Clomp Clomp Clomp

I guess it was kind of obvious I was going to one day be un-vegan long before I even started eating cheese again. It was the boots, you see.

I’ve always had conflicts within the vegetarian thing. For the first couple years, I ate plenty of Morningstar and the rest of it, fake cheese even, before I started to wonder what the point was. I mean, part of the reason (actually most of the reason) I was vegetarian was to save the environment, and then here I was buying individually wrapped preservative laden fake chicken patties? What the hell is the sense in that?

So I stopped eating the processed meat stuff and eventually I stopped eating tofu except every once in a while to make fake ricotta for lasagna, and I guess sometimes when out at restaurants because fried tofu at Thai restaurants is pretty awesome. This became exceptionally easy once I moved here and had oodles of fresh vegetables at my fingertips. So many that I still to this day end up composting a lot because I can’t get through them fast enough (curses! living alone!).

Anyway there is not a lot of sense in veganism (from an environmental standpoint) other than that factory farming sucks and should stop, like, right at this second, and I don’t want to hear any excuses. But factory farming grain (which includes soybeans) to make tofu doesn’t make any sense either. Additionally, there are the boots. I wear boots. I love boots, I really do. But I also beat the shit out of any pair of shoes I wear. There was a time that I was going through one or two pairs of sandals every single summer because I wouldn’t buy the leather ones, given that they were made from dead cows, and was instead buying cheap plasticy faux leather ones that would fall apart by the end of the summer. These could not hold up to my persistent abuse.

It was the same with boots. It’s one thing to use plastic for boots that are obviously not intended for daily use, such as the pleather-ish knee high pair I have with the four inch heels. Those are fine to make with fake materials. But regular, I am tramping around in the mud and trying to keep my feet dry boots? It’s ridiculous to attempt to make that kind of boot with “vegan” materials. They would never last, and eventually you are given the choice between buying a new pair of plastic boots each year (and throwing the old ones away, to be incinerated or landfilled) or breaking down and buying leather.

I first cracked with my field boots. I rode horses, I was on the riding team, and no way could I be out there riding on a daily basis in fake leather field boots. Besides, all of the tack was leather. I conveniently ignored this fact and went about my business. But then I had to buy a good pair of riding boots, for competitions, and my snobby image obsessed coach required us to wear Ariats. For those of you who have never ventured into the riding world, this is like buying a really good car. I actually don’t know enough about cars to accurately make a comparison, but maybe like a good Mercedes or something but not the most expensive sports car that they carry. They’re really good boots, let’s just say that, and tailor made, and expensive as hell. They fit like a glove and you cannot pull them off single handedly, you need help. They are amazing. And if they were made in anything BUT leather, you would absolutely kill your calves. The leather protects against wear (from the saddle on the inside of your legs) and is still flexible enough to allow you to move properly in them. When I went to buy these boots, however, I balked. They were leather. They were very expensive leather. And I was a vegan. I was not supposed to wear leather. But I had to have these boots, or I wouldn’t be allowed on the team (or allowed to compete, to be specific).

And so I bought them. I still pull them out and try them on every once in a while, even though I don’t ride ever because I can’t afford it, but I am holding on to them because they aren’t going to fit anyone else as perfectly as they fit me and I am holding out hope that one day I will find a place to ride where I can do mending or something in exchange and therefore will be able to afford it (and will also have the time for it).

And now I have my Renn boots. I got these this past fall at the Renaissance Festival, where I annually work, because standing on your feet for ten hours a day does a number on your feet, and your legs, and your back, especially if you are wearing shitty shoes. So I got sturdy hardcore leather boots with a steel shank and OH MY GOD are they comfortable. I was wearing them this morning and enjoying the sound they made as I tramped around- something like wearing high heels, except they are big steel reinforced boots. And I was thinking, as I tramped around listening to the sound of my boots, and reflecting on how wonderful and comfortable they are, that leather is a really great thing to make boots out of. It just makes sense. And for me, sense will always win out over dogmatic insistence. My vegan-dom never stood a chance against the simple logic that boots should be made out of something that worked well with the purpose of the boot, and especially something that lasted just about forever.

Though then again, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe it was obvious that I was never going to stay vegan when I was riding horses. Wouldn’t that technically be against the vegan ethic? Using horses for human purposes? So maybe it wasn’t the boots after all. It was my love of riding, of being outside and the relationship you build with the horse.

