350 (living as if everything matters)

You may have seen references to the number "350" in recent months, in connection with concerns about climate change.  I've seen many of my "tweeple" (twitter contacts) who are involved in green issues and the good food movement talking about it, and finally checked it out.  

And here's the deal:  In a few short days, an organization by the same name (number?) will coordinate an international day of action, with almost 4,000 events currently planned in more than 160 countries, all around the world.

So what's all this about?  Nothing less than our common future.

One of the measurements used in calculating global warming and climate change is how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is in the atmosphere.  Right now, scientists have determined that there are 387 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Doesn't seem like much, right?  Well, they also have determined that the amount of carbon dioxide that allows for the maintenance of a liveable planet for humanity is 350 parts per million.  (More explanation here.)

Right.  So we're currently OVER the sustainable level.   What does that mean?  Well, it means that our climate is changing, ice caps are melting, weather is getting wilder, and droughts and floods are affecting the lives of people all over the globe.  It's already happening, now.  This is key:  many of the projections that scientists were making a few years ago have been blown out of the water--now, scientists think that the Arctic ice will melt completely in the summertime in just a few years (2011-2015) rather than 85 years from now as was projected just a couple years ago...

So are we just doomed?  Thankfully, no.  But we have to get the concentration of carbon dioxide moving in the other direction, and we have to start now.  We need to stop these current changes from taking on a life of their own, and if we don't get the levels down, the climate will change too much for us to be able to reverse.

350 describes it this way:  

We're like the patient that goes to the doctor and learns he's overweight, or his cholesterol is too high. He doesn't die immediately—but until he changes his lifestyle and gets back down to the safe zone, he's at more risk for heart attack or stroke. The planet is in its danger zone because we've poured too much carbon into the atmosphere, and we're starting to see signs of real trouble: melting ice caps, rapidly spreading drought. We need to scramble back as quickly as we can to safety.

If someone wants to argue that the economic costs are too high, or they don't believe the science, I don't know what else to say except that this world is too precious to gamble with.  I don't want to roll the dice and hope that the projections are wrong, do you?  (This You Tube video by Gary Craven goes over the logic of our various choices pretty clearly.)

So, what can you do?  

• For starters, you can get involved on October 24th, by attending or organizing an event near you (find one here, organize and register your own here).  The goal of these events is to bring attention to this issue, to raise awareness, and to pressure our politicians to act.  There's lots of info, ideas, organizing plans, and resources on the website.

• You can also tell the people you know about 350, and encourage them to get involved (social network linkies here, too).

• If you want to make concrete changes to reduce your personal carbon impact, try out this carbon calculator and find ways to reduce your output.
  
  
• Take a look at the example of "No Impact Man," a guy in Brooklyn, NY who decided to see what it took to lead a zero-emission life.  We don't all have to go that far, but we can take a few small steps and have a big impact--which is why he started the No Impact Project, providing concrete, doable actions that we can all take.  A movie about his experience just came out--learn more about it, here.

• There are also petitions and other political actions on the We Can Do It, Repower America website.

• And you can follow what's happening on the road to Copenhagen, the site of a major international conference on climate change taking place in December.  

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the scale of the problems we face...but, then, what's the alternative?  Sitting back and just flipping the channel?

One of the first times I came to visit the farm, I caught sight of a sentence highlighted on their brochure, which spoke to me so deeply I could hardly think about anything else for weeks:

Let us live as if everything matters.

Because it does.

And that's the truth of it.  I think we know it deep inside when we let ourselves grasp the enormity of the situation.  We were entrusted with an amazing gift, this tiny, unique, bluegreen orb out there in the vastness of the universe, our only home...and how we live here matters. 

speeding by

Life on the farm is packed: early morning singing in chapel, caring for our animals, harvest and food preservation, noon chapel service, a community lunchtime meal, afternoon break and more work hours.  Then evening prayers and a light dinner.  The days and weeks just speed by...

