Husband: How did you get the tea to taste like honey?

Me: I added … honey.

Husband: Touché.

Photo by Steve Taylor/Getty Images

(Read Part 1 here.)

So the universal odometer rolled toward the 20th century, where all of hemp’s trouble began. Despite the lack of mechanized harvesting and processing, hemp’s versatility as the source of paper, textiles, and cordage enabled it to become America’s No. 2 cash crop, surpassed only by cotton.

In the 1920s, industry movers and shakers such as Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, and Henry Ford began developing synthetic products derived from from renewable biomass resources, including hemp. In fact, Ford used the resin of stiffened hemp fibers to construct an automobile that also ran on renewable biofuels, stressing that he planned to use only resources from the “annual growth of the fields.”

“The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust—almost anything,” Ford said in 1925. “There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”

Photo by Institut für Landtechnik

Around the same time, however, another octane-boosting fuel called tetra-ethyl lead, marketed by a little company known as DuPont, was also on the ascent. But the invention of an efficient and cost-effective method of processing hemp threatened to throw DuPont’s new technologies—which included nylon (billed as “synthetic hemp”), processing chemicals for wood-pulp paper, and pesticides and fertilizers for the cotton industry—for a loop.

George Schlichten’s hemp decorticator promised to revolutionize the hemp industry much like the cotton gin did with cotton. In February 1938, Popular Mechanics hailed hemp as the world’s first “billion-dollar crop”, providing “thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land.”

That allegedly didn’t sit well the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Andrew Mellon, president of Mellon Bank and, when he was appointed, the wealthiest man in America, according to Vote Hemp. Mellon Bank was also one of DuPont’s biggest financiers and loaned huge sums of cash to fund the company’s growing petrochemical business, one that had the potential to bring home 80 percent of the bacon.

Mellon appointed Harry Anslinger, an associate who would later marry Mellon’s niece, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a body that later evolved into the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) we know and love.

Conspiracy? What conspiracy?

Photo by Laura Zindel

It began with an innocent question from a potential wholesale customer in Los Angeles: How eco-friendly were ceramics artist Laura Zindel’s servingware, drinking vessels, and vases?

In a guest post on One Black Bird, Zindel details how she stayed up nights researching this storeowner’s assertion that ceramics could be anything but environmentally devastating. She began asking around, discovering mixed opinions.

Read the full post to learn more about the responses Zindel garnered, as well as the conclusion she finally came to.

Photo by Laura Zindel

Photo by Laura Zindel

Photo from Sparkability

If you don’t want your chilluns getting their sticky fingers on your antique Victorian dollhouse, the Dutch-designed MobileHome is made from 100 percent recycled cardboard. Has 8 rooms, stair openings, and spyholes, plus an attic for storage. Another 10 smackers gets you a kid-size playhouse they can paint and decorate. ($35, Sparkability)

A Slice of Organic Life by Sheherezade Goldsmith (Ed.)

Novices taking their first toddling steps toward a more sustainable lifestyle should look elsewhere for a reassuring hand and the soft coo of encouragement. A Slice of Organic Life, edited by Sheherezade Goldsmith, dives headlong into the often baffling business of eco-friendly living by rattling off a series of instructions, without framing them in any kind of context that might make sense to a greenie-to-be.

A foreword by acclaimed chef, author, and food activist Alice Waters is followed by an introduction by Goldsmith. But just when you think you’re on solid, navigable terrain, the ground suddenly opens up below your feet and you find yourself inexplicably rushing past an edict to “Grow Salad Leaves in a Window Box.” Immediately after, you’re asked to “Save Energy the Easy Way,” and then to “Shop Ethically,” as if you were flipping through a stack of flash cards, each bearing little relation to its neighbors.

It would be unfair, however, to say that no effort at organization has been made—the book is ostensibly split into three sections based on your living situation: 1. No Need for a Yard, 2. Roof Terrace, Patio, or Tiny Yard, and 3. Yard, Community Garden, or Field. It might be easier to think of Slice as a collection of homesteading projects, from making and freezing baby foods to—I kid you not—raising a couple of young pigs.

The large type, vibrant and generously laid-out photographs are certainly appealing, and so this is the kind of glossy picture book you could strategically place on your coffee table to pique the curiosity of non-environmentally inclined guests. Slice makes for an easy, non-threatening read—and you really do emerge from its pages believing that yes! you could grow sweet peas on a teepee or become a bee keeper—but the book also tries to toss too many balls in the air at the same time, and keeping track of all them can leave you feeling dizzy. ($25, cloth)

Want to snag my free copy of the book? Comment below about something you never thought you’d DIY, but you did. I’ll pick a winner at random on August 1.

This review refers to a first American hardcover edition, courtesy of DK Publishing. A Slice of Organic Life can be found in stores now.

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