And now I’m starting to realize you do the same thing with the cow that one day becomes your dinner, as strange as it may seem.

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Death, Dying, and Twinkle Fingers

We saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland this past weekend, and I have to say, it was disturbing. Not disturbing in the way most people probably thought it was disturbing. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter flitting around being psychotic is no longer disturbing. What was disturbing was Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of the White Queen (though I suspect it was meant to be that way- the black lipstick was a give away). Supposedly the White Queen is supposed to be the ultimate of good: doesn’t kill, is sweet and kind, and everyone loves her. But she flits around like a flaming gay princess, her arms always up at an awkward angle, her fingers twinkling. Apparently this is supposed to demonstrate her apparent goodness. But instead she seems to have a bizarre fascination with death, taking delight in collecting blood and making concoctions of fingers and eyeballs and other dead things, even though her “vows” apparently keep her from causing any death herself. She just encourages other people to do it for her.

This is a common modern phenomenon, and I found it no less disturbing in the form of Anne Hathaway’s twinkle fingered “good” princess act. We deny death at every turn. We avoid thinking about it, we avoid dealing with it, we pretend it doesn’t happen to us. The thing is, Ms. Twinkle Fingers couldn’t possibly have clean hands. She may not have done the killing herself, but how ridiculous for her to claim it was against her vows to “hurt a fly” when she regularly commanded others to kill in her name. And what in heavens name was she eating?

Everything requires something else to die. In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith points out that vegetarians are doing the same thing. They aren’t preventing death. At best, they are passing the buck to someone else. Because when you get down to it, plants eat animals. If you were to walk out onto the fields around the shore right now, you would see either big piles of chicken manure or recently spread chicken manure. And this is not only manure: it’s also bits of chickens, the dead chickens that got thrown in the manure pile, as well as scraps and inedible bits like feet and heads. There are always vultures circling over these piles. And the corn plants eat what’s left.

Keith also pointed to a passage in the other book I’m always rambling about, The Apple Grower (Michael Phillips), that I had passed right over when I first read it. He tells the story of an apple tree planted over the graves of two people. When the graves were later dug up, the roots of the trees had grown in the shape of the skeletons, and there was nothing left of the human remains. I didn’t think twice about this when I read it in The Apple Grower, but what Keith pointed out was that the tree had eaten the people. Or, to be more accurate, bacteria in the soil had eaten the people and passed the nutrients to the roots of the trees, but this is also more or less what happens in our stomachs, so not all that different.

So plants eat animals, and then we eat the plants. Yup, I’d say that constitutes death by our hands. Even if a plant is raised on fossil fuel based fertilizers rather than bits of animals, well, fossil fuels are actually bits of animals. They’re just bits of really, really, dead animals. Everything is made up of bits of other dead things. The soil, the trees, the grass, cows, you. Everything. Nothing could survive if other things didn’t die. When vegetarians make the argument that they are vegetarian because they don’t want things to die, they are in denial. No matter what they eat, unless they can survive on air (which apparently some people are convinced they can do), something had to die first.

It’s something we all need to accept. I love this passage from The Vegetarian Myth:
“Where was I going to draw the line?… Mammals, fish, insects, plants, plankton, bacteria? Was the least of us going to be an “us”? And if “what” became “who,” then what would be left to eat?
“I have my answer, finally. I’m not going to draw a line. I’m going to draw a circle.
“It’s so simple… we need to be a part of the world to know it. And when we join, when we participate, we see that life and death can’t be separated any more than night and day. I will face what is dying to feed me and I will do my best to ensure it is individuals- cared for, respected- not entire species; that soil- the work of our grandparents for half a billion years- is built, not destroyed; that the rivers keep their waters and their wetlands and that the oil stays in the ground.”

That pretty much sums it up. The point is, you can’t not have an effect, and if you are in denial of that fact, you are no better than a child. Not even so aware as a child, in many cases. I think I had a pretty good grasp on the “part of everything” concept at a pretty early age. I just forgot about it for a while, taken in by the hope that there was some way out- a way which unfortunately involved denying the reality of the consequences of my actions on a daily basis. Now I insist on knowing: on looking the death that occurs for me, so I can live, straight in the face.

