Introduction: In Short, I've Changed

It was the day after 9/11/2001. I was standing in a Publix supermarket in Dunwoody, Georgia, shell-shocked like everyone, trying to figure out what to buy as emergency food "just in case" and it hit me that if something happened to our food supply, we were pretty much up a creek. If something happened to our water supply? Well, forget the creek.

I'm not a doom and gloom kind of person, so I shook off the choking despair that threatened to grip our entire society. Instead, I did what people have done for centuries when faced with the unknown. With disaster. With that feeling that there isn't a darn thing they can control in a changing, unpredictable world. I planted seeds.

I was never a gardener before. And no, this book is not about gardening. Well, I guess it is, a bit. But it's more about how a whole new world of possibility opened up when I took that simple, time-honored action. I got rich in things that don't have price tags. I got connected to people all over the world I never would have met before. And I found answers to questions I didn't even know I had, about a way of life I didn't even realize I was living.

I'm just a mom in suburbia. Or, I was. Since I planted those seeds, I became the author of a blog titled FoodShed Planet, about nurturing sustainability close to home and around the world (and other food for thought). I wrote for various publications about sustainability, eventually becoming somewhat of a subject matter expert, I suppose. I was named the chairperson of the sustainability commission in my city, one of the newest cities in the United States of America, and am charged with helping it become a certified green community. I was even appointed to my city's 20-year Comprehensive Plan steering committee, an incredibly concrete way to have my hand in helping to form a more sustainable future. I've toured farms and factories. I've interviewed CEOs and social justice leaders. I've made friends with farmers, artisans, and eco-entrepreneurs. I'm helping start community and school gardens. And I've grown more than 50 different types of crops, on what used to be about 200 square feet of suburban lawn.

In short, I've changed.

And you can, too. I compiled this collection of my favorite FoodShed Planet posts (and added lots of brand new stuff, too) on a wide range of topics about sustainability, and life, to get you thinking about your power each and every day to make a noticeable difference--mostly by voting with your dollar, but also by taking an extra moment to make choices that, over time, will become habits that have the potential to change your life. Like they did mine.

There's nothing sequential about this book. Even though it's arranged from A to Z, or rather, Amaranth to Worms, you can jump in to these quick-read chapters any way you want when you're waiting for your kids at karate practice or hanging in carpool line or, my favorite, in the hammock on a Sunday morning.

And just because I'm a mom doesn't mean you need to be a mom to enjoy this book. In fact, if you're a corporate road warrior, a 25-year-old living on the cheap in a fifth-floor walk-up in a big city, a backpacking college student or a teen going green, I know you because I was you. I write with you in mind as well.

If you're a sixties throw-back who ate organic way before it was easy to find and warned about the effects of industrial agriculture, I stand on your shoulders. And if you are a grandparent who remembers Victory Gardens, I look to you for a transfer of knowledge so I can be among those to carry it forward.

So, book a little time with me each day for the rest of the summer and we'll end up with a book at the end. Its name may change, although I'm thinking a great designer could have some fun with From Amaranth to Worms. But its mission remains the same. To share some food for thought to help you live more sustainably. And perhaps, just perhaps, to change the world a little bit for the better.

A

AMARANTH

It Asks Little of Me

It seems like watering the crops after dinner has been my life for ever, not just for a few years. At first, I felt anxious and impatient and planted only what you would expect--green beans, red tomatoes, zucchini. Next, I threw in lots of heirloom veggies that veered from the mainstream--lemon cucumbers, yellow teardrop tomatoes, purple beans. And I started to add flowers, which I hadn't wanted to do that first year because I didn't want to "waste any space.' But I realized how important they were for pollination and averting specific pests. Then, although still trying to maximize space, I was happy to let plants stay past their prime and go to seed so that I could have all lifecycles present in the garden, and so I could save seeds.

And finally, I changed yet again. As I was watering last night, I realized how little time I've spent weeding lately. As I looked around the garden, I discovered it is because not only am I eating half the weeds (the lamb's quarters, mostly), but I find a sort of noble beauty in them that I hadn't found before. I see how the birds visit them, and how the kids work their little flowers into their games. I also realized that much of my garden is filled with stuff I didn't plant this year. Where are the eggplants? Where is the corn? Tomato, lamb's quarters and calendula volunteers are all over, and this year's big star is turning out to be a tall, bushy, elegant red spire with nutrition-packed leaves called amaranth. I planted it two years ago and let it go to seed and now it is truly everywhere. It is a big, showy plant that adds color, movement and interest to the garden. But, more than that, it asks little of me and continually delivers a daily harvest of its leaves. The crimson red of the flowers supposedly makes a gorgeous dye. I'll somehow learn to thresh the flowers to get the seed, which apparently can be popped like popcorn, cooked like couscous or quinoa, or ground into a flour. Amaranth resists heat and drought and has no major disease problems. Cultures around the world rely on this easy-to-grow, densely nutritious crop. And now I do, too.

I ordered my original amaranth seeds from Seeds of Change. I wasn't going to mention Seeds of Change because they screwed up my order this year so badly and for so long that I vowed not to order from them again. Yet, had I gotten the seeds I ordered this year, I am certain that I would not have let my beds become overrun with amaranth, and I wouldn't have as part of my life what I'm increasingly seeing as a daily gift. So, in an odd way, thank you, Seeds of Change. It all works out.

B

BALANCE

Dancer Tree


We pass this tree on the way home from karate. We have, for years. Yet I only recently noticed this silly tree with its arms out and leg lifted, clearly practicing the yoga pose, Dancer, and now every time I pass it, it's all I see. I laugh out loud that a tree would do Dancer Pose, instead of Tree Pose. My younger daughter groans, telling me it's not all that funny, but just wait, I want to say, just wait until you've lived through college and work and children and homes and society and you're expected to act a certain way, but don't. Just wait until you see how connected you feel one day when you pass a tree doing Dancer's Pose. Just wait.

But then, this week, every day that I've seen this tree has revealed more and more red buds coming out of its fingers and toes. Soon it will be covered and I will no longer see the pose underneath. Spring is about to explode here. The "smelly trees" (the Bradford pear trees) are blooming. The first of the cherry blossoms and magnolias are flowering. The yellow forythia bushes and perky little packs of daffodils are everywhere.

About a week ago, I received a package in the mail from Kate in Australia. It was as if she had officially passed the baton of Spring to me. The package held numerous amazing things, among them several small seed packets that contained seeds she had saved from her garden, thousands of miles away, where summer is now giving way to fall. I already planted her "beautiful, pale green spinach" that she has been saving for more than ten years, and, come late April here, I will plant her Red Cornos capsicum (those are peppers, to us here in the US) and Ogen melon seeds, which she actually got from a gardener who lives near her beach shack, and which he claims are the Best Melons in the World. We shall now see!

And so, with the Dancer Tree about to hide under it clothes of leaves, and Kate's seeds in my garden, I feel balance in the world. I dabble in yoga myself, not near enough, not long enough, but a 40-second sun salutation while the coffee heats up counts, doesn't it? I do receive an email update each morning that I love, called The Daily Om. And I do try to do Dancer Pose more often. Especially when inspired by a tree.



Something Telling About Me as An American


The basil abounds, and I use it recklessly. Piled on top of pizza and rice and eggs, so much that I can barely see the food below. Full-leafed as a garnish. Fistfuls of it in vases. There is no cherishing of this basil, no doling out of it in small quantities, no sense of conservation about it. Oh, sure, I've frozen some for the dead of winter, but not near enough. And I share it quickly and willingly with anyone who wants it. And, although I am fully aware that the first frosty night in October will take it all from me, blackening it and ending its reign in my garden, for now I have more than I could ever use and I use it as if it is endless.

And it occurs to me. The United States is a vast country. Our resources have always felt plentiful, before the realization that they are not, and that we as Americans are using more than our share. Yet we keep on using them knowing they are finite, knowing the day will come when they are gone. We use them like basil, recklessly, piling them on, garnishing our lives, grabbing fistfuls and displaying them.

I know it is merely a green herb in my garden. A crop that did well, like you may have tomatoes or zucchini. But perhaps it is something more than that, something metaphoric, something telling about me as an American. And perhaps it is time for me to change how I view the gift of this resource. And what I do with it.


Basil's Last Hurrah


The squirrels are everywhere, frantically gathering nuts for the winter ahead. And just as they know what they need to do, the first chilly mornings of the season made it clear to me as well. Gather the last of the basil.

Basil turns black when it gets cold, and that's it, it's done. Life without basil, after months gorging on it, seems almost inconceivable, and I will dole out my little ice cubes of pesto like gold in the next few months, eventually, by January, happy to let it go, happy to wait and to want again.

In the meantime, I celebrated the occasion of Basil's Last Hurrah by baking a fresh batch of pesto into my famous bread. Now, there are lots of cool features on blogs but what we really need, let's admit, is a button you can click to smell things. I'd add the button here and you could walk outside and then in again, as I did a dozen times, to smell that powerful marriage, that alchemy, of bread and basil.

And if I could offer you this feature, I'd also include those smells-like-honeysuckle-but-aren't bushes we pass on the walk home from school, and licorice-scented tarragon that's currently tipped with brilliant yellow flowers, and what my neighbor's dog Rexy smells like after a bath.

I'd add the smell of morning. The smell of rain. The smell of that candle burning last night after dinner, when I lingered at the kitchen table alone, basil bread crumbs on the plates, thinking about what my older daughter told me, how she reached out to people she barely knows and asked for help about something big in her life, how she said she "finally realizes that together in this world we can do much greater things, that alone we are small."

And I said to myself, "Thank you, Basil." We've come together, and we've shared, and we've grown through many meals where it has starred this year, and I am grateful.


The Genie of Summer


If you had been in my kitchen yesterday when I was rummaging through my freezer to find things to throw in the soup, now that the cold has finally blown in and the flip flops have hung their heads and scuffed back to the closet, you would have heard me gasp out loud in shock, in joy, in total unadulterated exuberation! Because (and you fellow kitchen gardeners will appreciate how exciting this was) I found an entire ice cube tray full of pesto that I didn't know I had. Pesto! Green gold!

Pesto is the genie of summer, a power captured in a concoction with a smell and taste that transcends time. When I heated up a few cubes, the genie exploded forth and granted me three wishes.

I wish I could stand, barefoot and sweaty, on the end of the diving board while the distant sounds of "Marco!" "Polo!" fill the air.

I wish I could take a nap in the hammock, an unread, open book splayed across me.

I wish I could chop up bowls of heirloom tomatoes and drink the juice from the cutting board.

Those days will come. And no, I don't really want them now. But for a moment, on a day when I worry if the peas, oddly flowering in December, will survive, it feels good to warm my heart with memory.


BLACKBERRIES

My Deep-Purple Opportunity


A few years back, my neighbor told me I had sticker bushes poking through the fence. I trimmed anything that could get in his way, and then had to wait a couple weeks before I had my golden opportunity. Or, should I say, my deep-purple opportunity. Because those weren't sticker bushes any more than rose bushes are sticker bushes. They were blackberry bushes, and before long they were hanging heavy with hundreds of plump, mouth-puckering berries.

"Here," I said, handing him a plate of homemade blackberry bars over the fence. "They are from those sticker bushes."

A smile crept across his face like the one when the Grinch's heart grows three sizes.

And now, once again, right on schedule here in June, the blackberries are ripe for picking. I never planted them, you know. The birds did. And such a lovely job they did. The blackberry canes are interspersed throughout a row of low-growing juniper bushes that edge my kitchen garden, perfectly positioned as if some master planner had intended it.

All day long the mockingbirds visit the bushes, their gray and white tails tipped upwards as they dip their beaks down the blackberry canes, searching for just the right berry. I told my family that I wasn't sure how many berries we'd get this year, what with the birds keeping constant vigil there, and one of my children, in her infinite wisdom, said "Well, it's not like they're yours, Mom. You're not the one who planted them."

And so I am grateful for the handful I pick for morning yogurt or afternoon smoothies or for tossing on top of vanilla ice cream. I hope I can pick enough to freeze, like last year, so I have them in October, when June is already a far away memory. But most of all, I hope I can pick enough for blackberry bars, to make my neighbor smile at the miracle of nature once again.


Nature Tried to Warn Me


How arrogant I had been, thinking I could tame the wild blackberry bushes, thinking it was my decision where they would serve me best. The birds had planted them a few years ago, all nice and neat and convenient in a bunch of juniper bushes at the edge of my garden, and we had picked up to a quart a day through the month of June each year from them. Yet, like mint and bamboo, blackberry brambles like to ramble, but in general, I wouldn't let them. I would pick and prune and keep them contained where I thought they worked best. For me.

Last year, I let a couple other sections of the yard fill with the brambles, that end of the path up in the bushes by the hammock, and that spot by the garden gate where the little blackberry shoots kept appearing. I reasoned that I'd have more, more, more, and wouldn't that be great.

So, guess what? My original patch, the Mother Lode, barely returned this year. And now it is June, and the berries are turning black and I have only those two new patches, the ones I almost didn't let grow. Nature tried to tell me something, tried to warn me that change was coming and that I needed to change with it, and I barely listened.

I barely listened.

And now I have just a small handful of berries each day, not near enough to toss into smooothies and desserts and freeze for the future, as I did the past few years. And, of course, I cherish each of these berries even more.

And I have learned my lesson.


BREAD

"Your Life Is an Occasion. Rise to It."


And so, there I was the other day, baking bread from a recipe in my new Less is More Mennonite cookbook, and as I punched down the risen dough so it could rise again, I remembered my favorite line from the recent movie, Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium. Mr. Magorium, played by Dustin Hoffman, says to the cute Natalie Portman character, "Your life is an occasion. Rise to it."

Right there and then, I decided. I would bake bread weekly (the oatmeal/whole wheat recipe is simple, and I just divided the dough into four loaves and made several different types by adding olives and oregano to one, a cinnamon/sugar swirl to another, and leaving two plain). And I would ask myself each week, am I rising to the occasion of my life?

This week, I would say, yes, I did. I lived more fully my daily "prayer," if you could call it that. Which is:

To live more fully in the Now,
To live intentionally,
To hear--and heed--my calling for today,
To treat creation with dignity and respect,
And to express my authentic self.

First, my family is still basking in the glow of our still-lingering vacation memories. But I also took some big steps forward:

* I rebranded my business so that my vocation and avocation have officially merged.

* My friend Richard and I made worm bins, and the worms have been ordered ("Get the Latin name! Get the Latin name!" Richard insisted. Okay, they are eisenia foetida--or red wrigglers--and 500 of them are on their way). I'm already planning the Grand Celebration for their arrival.

* And I swung my garden gate open one afternoon for my new weekly "Open Garden" and told everyone I saw to feel free to drop by, although I couldn't promise them they would not be put to work! I have been longing for more social activity in my busy days of working and parenting, and I have been wanting to connect with more kitchen gardeners (or wannabees). And yes, a steady stream of the most wonderful peeople came. One boy tossed my hard-to-toss compost pile. Another, only five years old and autistic, chopped up decaying logs so that I have the most beautiful mulch. Two other kids cleaned out the clubhouse. And a group of moms helped me plan a Zen garden over in that corner that doesn't get much sun, and they each walked away with their own little cups of dirt with lemon balm, mint and strawberries in it.

One of my favorite quotes is "How you spend your days is how you spend your life." As the little five-year-old said as he dug in the dirt, "I am doing all the things I love to do." And this week, I agree with him. This week, I loved how I spent my life.


It's Ultimately About Hands

My husband left me a DVD, with a note that said, "I think you'll like this," which is all it takes for me to find a space and time and indulge in whatever is being sent my way. And so, that's how I found myself, curled up with headphones on in a room in our house far away from the rest of my sleeping family, on Saturday morning long before the sun rose, watching How to Cook Your Life, a "cooking class" with the very charming, funny Zen Priest and Chef Edward Espe Brown.

Of course, it's really not much about cooking (although, my goodness, I'll never bake bread again without thinking of this movie). It's about life and deciding certain things are precious and honoring them, about the value of allowing ourselves to be in functional silence, about channeling anger into energy, intensity and creativity, and, ultimatley, about hands.

Yes, hands. Brown maintains that working with our hands nourishes us, connects us to the world, roots us, and that not only have we lost this connection, but our hands themselves don't know how to "be hands" anymore.

I sort of forgot about all this after my family woke up and the day propelled itself forward, as days tend to do.

But then, yesterday, I was making pizza dough, as I do about once a week (as you well know by now!) and I felt myself moving my hands a little differently than the hundred times before that I have done this exact task. And I looked at my hands and thought about how they felt to touch that dough and push it forward from me, turn it, fold it. And I was suddenly no longer gazing out the window while kneading, watching the hummingbirds that have suddenly taken up residence in my garden, their jewel-toned oscillating bodies hovering in mid-air around the crimson plumes of the stately amaranth plants. I was watching my hands, feeling the seemingly- contradictory strength and softness in them at once, letting my hands be hands.

Fast forward to the evening, my One Local Pizza baking in the oven, topped with the days' always shockingly-abundant harvest (this time, Japanese eggplant, tomatoes, basil, oregano, mustard greens, arugula, lamb's quarters, bell peppers, and the truly delicious thick leaves of heat-hardy malibar spinach, which grows like a vine and has little, tiny purple flowers poking their heads out along the way). I picked up the New York Times business section and read an article titled, Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands.

