored outside the work area in groups that match their ultimate house location.

I was filled with joy all the way home – and I can’t wait till next Thursday.

MY VALENTINE TO THE TIMBERS THAT WILL MAKE OUR HOUSE

It’s time for an update on building our house because things have been moving along swiftly this winter.

Last summer we went over our 44 acres with Roald Gundersen and Della Hansmann from Whole Trees Architecture, selecting specific trees to be part of the house based on both their suitability for construction and how their removal would affect the health of the woods. (See my post The First 100 Trees for our Home) Next, we peeled the trees where they stood, so they could begin the drying process, which also serves to make them lighter and easier to move once the trees are actually cut down.

When the ground froze (although this spookily mild winter there has been less frozen ground to take advantage of than usual) the trees were felled and pulled to the area around the barn.  (See my post Tree Felling Begins)
This month our building foreman Brian Dalstrom and an assistant have started prepping the timbers and are starting to join them together with custom cutting and shaping.

This month because of health issues, I have not been able to be involved in the process as much as I would like, but Sunday, Doug and I were out at the land making final adjustments to the building site.  Fitting the house, the future garage and the solar panels into the hillside is challenging, and many hours have been spent with levels, tape measures and compass to come up with the best possible configuration.  We are getting very close.

This is a merged panorama that shows where the sun is at rising, noon and setting this time of year. Our house will be aligned to take advantage of this solar arc.

We got out to the land before sunrise because we wanted to see exactly where the sun is coming up at this time of year.  Every branch of every tree and every leaf and twig on the ground was covered with delicate tracery of frost, making it a challenge for me to concentrate on compasses and tape measures.  By noon, we had a good sense that the house, garage and solar panels will all nestle in and work together like the gears in a clock.

Then we took time to look at the timbers Brian has been shaping.

Timber frame at dawn

Timber frame buildings are made of bents, and bents are like a cross-section of the building.  They define the outer shape. In our barn, which was a more traditional timber frame structure, they looked like this.

Doug helping to set the back barn bent in place.

Unmilledtimber framing, as it is done by Whole Trees builds upon the opportunities that occur as unique branching shapes are fitted together.

The pieces are not joined with the traditional joinery  of milled timber frame – the time necessary would make it cost prohibitive.  Ultimately, metal nuts and bolts will hold the pieces  in place, but the joinery does nestle customized shapes into existing natural curves, and many natural branching columns are left intact, creating connections that strengthen the joints.

Looking at the same bent Doug is standing by at dawn (above) from another angle.

In general, the load-bearing capability of the posts and beams will be exceptionally high, and I’m glad they are going to be strong.  When Doug and I lived in the Netherlands, we lived in a 300-year-old farm house.  Since then, I have never wanted to build anything that would last a second less.  That is an important element of sustainability.

But I am even more glad that these joints are beautiful.  They are a reminder that there are ways of working with nature, rather than conquering it.

Sure, it’s quicker and cheaper to toss together a structure out of “2×4”s.  But what is the final product?  How does it welcome and shelter you?  How often are you reminded of how you owe your shelter to trees?

I admit it.  I’m in love with this house already, and it’s only a bunch of trees piled around the barn.

WILL YOU BE MY GREEN VALENTINE? HERE’S HOW!

If  a bouquet and a box of chocolate are part of your valentine vocabulary, you may be telling someone you love them with toxins and trafficking in children.  Those flowers and candy didn’t cost you much, but like many other materials we take for granted, someone else may be paying a very high price for our indulgences.

DON’T SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

Beautiful, isn't it? Just don't touch or smell it. (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/damselfly58/2262853040/ )

You can find the details from many sources, but for a quick, concise read, check out planetgreen.com.   It will tell you that 79% of cut flowers displayed so prettily in the grocery store come from Ecuador or Columbia where they are poisoning the people who grow them and the country around them.

And you know that green foam that the stems are jabbed into to fix the flowers in place?  It’s a petroleum bi-product that off gases formaldehyde – but only when soaked in water.

Who doesn’t love the smell of flowers?  Ever buried your nose in that bouquet and breathed it in?

Not such a good idea.  The leaves have probably been sprayed with a toxic substance to make them shine, and the blossoms have been drenched in various chemical pesticides and preservatives.

When flowers aren’t available at your local farmers’ market, give them a pass.

SWEETS FOR THE SWEET

A lot of chocolate comes from an area in Africa with a tradition of using children for labor.  The children are brought from neighboring countries, and it’s a very ugly situation.

(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixieclipx/2265668729/in/photostream/ )

Watch  Chocolate: The Bitter Truth, a BBC documentary

Or

The Dark Side of Chocolate

When I first learned about how most chocolate is produced, I actually stopped eating chocolate for about a year.  Then I learned that there are Fair Trade and organic chocolates available.

 Stop Chocolate Savery   has the most comprehensive list of Fair Trade and Organic chocolates that I found on line.

GREEN GREETINGS FOR VALENTINES DAY

Here are a few other ways to send a Valentine message that don’t have any toxic residue or bitter after taste:

1. The Sierra Club offers great gifts that support the wild.  With each donation, you get a fuzzy toy.  Protect the Arctic and give your true love a polar bear puppet.
2. Fair Indigo offers your pick of Fair Trade, organic or USA-made Valentine gifts like a beer soap bar or a recycled sari evening bag.  And instead of flowers, you can give your true love a garden in a bag organic basil kit.
3. Check out your local antique mall or other venue where you can find items made some time ago.  Their manufacture probably involved less carbon release, and they have acquired a patina that money can’t buy.   To me such gifts carry the message that love can last a long, long time — how long will chocolates or roses last?

 What are your ideas about greening things up this February 14?