The only surefire way to make sure you have no effect on the world around you is to kill yourself- and even then, your decomposing body is going to have an effect, as will the emotional response of the people around you. Beyond that extreme, we all have to accept that death happens, and it is our fault, and that’s ok. But that always means we need to take responsibility for the death that occurs in our names. We need to look it straight in the face and decide if we can accept the terms, and if we’ve fulfilled our end of the bargain with what has died for us. We can’t just wiggle our fingers around and repeat over and over that we could never hurt anyone, because it’s just not true.

Death happens. And one day, it will even happen to you. And if you think about it, there’s nothing very disturbing about that.

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The Vegetarian Myth, Part 1

I spent the weekend lounging around the beach (indoors) and banging my way through Lierre Keith’s book, The Vegetarian Myth. I am about halfway through and wishing I was at home reading it still, especially as I am about to reach the chapter I am most interested in, on Nutritional Vegetarianism.

It has been an eye opener none the less, especially in light of the recent attack on Lierre Keith while reading at an anarchist book festival in San Francisco (SF Gate). She was hit in the face with several pies laced with cayenne pepper by rampant vegan activists.

Now this is an interesting- dilemma? I’m not sure what to call it, especially standing on this precipice (or so it seems to me) between veganism and whatever you call it. Eating. The vegans, one way or another, had no right to attack an undefended woman who was in the middle of giving a talk on the horrors of factory farming, something I think they can all agree on. And anyone who has read Ms. Keith’s book would know she has nothing but respect for the motivations behind vegetarian and veganism- wanting to save the planet, wanting a more just world, the whole deal. She talks about vegans with a lot of respect, as she was one herself for 20 years. But there’s no denying that the vegan perspective has some rather glaring flaws, and this is something I myself have been struggling with over the past years. Reading her book has got me trying to trace back the moments in my life that led me to that steak two weeks ago (and the bacon I had Saturday morning).

I know last year about this time I was still stalwartly refusing to eat meat, though I had caved on the cheese front some time earlier. I found myself arguing with a die hard vegan animal rights activist- me, of all people. The thing I kept hitting my head against was that he insisted that there was no reason EVER to kill animals for food. But this was impossible, I insisted. The very nature of living means you will kill animals. You will run over bugs on your bike on the way to buy your tofu at the health food store- and let’s talk about the packaging on the tofu and what’s behind THAT, and let’s talk about the animals that were displaced for that health food store to be there, and oh, while we’re at it, you’re riding a bike and that had to be mined–

There seemed to be something glaring me in the face in this argument, only I couldn’t put my finger on it, not yet. At the same time, I was learning how agriculture actually worked. It’s destructive. I mean, most agriculture, and definitely just about all “conventional” agriculture, as they call it, is destructive. That’s why it’s so energy intensive, and why they need so many inputs to force things to grow. I remember being shown a Georgia Pacific tree farm for the first time. This is referred to, by the company, as a forest. They grow pine trees for paper (your office paper, toilet paper, paper towels, etc). But if you look at one of these, there is absolutely nothing resembling a forest- the trees are all in straight lines, and there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, growing on the ground between the trees, even though it takes them about 16 years to reach the height needed to make it worthwhile to cut them down for paper. That is because they spray to keep the weeds down, just as they do on any other conventional farm. To grow any kind of monocrop, even happy local vegetables, you need enormous inputs and usually a lot of death sprays to keep the weeds and bugs away from your crop.

On top of that, you simply can’t grow some things in some places. This had occurred to me after reading Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. When discussing vegetarianism (in another very respectful, open minded way, I should add), he points out that it is nearly impossible to grow certain crops in certain areas (New England is a great example) without huge inputs, usually fossil fuel based. The soil is rocky and poor. It’s COLD. And soy just really isn’t going to grow there- so where are all the vegans going to get their protein, if everyone in the world is going to be vegan? I’m a local food advocate- how can I reconcile that the best thing (environmentally) to grow in some places is not vegetarian? Are the Inuits all supposed to stop eating seals and start growing soy? I mean, seriously. That’s just ridiculous.

But I found this so hard to accept that I just ignored it. As I had been ignoring it for the entire length of time I was a vegetarian. But, as Lierre Keith states in her book, the problem with knowledge is that you can’t really help but get more of it, and eventually it gets to the point where you can no longer ignore what’s staring you in the face. Well, unless you’re narrow minded and dogmatic, and goodness knows there are a lot of those people running around.