Sure enough, engineering, architecture and design professors have noticed that today's students in these disciplines have often never had hands-on experience with manual labor, as opposed to students in the past who typically "tinkered" with things in order to figure them out. Now, a movement to get software designers and other designers who do most of their work on computers to use their hands more offline is an attempt to enhance creativity, safety, durability and usability of end-products. This "rediscovery of the human hands" supposedly hones instinct and intuition, as opposed to just logic and cognition.

This got me thinking about a teacher's website I visited last week that exclaimed how green the classroom had become. I was surprised to find that her support of this statement revolved completely around the fact that almost all schoolwork (and homework) for her class was now done on the computer. Sure, that saves paper, but how green is that if we define green, at least partly, as being connected to the environment? To being connected to our senses, and being able to sense what is right and wrong with our relationship with the earth and take active steps to improve it? To being connected, ultimately, simply, to our hands?


Make Bread. Plant Beets.


Make bread.

Plant beets.

Repeat.

It's as simple as that.

And deep inside, in the very core of my being where human instinct lives, I somehow think that if I make enough bread and plant enough beets, all will be well. The world may go to hell in a handbasket, but I will have bread. And I will have beets. Enough for my family. Enough to share. Enough.

And so I drag my red bucket of kitchen water, which I catch while heating up water to bring the yeast to life that I use to bake the bread, outside. I soak the seedlings that I transplant each day in neat little rows tucked beside the straggly, still-stretching-for-the-sky tomato plants and rambling mint and what is that, butternut squashes I see, their hourglass shapes filling out a bit more with each sun rise and set?

The first red leaves of autumn fall on the golden hay of the paths that twist and turn around my vegetable beds. The sun's striations spread their fingers through the deep brown seed heads of the towering sorghum stalks and the rounded, hand-like leaves of the fig tree and the brilliant color-bursts of amaranth and endless sprays of zinnias and the eggplants heavy with fruit again.

I can smell the soil, rich and dark and teaming with life. The soft lawn is moist beneath my feet and the fragrant evergreen juniper bushes, trimmed to make a path, leave their essence on me as I brush by them on my way to the hammock, a book that I never end up reading in my arms. Instead, I lie there and gaze up at the trees that I planted as saplings ten years ago with hopes of one day hanging a hammock.

And I hear the laughter of neighbor children and the distant hum of yet another lawn mower.

And I see a red-tailed hawk circling above, looking for prey.

And I smell the challah bread, made with eggs from chickens I know and kneaded and braided with my own hands, through my open kitchen window not too far away.

And I somehow know, intuitively, that as long as I keep my hands involved in that bread and in that soil, everything will be okay. For today.


The Particular Place I Call Home


I start thinking about it, my garden, in that suspended time and place 30,000 feet up, coming back from visiting my father-in-law in South Florida, where it had been a bit chilly but nothing like here in Atlanta, where it apparently snowed.

"The lettuces will be fine. The kale, downright happy. But the potatoes. They may be goners," I think to myself, imagining their leaves black and lifeless, knowing I had planted them too early, knowing I always do.

I walk through the garage door into the house and then out the back one, just like that, in one sweeping motion, no pause to check the mail or see if the hamsters are alive or breathe in that distinct smell of home. Because that smell isn't there, in my house, after these days away but rather outside, where I brush against the rosemary and lavender on my way to the paths, where mint sprigs crush beneath my flip-flopped feet. The potatoes have made it. The snow must have been brief. The cold, fleeting.

The sun never rises the next day. Sheets of rain and marbles of hail pellet the house. The laundry is piled up. The dishwasher is full. The stacks of things to be read and sorted cover the counter. Yet, I add the yeast to the the warm water, measure the whole wheat and grind the flax seeds and within moments the heels of my hands are pushing, folding, turning, pushing, folding, turning, rhythmically, mindlessly, and I am once again home.

My younger daughter asks if she can knead and I acquiesce reluctantly, missing the soft fullness of the dough the moment my hands stop. She tries to copy my rhythm but quickly changes cadence, her head bending down, her voice rising slightly to announce, "I have my own way of doing it," as well she should, as we each do when we make bread.

A long while later, her hands still busy, she calls to me and proclaims, "Look, Mom, a dough man!" I smile, and then tell her that, of course, the dough still needs to rise so the shape won't be retained, and I could almost kick myself for squashing her moment like that. But she replies, a content smile on her face, "I know. That doesn't matter."

That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. I think of that, looking out across the soaking yard, a river of water racing from my neighbor's yard through mine, and onward downhill to the neighbor's yard beyond. The hammock swings gently in the downpour, singing out to me even in its sopping state.

I think of the night I wandered out from my father-in-law's condo and turned a corner I hadn't turned in the 19 years I've visited him and fell upon a grand old Southern oak tree I had never seen before, draped with Spanish moss. I called for my younger daughter, knowing she would revel at this find along with me, and sure enough, she did, pulling at the moss, climbing the tree, wondering if the fibers were usable, if we could knit a scarf from it or if it would dry out. . .

The next day, I ease onto the interstate, the wonderful NPR radio show Splendid Table accompanying me the way it has since my first of these seven organic farming classes when I first discovered it, this time with an interview with a winemaker from New Zealand and Australia. I think of how lovely she sounds, how gently she handles the interview, how the striations of the early morning light on my way to Cumming, Georgia match the lilt in her voice so far away so perfectly. I pass sleepy barns and horses grazing and everywhere wisteria dangling from trees, the sugar-sweet grapey smell of them permeating the air like some lost memory, like every lost memory.

At lunchtime, my fellow farm students and I linger around the outdoor tables with the Pughs of Cane Creek Farm and the former students who had returned to share their stories with us, bowls of a cheese-specked Mexican-inspired potato soup before us. We stretch and move seamlessly to the asparagus patch where we spread wheat straw, and on to the berry patch where we weed and talk, and talk some more, and finally to the hoop house where we pluck the suckers from the tomato plants, and then part once more to go back to our everyday lives.

Yet I don't want to go back, not to the everyday life from before this past week. No. Because the light has changed. The season has changed. The crops have changed, settled now in their spaces, reaching out, growing. The house is filled with the fragrance of baked bread. And the hammock calls.

All over the world, perhaps, the pace picks up with spring's new growth. But I live in the Southeastern United States, where heat will be rolling into town with the next train, and, although my work will somehow still get done, I have found my own way of doing it, a way that fits the particular place I call home. The abundant lemon balm outside my door makes one thing perfectly clear to me. It is time for tea.


BUTTER


To make homemade butter means to commit for fifteen of the longest minutes of your life, as you stand there shaking cream in a jar until your arm seems as if it will fall off. The cream starts to whip and fills the jar, making the shaking seem like it has done all that it can do even though you are still far from butter. You may even stop there, and put this cream on your toast and call it a day. Half-done.

But that's just like life, isn't it? The flurry of activity that makes up days and sometimes has you feel as if you're not getting anywhere? The desire to give up, to stop, to abandon the cause, to exclaim out loud, "It's just not working." Especially when things get hard. Or results are not apparent.

But if you stick with it, and trust, there comes a moment, a glorious, golden moment, when suddenly a slight sloshy sound catches your always-surprised ears and you know that you have made it through. And as the buttermilk quickly separates from the butter, you realize you are mere moments away from the sweetest, freshest butter of your life. And only because you persevered.

When I feel completely ineffectual, I know that it is time for me to do one thing and one thing only. Make butter. And remind myself how life works.

And so, as Lake Lanier hit its historic low last night (the lowest it has been since it was built in the 1950s), and I continue to believe that small actions matter, even if it's just to put a little bit of positive energy into the world, I will take one small extra action today, however unrelated to our Georgia drought it may sound.

I will make butter.

C

CAMPING

Endless Stream of Humanity



We camped in the garden last night, the earth firm beneath our backs, the breeze enveloping us with scents of lavender and rosemary, mint and oregano. First we heard people on a distant deck, a laugh or two, a lone dog barking, a cat, a wayward car alarm and finally, quiet, peace, silence, broken suddenly and exhuberantly by a veritable symphony of bird song and the slow spreading of morning's fingers across the sky.

I thought of the Ingalls family from Little House on the Prairie. Of famous 20th-century homesteaders Helen and Scott Nearing. Of refugees in tents who somehow manage to save a seed or two and start a garden in the midst of despair, and nomads who move their tents or yurts with the seasons so their animals can continue to graze. I though of them all lying under the same sky and hearing a bird symphony of their own and knowing the land they slept on was the very land that would nourish them. And although my coffee pot was only yards away, and here I am already publishing this post using modern technology, I felt, through my simple gesture of sleeping under the stars in the garden that sustains me, somehow connected to this endless stream of humanity.


CARBON FOOTPRINT

Cloth Napkins, My Frightening Carbon Output Number and Why I Think Change Is Hard--UPDATED


I'v been humbled. Sincerely humbled. I spent the past week scrutinizing every aspect of my daily life in order to see where I can make eco-improvements, with a particular emphasis on the "reducing" component of reduce, reuse and recycle (since waste is a sign of failure to plan--there is no waste in nature).

My "textbook" for the week was Go Green, Live Rich, which gives 50 tips for saving the earth--and saving or even generating money at the same time. The book includes links with every tip that empower you to take action right away. First stop for me was to check my carbon footprint. According to the book, the best carbon calculator is at www.earthlab.com/carbonprofile. It is about a three-miute survey, and voila, there's your number.

My family's number is 483. I checked to see what this means and here it is, folks--it means my family is responsible for 24.5 tons of carbon a year. Please keep in mind that we eat local (both in our kitchen garden and through participation in a CSA and farmers market), walk and bike when possible, use a rainbarrel, have had an energy audit that revealed we were doing most of the things we could to save energy in the home, eat vegetarian (almost my whole family now), recycle, hardly ever travel by plane (maybe one flight for my husband, none for the rest of us each year) and many more things, most of which you know from reading this blog. And guess what? The average score for a U.S. family is 325, with an output of 20 tons of carbon. The average Canadian family's score is 305, with an output of 17 tons of carbon. That makes us worse than average.

I was shocked. Granted, the survey, which prides itself on being quick to do, does not ask about vegetarian (which cuts carbon output due to food production in HALF), kitchen gardens or anything about lawn care at all, all points where we would have scored in our favor. But, my goodness, what am I doing wrong?

It appears to be the cars. My car (minivan) is eight years old and I was hoping to run it into the ground, that by using what I have rather than buying (especially since I think the next 5-10 years will reveal much better eco-options) would be the most environmentally sound decision. But it turns out I get 16 miles to the gallon city-driving (check your car here), which is mostly what I do. I'm thinking this is what killed me on the survey. But I don't see how we're any worse than most American families on this issue.

Anyway, I researched MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation Authority (our mass transit service). Three buses run through my town. But to take one to the farmers market, for instance, which is about 4 or 5 miles away, would take me literally an hour and two transfers, not including the long walk to the bus stop and waiting for the two buses. As it is, I get there by car in less than 10 minutes and run five errands or so every time I go in order to increase efficiency for the trip. Which is better?

I went through the entire book like this, looking up websites, evaluating my life. I ended up with a list of 31 bullets about things I could reduce, 2 bullets about things to reuse, and 5 bullets about recycling.

And you know what? It's hard. I work at home so it's not a stretch for me to put on a pot of whole grains bought in the bulk food section while I'm writing or to air-dry towels or to weed the garden during my lunch break, but it's constant thought and planning every single day--and I'm still failing on my carbon ouput!

Could I even imagine coming home from eight hours at an office job (and two hours of commuting) and carrying grey water from my upstairs shower to load my washing machine downstairs, trying to find something to eat from an overgrown garden while making homemade waffles for tomorrow's breakfast and plugging and unplugging appliances all over the house before and after using them?

Every single thing takes time, time that most people simply do not have. It's easy to be all high and mighty and say, "Well, if they made it a priority, they would have time," but I know how those folks feel. I know the level of exhaustion and how brain-fried a day of running around like crazy at work can make you feel by the time you get home. Add kids to the mix and the constant school recitals (as opposed to afterschool activities, which, granted, you can limit), homework assignments and need for more clothes because they keep doing that pesky thing called growing, and you might as well just call it a day.

And for those who don't know the United States, especially Atlanta, an infrastructure of environmental support simply does NOT exist yet, at least not out here in the suburbs. Change is coming, but folks making eco-choices are very much the odd ones out still. For instance:

The other day at a clothing store, I told the cashier I had my own bags and he said, "I have to put your purchases in a plastic bag, for security purposes."

I said, "I don't use plastic bags."

He said, "You have to. For security purposes."

Needless to say, after a bit of a back-and-forth struggle, I used my cloth bags, but I have these kinds of weird conversations every single day almost everywhere I go here.

So, I'm a bit frustrated. I know the little things matter, and this past week we made a bunch of small lifestyle switches:

* We're using cloth napkins only (we used to use them for just lunch and dinner)

* We're breaking the paper towel habit

* We're making homemade herbal tea every day and eliminating store-bought tea packaging

* The whole lawn thing with the push reel mower, of course (we've never wanted the grasss to grow so much! There's nothing to cut just yet!)

* My older daughter went veg

But until we can figure out the car thing (and you know we've been trying), I don't see how we're going to make a noticable change in that carbon output number.

So we're working on it. And we're sympathizing with everyone out there who doesn't know where to start, and doesn't know how to make a measurable difference. I clearly don't have the answers.

Time. I think that's an important part of the answer. Every change takes time, and an extraordinary amount of thought. Perhaps some of these changes become second-nature after awhile, but walking to school will always take an extra half hour, and that takes planning, especially when it's getting dark later and we're lingering in the garden instead of going to bed earlier in order to get up earlier to walk.

And so I'm trying to find a way to free up some time. One answer is to blog Monday through Friday and use a few extra hours on the weekends for some of these eco-changes. So that's one small change I'm making, starting this upcoming week.

In the meantime, cloth napkins. At least it's a step in the right direction.

This week on FoodShed Planet:

* Property values, or "Keeping Up with the Greens"

* The exciting arrival of Mr. Stripey

* What on earth are therms, and why can't the utility companies just SAY that?

* Every Monday Matters!

I'm happy to be back, where (most) folks don't think I'm crazy. It was lonely out there.



UPDATE--April 14, 2008

Okay, I went back to the carbon test and re-took it. The only changes I made were to indicate that 4 people live in my home instead of "2 adults", and I added a few bus trips (the afternoon school bus is used numerous times). Those two changes reduce my score to 342, with a carbon output of 14.8. Whatever. I just think that if you're going to ask about the size of the house, how much you drive your car, and the cost of water, electric, etc. and not include the children, then the results are no doubt going to be skewed higher. Okay, I'll let go now (I think).

Ut oh, I'm back. Last time, last time. Here's another interesting one--the Earthday Network's Ecological Footprint Quiz. This one does give credit for vegetarianism and for living and driving with others (i.e. kids). My total footprint was 15 acres in this quiz which, granted, would require 3.3 planets if everyone lived like me, but which fell way below the 24 acre footprint that is the average per person in the United States.


CHERRY BLOSSOMS

Just Follow the Cherry Blossoms


A gentle wind blows and it snows cherry blossoms right now all over Atlanta. The large, fluffy trees with cotton-candy flowers dip their heavy arms willingly to passersby who just want to touch them or pluck a stem or two to stick in a little bud vase. They are beautiful and elegant and funny and sweet, all at once. And not only do thousands upon thousands of them blanket Atlanta but just two hours south of here, in antebellum-home-filled Macon, Georgia, 300,000 Yoshino cherry trees are blooming, just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival this week.

It is Washington, D.C., however, that gets the glory because of the 3,000 cherry trees given as a gift from the Japanese to our nation's capital. In fact, cherry blossoms are so tightly associated with D.C. that the new Nationals Park baseball stadium (the first LEED-certified stadium in Major League Baseball, by the way) includes a stand of cherry blossoms that overlooks the field. (The Washington Nationals won their season opener the other night--against the Atlanta Braves. Congrats, but we have more cherry blossoms).

Other cities around the world boast a concentrated number of cherry blossom trees--Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and other countries such as Germany and Bulgaria. But 300,000, folks, in Macon. 300,000. That's 100 times the number in D.C. Not to mention the thousands that are blooming all around Atlanta right now, probably at least twenty in my neighborhood alone.

The Yoshino cherry blossoms are almost pure white and they last for about a week, and then scatter gently as if the tree were a flower girl tossing its petals down the aisle. If the wind blows just right, it is not uncommon to be driving and have to put your windshield wipers on. If your car has a sunroof and you open it while driving, you'll be gifted with a seatful of blossoms by the time you get to your destination.

Yoshino cherry trees, called sakura in Japan, are a symbol of the ethereal nature of life. When I see the gutters and ground full of the delicate blossoms, I think of the Buddhist monks who spend months making sand mandalas only to pour them into the river as soon as they are completed so as not to get attached to them and to show how temporary they (and life) are.

And so, enjoy. Enjoy them now, in this moment, on this day. Because this day passes quickly.

But not before more than cherry blossoms connects Macon and Atlanta. Today, a convoy of 250 truckers will supposedly turn off their rigs on the side of the road between the two cities to protest rising diesel fuel prices. Some truckers are quoted in the newspaper as saying they don't think the effort will have an impact, that the truckers need to take their message to Washington.

Just follow the cherry blossoms, folks. Just follow the cherry blossoms.

CHICKENS


"This Would Be My Home"--UPDATED!


I got a piece of mail the other day that said, in big letters, "Have you hugged your chicken today?" It was for some backyard poultry publication, and it made my husband laugh to see that this is the kind of mail I get.

"Perfect timing," I said. "I have my Chicks in the City class this weekend."