But on Sunday afternoon, after our "house meeting" when the Sisters and other residents discuss and make decisions about farming projects, events, and day-to-day schedules, Anne and I stole away for an afternoon walk.  And I think I'll have to make a practice of it, because to stroll through the woods acquaints me with a whole other part of the farm, slows me down, and makes me appreciate this place even more.

The Community's property is about 23 acres, and we cultivate less than one acre (which makes our harvest, and the fact that we sustain ourselves primarily from our own crops, all the more impressive!).  Throughout the property there are about 300 maple trees, which the Sisters tap to make our own maple syrup. 

This photo is of an area that separates the farm and a playing field used by the Melrose School, a dayschool that shares the property. The ground is fairly bare, with few shrubs or mid-sized trees.  From what we've been learning about edible forest gardens, the forest would probably be healthier if it had a wider diversity of species to help protect and nourish the soil. 

A few years ago, one of the Sisters began planting fruit trees in the meadow below our main garden, which abuts this part of the forest.  We currently have at least two varieties of pear trees, apple trees, and a peach tree, as well as hazelnut trees in the nearby vineyard.  We're thinking about how to cultivate this lower meadow with a wide variety of fruit and nut trees and other edible plants.  If we can successfully "build into" this transitional space between the garden and the forest, we will be able to harvest many foods and materials without the intensive labor required by farming.

In this photo, Anne is looking down upon the playing field and the woods beyond.  It's such a serene place.  I can just imagine building a little strawbale house near this field, in the woods on the periphery...and the snowy silence down here in the wintertime.

Walking back up to the farm, up the winding road that takes you to Farrington's Pond and then into Connecticut.  It's a bit of a shock when SUVs come barreling around this corner, rushing on their way, totally out of sync with the pace and peace of this area. Sans traffic, you hear the wind, the leaves falling, the chickens clucking, the sound of shovels hitting soil.  And then a big noisy car or truck will drive by, and you realize that we're living cheek-by-jowl with suburbia.  Or, really, that suburbia is speeding by us, oblivious to the quiet beauty and slower rhythm of this place.

I think that all those lovely manicured lawns that you can see on your way down the hill, when you get into town, would make great vegetable gardens.  Imagine if we were all growing a little bit of food, we could share seeds and tools, and have the pleasure of eating food we've planted and watched mature...imagine if we all were connecting with our neighbors around the activity of growing food.  Rather than spending big bucks on lawn care, and the costly and toxic pesticides that are part of that whole operation, we could use our yards for food.  This idea of "yard sharing" is becoming a reality, organized through new media--check out this site that connects people who have yards with people who want to garden.  

There's something about getting your hands in the dirt, about shuffling in the leaves on the forest path, about imagining new life in a plot of land that gets us to slow down, to see the way the light falls, to be creaturely.  I'm grateful for Sunday afternoons, and how they help catch me from just speeding by...

your one wild and precious life

"The Summer Day" 
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean— 
the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— 
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
Tell me, what else should I have done? 
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

I've been contemplating a new title for this blog, and was most recently settling on the phrase "one wild and precious life" from the poem above.  Part of my move to the farm, to this attentive life, came from my understanding, all of a sudden, on a small boat rocked by rain and waves off the coast of an island in Honduras, that we only have this one life, that we are such small creatures in this great universe, and that there is no time to be wasted.  

We had gone out early with a marine ecology boat, to look for dolphins and observe the marine life.  The boat was partially uncovered, and we sat toward the back, getting lightly sprayed with water as the boat rode against the waves.  And then it started drizzling.  And then it started raining.  And I thought, well, we're about to go snorkeling, what does it matter to get wet?  And then it started raining for real, and the chop came over the sides in huge waves.  As the water poured down on me from above and from the sides, I had a flash of insight:  we are mere specks in a giant sphere of water...And I began laughing, joyfully...

We are mere specks in the flood, and we are here for just a few moments.  This realization comforted me, gave me perspective...and made me desire to be connected to the natural world.  Being out among the open sky and the big water makes my soul soar...being among the trees and the dirt makes me breathe more deeply, slows my pace, makes me see.