As we drove back from the beach yesterday I looked out at all the fields covered in chicken manure and flipped off the Perdue corporate headquarters, as per usual, but found myself wondering what it would take to educate the farmers who are currently indentured to Perdue to pasture their chickens, instead, what the investment would be, whether Perdue would flip out and just refuse to take chickens that were raised on pasture. Probably, considering the current regulations. But the thing is, a year ago I would have been arguing that people should just stop eating chicken entirely. I get all red in the face whenever I think about this. Of course people should eat chickens. I mean, chickens aren’t ashamed of eating bugs, right? Chickens are happy as can be to live outdoors on most functional farms, eating bugs and food scraps and digging in the dirt. And if you don’t eat the chickens, you just end up with too many chickens. And then they starve, because there isn’t enough space or food to go around. And before anyone tries to argue that this isn’t fair because we’ve domesticated the chickens and that this wouldn’t happen in the wild, think about what you’re saying. If chickens were in the wild, they’d be doing the same thing, only MORE of them would be dying because the predators would just eat whatever chickens they could get. At least on the farm the chickens have a nice little house they can hide out in to protect them.

It’s a complex issue and I’m not trying to address it in just one blog. But as I’m starting to wake up and actually understand what’s going on around me, I can’t help but ask, for the nine millionth time, why no one else seems to notice, and what drives humans to be so damn blind all the time.

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Consumers Consuming

You know, kind of like “maids a milking”. Consumers consuming. I don’t consider myself a consumer. Sometimes I consume- like when I inevitably end up at Target for some random household item I’ve decided that I need and that I don’t feel like taking the time to go to twenty second hand stores looking for.

But when it comes to my food, I’m not consuming. I’m eating. I like to draw a line between consumers and eaters. Consumers consume- they are making purchases, they are being marketed at and sold things based on how snazzy the box looks and how well they know the brand name. Consumers eat at McDonald’s, or any of the other fast food chains. Consumers buy something because it has a new exciting label on it. They are influenced by things like packaging and who has the better commercial.

Eaters, on the other hand, eat their food. They buy food based on, well, whether it’s food or not. They buy it based on whether it’s edible, which, let’s face it, most consumer products are not. Go-gurt? That is not a food. That’s a product. I went down to my neighbor’s farm for a quart of milk and made yogurt. THAT’S a food. Are you starting to see the difference? When an eater goes looking for food, they’re looking for food. Not for a product. Not for a gimmick, or a flashy label, or a brand name.

It may be a semantic thing, but I find that semantics can make rather a difference. When having conversations regarding local foods, I’ve found that I cringe every time someone calls me a consumer. I don’t want to be associated with that mindless pastime, consumption. It’s one of those things that got us in this mess.

I wanted to point out the difference, as in the future I am going to use the term “eater” when I am talking about regular old day to day eating, and “consumer” when I’m talking about people who are consuming all the manufactured products that exist out there for people to put in their mouths.

Hopefully we’ll have a lot more of the former in the future.

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Beer for Breakfast

I have been missing Germany like crazy. For those of you who don’t know, I usually go once a year to visit my good friends and my sister at heart, the delightful click clack gorilla, with whom I am blessed to share genetic material. I have been spending the day listening to her music and it is making me miss Germany even more. As are the weather and my ongoing cravings for German food and German beer.

I started the morning off today by drinking a Hansa while talking to my sister at heart over the internet. Hansa is pretty cheap beer in Germany, so the fact that they’ve taken the trouble to import it to the states kind of baffles me. But it’s available up at one of the big Delaware liquor stores and every so often I make a pilgrimage for more of the oversized bottles. It doesn’t taste quite the same as it does in Germany, but it’s close enough that I’m taken back to nights sitting up around a bonfire, listening to music and eating heaps of dumpstered vegan food off plates in our laps. I miss those nights, I miss the freedom of having nothing more pressing to do than eat and talk and sing, I miss sitting outside for every meal, and I miss the mosh of mismatched chairs that make up the dining areas of the wagenplatz where miss clack lives.