"What?" he exclaimed. "Honey, we're not getting chickens. I can't do it. Not chickens!" He has been concerned about this possibility ever since he saw me reading Chickens in Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide a few years ago. And then there have been the chicken pictures I take at every farm I visit. And those little chicken pins I made obsessively one year.

He need not worry. Our neighborhood doesn't allow live poultry (Yes, I've checked!). Yet there I was, at the class.

"I'm not sure why I'm here," I told the dozen or so other students as we sat in our lawn chairs around the chicken coop as if it were a bonfire. The chicken coop straddles the yards of three neighbors (Allison and the couple next door, Lou and Bill) who barely spoke with each other until they all discovered they had a mutual desire for keeping chickens. Now, the "east wing" of the coop is in Allison's yard, where the chickens enter the shed at night, and the "west wing" is in Lou and Bill's yard, where an old rocking chair has been recently added to the found materials that serve as perches. The "wings" are connected by a narrow stretch of land called Chicken Run (of course).

As I was leaving, Allison made an offhand comment about being a musician. Turns out she just released her first CD, Redbud Winter, and she's a finalist in the 2008 South Florida Folk Festival Singer/Songwriter Competition. I purchased her CD and popped it in my CD player for the lengthy ride home.

Oh for a tire swing where I could sit and sing
Sing with the crickets in the twilight lingering
Oh for a resting place to end my wandering
On my own, this would be my home.
Oh for a little lamp that I could see to read
On my own, this would be my home.
Oh for a patch of dirt where I could lay
some seed
Of my own, this would be my home.

I came home, to my swing and lamp and garden. To fresh eggs in the fridge from a farmer I know. To my family out for a long, lazy walk. I put on my sneakers and walked the two miles or so in the breezy Saturday sunshine to meet them on their way back home. I saw them when the road bent just right, and they ran to hug me.

The chickens will have to wait.

To hear Allison's beautiful songs, click here. I particularly love number 4, This Would Be My Home. She also has a very cute song about canning fruits and veggies titled Because I Can that FoodShed Planet folks who "put up" for the winter may enjoy.

UPDATE: November 6, 2007
Just heard from Allison. She has posted an unreleased new song, inspired by the chickens! Actually, here's the story, courtesy of Allison:

For a while now I've been wanting to write a song about the chickens, but I didn't want to do the obvious thing and write a funny one, which would be easy, because there's so much about our Girls that's just funny. Rather, I wanted to write about why I love them, what I've learned from having them, why I think they're so wonderful. And then, serendipitously, my pal and singin partner Cyndi came along with this marvelous challenge--that we all take a theme and write a song about it. The theme was "Day Old Bread." I let it sit in a back corner of my brain for a week or so, and then one morning last week as I was having a cup of coffee and visiting the Girls, this song just fell out. Cyndi recorded it last night at our weekly Sunday Evening Jam get-together with her little hand-held digital recorder we've named Roscoe. Roscoe did such a good job that I decided to go ahead and post it--so have a listen and enjoy!

The Goddess (Or What Happened When I Joined Team Chicken)


"Who's coming to Team Chicken with me tomorrow morning?" I asked my family while out at the fabulous Cafe Sunflower for dinner.

Silence.

"C'mon, Team Chicken! How are you going to wear the t-shirt if you don't participate?" I asked.

"There is no t-shirt, Mom," my older daughter said.

"Not yet," I answered.

"How about you go this first week and . . . check it out . . and then we'll join you next time?" my younger daughter, future diplomat, suggested.

And so, there I was, alone as the sun rose on I-285, making my way more than 30 minutes away to the Oakhurst Community Garden, to join Team Chicken, the group of volunteers that take turns tending to the garden's six chickens each day.

I had become a bit obsessed with Team Chicken back in November, when I took the Chicks in the City class and the leaders of the class suggested joining Team Chicken if you were interested in learning how to care for chickens before getting them yourself. And, of course, long-time readers of FoodShed Planet know I live in a neighborhood that forbids chicken-keeping ("no live poultry" is how it's technically put in the covenants).

"Since you can't even have chickens, why, then are you doing this?" my husband asked. I think I heard "thank God for covenants" under his breath.

Yes, "Because this, I can do" works here as an answer. But, in truth? I think somehow chickens are simply part of my journey. And dare I say, I think they may just be an important part. And as with all journeys, the road of which often bends out of view far too soon to be able to predict where you are heading, I can't figure for the life of me why or how chickens will matter. I've simply learned to trust the journey. And I just keep showing up.

So, I showed up for Team Chicken, looking forward to seeing the chickens' little beady-eyed faces when they are first let out, and particularly excited that it was a "clean the coop" day.

I rounded the corner of Oakview Avenue, parked and entered the sleepy, winter garden, an acre and a half of diversity. Neighbor garden plots over here. The earthen playhouse. The labyrinth. The woodland path. The teaching garden. The compost pile. The bees. And yes, the beautiful wooden chicken coop and run.

And the six chickens. Out already. And the coop. Cleaned already. Yet no one to be found.

I stood there, perplexed. Why was I here? What twist had the road of my journey taken?

And then, I saw her. A strong, purposeful woman with armfuls of brush, way back in the wild spaces.

I called to her, asking if she were the Team Chicken member I was supposed to meet.

"No, I'm Sally." she answered.

Sally. Ah, yes, I had heard about Sally. Sally was the founder of this garden more than ten years ago. The story goes that some children had vandalized her neighbor's garden, and Sally and her neighbor responded by inviting the children to become caretakers of the garden, guiding the group as they restored it. They even created a second garden on the median strip beside the neighbor's house. This eventually led to the formation of the Oakhurst Community Garden. The children ended up receiving certificates of appreciation from the mayor of the city, and I suspect this whole experience has changed the trajectory of their lives.

As for me, I suspect meeting Sally has changed the trajectory of mine. Just as with Bruce Mack last week, I sense the aura surrounding Sally. An artist, educator, and theologian, Sally bursts with the kind of passion you just don't see every day. Or month. Or year.

Sally was busy putting the thorn-filled armfuls of brush on The Goddess, she told me. It is a hut-like structure that was built last year for Earth Day. It is a magic place, she told me, for the children. A place in the wild where they could go. A place they need, and of which there are less and less in today's world.

Since I am a strong advocate of unstructured, outdoor exploration in nature and a fan of the book, Last Child in the Woods, I knew I had met a kindred spirit in Sally (whose last name, as fate would have it, is Wylde).

Sally had somewhere she needed to be, so our conversation was short, but we agreed to meet again. Soon. Jotting down her contact info, I said, "You call it the Goddess Hut?"

And she answered, "No. Just The Goddess."

Sally left, and I stood there, in the shadow of The Goddess, and smiled.

All because of Team Chicken.


Making Chickens


Scrap paper is the number one American export, by volume. We're shipping it halfway around the world by the boatload to China as well as India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, where there is a shortage of wood pulp and where it is converted into mostly shipping boxes so that these countries can import yet more things back to us. These countries also produce recycled paper far cheaper than the U.S., based on labor costs. Therefore, as demand continues to rise, U.S. paper mills are getting priced out of the recycled paper market.

Lately, however, scrap paper has not even been leaving my house. I have been continuing to recycle pieces of my life into homemade paper. Tissue paper from gifts. My children's homework, once returned from school. The handout I got when I donated blood. Direct mail postcards. Arts brochures. Catalogs. Notes I took for an article I wrote. Everyday stuff that used to stuff the garbage, or the recycling bin. Plus, herbs and straw and seeds from the garden. Things I love.

Here is a sample of the result so far. Sheets of paper, in varying hues, each one more beautiful to me than the next. It is literally impossible to see this paper in person and not touch it.

The chicken? Oh, that's something I've been making for a few years, the exact same chicken, sort of like when I was in a high school photography class and I used the same photo of a horse for every project, simply changing the technique in order to have a different result.

My original chickens were made out of foam and feathers. I then moved on to car tires and water bottles, but I didn't like the results of either of those. The tires were too thick and the water bottles bent too much. This chicken's body is made from a piece of one of the handmade sheets of paper, and I pushed the recycling angle further. The feet are dried calendula flowers, the wing is dried rosemary, and the beak is a rose petal (all from my garden). The shell dangling from the pin was picked up by me or perhaps one of my kids during a sunrise stroll on a beach on the east coast of Florida, looking out at the world across that vast Atlantic Ocean.

My dream? To find just the right materials to recycle for these chickens--or perhaps a variety that works. And then to start a company called Happy Chicken Farm (I already reserved the Blogger address, as part of my "put the intention in the world" philosophy) where a group of employees--perhaps high school kids who have never had a connection to the garden before--could hand-assemble these and we'd sell them, with a percentage of profits to benefit environmental efforts. They make great pins and magnets and I even glued this one on a journal made out of other sheets of the handmade paper and tied with jute twine.

And yes, of course, Happy Chicken Farm would need to have a live flock. A small flock. Just a few chickens. I'll get those chickens yet!

And so a million things need doing in my house and life. A dozen work assignments beckon for more attention. They'll all get their due. In the meantime, you'll find me out in the garden, at least for a little bit each day, making chickens.


The Duck in the Dog House


So I saw Corinna the other day at the farmers market and told her about my desire to keep chickens, and my neighborhood covenant against it.

"Ducks!" she said. "Keep ducks!"

"Ducks?" I replied, a carton with a dozen of her delicious duck eggs (including a pale blue one from Cutie the Duck, pictured here), which I especially like to use for baking, in my hands.

"Ducks, I tell ya'." she went on. "You can raise one like a pet. It'll imprint on you as a duckling and follow you around. It eats kitchen scraps, and bugs and slugs in the garden."

"But the covenants say no poultry."

"Ducks aren't poultry! Hey Tommy?," she shouted several stalls down to Tommy Searcy, who raises pastured animals for meat. "Are ducks poultry?" Not really waiting for an answer, she continued, "No, ducks aren't poultry. Ducks are waterfowl. Waterfowl!"

"Waterfowl?"

"Waterfowl!"

"But I don't have any water," I stated. Ain't that the truth, especially now during the drought.

"A baby pool. They like to play in a baby pool," Corinna answered.

Okay, do you think the governor will approve that? Water use allowed only for fire departments and pet ducks.

"How about noise?" I asked.

"Not as noisy as chickens," she answered. And, I wondered, what's wrong with an occasional quack?

"Where do I keep one? I'm not allowed to build a coop," I asked.

"A dog house! It'll be happy in a dog house!"

A duck in a dog house. The Duck in a Dog House. Doesn't that sound like the name of a children's book? About a duck that literally lives in a dog house, but is always getting in trouble with the restrictive neighborhood so is figuratively "in the dog house" all the time, too?

The writer in me smiled. I would write this children's book. But I would need to have the duck first. I would need to know the duck. It would be a business initiative. Yes, my husband, not a chicken-keeping fan, would like this, wouldn't he? He is the biggest supporter of all my hair-brained (or rather, feather-brained) business schemes.

"I order my ducklings in the spring," Corinna added. "I could order one or two for you then." She mentioned a breed that averages 280 eggs a year.

As my older daughter and I got back in the car, we were both convinced that we were about to become duck owners. There was just no doubt in our minds. It all made such perfect sense.

"Let me check the covenants first before we bring this up with Daddy," I suggested gingerly.

And, then, when I downloaded the document and read the fine print, my future as a duck owner was obliterated:

The maintenance, keeping, boarding or raising of animals, livestock, or poultry of any kind, regardless of number, shall be and is hereby prohibited in any Unit or upon any of the Common Areas, except that this shall not prohibit the keeping of dogs, cats or caged birds as domestic pets provided they are not kept, bred or maintained for commercial purposes and, provided further, that they are not a source of annoyance or nuisance to the other Owners.

It goes on and on. There's the clause about no shacks, kennels, barns, sheds, or stables. Listen, there's even a line mixed right in there with the kennels and barns that prohibits "outdoor clothes dryers," which took me a minute to realize was actually clothelines. Hey, if I can't even run a clothesline in my yard, owning a duck suddenly seems like I'm asking for the world.

"It's not fair," my daughter exclaimed.

"Yes, it is," I said. "We knew all this when we bought a home in this neighborhood. We just didn't know, all those years ago, that we would one day want a duck in a dog house."

As for my husband, the first time he hears about this will be when he reads this post. And I will put money on it that I will literally hear his sigh of relief. However, he sure does like those muffins I make with those duck eggs!

There's only one thing I can say. Please keep 'em comin', Cutie and Corinna!


CHICKWEED

The Current Star of the Garden


Impatiently, we wait for summer's lamb's quarters, that edible weed which grew like, um, weeds, in my garden last summer and which we discovered was the highest in vitamin A, vitamin C, protein and calcium (over 50% of the RDA in one cup of cooked lamb's quarters!) as compared to other nutrient-packed greens like kale, collards, beet greens and spinach. But it's barely spring here (although today we "spring ahead" on the clock, and yesterday's snow-globy morning notwithstanding, spring is evident everywhere) so it will be awhile for lamb's quarters.

Yet, look at this. This little tiny flower, barely perceptible unless you zoom in closely on it, is growing everywhere in my garden right now. A weed, easy to pull. Or perhaps, to eat! Yes, this is chickweed, an edible weed found all over the world that I had never tasted before. Doesn't look like much. Long stems with just a few leaves--how good could that be?

One taste, my friends. Just one little nibble, and you, too, will be crouched in the wheat straw like a rabbit, chomping away, singing the praises of stellaria media (its much-prettier Latin name). This is the sweetest, most delicious thing I think I've eaten from my garden maybe ever! And, surprisingly, it's the crunchy stems that are the real treat. I've been composting this?! What, am I crazy?

So last night's dinner salad was a bowl of chopped chickweed, sprinkled with lemon balm, cilantro, broccoli-like tatsoi florets, and a collection of my freshly sprouted seeds from my kitchen counter sprout container, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and a spoonful of nutritional yeast for B12 (a vegetarian necessity).

I called my mother.

"Do you know chickweed?" I asked, excitedly.

"Yes, I pull it out of my garden as fast as I can," she answered.

"But it's edible, Mom! And delicious!"

"I'm not eating weeds," she answered.

"I'll bring you a big bowl tomorrow," was my only possible reply.

So what if other folks are aiding in her recovery with delicious dinners of chili and chicken and soup. I'm bringing what the ancient Romans referred to as the "elixir of life." Perhaps I'll make a chickweed/walnut pesto. Mmm.

And, by the way, chickweed leaves, when crushed, are supposed to be soothing for eczema when applied to the skin or added to the bath. A tea or tincture of it is supposed to ease rheumatism.

But, remember, as with most things, be sure to make a positive identification, and moderation is usually the best bet.

Here's a PDF about edible weeds that you might find interesting, especially in the Northern Hemisphere as we wait for spring's crops to be ready. The weeds always seem to come first. And right now, stellar media is the true star of the garden.


CLEANING

The Hoop of Consumer Trust


In my whip around the perimeter of my nearby Kroger supermarket the other day, I took a shortcut down the cleaning aisle, a shortcut because I never stop on that aisle for anything. Yet, screeeeeeech, I slammed on the brakes of my heels.

"What is this, pray tell?" I asked myself as the fresh, clean, line of GreenWorks products I had never seen before practically jumped off the shelf.

Was I put off by the Clorox logo? Yes. Immediately. Yet I read on (although the print is tiny and I'm guessing I'm a definite target for this product--MAKE THE PRINT LARGER, FOLKS! My eyes are changing, those reading glasses are still too strong for me, and label-reading is becoming tough, tough, tough!)

Plant and mineral-based ingredients, all biodegradable. No phosphorus. No bleach. A whole line of products. All about 3 bucks. I bought one, the GreenWorks natural dilutable cleaner.

As I was unpacking my canvas tote at home, Richard (my fellow worm-owner friend) called.

"I have this new product from Clorox," I said.

"NO! Not Clorox!" Richard exclaimed. He is very sensitive to fragrances and can't be near Clorox bleach.

"No, no, this is a new product. A green one," I explained. I opened it up and smelled it.

"Smells nice," I said.

"No," he repeated.

There was only one possible reply. "I'll come right over," I said.

And so I did, and Richard cleaned around his kitchen with this product, saying the smell (which is quite pleasant), surprisingly, wasn't bothering him. By the time I got home, he had left a message on my machine saying that within minutes, the smell was completely gone, and exclaiming the product a definite winner.

After checking out the simple but impressive GreenWorks website, I used the product around my house and frankly, its performance blew away any of the other so-called eco-products I've been using for years now. I found myself raving about GreenWorks at karate that night, which makes for odd conversations on the mat.

Yet, a few things nagged at me. Some blog research uncovered a great deal of chatter about this line of products. Sure, there was the expected, "Clorox is pouring bleach down one pipe and greenwashing the other one." Yes, there was the "99% natural? Call me when it's 100%! Even one percent can kill oceans full of fish!" rant. And, of course, there are those indie-loyalists who cringe at the thought of giving money to Big Business (and are appalled that Clorox now owns both Burt's Bees and Brita water filtration systems).

Yes, there is an 800-number on the back of the GreenWorks bottle, but I needed to go closer to the source. A GreenWorks press release revealed the name of the man with the answers. Matt Kohler, Brand Manager for GreenWorks at Clorox headquarters in Oakland, California. I left a message, Matt called me back and we had a detailed conversation about GreenWorks.

My questions, Matt's answers:

Q. I know the color is artificial. Why even have color, if you can't do it naturally?

A. Our prototype product had no color added, but the essential lemon oil made the bottled product appear light yellow (let's face it, Matt indicated that it looked like urine--not a selling point). Then, we left it clear and people couldn't find it on the shelves and then weren't convinced it would work. We are currently trying to source a natural color ingredient for this product but haven't been able to do so yet.