So I've been toying with the phrase, "one wild and precious life," because that's what I want this blog to focus on...that realization that this is it, this is my life, and every bit of it matters.  How am I going to live this life?  How will I make use of the time I have?  What will I do to bring joy to others, to comfort, to heal?  I write to help me slow down and appreciate, to be present to my own experience, to stop rushing through time, to cease my stomping on the ground.  To prevent me from deferring, postponing, doubting, squashing.

And the phrase seems only more apt after this week, which brought about the death of one of the most remarkable women I've known, Gail Burns-Smith.  I knew her primarily as my best friend's mother, and she was like a second mother to me, especially during the rough years of high school and college.  She always welcomed me; when I brought my partner Anne to meet her, she welcomed her like a daughter, too.  Gail was also a passionate advocate and organizer, focused on stopping sexual violence against women.  This week, as tributes and condolences poured in from across the country, I learned just how effective she was, how her work was instrumental in passing the national Violence Against Women Act, as well as numerous state laws, and in creating the national model for victim advocates.  Her obituary, written by her husband Tom, the profile of her from the organization she built, and the feature on her in the Hartford Courant, together begin to illuminate just how much of an impact she had, and how much she was loved and admired.

But nothing can really capture her laugh, her incisive wit, her courage, her big heart.  By the way she lived her life, I think she must have understood that all we have is one wild and precious life...tell me, what will you do with yours?

pausing

I am delighted every day, whenever I remember to pause. It's all too easy to get caught up in a task, or start thinking ahead to the next thing that needs to be done, and not even really see what's surrounding me. Sometimes being "in the flow"--when you're totally engaged, learning something new or problem-solving, when the hours just fly by--can be exhilarating in itself. But other times, I can find myself (especially in front of the computer) just jumping from one thing to another and before I know it, the day is over...

On the farm, though, I'm finding it easier to pause, to look around myself, and to breathe deep. I think the rhythms of the day help: morning harvest is usually a quiet time, and the stillness of the garden can make me just stop and take in my surroundings, and smile.

With my harvest basket in hand, I will look up, stretch my back straight, and catch a glimpse of beauty...

Morning glories climbing the fence...




 

The geometry and grace of a squash blossom, its spiraling shoots and vines, the tiny little hairs covering it....

The amazing colors and shapes of our harvest, spread out on the countertop...

Zucchini, Ichiban and Green Goddess eggplants

Annelino beans (curly green beans)

Anaheim and Cherry Bomb peppers

Sun Gold and Cherry Tomatoes

Yard-long and Indy Gold beans...

Taking time to pause and appreciate is part of the culture of the farm, too.  Living in community, with six other adults who have a range of interests and responsibilities, means that other people are always doing something wonderful when you aren't looking...Walk into the pantry, and find that of the Sisters made a whole batch of Jalapeno Dill Pickles (YUM!)...walk into the yard, and see that someone has been busy planting and mulching, and there's a whole new bed of beets just bursting forth...go into Chapel and there's a beautiful arrangement of flowers gracing the altar...There's berries freezing in the freezer, eggs in the refrigerator, wood chopped and fences repaired, tidy guestrooms prepared for friends and visitors, and, always, delicious clean water brought from the building across the street. 

It's a symphony of sorts, one played in many parts and at different moments, and there can be bumps and scrapes along the way.  But the abundance of gifts that is the manifestation of this symphony is breathtaking: a perfect cherry tomato, in a season when most tomatoes in the northeast were devastated by blight.  A parade of ducklings, marching to their morning bath.  The collective happiness about the homecoming of a cat thought lost.  The enjoyment of shared work, shelling beans and beans and beans.

There's Hidatsa Red, Black Coco, Arikara Yellow, Black Turtle, Hutterite, Edamame, Kidney, Cannelini, Vermont Cranberry, and Scarlet Runner beans, for starters.  These are all "dry beans," and that means we let them ripen and dry on the vine, waiting as long as possible before we harvest them.  With all the rain, we need to be careful about them sprouting, as those can't be stored for the winter.  (The little white bowl in the upper left has some of the sprouted beans we found, in and among the others.)  Much of our work is in preparation for the winter, though the weather makes it hard to believe that it's already the end of August...