And I miss communal cooking. I didn’t think I would miss communal cooking, because I tend to get frustrated by other people’s tendencies to be kind of wishy washy about eating at a particular time, and even more wishy washy about cleaning up on any kind of regular basis, but I find I am really missing it. I think it’s because at this time of year, when I have run through pretty much all the food I’ve saved over the winter, and there’s not much in the way of food available from the ground, I am so bored with my own cooking that I am craving that variety, the surprise of wandering into the communal kitchen of an evening to see what someone has cooked up. I don’t remember ever not liking something someone made. And there was always food. Voku for lunch and leftovers or whatever could be gleaned from the cupboards and the drawers where the vegetables were stored.

I miss Knödel. I had them for the first time last summer and boy are they good. I miss weiss Spargel (god my spelling is getting awful), and those pancake things that a.t.’s mom made, and a.k.’s cooking, and breakfast every morning with a.r. (ok, I miss my girls, what can I say). Oh my god I miss the rolls. I miss having a bakery on every corner. I miss Brezel. And making giant concoctions of white bean whatever and eating them off bread and making a huge mess in the process.

And I miss the freedom. I realize that at this point in my life the freedom is only because I have worked hard all year and saved up the money to go ramble around Germany for a month, but one day I will have that freedom in my own life. The ability to say, you know what, today I really just do not feel like doing anything but sitting around all day writing and drinking mint iced tea and watching the plants grow. I know farming is technically the wrong career for that, but that’s why I want to run my own farm. There won’t be anyone to tell me off for sitting outside all day, thinking about food, except maybe the chickens.

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Will Consumers Swallow What Science Serves Up Next?

AOL News: Regulated or Not Nano Foods Coming to a Store Near You

As if we needed more reason not to eat food from the grocery store. Seriously. WHY WOULD YOU EAT FOOD WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE IT CAME FROM???? It is clear from this article that grocery stores don’t know what’s in the food anymore than you do, and that the FDA either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. So WHY WOULD YOU EAT IT?

God it’s just one of those things I can’t wrap my head around, even though I know I do it sometimes. I bought those canned artichokes the other day without knowing where they came from. I go out to restaurants, as if the people in the restaurants know what’s in the food. It’s just so easy.

In case you don’t take the time to read the whole article, it basically talks about how scientists are now putting nano particles in foods. They apparently serve a wide array of functions, from “improving” flavor, making the foods look more attractive (“shiny” or “better textured”), keeping ketchup from sticking to the inside of the bottle, or warding off microbes. Nano particles are teeny tiny bits of atoms. Like, ridiculously small. Atom sized. Manipulated to perform certain functions. And then placed in your food. And you’d never know! Because obviously you can’t see it.

The risk is that there have been hundreds of studies showing potential health risks to humans from consumption of nano particles- including such delights as DNA damage that would lead to cancer, heart and brain disease. Of course, the companies using the particles won’t release any information on what they may or may not be using, and what their studies may be showing, and so far (surprise!) the FDA isn’t demanding it. Chances are they are already in many foods in the store, and no one knows about it.

Actually, I think the thing that pisses me off the most about the whole thing is the casual reference to torture: “One of the few ingestion studies recently completed was a two-year-long examination of nano-titanium dioxide at UCLA, which showed that the compound caused DNA and chromosome damage after lab animals drank large quantities of the particles in their water. ”

I think we’re supposed to be horrified that this is a substance they are putting in food for sale to humans, but I am far more horrified that they have been causing severe DNA damage to lab animals who have no say in the matter. I suppose most humans don’t either, actually. It’s like a tremendous nationwide lab experiment, the stuff they put on grocery store shelves, and it’s only a matter of time before the results start getting back to us. Oh but wait! They already have! Everyone has cancer and diabetes and asthma and obesity and god only knows what else! Thanks so much, food companies.

I also want to comment on that last ditch effort at the end of the article to suggest maybe there are some useful applications for nano particles, namely, identifying pathogens in foods. Of course, they are talking about chickens, which wouldn’t have pathogens in the first place if they weren’t being run through the industrial food system, but who ever bothers to ask that question? No, it’s all about looking for band aid solutions to the problems we create, not solving the problem itself. ARGH.

I feel more and more justified in refusing to eat a single thing from the store, that’s for damn certain.

Oh, and here’s another: Amid Nanotech’s Dazzling Promise, Health Risks Grow

This one suggests that nanotech might, in the future, be used to produce food in the lab, without the need for a pesky farm. This has got to stop. It has got to stop, RIGHT NOW. It is already out of hand. There is no time to waste. The day has come.