Q. The ingredients list "fragrance with essential lemon oil." What is the source of the fragrance?

A. All the GreenWorks products except two have 100% essential lemon oil as frangrance. In two products, the dilutable one you bought plus the glass and surface cleaner, the 100% lemon oil wasn't stable with the other igredients so we had to add a small amount of a petrochemical-based fragrance."

Q. I like that you are being transparent and telling me that, straight out. Is that an intential strategy?

A. Yes, we are aiming to be transparent so that consumers can then make their own decisions. And we are aiming to make all the GreenWorks products 100% natural as we continue to develop them. We are also relying on third-party certification, such as the U.S. EPA's Design for the Environment certification that is indicated on the GreenWorks products.

Q. Will you tell me about your relationship with the Sierra Club?

A. It's a traditional cause-marketing relationship where a percentage of sales from GreenWorks products go to support the Sierra Club, which is the oldest and most established organization that protects and preserves the environment in the U.S. When we called the Sierra Club, they thought were were crazy, but then after they scrutinized our products, supplies, and processes, they embraced the relationship.

Q. What percentage of sales of GreenWorks products is going to the Sierra Club?

A. We're not revealing that.

Q. What happened to transparency?!

A. It's very complicated legally.

I don't think Matt is hiding anything. I worked as a sales promotion manager for Turner Broadcasting and I know how hard it was to get through the legalities of joint partnerships, especially considering that rules change form state to state, so I'm not faulting him for this answer. It's just a reminder that Clorox is definitely a Big Business and as such, it does have enormous hoops to jump through when it does something new (including the hoop of consumer trust).

But the thing is, and I've said this before, when a company the size of Clorox does something that can actually make a difference by shifting consumer preferences and purchasing patterns in a way that can help the environment, then I say, "Bravo." And if enough folks vote with their dollar for earth-friendly products such as these, then I'm guessing that there will come a day when the sight of the Clorox logo won't make eco-oriented (and artificial fragrance-sensitive) people cringe.

Matt wants your feedback. If you use a GreenWorks product, call 1-800-227-1860 and give your opinion of it (or email in a comment on the comment form at the GreenWorks website). Matt reads these comments every week. Say that Pattie sent you, and let's have a say in the products available at our local grocery stores.

And one more question, Matt. Are GreenWorks products available beyond the United States? FoodShed Planet readers are going to want to know.

Oh, and one last thing. Yes, GreenWorks natural dilutable cleaner is an EcoMomical choice!


Curing


The first frost of the season swept death through my garden this week, separating the hangers-on from the truly cold-hardy. It was as if there had been a massacre while I slept.

The towering canna plants were crumbled practically to their knees. The basil had packed a suitcase and hightailed it out of town. Sweet little red plants, I still don't know what they were, were waving little white flags, and even my lingering yellow tomato plant bit the dust (but a bowlful of the yellow babies still adorns my kitchen counter, thankfully).

And the zinnias! The zinnias! Oh, my, my. There are no words for what one frosty night can do to a zinnia. I had been wondering if the zinnias would ever stop blooming outside my office window, if I would ever stop taking photos of butterflies on them, and if the bouquets on my kitchen table would ever lack of them. Well, take it from me. Their months of beauty and bounty ended harshly, suddenly, and completely.

While ripping the zinnias out to add them to the compost pile yesterday, I saw several Gulf Fritillary butterflies flittering about, not knowing what to do with themselves.

"Sorry, guys," I said, as sad and confused as they were.

Yet, there on the edge of my counter were the soaps that I made several weeks ago with dried calendula and lavender from my early summer garden, back when abundance was taken for granted.

The bars had been curing, which is the term used for when soap sits for awhile, being turned every day, so that excess water can evaporate out of it. But yesterday I looked at the soap with new eyes. It made me smile when I saw it, remembering the bursts of color that used to fill the garden, the children that played in the clover, the friends that visited, the harvests I've enjoyed, even the early autumn night I stirred the pot of olive oil and oatmeal and soap and herbs while reading the newspaper with my other hand as a gentle breeze blew in over the kitchen sink and the sun set outside my window.

"Yes," I thought while packing up the soap to send a little piece of my garden to my friends in Australia, where it is now springtime, as a thank you for hosting Flat Stanley. "The soap most definitely cures."


COST

Keeping a Cap on Cost


Cha-ching. It all adds up, all this good, organic, local food. I think I'm going to save a fortune, and in some ways I do, but the sheer abundance of food I buy means a big, fat grocery bill, no matter how I slice it. At first, I thought Whole Foods was just plain expensive, but I've trained myself over the years to buy their house brand when possible, choose produce on sale with prices that I know are good comparatively, and skip the things I know I can get less expensively elsewhere (like conventional pineapples, and basil from my garden only in season, and cookies I can bake myself). Yet the magnitude of items that fit my parameters in that particular store means my grocery cart is always overflowing, and so I limit how often I allow myself to go there.

As for Kroger and Publix, it's a quick run around the perimeter of the store, buying milk, organic waffles, yogurt and whatever meager organic fruit offerings they have. Yet the bill still explodes. Costco is carrying more and more organic offerings, and yes, I know, they are probably from somewhere far, far away. Yet I buy what I can't find locally--organic fair trade coffee, organic peanut butter (in a state that is the #1 producer of peanuts in the country, no less), that trail mix with the dark chocolate chips in it that I pick out obsessively.

The farmers market helps, yet now as my farmers market is growing, so is my bill, and with it being heirloom tomato season, I'm pretty much doomed. The CSA helps a great deal, but since I never know what I'm going to get, and I have a family to feed, I can't rely on that as my only source of produce.

And so, I greatly appreciated when my farmer friend, Melissa, introduced me to the Natural Foods Warehouse recently, which is just nine miles from my home (and there is a second location not far away as well). Owned by the folks who own a natural foods store (Return to Eden) here in Atlanta, this 10,000-square-foot warehouse offers natural and organic packaged goods, supplements and personal care products, with a scattering of dairy and frozen foods and a large wine section, for wholesale prices. Items change monthly and are chosen from the top 2000 items sold in the natural foods marketplace. The Natural Foods Warehouse is significantly, sometimes shockingly, less expensive for things I buy regularly at the other places. I even found local, raw honey there, although that seemed to be about it for local.

So I continue to cobble together a sort of time-consuming quest for just the right mix of products to feed a family and fulfill a soul. I'm not there yet. But places like the Natural Foods Warehouse give me hope. Because as I continue to vote with my dollars for good food, my options keep expanding.

Click here to find out more about the Natural Foods Warehouse. And let us know what solutions you've found to keeping a cap on cost when feeding your family organically.


The Easiest Way to Save Money on Food Costs


When I told someone the other day that I had just been to the farmers market, she asked, "Isn't that market expensive?" I was at a rare loss for words. How to answer that? I spend about 40 bucks at the farmers market every other week, and $25 on the CSA box the other weeks, and I can't remember the last time I left the supermarket as inspired about upcoming meals for less than that. Plus, I get things that I can't get anywhere else, like these delicious crowder peas, which afforded me a few moments of meditation as I shelled them at the kitchen window, the sun streaming in, a welcome October breeze blowing, my younger daughter singing in the garden. And, finally, of course, the farmers are my friends and the time we spend visiting at the market adds a depth to my food that honestly can't be reduced to dollars and cents.

But I did think about that comment the rest of the day, mostly because rising food costs are hitting us everywhere. And yes, I do shop at the supermarket once a week as well (plus Whole Foods and Costco, each once a month), and I am definitely feeling those escalating prices. However, I seem to be managing to retain my last year's spending rate on this year's food. The Atlanta newspaper had an article about saving money at the supermarket and I clicked it on to see if I was doing any of the things it recommended. Clipping coupons for what is often junk food? Buying the on-sale items, which are usually heavily processed and not organic? No, that's not what I do at all.

So I thought, "What am I doing?" and realized that it's the veg thing. Giving up meat knocks tons off my grocery bill. In fact, since this week marks six months since the kids went veg (and a year and seven months for me, if you can believe that much time has passed already), we are now a meat-free household (my husband does like that occasional bacon, however). Eating a vegetarian diet dramatically decreases the amount of land, water and oil your diet requires, and reduces pollution more than any other change you can make. I also throw away very little food (Americans waste up to 40% of their daily food, by the way). Tonight's dinner will most likely turn up several other times in several other ways in the upcoming weeks.

A friend of mine emailed me for some suggestions about veg eating. There was the requisite question about protein. Ya' know, an adult woman my size needs only something like 45 mg of protein a day, and you may not realize that whole grains, greens, beans and more all have the stuff. It is really not hard to get if you eat whole foods. The same with the iron, calcium and all other nutrients. The only one you can't get from a veg diet is B-12, which I get from nutritional yeast, fortified cereal and a daily multivitamin (which I didn't take last year but decided to take along with the kids when they went veg).

Anyway, here are some ideas. The veg thing is simple, but if you want to go in the grains (a buck or two a pound), greens (fresh from the farm or garden) and beans (again, a buck or two a pound) direction (which is what I do), it does require a cupboard stocked with basics, access to fresh local organic produce and a bit of time each day (the prep time isn't that much--it's the hour in the oven that aligns particularly nicely with a work-at-home job, or you can probably knock off most of this in three hours on a Sunday, plus you'll build up freezer meals over a short period of time). Since I eat a lot of local (and garden) produce, the specific ingredients (and thereby, tastes) of the following meals change with the seasons. And, yes, my kids eat all this stuff. My younger one is a bit more picky, but the expansion of her palate in the last six months has been nothing short of remarkable.

A typical week for us might include:

DINNER

An egg dish--scrambled or frittata or omelet or quiche, with seasonal veggies, a side of various colored potato fries (homemade and just baked) and perhaps some orange segments or other fruit.

A rice dish--brown rice or wild rice with beans and veggies and baked marinated tofu and one of several types of sauces, maybe stuffed in a red pepper or a whole-grain wrap

A different grain--quinoa or spelt/farro or oat groats or buckwheat with the requisite beans and tofu and veggies and perhaps some cheese

A whole-grain pasta thing--again, tossed with whatever I've got--perhaps fresh pesto with basil from the garden and sliced eggplants, or maybe as a vegetable lasagna

A soup--last night was a Cuban black bean and corn soup with a side of skillet corn bread (with eggs from my friend Tracy's chickens--thanks, Tracy!) and a green garden salad with a homemade citrus balsamic dressing, for instance

Vegetable pancakes--made with whole wheat, beans, tofu, zucchini, corn or even collards and topped with fresh salsa or warmed plums or some other complementary flavor

A pizza--well, you know how I am with my pizzas! Always whole grain and with lots of garden veggies

Something ethnic--falafel or tacos or a stir-fry Asian thing

A big fat salad--with hard boiled eggs and toasted pumpkin seeds and chickpeas and avocado and raw okra and raisins and apples and chopped kale and lemon balm and more

Dessert (or, as we do it, a snack right before bed) is usually a whole grain cookie or homemade vegan pudding or homemade ice cream or a dark chocolate and sweet potato brownie or something else like that

LUNCH

If you have dinner worked out, lunch takes care of itself since it is usually leftovers, or I'll often just stroll out to the garden and pick a salad and then add whatever I have in the fridge. We also have a lot of smoothies (with yogurt, soy milk, fruit, ice, local honey and fresh ground flax seeds).

BREAKFAST

Most days, breakfast is usually a fortified organic low-sugar cereal that has iron and B-12. I also like a dry organic waffle, or some toast and jam, and of course there's oatmeal and perhaps whole grain pancakes on a weekend morning.

SNACKS

fruit, fruit and more fruit (especially if I gleaned it from a local tree!)
dried fruit and nuts
whole grain crackers and cheese, air-popped popcorn, or chips and avocado
my famous "meal muffins"
whatever is growing in the garden
whatever is currently cooking in a pot
fresh-baked whole grain bread (preferably dipped into what's in the pot!)

Going veg is hands-down the easiest way to save money on your food costs. If you don't want to go veg, consider adding a few more vegetarian meals to your week. And take a little time to savor your meals. That's the priceless part.


CSA

And My Life Changed. Poof. Like That.


It was an innocent day. He was standing next to baskets of innocent peppers, albeit purple, and tomatoes, albeit heirloom, and cucumbers, albeit round and yellow. We had an innocent conversation. And my life changed. Poof. Like that.

Since that innocent day when I first met Farmer D, I have participated in CSAs for five years (CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it's when folks pay a farmer directly, up front, for a share of that year's crops, which they then pick up in a pre-packaged box every week from a designated central location).

The first year, I got my crops from Full Moon Farm, an organic research farm affiliated with a professor from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia about an hour away. The crops were delivered to a community center near me. Picking up the crops was a highly social event, with the farmers there to chat and other CSA members lingering for awhile. Fun.

The second year, Full Moon Farm delivered CSA shares to centralized CSA member porches, each serving about ten members. That whole summer, I never saw another member, including the one whose porch hosted the crops in big coolers so the Atlanta heat wouldn't completely wilt them. Not as fun.

The third year, Full Moon limited distribution to Athens because they were also starting a restaurant, Farm 255, that would rely on the fresh produce from the farm. Concurrently, Farmer D started Serenbe Farms at the absolutely gorgeous community, Serenbe, about an hour south of Atlanta. He now had a stand at the farmers market, so I picked up my Serenbe Farms CSA box every week there. Serenbe did a great job, but their soil was not so great yet and it definitely showed in the crop yields. That's when I met Charlotte, munching away on her sweet, raw corn at the next booth at the market. Charlotte had a CSA also and her boxes were always bulging with abundance. I started coveting her boxes. Not so good.

Year Four, as destiny would have it, Farmer D moved to Hampton Island Preserve to start a new farm, Serenbe limited CSA box distribution to on-the-farm only, and I moved over to Charlotte's Riverview Farms CSA. Charlotte and her husband Wes own the largest certified organic farm in Georgia. It is on fertile Cherokee Indian soil, nestled on the banks of the Coosawatee River in North Georgia. Her crops are diverse and gorgeous, week after week. She also sells grass-fed beef and pastured kuributo pork. Charlotte no longer had a booth at my market but left her boxes with Chad the Milkman. Which is how I met him and started buying milk from Chad. All good.

So this year, I'm still with Charlotte (the photo above is what I received in yesterday's box, all for $25) but she's dropping her boxes at Parsley's Catering. Which is how I met Mark. Who went to camp with Farmer D when they were kids. Which only proves, once again, that it is all a circle, and we are all connnected. And it all works out in the end.

To find a CSA near you, go to www.localharvest.org. Or ask around. You may be surprised to find out who you know who's actually in-the-know on this rapidly-growing way to connect with local, organic food and help support family farmers.


Sharing the Bounty


It hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday. I am not alone. I am not a crazy woman out in the yard with my kale seedlings, believing in something different from the rest of the world. I am connected. To history. To diverse cultures. To Australia and Germany and Michigan and Idaho and now, it seems, some new friends in Alaska (welcome!). And to every family everywhere that picks up a box of crops from a farmer, with nothing to regulate their relationship except a few dollars and trust.

When I came upon this pile of CSA boxes waiting to be recycled at the Oakhurst Community Garden the other day, I just stood there and looked at it for what seemed ages. Behind every one of those boxes is a person who left his or her job or home at a set time on a set day to pick up a box of crops unknown, and then brought them home to be part of his or her family's life. Each person worked his or her own culinary magic to include this bounty or asked a friend or neighbor, perhaps another box recipient, for advice. And each person sat down with thanks to the same farmer on the same piece of land in the same northwest corner of Georgia.

As I drove home last night in the dark, the cloudy, rainy sky of the past few days suddenly clearing to reveal a brilliant full moon, I thought of those boxes that I share locally, and then I thought of that moon that I share globally. How today farmers all over the world are taking advantage of the moon's gravitational pull and harvesting crops surging with nutrients. And sharing their bounty with each other. And proving, once again, that no, those of us committed to eating close to home around the world are not alone.


Sex and the CSA


I'm blushing even as I write that headline. But write it I must, as will become clear to you shortly.

So yesterday I show up at Judy's new CSA drop, which, by the way, still has 56 members after a handful dropped out and some new ones started. A few folks are there already, and more come flying in the parking lot with each passing moment. Charlotte and her baby's arrival in the big white truck causes gleeful excitement, the boxes pass down the human chain of hands, much milling about occurs, much sharing of recipes and children playing together, and finally everyone disappears, their mutual experience still lingering in the air.

I'm driving home, the sweet, pungent smell of fermenting strawberries filling my minivan, and I swing suddenly into the parking lot of my very favorite chocolatier, Anne Stroer of Chamberlain's whom I haven't seen for awhile and whom I realize I will probably see every two weeks now as I go for my CSA box.

This particular day, I'm looking for a movie snack since I won't have time to get to Whole Foods to get the dark chocolate raisins that I specifically want for the occasion. My friend, a mother of four, and I have somehow, remarkably, worked out a date tonight to see Sex and the City, a show I liked for its sharp dialogue, if not for its superficial fixation on fashion, that is now a movie.

Anne, upon hearing what movie I'm going to see, immediately puts a dark chocolate stiletto heel on the counter, which I purchase as a surprise for my friend, plus some other little delectables for me, and the kids that I'll be leaving behind (whom I've told, by the way, that I'm going to see a movie called Friends and the City, which, according to my older daughter's shaking head, was pretty much my lamest attempt at being respectable yet).