And although we are preparing for the months to come, what strikes me again and again is how much this community is living in the present.  Every day we pause, at every meal, to say what we are grateful for.  It's an amazing exercise, to stop and think about what you can give thanks for, and I find it makes me much more aware and appreciative of all that I am experiencing.   

Every day we pause, to stop and stretch and look around, to check in with the cats and the dogs, and the ducks and the chickens, and even the bees, to see how everyone is doing.  And these pauses are nourishing, enlivening, filling.  I hope that everyone can find moments in which to pause, to look around, to breathe. 

love and cooking

In the last few years, I've developed a passion for cooking--for the smells, tastes, colors, textures of food, and for the delight that people can experience eating food that is prepared with love and creativity. There's something both meditative and artistic, I find, in imagining a meal and then bringing it into being.

I think that my love of cooking and my desire to become healthier were the two driving forces that brought me to begin farming, though that journey has taken a couple of years. Earlier on, the idea of buying organic food seemed like a luxury and a hassle at once. My local corner grocery store didn't carry much fresh food, and the vegetables in the produce aisle cohabited with the owners' cat. Trekking into Manhattan took time. I managed to become a pretty decent cook with canned and frozen items, but we ordered in quite a bit, too! Then, a few years ago, a grocery delivery company started delivering in my neighborhood. It was great, for awhile, until I became completely disgusted with the amount of plastic packaging used...Every week, we were throwing out a seemingly endless sea of containers. And while that company offered many freshly prepared foods, they were expensive.

Last summer, I realized that I'd been going to the gym for about a year, given up smoking (again!), and wasn't seeing many changes. I switched to a new trainer, who had me write down everything I ate, every day, and show it to her. This was an invaluable activity--it really made me notice food. I was already eating pretty healthily--yogurt and fruit, veggies and pasta, lean meats and grains and salad--but just writing everything down made me think about my body as a whole complex thing, about the relation to what I took in and what was happening as I strove to build muscle and improve my cardiovascular system. I started thinking about my health differently, about whether I really wanted to take certain things into my body...

When the economy started to crash this past fall, I got hooked on the idea of "recession cooking"--using low cost, healthy, and often out-of-fashion foods and making them as wonderful as possible. Around the same time, it seemed that everyone I knew was reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and other similar books (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; What to Eat by Marion Nestle; Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlossberg).  And Mark Bittman, whose recipes I've long loved, was writing for the NYTimes in his "Bitten" blog about conscious eating and healthy foods (in early 2009 he published Food Matters: A guide for conscious eating).  So I started experimenting with sweet potatoes (grating them into hash browns with sage, roasting them and then baking them into muffins, steaming them and eating them plain), black eyed peas (great for soup with sausage and greens), cauliflower (amazing roasted, with a little olive oil, curry powder and garlic), and cabbage (tasty when briefly wilted in bacon fat and then baked with yogurt. Tomatoes, long roasted with cinnamon and garlic. Squid, braised with artichokes.  I began searching out recipes on blogs, from The Kitchn; Cheap, Healthy, Good; Food Renegade...the more I read, the more I became interested in and aware about the ethics of food, the problems with "industrial food", and how "pastured" animal products (grass-fed butter, milk and meat) is much healthier for us.

And as I became more attentive to the origin and quality of each ingredient, thinking simultaneously about cost, environmental/pesticidal issues, packaging and waste, and health/nutrition, I found that I wasn't satisfied unless I knew a lot about the food I was using to cook with. I wanted the food I used to meet a number of criteria. I wanted to support local farmers, so my food didn't have to use an airplane or a truck to get to me. I wanted to eat fresh, clean, healthy food that was nutritious to me and didn't harm any of the people who were producing it. I wanted to limit the amount of waste I generated, both by avoiding excess packaging and by using every bit of every bit. These all were related, intertwined.

And the more I thought about these issues, the more convinced I became that the cost--in terms of time shopping, time cooking, and the sometimes higher prices--were all worth it. The meals I cooked, and served to the love of my life, to my friends and family, and to myself--these meals are acts of love and faith. They say, to myself and to the world, that I believe in particular set of social and environmental concerns, that I am acting on and embodying my beliefs to the best of my ability.