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Breast Cheese!

Mental Floss: Breast Milk Cheese, Anyone?

Um.

I am only posting this because I want to point out the reference to non-pasteurized milk. Have you ever thought about that? All those people out there rambling on about how pasteurization is so necessary, how we’d all die without pasteurization. What, are you going to start telling mother’s they have to pasteurize their breast milk? You know how many pathogens are in breast milk? And do you know WHY they’re in breast milk? It’s because they increase infant immunity. That’s the whole point. And that’s why they’re in cow’s milk. That’s why drinking unpasteurized cow’s boosts our own immunity. Duh.

Actually, it’s an interesting question to ponder. People ARE squeamish about eating breast milk cheese. I mean, I’m squeamish about eating breast milk cheese. And yet I’m perfectly happy eating breast milk cheese when then breast happened to be attached to a cow… I’m not sure why this is. Will have to ponder.

Here’s the original article: NY Post: Wife’s baby milk in chef’s cheese recipe

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When I Grow Up

I will be a farmer! Sigh. One day. In the meantime, today I got to go to a real live orchard and prune peach trees. All day! Some of you might think this is sarcasm, but I truly, honestly, was excited out of my mind to spend the entire day outside, on a farm, finally getting hands on experience in orchard management. If I’m going to have an orchard, and take care of it for the rest of my life, it seems like a good idea to get some practical experience. All the books in the world couldn’t have prepared me for actually pruning today. Though the books did help, quite a lot.

When I was rereading the pruning chapter in The Apple Grower last night, the handsome fella laughed a little over the title “Intuitive Pruning.” But after actually pruning today, I get it. I am not an expert pruner. I will not be an expert pruner for years and years, I’m sure. But after doing it for a while (seven hours?) you start to get a sense of it. You stop repeating to yourself, “ok, every other upright, and all the ones on the bottom, and sometimes the ones that are too crowded”, because that doesn’t really translate to an actual tree. Especially when there are different varieties of trees and some of them have a lot of laterals and some of them have a lot of uprights and some of them just have stuff going in all kinds of directions so you look at the tree and it’s a great big clusterf*ck. I can imagine that the more you prune, and the more time you spend with trees and see the results of your pruning in big plump peaches, the more you won’t even need to be trying to keep all those little bits of advice in your head. When I paint, or draw or design, I completely forget what I’m doing. I sense, more than see or feel, what needs to go where. It’s called aesthetic sensibility. And I think pruning is the same way. When I learn to let go, I have every faith the tree will be telling me where to cut, the same way a draped piece of fabric tells me where to cut.

These weren’t even my trees, they were stranger trees, that I had just met. But within an hour I could hear them. They were pretty happy trees. They were not particularly happy that they had been sprayed recently, and they weren’t big on that chainsaw thing. But I was afraid they would be unhappy about the clippers, as well. And that they didn’t seem to mind, except when I messed up and twisted too hard or clipped a healthy branch instead of a dead one. But those are things I will learn with practice and more confidence.

And as I was driving home today, I felt better than I have felt in ages. My back hurt, and I know when I wake up tomorrow I am going to be in major pain. My shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my hands hurt, and I was so. fucking. happy. Usually when I get home from work, I am exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with the physical (though my body usually hurts anyway). My brain is off. I feel strained to my limit. I feel this strange mix of panic and frustration and depression and exhaustion and I usually find myself sitting on the couch watching netflixed tv shows and coming up with excuses to avoid doing anything else. This is the reason I have not finished my business plan. This is the reason I haven’t DONE anything with my novel. Even on the best of days of work, and believe me, my job isn’t THAT bad, not compared with so many others, I have completely lost my will to do anything by the time I get home.