Flash forward numerous hours later, work assignments complete, every ingredient in the CSA box "processed" (and photos with the new camera taken, a camera with which I'm still fumbling like a new lover), sweaty bike ride to and from camp over, dinner served and shared.

And there I am, at the movie theater, waiting for my friend, who is late, four children scattered around her house and a husband cleaning up the barbecued ribs. Yet, at precisely 6:15, every other set of friends is meeting, all women, all between the ages of let's say 25 and 50. They are milling about, hugging, chatting, laughing. If Charlotte had pulled up now, they would have formed the same human chain, and passed the boxes from hand to hand.

Instead, as the lights dim and the movie starts, my friend breathing the first sigh of relaxation after a long day, Carrie and Samantha and Miranda and a very different Charlotte than the one from the back of the truck strut across the screen. Suddenly, this packed theater of women put their hands together, spontaneously, and applaud.

And I do, too. Not for the movie. For us.


What $30 Buys This Week


Inflation is at a 17-year high here in the United States. Grocery bills are through the roof. I can run up a $75 bill even going through the 15-and-less aisle somehow. Things that used to cost $2.49 have suddenly catapulted to $4.99. And so, to see this abundance in my CSA box yesterday for $30 filled me with enormous gratitude.

Here's what $30 buys this week:

* Farm-fresh, local, organic crops: a pile of sweet corn, a bunch of tomatoes at different stages of ripeness, a handful of potatoes, a few red onions, and three heirloom melons--the makings of at least two nights of dinners and a lunch, plus leftovers: tomato pie, vegan corn fritters, and melon smoothies

* The connections from hand-to-hand as the human chain passed the boxes from truck to ground

* Two hours worth of conversation. including the birth of an idea about a multi-town North Atlanta Sustainability Alliance

* The opportunity to share in wishing our farmer Charlotte's son a happy 2nd birthday

* Tips about what DEET-free bug spray actually works (thumbs up seems to go to a company called Ozark Herbals)

And no one even asked if we wanted paper or plastic with that.

P.S. For those who don't know--my friend Judy started this brand-new CSA drop for Charlotte by canvasing her neighbors and friends to see if they would be interested in participating. Judy had never been in a CSA before this. Now, she has enabled 53 families to share in this bounty each week. Kudos to Judy for pulling this off, and for inspiring others (like you?) to do the same in your neighborhoods.

Beats sticker-shock at the supermarket, I'll tell you that.

D

DELICATA

Delicata "Fries"


This is delicata squash, a truly delicious variety that has an edible rind. The one you see still growing in my garden is from a seed I saved from a delicata I received in my CSA box last year at this time.

Four delicatas showed up in this week's box. Here, I sliced one like french fries, coated the "fries" in Chad's bright orange eggs, rolled them in a nut/cheese/flax seed/herb combo, and baked at 350 until I couldn't stand the delicious smell any longer. My kids sucked these down.

I saved more seeds, as I have with butternut squash, watermelon, cucumber and spaghetti squash so far this year. I simply wash the seeds in a colander and then lay them out flat on a paper plate, with the name of the seed written on the edge of the plate. I let them dry for a week or so and then store them in ziploc baggies, with the name of the seed and date written in permanent ink on the front. It all take minutes.

Within another year or so, I should get to the point where I am buying hardly any seeds. What's more, the crops I grow are adjusting to my microclimate more and more each year so that ultimately they are custom-made for my environment. I really only need five seeds or so of each variety for my garden each year, so I have plenty to share with neighbors and I don't waste money on whole seed packets that I don't need (and that were grown far away and have no relationship to my climate).

The best part? Having things in my garden, and on my dinner plate, that I can't find in the store. Keeping heirlooms alive. And creating my own heirlooms.


New Taste Sensations


What to do with all those delicata squashes I get in my CSA box . . . well, here's a meal that truly features local, seasonal ingredients. I made this pizza with cornmeal from Riverview Farms, topped with a sauce made from the last of the heirloom tomatoes and pesto from basil from my garden, and then crowned by diced delicata. It was one of those simple meals that exploded with new taste sensations and made me look at my CSA box and garden in a new light. Arugula, sweet potato and goat cheese pizza? Why not? Kale, apples and onion pizza? Bring it on.

Eating local and seasonal doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it can be downright easy. A few basic things--a cup of rice or other grain, a colander full of pasta, or a pizza crust, and then a handful of fresh, local ingredients that change with the seasons-- and suddenly the meal, and you, are transformed.

Don't even get me going on the salads--if you've been eating iceberg lettuce, cucumber and tomato as your daily salad, you're in for a treat when you switch to local. Our latest salads feature arugula, baby kale, baby tatsoi, sorrel, our still-going-strong yellow grape tomatoes, lemon balm, mint leaves, and more.

Have fun out there! Create, combine, experiment and revel in the way your taste buds come alive with each new season.


DREAMS

"You Are Never Given a Dream Without Also Being Given the Ability to Make It Come True"


So we've been taking my mom to Harry's Farmers Market every couple weeks. Harry's is owned by Whole Foods and is a huge, wonderful, wide-aisled, abundant, less slick (and a little bit less expensive) version of its parent. As for my younger daughter, it's simply the place "with all the samples" and she proceeds to find and taste them all. She also tends to talk my mother into buying a couple things that weren't on her list, which somehow then make it into my bag when it's time to go home. Pomegranate yogurt goji berries? Arden's Garden Cha Cha Cherry juice? Yep. Those ended up in my home yesterday somehow.

Anyway, so I left them scooting around on the motorized wheelchair (Mom is doing great, by the way, since her accident back in February) and headed off in search of my own particular brand of investigative journalism. And there, outside in the garden center, I saw it. Finally! Farmer D's freestanding biodynamic compost display, made of reclaimed wood to resemble a barn or shed and truly evoke the "farm feel."

I actually teared up a bit, to see Farmer D's dream finally realized. He had been talking to me about this idea for so long, and there it was. I have another friend whose book just got published (and which I'll write about soon) and I feel the same way about him, that by witnessing the actualization of others' dreams, I am reminded to keep my own dreams alive as well. I love that saying, "You are never given a dream without also being given the ability to make it come true."

As for yesterday, my only dream was a beautiful garden, and after hours of glorious, much-needed rain and this trip to my mom's and Harry's, I came home with my Farmer D compost and some new tomato, pepper and basil transplants and head on out there. I had to choose carefully who would get the compost because I didn't have enough for all my plants (it's expensive--worth every penny, but expensive). So I walked around, looking each plant in the eye (if you can do such a thing) and doling out the black gold judiciously.

Some native grasses are growing in patches where they didn't grow before. Rye and hairy vetch and clover all undulated in the gentle breezes, and I felt a little bit more wildness working its way into my garden design, and it looked so gorgeous to me, my vision for the space changing. The tomatoes and peppers and basil are almost secondary to what's going on out there.

What's more, my friend Judy brought me a book titled Weed 'Em and Reap about edible weeds, which I'm about halfway through already (it's a real pot boiler!) so I'm hesitant to pull up anything until I determine whether or not it would make a nice featured item in my salad or on my dinner plate.


On a day like yesterday, when beauty and bounty surrounded me, it seemed like I was seeing the garden, once more, for the very first time. And yes, I fell in love with it all over again.


Charcoal Briquettes and Cleaning Vinegar (or What Happened When We Ran Into Neil Simon)


This is Brad. The sun is shining on him finally, literally and figuratively.

About 18 years ago, when we worked together at Turner Broadcasting, I noticed that Brad was dismantling his bulky personal computer and loading it on to a shopping cart and bringing it home each night. It is about then that Brad and I became friends, when I realized that this man had a dream, and I'm a sucker for a person with a dream. Turns out Brad was writing screenplays--in fact, after the next two years, he had written nine of them.

About then, with the ink on the ninth screenplay barely dry, he and I went to a work-related conference on the Upper East Side of New York City. I was knee-deep in my first novel by then (with three more to come, plus a work of nonfiction, all still unpublished). We sat in this claustrophobic room while brand managers from various companies presented their big exciting new products and their supposedly-innovative sales promotion plans to support the products' rollouts. Brad and I were in hell. Neither of us wanted to be there, and the day got more and more painful until finally there was the presentation that almost did us both in.

A brand manager proudly proclaimed that he was in charge of charcoal briquettes and cleaning vinegar. We both slumped deeper into our uncomfortable metal chairs, a look of "just slay me now" impossible to conceal across our faces.

We broke for lunch, thank goodness, right after that, and Brad and I couldn't get out onto Madison Avenue faster. Within moments, we found our way into a charming bookstore. And then, as luck would have it, it happened. Right there, on the left in the back, we ran into the famous playwright, Neil Simon. We said stupid things, yet felt alive again and that dreams were indeed achievable in a world of charcoal briquettes and cleaning vinegar.

No less than 20 times these past many years, at particularly tough times on the journey, Brad has emailed me, "What was it again that guy was hawking?" and each time I emailed back the simple words, "Charcoal briquettes and cleaning vinegar." That's all it took to refuel his dream, to remind him of that chance encounter with Neil Simon and how it felt to think that anything was possible.

A few years ago, Brad wrote a memoir about his years of trying to sell his screenplays, which I read in draft form and have waited patiently to see published, which it was just a couple weeks ago. Brad is ruthless and clever and resourceful and unyieldingly hopeful (and funny), through numerous corporate downsizings, the breakup of his marriage, and more personal trauma and tragedies than even make it into the book. He secures agents, leaves no stone unturned in Hollywood, and actually gets closer to his dream than anyone ever would have imagined. Most importantly, he believes in himself throughout it all, and his faith shines through.

I have pursued many things over these years, and when they haven't worked out, I have asked myself, in all honesty, have I tried as hard as Brad? Most times I haven't, as trying as hard as Brad means harder than most people ever try at anything.

And so, if you have a dream, really, any dream at all, I encourage you to read this book (Open Field Running, by Brad Catherman) and ask yourself how hard you are really trying. Perhaps Brad has not received the Oscar he covets so much just yet (but I did give him charcoal briquettes and cleaning vinegar!), but after reading his book, it's hard not to believe that that is still a distinct possibility in the future.

We met at the same restaurant where we have been meeting for 15 years the other day, and for the first time, Brad didn't have a plan, a set of schemes for promoting the new book, a list of 100 Ways to Get The Book into the Hands of Hollywood Big Wigs.

"I'm trying something new," he told me. "I'm going to just see what happens now."

The food was sort of unmemorable, the service disappointing, the desserts relegated to a cheapo plastic menu rather than presented on a tray the way they had been for all these years, although we still got one piece of cheesecake (New York-style) and two forks.

"Maybe we should go somewhere new," I suggested for our next lunch, which, in all likelihood, if history is any indicator, won't happen for another year.

Perhaps when my book is published. Something new. Something FoodShed Planet-related. And perhaps I'll finally deserve my own charcoal briquettes and cleaning vinegar.

But I'm going to have to work much, much harder. Because dreams are worth it. Aren't they?





"Everything Is Hard; The Question Is, Is It Worthwhile?"


This is Liz and Tim. Liz was a special education teacher. Tim spent 13 years as a division president for a Fortune 500 company. He then started his own business in data marketing, which, within five years, had 450 employees in six countries. Enjoying their financial success, Tim and Liz moved from Boston to the seventh hole in an exclusive golf club community in suburban Atlanta.

And then it happened. They went horseback riding one year on Liz's birthday and realized that this life they had built was not the one they wanted.

"I couldn't even explain to my mother what I did," Tim told me.

They decided, right then and there, to trade their lives. First, the thought was to get a small place in the country where they could have a few animals, but they had this little dream of "healing the land" and felt the only way to do that was to mimic nature, and that to mimic nature required more than just a few animals.

You can take the man out of the fast-paced business world but you can't take the fast pace out of the man. And so, the next thing you knew, Tim and Liz bought 72 acres in Elberton, GA, and have scaled up their original vision to establish a sustainable farm named Nature's Harmony Farm where they produce grass-fed Murray Grey beef, free-foraging Berkshire and Ossabaw pork, pastured poultry (eggs, broilers), and heritage turkeys.

"I went from never having raised a chicken to producing 2,000 of them a year," Tim laughed.

I have been following their journey these past six months or so. Seemingly overnight, they have cleared land, built a house, acquired cows and pigs and turkeys and chickens, built egg mobiles, planted crops, bought a refrigerated truck, developed a logo, a website, a life.

I asked Tim how on earth they were able to do all this, and he answered:

I could run another big business if I wanted, but what I want to do is sell $10 chickens. And here's why. Number one, I want to spend all my time with Liz. Number 2, We both like nature and animals.

The risk to this is no different from any other business we've ever done. You still have to plan the exit strategy, and you can choose to make money--or to make an impact. The economic reality is that by scaling up, we can make a living, but this way we can also heal the land and provide a sustainable food supply to consumers.

Yes, what we are doing is hard work. But we have discovered, in life, that everything is hard. The question is--is it worthwhile?

When I started to ask Tim specific questions about how his animals are raised, he made it easy for me by saying, "Pattie, you don't need to ask me any questions about that at all. Just picture how nature does it. That's how we do it."

There is no barn. There are no permanent pens--they are all big and roomy and movable. There aren't even permanent fences. Tim and Liz move portable fences all day long in order to mimic the role of predators in nature. Their ultimate dream is to have all their animals be born, live their lives, and die right there on the farm.

Did I mention that they also make fudge? I'm ordering some today. Because frankly, I want a piece of this sweet life right here in my suburban home. Even though I'm not on the seventh hole of a golf course.

Tim says he's the "ready, fire, aim" part of the relationship, and that Liz is the nurturer who provides the balance. Together, it works. Check out Tim and Liz's blog for wonderful video of their cows and other goings-on on the farm. You'll fall in love with this couple, and perhaps with their life.

Want to chuck it all and start your own farm?

"You can, you know," Tim said to me, as simple as that.


WOW! What a Ride! (Or What I Hope to Be Able to Say at the End of This Thing Called Life)


So I'm climbing on the back of the camel yesterday (please, don't ask how I got myself in this situation!) and I'm grinning ear to ear. First, because I'm on the back of a camel, and second, because Ride a Camel is #18 on my Life List (bundled with riding an elephant, a mule and a dolphin).

This is from my new Life List, the one I made a couple years ago after I found my old one, the one I had written as a graduate school assignment that included 100 items. A bit excessive, don't you think? I spent a year knocking off 12 of those items (one a month) and wrote a memoir about it from which several excerpts have been published (parts of the Hot Air Balloon chapter and the Ballroom Dancing chapter). And then I wrote a new list, a list with only 18 items (although most have multiple components, such as Become fluent in Spanish, French and Italian).

And so Number 6 calls to me now, as summer vacation from school looms just down the road of this week. Visit 100 organic farms. I think I'm up to four so far, unless you include community gardens. But still a bit of a ways to go.

Number 14, Reduce my energy-use footprint, is in full swing. My neighbor and I call each other up now excitedly when the gas, electric and water bills arrive to compare results and celebrate each other's improvements. Sort of pathetic, but fun. However, Number 16, Tour wineries on six continents may put a big dent in those energy savings, so I'll wait on that!

Number 17, Go on an annual solitary retreat for at least 24 hours reminds me that I want to schedule that overnight at the monastery. And guess what? I just found out that the monastery has a new eco-burial offering in the woods on its property. I definitely want to check that out. A little rest, meditation, working on my new manuscript, and doing research for FoodShed Planet at the same time! Multitasking at the monastery. Gotta' love it.

There's more, of course. All things that mean something to me, things I dream about doing and look forward to making realities one day. What about you? What's on your Life List?

What? No list? Take ten minutes and start jotting. You may open up a door to amazing possibilities. Consider the quote I put on the cover of my Life List notebook:

Life is not a journey to the grave
with intentions of arriving safely
in a pretty well-preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up,
totally worn out
and loudly proclaiming . . .
WOW! What a ride!

Want some inspiration? Check out 43things.com. And a word of advice? When you have the chance in life to ride a camel, take it.


DROUGHT

Harvesting Rain


"It's gorrrrrrgeous, isn't it?" someone said to me at the community pool yesterday. And yes, it was. Breezy. Sunny. Children laughing and playing in the cold, refreshing water.

Yet. . .

It was day number what, I don't even know anymore, without rain. It stopped raining here weeks ago, sometime in May, when the farmers were putting in the rest of their summer crops, or still trying to get their already-planted ones to take off. It stopped not long after that killing frost that obliterated almost all the Georgia blueberries, peaches and apples. It stopped long before the wildfires in South Georgia started flaring so violently that their smoke has traveled here, to Atlanta, 200 miles away, so that several days when we woke up it smelled like Sherman was on his march to the sea again. The red clay is so dry and cracked that if I squint my eyes just so, I can even see Scarlett O'Hara with a fistful of dusty earth, shouting to the heavens, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"

And that, of course, gets me thinking. How do I never go hungry again when food security is threatened by so many influences outside my control, including drought? I was surprised to learn that watering restrictions, in place now all over Georgia, do not apply to personal food gardens. And so, just as the South rose again, my belief in the practical benefits of Victory Gardens once again rears its head.

I know I can do better with my garden in several ways:

* Planting more native plants that don't require much from me (the lamb's quarters and wild blackberries are a good start).

* Harvesting rain. Yes, I'm assuming it will one day rain again, and knowing Atlanta, it will probably come in thunderous rolls of dramatic downpours. But when it does, I need to be there, ready, with a rainbarrel hooked up to my downspout so not a drop of that precious resource goes to waste.