I know that I can't always be totally ethically satisfied in my food shopping--sometimes you need to buy a certain thing, and it's out of season and so has to be imported from California or Mexico. And I know that sometimes you need to take a shortcut and have to buy prepared salad dressing rather than make your own. But I also know that once I devoted spending all day Sunday to cooking for the week--making a roast chicken or a stew, making 15 burritos and freezing them, cooking up some greens and some rice to last for the next few days...those Sundays were days filled with love and creativity, meditation and singing. Those were days that I was feeding myself and my wife, caring for us and thinking about the days ahead.

Perhaps it's a bit ironic that my journey deeper into my love of food and the ethics of food production has led me to move to a farm and away from my partner, who is still working in the city. We will see each other on weekends, and I'll come to the city for a "date night" every week. But I don't feel separated from her at all, and I think it's important for me to find a new path, a new profession that can feed me, and us, for the long term. So, for now, I'm learning about farming, about squashing pests by hand, about making yogurt from raw milk, about mulching and compost and mycelium, and about the wider networks of people and organizations interested in food, farming, food politics, and the future. I'll be writing about all of these topics in the weeks to come.

For now, I'll leave you with a taste of my cooking: zucchini fritters, cold curried cucumber soup with minted yogurt, and spicy string beans. All, except the olive oil, from our garden.

Zucchini Fritters--if you've grown zucchini, you might know this already. Apparently it grows in leaps and bounds, and some people get sick of it! So I've been looking up new recipes to keep the Sisters happy about their crop of zucchini, and so far, we've been loving it. I'll write about the raw zucchini "pasta" successes another day....

So, for this dish, I used a recipe from a blog that's new to me: Whipped the Blog. I had to tweak it, because we have two people here who are gluten intolerant. So I used two cups of white beans, which I mashed into a chunky pasty mass, and four eggs, to act as binding agents. And rather than grating the zucchini (because here we typically are cooking for eight people, and I had a lot to do) I just chopped the zucchini into 2"x2" size pieces and then pulsed them in the blender until they were little bitty bits. The key in this recipe is to salt the zucchini bits well, and let them sit for 1/2 hour, then squeeze them well. Zucchini holds a tremendous amount of water, and you need to release that so the fritters hold together.

Take that squeezed zucchini and add to it mint (or dill) and lots of scallions, salt, pepper, and either breadcrumbs or smooshed white beans, and some egg. Then form into patties and fry in a little bit of olive oil. Voila!

As for the cucumber soup with minted yogurt, I got that from a Mark Bittman book that you can see on the web thru GoogleBooks...but it's super easy, and you could make it with many variations. First, take some yogurt and some chopped mint and mix them together, vigorously, for a few minutes...basically, you want to infuse the mint oil into the yogurt. Then remove the mint by straining the yogurt. Refrigerate that until you're ready. Then, take a bunch of peeled cucumbers (though you could use the peels, I suppose!) and pulse them into little bits, remove a third while it's still a bit chunky, and then process the rest til it's smooth. To the cucumbers, add some salt and a couple teaspoons of curry powder and lemon juice (or you could use chili powder and lime juice).  Let rest for two hours, if possible, so that the flavors can blend well.  Then, when it's time to serve, put some of the cucumber stuff in a bowl, then create a little well and put the yogurt in the middle.  Garnish with chopped mint and toasted nuts... Yum!  

The spicy string beans were an attempt at Chinese cooking--they came out great, but I probably will make them a little crunchier in the future, by reducing the simmer time.  I used this recipe here, but we didn't have Hoisin sauce.  That would have made it even better!  

The string beans didn't really "go" with the Mediterranean flavors in the fritters and soup, but I chose them for balance: they added some crunch and some spice to a meal that had a lot of soft, savory, and cool.  Whenever it's possible, I try to create that kind of balance, to engage as many senses and tastes as I can.  I would have preferred green beans to yellow beans, for the extra color, but yellow beans are what we picked that morning, so there you go!