This is pretty pathetic. It is the reason I am wishing I could cross off days until I can start farming full time. Because when I was driving home from the orchard today, even though my body hurt, even though I was physically tired, it was a good tired. It was the tired of having actually done something to merit being tired. I felt like I had accomplished something. I pruned trees. Trees have been pruned, because of me. Trees will grow bigger and stronger because I put my back in it, and I stuck it out against two men who are twice my size and do this every day. But the best part was that my mind was sharp and I was excited and pumped up to come home and get things done and go to bed early because I got up early and worked hard all day, not because I had just given up on being awake. That is how I want to feel EVERY DAY POSSIBLE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Even if some days I am angry and frustrated and depressed and miserable, and I’m sure they will happen, because farming is hard, hard work, and many days will be cold and miserable and wet, and many days I will be thinking oh my god if I have to prune another tree I am just going to die, and many days I will be thinking what the HELL was I thinking I just can’t do this. But I am very secure in the knowledge that for all of those days there will be days like today when the trees are talking to me and the sun peeps out from the clouds (even though it was raining and cold) and I hear birds singing and see the slight pink tinge on the edge of a bud on the tip of a branch, and I will end the day thinking, what did I do to deserve this? How can life be so impossibly beautiful? And how can I help others who want to feel the same way out of the death trap of day jobs, and into the possibly harder but ultimately more satisfactory life of their choice?

If nothing else, today proved to me that I have chosen the right career path. Farming, here I come.

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OMG I MET JOEL SALATIN!

I kind of wish I had gotten my picture taken with him. Damn. I also forgot to ask him about Lierre Keith… Oh well. He signed my copy of You Can Farm with “Yes you can!”

I spent the entire weekend bouncing up and down like a preteen meeting what’s his name, vampire boy. Every once in a while I would remember what was to occur Sunday afternoon, and I would let out a screech and cry, “I’m going to meet Joel Salatin!” I imagine this was fairly irritating to the people around me. But seriously, I met JOEL SALATIN.

For those of you who, like everyone I spent my weekend with, have no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to clue you in. Joel Salatin is the star of Food, Inc. (well, if you ask me) and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Joel Salatin is a farmer. He is kind of a famous farmer. He is, if I was to jump onto to the whole hero worship thing, one of my heroes. I first heard about him, as did so many others, through The Omnivore’s Dilemma. And then somehow, I don’t remember how, I found his book, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. And I devoured it. I read that book just as fast as I could. The title alone was enough to sell me, as my whole life is devoted to illegal food related pursuits (HAHA I eat bread from non-certified kitchens! Take that, bitches!). But the book itself goes into detail on all the ways the government and USDA in particular are out to make life for small farmers as difficult as possible. The number of hurdles you have to jump through. A whole book on the subject!

I progressed to others of Salatin’s books, namely You Can Farm, which I have read collectively at least twice and am onto a third time. It is my bible for writing my business plan. Every time I sit down to type I have to have it by my side, so I can check in with the no nonsense common sense advice. I watched him speak online. I watched him speak in Food, Inc. And I could. Not. Wait. to see him speak in person.

I still haven’t told you what Joel Salatin does. He is a farmer. He raises grass. He takes very good care of the grass, and then cows and chickens and turkeys and pigs and bunnies graze on the grass, and he orchestrates the rotation between the lot of them. It all works like some kind of carefully planned ballet, each animal complementing the others, all reducing the need for external inputs until, aside from tractor fuel and a little grain from neighboring farms (for the chickens and pigs) the farm is almost entirely self sufficient. And it is wildly successful. And pretty damn sustainable.

I could go on at great length about the amazing implications of Polyface Farm, and I will, at some point. It’s very similar to the type of agriculture I’m pursuing. But that will probably take about five posts to explain. In the meantime, I want to share this little snippet Salatin mentioned in his talk: 60% of Americans have no clue what’s for dinner at 4PM.

This may not sound so strange. I mean, that’s how I grew up. I’m pretty sure 9 times out of 10 my mom did not know what she was going to make when she got home from work, and really, who can blame her. But, as Salatin went on to say later, one of the biggest protests people have against local foods is that it takes more time. Oh, I can’t eat like that, I never know what I’m going to get in my CSA box. I just don’t know what to do with kohlrabi! Oh, I have to actually talk to the farmers, and research their methods? Oh, I’m supposed to find all these places to get food myself…

The list of excuses goes on and on, and so, people shop at the grocery store (GAG). But it’s like I said last week. If you care in the slightest what goes into your mouth, then it’s worth taking a little time to find out what you’re eating. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, by making all these excuses for not taking the small amount of extra time it takes to research local foods, people are basically condoning the practices of giant corporations who just put whatever in food, without any regards to, you know, whether it’s toxic or not. I’d rather do a little research and do without the arsenic in my chicken, if you know what I mean.