* Reusing household water. Hey, this may sound like "a long walk for a short drink," or so they say, but every little bit helps. It's as easy as tossing the water after boiling eggs into the herb bed, or keeping a pail in the shower to catch water for the calendula patch.

I think of Wes and Charlotte making runs to the river with their water tank in order to irrigate their fields, adding at least three hours to every workday. Or Corinna, who already lost her whole blueberry crop. Or Jessica and Jeremy, Tommy and Alicia, and Chad, who all have grass-fed animals. And I say to the heavens, "Please let it rain."

We can miss a few afternoons at the pool.


Spirit-Affirming Energy


Heard from Chad, the milkman, last night. Apparently, Zippy Duvall, the president of the Georgia Farm Bureau, and Governor Sonny Perdue have declared today a day of prayer for Georgia Agriculture. The only time on record that Georgia got less rain between March and May was in 1887. That would be before my grandparents were born in Ireland. Before the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 when the waffle-met-ice cream and the "walkaway cone" was born. Before the debut of Henry Ford's Model T automobile in 1908. Before World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, the Iraq War. Before the first radio, television and computer. A long time ago.

I also received an email last night from Jessica Little of Sweet Grass Dairy, that wonderful goat dairy in south Georgia which I thought originally was not within my foodshed but was thrilled to discover several months ago is exactly 250 miles away. I emailed her after my breakfast of Sweet Grass Dairy fresh chevre on beet greens with local honey to find out how the "sweet grass" was doing without rain. She said that because they have over 100 acres of woods, there is plenty of brush and shrubs for the goats to eat but that they were behind in their planting in the fields. She said the top layer of soil would be lost as dust if they plowed now. And then, in true farmer style, she added, "So, hopefully, we will get some really good summer showers . . ."

Hopefully. Farmers are a tough, hopeful group who are completely dependent on many things beyond their control. Maybe they learn from the land, how to give, what to take, how to let go and trust. And, in doing so, it forms them. Toughens them. Softens them. Deepens their spirit.

After nosing around the Georgia Farm Bureau website, I found a buyer's guide to Georgia's fresh fruit and vegetables. Some of the traits sound, to me, like food for thought regarding people:

Corn: Kernels should be just firm enough to offer slight resistance to pressure.

Cucumber: Even the best cucumbers could have small lumps on their surfaces.

Peaches: Don’t squeeze peaches; they bruise easily.

Snap beans: Snap beans with thick, tough, fibrous pods are over-mature beans.

Summer squash: Summer squash should be tender. If the skin is glossy, not dull, hard or tough, the squash is likely to be tender. Avoid stale or over-mature summer squash which will have a dull appearance and a hard, tough surface.

Considering the drought, however, I would suggest a different buying guide right now. It goes like this:

Farm-fresh food: Buy something. Anything. Just let the spirit-affirming energy of trust pass from your hand to the hand of a farmer. A hopeful, tough and tender farmer. And let him or her know that you are hopeful, too.

Water Shortage and Recycling: A Dilemma


So the state of Georgia is in the middle of a major water shortage right now, a combination of drought conditions, strained resources because of growth and the legal requirement to release water from our reservoirs to states downstream. A near-total watering ban in North Georgia was instituted a few weeks ago, with a few exceptions (including watering home food gardens). Fountains are dry. Pansies have been pulled up or not planted. Neighbors are reporting neighbors who water their lawns or wash their cars in the driveway. And talk of closing down the University of Georgia (that county's largest water user) keeps the rumor mill churning, as does the reported fact that unless things change, we could literally dry up Lake Lanier by January.

Much is being written. Except about one thing, which now poses a little dilemma to me. Recycling.

Recycling is not required for homeowners in Atlanta. In my county, homeowners who want to recycle pay an annual fee for curbside pickup once a week. (You can also drive your recyclables to a recycling center for free.) We joined this program on Earth Day in April of this year, and I am truly shocked each week by the quantity of recyclables we have. Here is a photo of a particularly heavy week.

The problem? I am required to wash out containers before recycling them. We eat a lot of yogurt, for example, and those yogurt containers take a few minutes of water flow each in order to clean just adequately. With this water shortage, do I stop recycling these items or do I use the water to clean them? Which is more wasteful? I don't know.

And therein lies the challenge. Knowing what really makes a difference and what simply appears to make a difference but perhaps causes another problem. Does eating organic food help the planet if that food is processed, packaged and shipped around the world? Does putting kids on school buses help if those buses are spewing diesel exhaust? Does walking instead of driving help if the time I saved driving could be spent in productive labor?

Apparently, these few weeks of banned water have resulted in a 15-20% drop in water consumption in metro Atlanta. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, water officials say we need to come down another 15% and increased bans are probable.

As for my yogurt, I think I'll switch to only large containers instead of those convenient small ones. That's less washing, reduced packaging, and cost savings as well. It's the little things that matter. I think.


If This Isn't Another Reason to Increase Organic Acreage, I Don't Know What Is


Ahhh, water. That's a sight for sore eyes, as the drought marches on here, day in, day out. I have about two more weeks of being able to water my kitchen garden with the hose (my rainbarrel is long empty) before Atlanta is scheduled to put even stricter watering regulations into place (watering food gardens is currently allowed).

Lake Lanier, where we get our water, is at an 11-year-low and even with a return to normal rainfall, it would take the lake three years to recover. The states of Georgia, Alabama and Florida continue to slug it out over water rights and the release of water downstream from dams. Governor Sonny Purdue, recognizing that rainfall (the one real solution) is out of our control, has called for a prayer service at the Capitol in downtown Atlanta next Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. on the Washington Street side of the statehouse.

This whole experience drives home just how important it is to know your watershed, and what affects it (click here for a nice visual that explains what a watershed is). My watershed is the Upper Chattahoochee watershed, which is the most heavily used water resource in Georgia. The Chattahoochee River starts as a cold-mountain stream in the Blue Ridge mountains (its headwaters are the smallest of any metropolitan area in the United States) and ends 430 miles south where it joins the Flint River at Lake Seminole and the Florida border. According to the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper's website:

Although most of the ACF Basin has been altered by human activities, the basin’s environment is noteworthy for its remaining biological diversity and the role it plays in sustaining biological productivity in Apalachicola Bay. The Basin is home to the largest number of fish species among Gulf Coast drainages east of the Mississippi River.

Waterkeepers, by the way, advocate and secure the protection and stewardship of their watersheds. There are 156 Waterkeeper organizations on six continents. Find your closest Waterkeeper organization here.

For those in the United States, the EPA has a handy way to "surf your watershed." Click here, enter your zip code, and find out:

* Citizen groups at work in your watershed
* Environmental websites involving your watershed
* Assessments of watershed health (how can you not click on the link that says "Impaired water for this watershed"?)
* Stream flow, science in your watershed, water use data, and more.

It appears 69% of the waters in my watershed have fecal coliform pollutants (data is from 2002, however). That clearly requires further investigation! (I'll report back on that in the future).

By the way, almost 60% of water use in the state of Georgia is for agricultural purposes. Organic farming improves soil conditions, increases water retention, and reduces water runoff. State Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin, if this isn't another reason to increase organic acreage in the state of Georgia, I don't know what is.


A Church-State Mashup on the Steps of the Capitol


Now, put your hand up, as if you're raising it to ask the teacher to go to the restroom, and say with me, "Let it rain, Lord! Let it rain!" Because if you were on the steps of the State Capitol of Georgia in downtown Atlanta yesterday for Governor Sonny Perdue's prayer service for rain, that's what you would have been saying.

You would have been joining a crowd, almost a third of which was made up of media, despite the news reports I read that said there were half a dozen cameras and reporters--I was there, and I counted five times that many mega-cameras that look like you could see Mercury through them, in a sea of them across the back and in the front and on the side. And I can't even count how many people had little pads and pens, like me, and were jotting notes for a story to run somewhere. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Associated Press. CNN. (FoodShed Planet).

And if you were one of those members of the media, you might have caught a photo of the only true optimist in the crowd, apparently--the person in the back with the bright pink umbrella.

Or you might have thought it was interesting that this "interdenominational" church-state mashup on the steps of a government building, paid for with taxpayer dollars, consisted of just three religious leaders, all Protestant, two of them brothers.

Or you may have been intrigued that the head of Governor Perdue's Agriculture Advisory Commission owns a company that provides turf to golf courses, athletic fields and home lawns and that he asked us to pray specifically for the recreational watersports industry.

Or perhaps you were caught off guard that Perdue did actually tell the Lord, for most of the talking was aimed upward (beyond the brilliant, clear, 70-degree blue sky) that "We have not been good stewards of our land. We have not been good stewards of our water . . . We acknowledge our wastefulness."

Or frankly, you may have just scratched your head when you spotted Ms. Georgia in the midst of all this, with her sash and tiara.

Or you might have just done what I did. Enjoyed the sweet voices of the requisite children's choir and muttered to yourself, "Whatever it takes. Just fill those lakes."


Aren't You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?


My friend Kelly showed up at Open Garden Day with these delicious fruits, "not from our foodshed, Pattie, but from my mother's foodshed," she told me. Her mom in Florida (our sister state) had mailed a box of honeybells and red grapefruits to Kelly, and she shared them with me. And as I took this photo of them in the frosty hairy vetch, I thought yet again of how we are fighting with our sister foodsheds right now over water rights, and basically, the shortage of it here, upstream, in Atlanta.

The drought was pretty much off folks' minds for awhile over the holidays. It rained something like 10 out of 14 days, it got cold, and the little share-of-mind that had tuned in to "drought conditions" had moved on to other things. That is, until this past weekend, when two big fat news headlines strutted and strode across the local papers and left me standing dumb-founded in my tracks. One said that pools would most likely not be allowed to open in Atlanta this spring/summer. The other said that no festivals would be allowed in Piedmont Park this year.

Atlanta is hot. Pools are critical components of communities for recreation, health, and even reducing crime and vandalism by providing a positive outlet for our city's youth. What's more, unmaintained pools become a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes. The amount of water used to top off pools all season pales in comparison to the one-day water use of our city's bottling plants and electrical facilities.

Piedmont Park is Atlanta's "Central Park"--the biggest festival there is the 72-year-old dogwood festival. The festival has only been canceled once. During World War II.

The headlines we have not seen? The ones about solutions. Innovation. Incentives. Change. I'm not sure, therefore, why it was a surprise to me when I read the article in the latest issue of Organic Gardening about America's Greenest Cities and didn't find Atlanta. For major metropolitan areas, it lists Portland (Oregon), Boston, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco and Philadelphia. For cities that didn't make the list but in which the editors see "hopeful signs of change," it lists Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston and Las Vegas.

And so I am breathless and speechless, but not hopeless. Because I believe in the power of positive thinking. And I believe in the miracle of collective world energy. And I believe in the people of my city.

Remember that joke?

Knock, knock
Who's there?
Banana.
Banana, who?
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Banana.
Banana, who?
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange, who?
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

Our challenge with the drought, and our food supply, and business sustainability, and the world's resources in general is no different. Doing the same things that clearly don't work is just not funny anymore.


Fuzzy Kisses--and Fuzzy Details About the Georgia Drought


Been trying to eat more raw foods and I remembered the cute little date nut balls I had at Arden's Garden and thought, "I could make those." And organically, which Arden's Garden are not. A handful of simple ingredients (dates, dried Turkish apricots, pumpkin seeds, dehydrated banana chips, a tablespoon of honey and a tablespoon of oil, whirled in the food processor then rolled in balls and then in coconut) and here they are. Outrageously delicious. (And high in iron!)

The next morning, it snowed again here in Atlanta. Always a big event, even though the flurries lasted just a half hour or so. As my younger daughter and I were walking through the woods, we saw the sprinkled sugar-snow on the forest floor's leaves and I remarked, "It looks like coconut. It's as if Atlanta has been fuzzy kissed this morning!" And if that's not a thought that will make you warm, I don't know what will.

But, of course, the recent rain and snow leads folks to think the worst drought in Atlanta's history is over, so instead of battening down the hatches and truly preparing for what may come this year, watering ban rules are being relaxed, the pools most likely will be filled, amusement parks with water rides will open on time as long as they install some low-flow toilets, and I believe I still have the only rain barrel in my neighborhood.

A letter came from the Dekalb County Department of Watershed Management the other day. It listed its water conservation initiatives as well as water conservation tips for residents. The usual suspects were there: wash only full loads of laundry and dishes, keep a bucket in the shower to catch water as it warms up and take shorter showers, turn the water off when you brush your teeth, make sure your home is leak-free, avoid flushing the toilet unnecessarily.

But glaringly missing from either list were the following:

* Rainharvesting and water re-use, including rain barrels, rain gardens and grey water systems

* Xeriscaping and lawn reduction

* Wetland conservation and expansion

* Promotion (or requirement) of permeable surfaces to return water to the watershed

* Promotion of organic gardens and farms to reduce water toxicities and runoff

* Ways to cut down on electricity, the largest use of water

* Solar power and other alternative energy initiatives

But there are a couple positive drought-awareness things happening:

There was a nice article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about three high school kids who are distributing water conservation flyers, sponsoring river clean-ups, and lobbying state lawmakers. Here is their website.

Also, I received a postcard from Hastings Garden Center (where I usually buy my Seeds of Change seeds) and it is advertising xeriscaping plants and offering a "drought-buster guarantee."

But that's it, folks. As far as I can see, nothing has really changed this winter. Oh, wait, I forgot to mention. The state of Georgia is trying to move its border one mile north so it can tap into the Tennessee River and get access to yet more water to manage inefficiently. That's been the big development.

Sounds fuzzy.

Time for a fuzzy kiss, I think.


Intricately Entwined in the Rhythms of Nature


So I'm out mowing the other morning and I see Alan of the Appalachian Trail washing his car. Keep in mind that our ongoing drought means no driveway car washing, so, intrigued, I walk over to observe how a resourceful man who has hiked over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine washes his car.

With that little container of water and soap that he is holding. Period. He sprays, he wipes, he sprays, he wipes. The entire car.

The next day, a visiting parent of another neighbor saw me dumping kitchen water from my red buckets onto my mailbox garden and said, "So that's how you keep it looking good."

My younger daughter had a friend over and instead of playing in the sprinkler, as they haven't been able to do in two years now but which used to be a normal thing on a near-100-degree day after the community pool has closed for the season, they played a game of chess on the front lawn in the shade. At least for as long as they could stand it.

Atlanta hasn't gotten a drop of rain since Hurricane Fay two weeks ago, which raised Lake Lanier about two inches. It is still 18 feet low, however. The other recent hurricanes, Gustav and Hannah, bypassed us, and the projected path for Ike has it heading toward New Orleans yet again. I am grateful, of course, not to be in the path of a hurricane, but a slow, steady rain once a week would be welcomed.

My rain barrel is dry. My crops require hand-watering each night, now that the fall seeds are in. Despite the years-long drought, I don't know of any new reservoirs, wetland areas or extensive rain harvesting systems around Atlanta. In fact, I believe I still have the only rain barrel in my neighborhood. I've read talk of our interstate "water wars" extending to South Carolina now, but otherwise, the drought is barely in the news.

Yet we have changed. Slightly, but definitely. We carry buckets of water. We wash cars with little tiny containers of water, or not at all. We sweat in the heat instead of cool off in sprinklers. We turn off faucets. We fix leaks. We look the other way when lawns turn brown and flowers droop. We plant more native, drought-tolerant species when we do give a thought to landscaping. And we hope for a good rain instead of endless sunshine, like the millions of people before modern plumbing whose lives were intricately entwined in the rhythms of nature, and whose very survival depended on it.

E

EGGS

Magic Eggs

Okay, I know I drank the "Kool Aid," so to speak, on this local stuff. Add organics to the mix and I'm gone, hook, line and sinker. But the truth comes from the mouths of babes, I tell ya'. So I wanted to share what happened last week when I bought eggs from a local, certified organic farmer. I had some children over my house and I asked them to crack these eggs for a quiche I was making. The children were all experienced egg-crackers. They picked up their eggs and started tapping them gently on the edge of the bowl. Not one cracked. They tapped harder. Still no cracks. They looked at me as if this was a trick but I urged them to tap even harder.

And then it happened. The eggs cracked and I heard a collective "wow!" The whites of the eggs were so thick they barely fell out of the shells. And the yolks! Forget yellow--these things were orange.

"I've never seen eggs like this!" one girl exclaimed. "These are magic eggs!"

I have to believe they are. There's scientific evidence about higher amount of omega-3s and all that, but I'm not going to go into that here. All I know is that the chickens that laid these eggs live like chickens are supposed to live. Scavenging around for grubs and worms and weeds. Scratching in the dirt. Getting fresh air. And these eggs are different from the high-priced cage-free, vegetarian feed ones I buy in the supermarket. The picture above compares two eggs--one from Whole Foods (on the left) and one from my local farmer (on the right). You can see the thicker, more gelatinous albumen and the deeper yolk color on the local farmer egg. I wish I had an egg from an industrial farm to show as well. They are very watery and pale yellow.

Magic eggs. It wasn't so long ago that these were the only eggs children saw. Buy eggs from a local farmer and bring back some magic.

The Dozen with the Blue Egg


Today is Market Day, which, today, means I have dinosaur kale, cabbage, cauliflower, free-range ground turkey and raw, grass-fed cow cream as well as one of my favorites, duck eggs (which are particularly good for baking).