It’s true that eating this way takes more time. It also takes more foresight. In the summer this isn’t as much of a problem. You can sign up for a CSA, you can shop at the farmer’s market, and other than having to remember to go to your CSA pickup and the farmer’s market, it doesn’t require vast amounts of foresight. You do need to research your CSA before hand, and try to talk to the farmers at the market about how they grow the food they have for sale, but once you’ve got your regular route down, it’s no problem. In the middle of the growing season, there’s usually so much food that you can come home from work and look at the pile of vegetables in the basket and make something up spontaneously.

But even still, it takes a little more planning. It takes planning to make sure you will have enough food for the whole week, because you can only get food maybe once or twice a week. If you know you are going to have people over for dinner Friday night, it’s a good idea to make sure your vegetables from the CSA are going to last that long (our pickups were Tuesday last year I think). It’s pretty difficult to cook if at 4PM on a Friday six people suddenly decide to come over and you already prepared everything you got in your share that week the night before.

Winter is even harder, because there’s much less to go around, and just about everything is frozen or dry. There are frozen vegetables and canned vegetables and frozen meat and dry beans, and every single one of these things (except the canned stuff) requires planning. You absolutely cannot come home on a Friday night and decide to make chili. HA. The idea is laughable. The beans are best soaked overnight, or at the very least, all day. The meat needs to thaw for hours, as do the vegetables. You have to think about it a little. Because when people wait until the last minute to decide what to eat, they just end up eating whatever. They go to the grocery store and buy whatever happens to be at hand and end up eating whatever happens to be in it. That’s not me. That’s not how I function. When I don’t know what I’m going to eat by 4PM (like today- it’s 5 and I still don’t know what I’m eating, but not by my choice), I go INSANE. I am sitting here at my desk at work stressing over it because I don’t want to just end up eating whatever, and I don’t want to just end up going out to eat all the time (which a lot of my friends do) because that is just damn expensive. Plus I don’t know what’s in it. It feels like a defeat.

I guess everyone is just used to things being copiously available, all the time, whenever, whatever. And they expect this of local foods as well, even though nothing about farming is really a “whatever.” But you’ve got to choose one or the other. And unless you’re happy with putting “whatever” in your mouth, you’re probably going to have to suck it up, and put a little effort into the planning.

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Rezepts

IE Recipes.

I was thinking yesterday, after I posted all that about making up this amazing pasta salad, that I don’t use recipes, or post recipes, even though I am tagging things with sentences like “add milk to pesto and butter and garlic” under the “recipes” category on this blog. I mean, I use recipes, in that I have a lot of cookbooks and I like to read them, and even found a Food Network magazine in the recycling last week and tore half the recipes out of that. But when I use a recipe, unless I’m baking, I kind of skim down the ingredients and then loosely follow them, so that if it says, “half cup cream” I will vaguely dump some milk into the pot.

So I don’t know how to give a recipe for something like what I made yesterday. If I had to write it down, it would look something like this:

Take some frozen spinach, chopped very finely (or run through a food processor), and thaw it in a little milk. Continue to add milk as you bring up to a simmer, stir regularly to keep from sticking. Stop adding milk when the mixture looks more creamy than green and when it will likely coat the amount of pasta you wish to serve. While this is occurring, saute some garlic and the better part of a can of artichoke hearts, roughly chopped, in olive oil. Saute until garlic is brown and artichoke hearts appear to be relatively cooked. While that is happening, add a little butter to the cream mixture, whatever amount you happen to have leftover in the fridge will probably do it (ie less than a whole stick, maybe like two tablespoons), and some salt and pepper and about two tablespoons of flour. When all of this has come to a simmer over low-ish heat and seems to be thickening, throw in some cheese if you want. When the cheese has melted, add the garlic and artichoke (or do this when the garlic starts to burn too much) and let the whole thing simmer some more. Cook some pasta, drain. Combine.

Now whoever saw a recipe like that? I think if the Food Network people saw it they would collapse all over their fancy ingredients and cornish game hens (seriously, there were like five recipes for cornish game hens in this ONE issue). But that’s how I cook. I cook it until it looks about right. I add ingredients until they look about right. I have no idea how to explain that to people… but if you ever hear me talking about making something, and want to know how to make it happen, I will be happy to write more recipes like the one above.

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