When I asked for a dozen duck eggs, Corinna Garmon of Garmon Family Farm asked me if I wanted the dozen with the blue egg. And I gotta' tell ya', if you ever get asked in life if you want the dozen with the blue egg, there's really only one conceivable answer and that, of course, is yes. And then, as anything involving a blue egg goes, it got even better. I asked her if she knew exactly which of her ducks laid the blue egg and she said it was Cutie's egg. Now, Cutie happens to be a duck I actually met at the market back in October, and I have to say "met" because she was sauntering around like she owned the joint, mingling with the customers. No plain Jane duck, Cutie was dressed up for Halloween as Count Duckula. I kid you not.

And here I am, one hour later, back at work, with ingredients for dinner, but even more importantly, a dinner story I simply couldn't have made up.

Thanks, Cutie!


EGGPLANT

Strong and Weathered Arms Over the Fence



There's a beautiful poem titled Where I'm From, by George Ella Lyon, which inspired me to write my own version of that poem. I think of it often, especially now, when eggplants abound. When I was about 10, a large, extended Italian family from Brooklyn built a too-big house on the lot next to ours, and then ripped up their entire backyard and turned it into a garden. This was shocking to the neighbors and extraordinarily intriguing to me.

While shooting baskets after dinner in my yard, I used to peer over the fence at the wonder of that garden. What I think fascinated me so much was that this family valued their garden above every other possible use of that backyard. There was literally not one inch for a lawn chair or a picnic table, a swing set or a basketball hoop.

My mother and Mrs. D (as we called her) became a bit friendly over the years, and it was often that I would be interrupted from my game of 'Round the World by Mrs. D's strong and weathered arms over the fence offering us glorious aubergine eggplants.

So instead of wishing the end of the eggplants, which is how I felt last week, I decided to honor them yesterday. To honor them and the memory of Mrs. D and the seed that her garden and others I experienced must have planted in my heart. And so, my One Local Summer meal this week is this eggplant parmigiana and these simple, orange cherry tomatoes, the type you'd pluck from a neighbor's garden while playing basketball.

Here is my poem:

I am from big, heavy eggplants
Passed over one chain-linked fence
And Nabisco cookies from a salesman’s trunk
Passed over the other.

I am from moths swarming around the back light
Outside the open window
Where dishes get hand-washed and air-dried.

I am from Italian ices
Flipped over in the cup and eaten on the curb
With little wooden spoons.

I am from a spare key
Tucked under the dwarf made in Ceramics class
And a bike always laying
Where that patch of grass won’t grow.

I am from lasagna and blueberry pancakes
And thumbprint cookies at Christmas.

I am from the Mets game on the radio
Over the fridge at dinner.

I am from the third house on the right.

Where are you from?


EARTH

The Night the Lights Will Go Out in Georgia (and Around the World)


Big news--Atlanta joins three other U.S. cities (Phoenix, San Francisco and Chicago) in pledging to support Earth Hour, the hour on March 29, 2008 when cities around the world will shut off all nonessential lights in a dramatic demonstration of concern about climate change. More than two million people in Sydney, Australia, inaugurated this event last year, resulting in a 10% drop in energy usage, double what was predicted. This year, participating cities currently include:

Aalborg, Denmark
Aarhus, Denmark
Adelaide, Australia
Atlanta, United States
Bangkok, Thailand
Brisbane, Australia
Canberra, Australia
Chicago, United States
Christchurch, New Zealand
Copenhagen, Denmark
Manila, Philippines
Melbourne, Australia
Odense, Denmark
Perth, Australia
Phoenix, United States
San Francisco, United States
Suva, Fiji
Sydney , Australia
Tel Aviv, Israel
Toronto, Canada

Yes, my friends, there it is, yet again. Adelaide, Australia, home to Kate and Maggie. I am starting to think that I am being sent enough messages about the connections between Atlanta and Adelaide, that perhaps, just perhaps, I'm being called to do something about it. I am not quite sure what yet. An article? A book? A cultural exchange non-profit organization where we can learn from each other, build bridges across the world, across hemispheres, across issues, between people who seem to have very much in common? I told my younger daughter the other day that the baton of spring and summer would soon be passed from Adelaide to Atlanta as Adelaide embarked on fall and winter, and she said, "It's as if Atlanta and Adelaide work together to keep the world in balance." Or could, I thought to myself.

Speaking of balance, and the world's energy, and the simple action of turning off lights for one little hour on one synchronized day around our FoodShed Planet, see www.EarthHour.org to sign up, get involved, reduce your impact and learn how to organize your own Earth Hour in your town or community.

(A quick thanks to my friend Judy for finding out about this for us! She's on top of so many environmental and health issues, you wouldn't believe it. Judy--when are you going to start blogging?!)


EARTH SKILLS

"You Take What the Trail Has to Offer"


Six years ago right now he would have been gone, two months already into his 5-month walk from Georgia to Maine, more than 2,000 miles on the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains. Only about 30% of hikers who attempt to walk the entire Appalachian Trail (the longest footpath in the United States and a designated National Scenic Trail) actually succeed each year, with many of those who don't make it stopping during the first 75 miles, still in the state of Georgia, not far from the trail's start at Springer Mountain near Amicalola Falls.

He carried a 40-pound backpack, camped in a tiny tent, ate freeze-dried food that his wife mailed to him "General Delivery" at various post offices just off the trail along the way, which he cooked on a miniscule fire in a stove no bigger than a box of cigarettes.

He is my next-door neighbor, and until last week, I hadn't really heard his story. I had asked about it, of course, but really not that much. Not enough. I've never seen the pictures, or sat and talked at length with him about it.

Yet I was planning our final Open Garden for the season, since the heat in my yard has already made it unbearable to be out there in the garden for long at the time of the day that we've been gathering with friends and neighbors to put children's hands in the dirt and teach them how to plant potatoes, and identify chickweed, and appreciate the tangy sharpness of French sorrel.

And I got to thinking, "Earth Skills," those basic skills we as humans need to survive in the wild and the world. There's been a marked drop-off in earth skills in today's generation of children, since many of their parents are either not passing down these skills or never learned them themselves. As a society, we have gotten used to segmented labor, or the need to hire a specialist for the kinds of things that everyone used to know. How to change a flat tire or cook or do simple repairs.

So I asked my neighbor, Alan, if he would do a "Survival Skills on the Appalachian Trail" demonstration for the final Open Garden, and he did. The crowd of us gathered on my front lawn this time as Alan and his wife, Fran (who had served as the critical at-home support person and had flown in to join him on various legs of the trip) showed the tent, explained how to purify water, talked about trail safety and even cooked freeze-dried lasagna right there on my lawn and offered it to everyone to sample. The kids tried on the pack and played in the tent and listened spellbound as Alan waxed poetic about how it feels to be out there alone, the wind washing over your tent like waves, the sound of nocturnal animals alive and vibrant in the night, the camaraderie of those you meet on the journey, the peace, the beauty, the joy.

Alan intended to hike 17 miles a day. He prepared spreadsheets that outlined his trip and had it all worked out--until he got there, and learned that it just doesn't work that way. That steep inclines, one after another after another, or 8 degree nights, or wet gear or overnight stays in a nearby trail town while waiting for Fran's next package of provisions throw the best laid plans askew. And so Alan looked at us and said the simple words that embody the biggest lesson he learned:

You take what the trail has to offer.

Whether it's murky water. Or rainy nights in lean-tos shoulder-shoulder with 30 other very smelly hikers and mice that run over you at night. Or a black bear mama protecting her cubs or copperhead snakes or Lyme-Disease-carrying ticks. Eventually you get there, if you are one of the perseverant and perhaps lucky, through 14 states, to Mount Katahdin 281 miles into Maine.

And so as one little girl insightfully asked Alan, "You probably pass lots of creeks and rivers while hiking. Isn't that water dirty? What do you drink?" I thought of how much that question is reflective of the times in which these children live, that unfortunately it is not natural for them to imagine a place where water is pure and clean, not even up there, in the middle of the forest, in the middle of nowhere. And it occurred to me how important it is for these children to learn Earth Skills, to know that a simple, hand-held water purifier can make any water potable.

Earth Skills. Growing your own food. Making fire. Cooking. Living lightly on the land, independently. And knowing when to share skills and resources (as I'm now thinking of doing with more talented folks as part of a developing concept for Open Garden). And when to actually knock on your neighbor's door and say, "I know it's been 6 years since you came home with that full white beard. But I have some questions for you. And I'd like to learn."


ETHICS

An Ethical Bridge to Cross


Here I sit with an ethical dilemma, faced with a bridge to cross that I don't know if I should. I feel like I should write to The Ethicist (that column written by Randy Cohen). Instead, I strolled into the office and asked my husband.

"There's a product I love so much that I was going to make it an Ecomomical choice," I said, "And I only chose five other products from my whole two years of FoodShed Planet to put on that blog so far!"

"So? What's the problem?"

"Well, I researched the company, and it's a 75-year-old farm, still owned by the fourth generation of the same family."

"Problem?"

"The product is organic. Has one ingredient. Packaged within 24 hours of harvest."

Okay, I started getting the "get on with it" look about then.

"And it's massively delicious. Addictively. It's my go-to choice for a 3 PM pick-me-up."

Raised eyebrows now. Clearly time to get on with it or get lost.

"And profits from my purchase of this extraordinarily simple and delectable product fund the company's foundation . . . which supports causes with which I strongly disagree."

Okay, now I had him. Fingers started tapping on the keyboard. Websites appeared. Scanning of mission statements ensued. Blog posts. Boycotts. The whole shebang.

"Okay, here's what I think," he finally said. "They hold opinions, some of which differ from yours. But they are not doing any harm, are they? They're not killing or otherwise encouraging anyone to do anything illegal. They simply have a difference of opinion. And that's a good thing in this country, isn't it?"

Good points, all. And yes, I am a big fan of the "marketplace of ideas."

But . . .

"But they are using funds gained from my purchase of their product to support efforts to deny certain individuals certain things," I answered.

"But if you researched every single company, you'd probably find something about each and every one of them with which you don't agree."

"Yes," I agreed. But the truth stared me in the face. "But I haven't researched every single one. I've researched this one."

"And?"

"And knowledge known cannot be unknown."

"But don't you think it's admirable that they have been able to stick with their convictions, especially considering how large they have become, even if you don't agree with them?"

Silence.

And then, my husband voiced the other truth that lingered in the air, the counterpart to knowledge.

"You'll drive yourself crazy, Pattie. You won't be able to eat anything," he said.

My husband is probably the most ethical person I know. And I must say that his argument about differing opinions is almost enough to sway me to keep consuming this product. Yet the owners of this company don't just have these opinions. They fund efforts to influence change to possibly alter laws involving these opinions.

Listen, I'm a person who stopped eating Altoids ever since I found out they have gelatin in them, which is derived from animal bones, and I am in the final week now of my year of Nothing with a Face. I won't consume products with vitamin D3 in it because it's derived from animals as well. Nor will I eat products with trans fat, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, artificial dyes, and non-organic soy. I am comfortable eliminating entire categories of food if they cross my ever-tightening "line" of what I stand for in this world. But is my world getting too small? Or is it simplifying, in a good way, in a way that brings richer meaning to my life, around what's truly ethical (for me)?

Do I need this delicious product to live? No. Do I need to vote with my dollar in a way that I think is right for me? Yes, I do believe that. Strongly. But am I sliding down a slippery slope of no return? Perhaps. And is that good? Not sure.

What do you think, my very wise readers of FoodShed Planet? What is the point where you let go? How stringent are you when you evaluate companies? What is your ethical compass?

Oh, and before you ask, I've decided not to name this company. I have not visited the headquarters nor interviewed anyone at the company, and I am fully aware that I simply don't know the whole story. But I think the questions I ask might be good "food for thought" regarding any company.

F

FARMERS MARKET

Just Another Morning Grocery Shopping


This is Andy, from Living Earth Farms. Last time I saw him, he was dressed as a sunflower. Next time I see him, he might be popping out at me during the Haunted Hayride at Moon Bughead's Yahoo Farm in Jasper, Georgia about an hour north of Atlanta. I found Andy so enjoyable at the farmers makret yesterday that I bought a big bouquet of zinnias, even though I have patches and patches of butterfly-laden zinnias in my garden. And once again, I'm reminded that that's what the farmers market is all about--the stories you bring home with you along with the products.

My already-back-in-school kids asked, "Are these flowers ours?" and I said, "No, they're from the guy who was dressed as the sunflower, remember him?" And on I went, with dinner story after dinner story.

About Chad the Milk Man, how some of the other farmers call him a rock star because he doesn't arrive until 10:30 AM and a swarm of people flock to his truck as it barrels around the corner in order to pick up the eggs and milk they have pre-ordered.

And Melissa, how she encourages so many people to sample so many of her things that it's a wonder she makes any money.

And Wakeeba, who bubbles over with smiles and warmth as she doles out that fabulous 100% shea butter that works miracles, literally miracles, on dry skin (we have no less than ten containers of it all over our house). How she finally bought a house, her first house, with a spot for a garden, and her pre-teen daughter insisted on coming with her to the lawyer's office to sign the papers. About how that made me cry.

About Corinna Garmon, whose booth is smack in the middle of it all, and whose tomatoes were so glorious that I bought pounds of them, as well as various zebra varieties from Bill Yoder (all of which were gone by bedtime, eaten straight out of our hands, uncut, over the kitchen sink).

And about Parsley's Catering and its soft-spoken chef who did a cooking demonstration, there in the heat, of orange spaghetti squash with roasted tomato sauce, and the big fave of the day, the honeydew melon sorbet, scooped out like melon balls into little tiny cups and shared collectively by a small group of farmers market die-hards, as the thermometer climbed to 102 degrees yet again.

It was just another morning grocery-shopping.

Or was it?


That Time of Day with No Edges


My morning glories are running amok through the garden, trellis-free in many places, wrapping and swirling themselves around whatever they can find--heavy red elephant-head amaranth, towering sprays of Hungarian broom corn, and nutty brown pearly bursts of sorghum. The effect is mesmerizing and beautiful--and the flowers haven't even started yet!

Last night, I stood at my kitchen window and gazed upon this symbiosis in the quiet of after-dinner when the sun had set and the day had started to loosen its grip, that time of day with no edges. And I thought of my friends. Family. Neighbors. Colleagues. Teachers. Strangers. And I thought of how sometimes I am that sorghum, standing tall and strong, reaching for the sky, supporting the delicate morning glory vines. And other times, I am the morning glories, sharing my light but relying on the strength of those in my life. Or standing on the shoulders of others, like Anita Roddick, like Alice Waters, like Margaret Mead who said to never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.

Today is Farmers Market Day as well as CSA pick-up day and I think of how hard it has been this summer for the farmers. The worst summer in years. If I don't go early to the farmers market, there's no produce. But Rock Star Chad doesn't show up with his milk and eggs until 10:30, so if I want his eggs (and I have become completely reliant on them), then I miss the produce.

I need what the farmers--Chad, Corinna, Tommy, Melissa, Bill and others--have. They need the customers to be there and buy from them. Even now, when yields are low. Especially now, when yields are low. Because one thing I know for sure--we take turns being the sorghum and the morning glories.


However Meager It Seemed When I Bought It


So I'm working yesterday morning, an article due, some interviews lined up, a pile of paperwork to handle, when I get an email from Corinna that says:

We will be short on produce this week so come early. No tomato plants this week. We were hit with a bad wind and hail storm Monday night that took its toll on the farm and garden produce. Nothing too badly damaged except some trees/limbs down (including one old apple tree that was loaded) and many of my garden veggies were battered. Many we could not harvest for sale this week. The baby arugula is toast. We hope the rest recover. Because of the damage we will not be bringing tomato plants this week. I may need them to replant those that don't make it.

Thank you for Supporting your Local Farmers!

It was already 10 AM and the market had been open since 8. Do I go? Do I lose an hour and a half of work to go to a farmers market that probably won't have very much?

I sit and ponder. I have lots in my garden. I could get by another week without Charlotte's box or the farmers market.

But can the farmers get by? That's the ultimate question I ask. Because, in many retail environments two or five or ten bucks may not matter much, but at the farmers market, it matters.

* It matters to Corinna, who is there with her two children and their new pet goose, Poppy (who, by the way, is getting along well with Cutie the Duck).

* It matters to Melissa, who spends 50 bucks just on gas to get to and from the market.

* It matters to Jen the soapmaker whose property was decimated by a tornado a few weeks ago.

* It matters to the two new vendors there yesterday, who are probably trying to decide if it is worth their effort: Flat Creek Lodge, which recently became the second licensed artisanal cheesemaker in the state of Georgia (with Sweet Grass Dairy being the first), and Kristin from Modern Day Masala, who is a native Atlantan married to an Indian man who packages unique spice mixtures that she learned how to create from her Indian mother-in-law.

* And, ultimately, it matters to me, because I want convenient community-access to local farm produce and goods. And if people like me stop going, they stop coming (a number of farmers have already stopped, because of gas prices).

And so I went. I bought a small handful of kale (all that was available), six duck eggs (all that were left), two little bundles of radishes (the last ones), two cookies, a bar of soap, and a chunk of mozzarella.

Late yesterday afternoon, after bike-riding home from the community center (where the empty bike rack from a week ago is now full) with my daughters in the much-needed but inconveniently-timed sudden storm (and feeling a surge of anger at the continual incidence of MOMS on cell phones in mini-vans who completely ignore crosswalks by not stopping, as is the law and frankly, is basic common sense when you see children trying to cross a street!) (oh dear, I'm getting all worked up again), I made Two Local Pizzas that celebrated the bounty of the day, however meager it seemed when I bought it.

One pizza featured a whole wheat and blue corn (from Charlotte last fall) crust, topped with the mozzarella, my one home-grown (salmonella-free) tomato, and chopped olives. The other featured the same crust and mozzarella, topped with roasted onions from my garden and Corinna's chopped kale.

And as lightning drew nutrients up from my soil to my crops (as Melissa says it does), I was nourished as well, by far more than food.


That We Had Come Together


And so it was that Farmers Market Day found me everywhere but there yesterday. Work, social and parental commitments meant that that hour or so was simply not available. And I had a houseful to feed last night, so Tuesday I faced the inevitable question--what to do for food?

Costco.

Okay, I know nothing's local, but there's enough organic stuff there to fill my fridge without busting my budget. One trip. One hour. Done. Needed to happen this week.

I felt bad about it yesterday afternoon. Not that I had gone to Costco--I go there about once a month--but that I had missed the farmers. I hadn't just missed going to the market--I missed them. I missed talking with them and knowing that I was helping to support a local food system in which I believe.

As some kids whipped down my driveway on that homemade go-cart we had picked from a garbage two months ago, a couple of others traipsed around the garden with me, picking big, fat, glorious onions and handfuls of basil. Yes, it was One Local Pizza Night, and within moments the onions were sauteeing and the basil was joined by a hodgepodge of pantry ingredients to make a fresh pesto. We punched down the whole wheat dough and rolled it out in circles and hearts and oblongs.

As the sun streamed through the windows, we combined ingredients from as far away as 2,000 miles and as close as two feet, and I wondered if perhaps, just for today, it mattered less where things had come from and more, simply, that we had come together.

The tie-dying then started in the yard, and the tent rose awkwardly on the Dutch white clover flowers that I had just mowed that morning, one person securing this, one doing that, another one hammering. As the aroma of pizza once more filled the house, I realized that, for just that moment, all was well in the world.

And now, as I hear the first strains of the pre-dawn symphony of birds, I am counting the last of my quiet moments until sleepy heads arise and the French toast, made from the last of Corinna's eggs, fill the pan, and a new day stretches out before us, in all its wonder and glory.

And I hope we see that spiky black and brown caterpillar on our walk to camp that we saw yesterday, that we sat and watched and even videotaped.

And I hope that folks stop in the crosswalk for us, and if they don't, I won't get mad, I won't get mad, I won't get mad (okay, I'll probably get mad).

And I hope there's a mimosa flower low enough that I can pluck and smell before the smell is gone for another year.

And I hope it rains to fill my empty rain barrel.

And I hope that I am worthy of this day.


The Face of a Farmer: A Middle-Aged Mom

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So there's all this talk about young farmers, young farmers, young farmers here in the United States, how they are desperately needed and how there is a definite movement of them in organic agriculture. In fact, a group of filmmakers are currently making a documentary called The Greenhorns about them (I believe they just shot at Serenbe, where young Paige runs the farm). Yet when I go to my farmers market, here's what I see. Middle-aged moms. Happy, confident, hard-working women who have somehow found their way to the farm and love it there. Each of these women--Corinna and Paula and Anne--always have a buzz of customers around them, although most times it feels more like a meeting of friends. What you always see are hugs. What you always hear is laughter.

I am just as interested in hearing Corinna's opinions on the latest tainted food headlines as I am in buying her lacinato kale. I am just as apt to talk with Paula about how a heated little potato can relieve the pain of an earache when placed in a sock and held by the hurting ear as I am to take home the last of her tomatoes. I am just as anxious to find out what wild food Anne has discovered on her farm as I am to purchase her turnips.

The farmers market has closed now, although some of the farmers will still show up and sell pre-ordered crops from the backs of their trucks in the middle of the parking lot. Informally, without tables and awnings and an official "Farmers Market Open Today" sign. I call these "drug deals," because as we pull up in cars on windy, freezing days, jump out, and exchange the series of things for which we've come to depend from the farmers market--hugs, laughter, advice and, oh yeah, some winter greens, I feel the medicinal properties of this powerful combination surging through my veins.

And so, for me, when I think of the "face of the farmer," it is rarely an old man and only half the time a young man or woman (Farmer D, Melissa, Charlotte and Wes). Just as often, it is a middle-aged mom.


FIGS

"Gone Figging"


Fig season officially kicked off for me yesterday. Figs are a great source of fiber, calcium and potassium, as well as lignin, which helps to plump up cell walls and may be why the ancient Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder claimed figs helped people retain a youthful appearance. Figs are best eaten "warm from the tree," although that's a taste the majority of people here in Atlanta will never experience because if our figs don't come from Turkey, Greece, Spain or Portugal, they come from California, 3,000 miles away. What's more, they usually come in the form of fig newtons, that distant cousin to the life-affirming sensation of eating a fresh fig, because fresh figs do not travel or store well.

And so it is with a bit of hesitation that I tell you my secret. I found a local fig tree last year (in addition to the small one I have growing in my garden). It is huge and yields hundreds of big, fat, purplish-greenish figs that melt in your mouth with a distinct taste of peach and honey, pulsating energy and history, all wrapped up in a neat little package. And nobody seems to know about it. It must have been planted years ago, with love and intention, and then forgotten. It's just there, on my walk, a little bit hidden and completely overlooked. Overripe figs rotted and fell to the ground last year before I discovered it. I asked the shopowner if I could pick them, and he didn't seem to care one way or the other. And so now, I leave a note on my kitchen counter that says "Gone figging" and I go to my secret tree, two minutes away, to relieve it of its fruits, considering it a bit of a public service, perhaps. And an extraordinary, unexpected treat for four weeks or so during the lazy, hot and humid days of a Southern summer. I always come home to anxious faces, ready to kick back like Cleopatra and plop those plump gifts from the gods into their mouths.

Good news. TaylOrganic Farm in Ellenwood, Georgia, grows figs. Contact Neil and see how you, too, can eat this oldest and sweetest of fruits "warm from the tree."


The Fruit I Harvest


I got caught red-handed yesterday at my Secret Fig Tree. You see, there was a recent change-of-owners of the shop on the property recently and I had not exactly cleared my "fig foraging" with the new owner. But I saw him yesterday, as both my paws were up in that tree, dropping the soft, ripe figs into that patchwork sachel my mother made for me.

"Good morning," he said suspiciously, peering around the corner, a hose in his hand as he washed down the outdoor patio.

"Oh, good morning!" I chirped cheerily. "I've been meaning to talk with you! I've been picking these figs for years. I mean, they get overripe and fall on the ground and make a mess. I perform a bit of a public service, I suppose . . ." I blabbered.

He stood silently for a moment, casting his eyes from me to the tree and back again. And finally, I saw the smallest bit of a smile creep into the edges of his lips. And he said, "I used to do that at my grandmother's house. . . Please, take as much as you want!"

Yes!

Only one problem. The figs are slowing down. Each day yields fewer and fewer. Whereas I used to stuff my bag and say to myself, "Stop. Stop. Don't be so greedy. Share with the birds, or at least leave some for Richard." Oh, yeah, Richard is head-over-heels about the figs as well. He's actually thinking of investing in a fig farm. Go, Richard.

Now, it's all I can do to fill a small bowl with them, and I've stopped going every day. Maybe only once every three days now. And they're getting smaller. The end is near, until next year. And, of course, this makes each fig like a jewel, more beautiful and precious than if the tree were still loaded with them. And that feeling of savoring, appreciating, taking not one bite for granted, that is the fruit I harvest each time. That is the nourishment I get from those figs.


Previously Bound and Trapped


So I stopped by Richard of the Worms' house to get some new worms. I had emancipated mine when I spread them in the garden along with the worm castings one beautiful day about two weeks ago, but then I found I missed the little guys when I was cutting vegetables and had some particularly good scraps. "The worms would have liked this," I heard myself muttering, there at the kitchen sink.

Richard's worm bins are in balance now and his worms, previously trying to escape everywhere and waving little white flags, are happily processing decaying food and living in harmony with their surroundings.

I had cleaned out my homemade bin and laid a little bed of straw and newspaper, into which Richard generously scooped four handfuls of his red wrigglers. I kept the previous batch in my living room for the last eight months, without incident or odor or flies, but I decided to keep this batch outside as a bit of an experiment with the hopes of making a bigger worm bin if this goes well.

As I was leaving, I noticed Richard's fig trees, planted a year ago almost to the day. They are settled into their spaces and starting to fill out and grow taller, and I realized that my still-potted fig tree was bound and trapped and doomed to a life of never realizing its potential unless I planted it. But trying to break through the hard, red, Georgia clay to dig a deep enough hole to plant the fig tree had proven to be too hard for me.

"You need a pick ax," Richard stated, and headed for his garage. He came back with a large, heavy tool and put it in my hands. I immediately crumbled under its extreme weight.

He wrinkled his brow a bit and suggested, "Choke up. Ya' gotta' choke up."

And so I dragged the tool to my car, brought it home and dragged it to the yard. I choked up on it as if it were a way-too-big-for-me bat from so many years ago, from when I tried to participate at my brother's baseball practices before I found a team of my own, and I swung that thing over my head and into the previously-unrelenting ground. And the ground moved like nothing, as if it were simply sand and I were digging a castle. I swung the pick ax again, and again, and again, more bits of earth displaced, the hole deeper and deeper and deeper, seemingly effortlessly.

I dragged the fig tree across the yard and planted it in the hole, straight and tall and secure, and imagined one day ten years from now when the tree would be big and lush with drooping branches that make harvesting the sweet fruit extra easy. And as I carried that pick ax back to the car, with one hand whereas before I could barely hold it with two, I wondered how many of us are bound and trapped and doomed to a life of never realizing our potential, simply because we don't have the right tools.

I thought of the worms, how I had freed them, and how I was raising the next batch that I would inevitably one day set free as well. I thought of the fig tree, and how I had freed it. And I wondered if perhaps, today, with the help of a pick ax, I had freed myself just a little bit more as well.


FLOWERS

Edible Flowers--The Last Hurrah



The oniony taste of chive flower blossoms sprinkled across fresh salad greens. The tart and lemony garden sorrel flowers, making you pucker in a sort of child-like Lemonhead memory. The mysteriously unidentifiable essence of lavender baked into a cookie or sweet bread. And the saffrony gold of calendula flowers coloring a soup or brightening eggs. Edible flowers such as these are not essential to cooking, like perhaps sea salt or tomatoes or balsamic vinegar, or whatever else it is you you use with a heavy hand. They are an edible garnish, a last-minute accent that elevates the dish from everyday to a head-cocking, what-is-that-flavor awakening. What's more, most edible flowers are not specifically grown for the flowers. They are the last hurrah of a plant you may have enjoyed for its leaves, like arugula or cilantro. These plants may have even been left in your garden too long, accidentally, because of life getting in the way of clearing them out and making room for the next season's crops.

Edible flowers remind me of so many older people I see, quietly quilting and painting and creating such beauty, expressing a lifetime of stored energy and inspiration, while younger, more supposedly productive life buzzes on around them. There they are, in all their glory, flowering exuberantly, reaching their arms boldly to the sun, singing a final song and leaving an indelible mark on all they touch as their seeds spread to foster new growth long after they are gone.

I try not to be so quick to "clear out and make room for the next season's crops." Because, if I do, I miss it. I miss the connection between generations. And I miss out on the indescribable flavor of the final stage of life.


FOOD MILES

Can't Anything Be Easy?


How hard could it be, the new EcoMomical blog that I share with Kate in Australia? Post about products we love. As simple as that, right?

Well, why, then, am I struggling to find products I really love, that are ecologically sound? I checked out my cupboard and thought I had an easy one for today, Heinz Organic Ketchup. Yummy taste--discernibly better than the non-organic version. And seventy percent more lycopene than non-organic ketchup. Seventy percent. That's an awful lot, folks, and lycopene is a big aid for protecting the prostate, which tells me it probably does other good as well.

So I took the requisite sun-streaked product photo in the wheat straw. And I got all ready for my quick and simple post on EcoMomical. And then I saw it, the little tiny words on the back of the container.

"Product of Canada."

This, of course, painted a bucolic picture in my head of The Manic Organic and his dew-kissed Canadian farm. Ahhh, how lovely. A big company and small family farms. Nice product.

But then I saw the next line on the bottle. "Question/Comments Call 1-800-255-5750." The kiss of death.

And so it went something like this:

"Hello, this is Lee. May I help you with something?

Run, Lee, run!

"Yes, I have a question about the Heinz Organic Ketchup. The bottle says that it is a product of Canada."

"Yes," Lee answered proudly. "It is processed at a 100-year-old manufacturing plant in Leamington."

Leamington. Leamington. A quick Google search reveals that Leamington is in Ontario, Canada. Here is a description from the Leamington website:

Named the best place to live in Canada by MoneySense Magazine. Imagine a place where rare plants and species thrive. Where the land is so rich it produces the most diverse range of crops in Canada. A place where naturalists flock to witness the impressive migration of birds and butterflies. A community where retirement living is at its best. A place where breathtaking sunsets, secluded beaches, after supper sails and friendly faces are a way of life. Imagine Leamington.

Great product, this organic ketchup. From beautiful Leamington. Right? Wait.

"Can you tell me the name of the farms from which you get the tomatoes in Canada?" I ask. Beautiful Leamington. I can taste the tomatoes, their backs still warm from last summer's sun.

And then my conversation with dear Lee took the inevitable turn for the worse.

"Oh, no, the tomatoes are grown in the United States and turned into a paste at a manufacturing plant in Stockton, California. Then, the paste is shipped to Leamington where it is made into ketchup."

Okay, so let me get this straight. The tomatoes originate probably in California. Or perhaps Texas. Or Florida. They are processed in California, 3,000 miles from me, and shipped to Ontario, Canada. What is that, another 3,000 miles? And then the resulting ketchup is distributed back in the United States (and elsewhere). Shipping containers. Trucks. Fuel. Miles. A much larger carbon footprint than I would have imagined. Not very EcoMomical.

Can't anything be easy?


FOOD SYSTEM

"More, More, More!" (Or How to Build a More Secure Food System)


So I'm cutting an onion yesterday and thinkiing about an interview I just did with a farmer named Laurie Moore. Laurie and her husband, who were both working non-farm jobs, inherited the family farm about ten years ago--60 acres just three miles over the Georgia border into Alabama. They started farming specialty produce for chefs--edible flowers, baby squash, things like that, and all the chefs kept saying to the Moores, "More, more, more!"

Fast forward. Now, in addition to farming their own farm, Moore Farms and Friends offers fresh produce, honey, eggs, cheese, meats, flowers, herbs, and pantry foods. All produce is either grown naturally on their farm, on one of their friend’s farms or produced regionally in the Southeastern United States. Every farm or artisan Moore Farms and Friends represents is either Certified USDA Organic, Certified Naturally Grown, or Sustainable in their methods. (We had a big chat about what this Certified Naturally Grown thing means--apparently small farmers are eschewing the USDA organic certification because the cost is too high, but this certification supports good, clean, healthy growing methods at an affordable cost for small producers. Personally, I'd still need to know more about each farmer.)

Where Moore Farms and Friends shines is in their easy on-line ordering, the ability for customers to customize box contents, and the very sharply done weekly newsletter (I love a nice newsletter). (Interestingly, out of 225 boxes delivered each week, only about 45 of them are custom. Perhaps folks like having choices but ultimately appreciated the random diversity of the $20 weekly "farmers pick.") They deliver to multiple locations in Atlanta and they have a booth at that "newish" farmers market on Peachtree Street by that cathedral. The market apparently opens with a bell at 8:30 on Saturday mornings. I like that!

And so I stood there, slicing my onion, and it hit me. Building a food system is like the concentric circles of that onion. The center is the garden, closest to home. The next ring represents my local farmers, Charlotte and Corinna and Melissa and Chad. The third ring is the regional system, what Laurie does. She pulls from 25 different small farms all over the Southeast. Her box contents change every week and include things like tomatoes from Tennessee and oranges from Florida. The next ring is national--those New England cranberries I like at Thanksgiving time, or those frozen wild blueberries from the Pacific Northwest, or my everyday organic whole wheat and other grains. And then international--can you say bananas? Coffee? Chocolate?

It's not all about local, nor do I think it should be. A secure food system covers all the bases so that in case of emergency or natural disaster or these never-ending food contamination outbreaks (or just for the diversity that adds spice to life), there are options. Good, healthy options.

And so I look forward to adding Moore Farms and Friends to my mix. And covering more bases, one onion ring at a time.


FRENCH TARRAGON

The Black Jelly Bean Plant


There are always a few in the group, kids who really couldn't care less about the garden, who want to take the sticks that line its edge and swing them at each other, or look at me and whine, "Can we go insiiiiiiiide?" That's when I lean forward and tell them the secret.

"There's a black jelly bean plant," I tell them. "It doesn't have beans, but it smells just like them, and if you find it and smell it, you'll think it's Easter morning again." Their eyes light up (no matter if they actually celebrate Easter or not in their families) and they start to scan the garden. It suddenly looks different to them, like a magic place with hidden treasure, and they start touching and smelling, in search of the jelly bean plant (also know as French tarragon!). Long before they find it, they find the lemon balm or the rosemary or the tangerine sage or, if they are very lucky, the pungently-sweet lemon thyme. They start asking me, "What's this? What's this?" and they share leaves with each other. I ask them if they want to smell the difference between peppermint and spearmint. I ask them if they want to smell pizza (oregano and basil). I point to a stalk and tell them to pull it up and watch their faces as an onion appears.

We don't always make it to the Black Jelly Bean Plant. But one thing is for sure. We never go back insiiiiiiide.