From Amaranth to Worms

So I finally figured out why I was having so much trouble with the FoodShed Planet Summer Reading Pick of the Week this year. It goes back a couple months, to when I decided to transfer all my FoodShed Planet posts into a Word document so that I had it all, to save for my kids. Blogger gives you no easy way to do this, so I had to cut and paste every single one of my 552 articles individually, starting from the first one (which was three years ago yesterday, if you can believe it!). You can only imagine how much time this took.

However, as I got to reading it all, re-experiencing the journey I've been on and how helpful, inspiring, funny, or perhaps even touching, others might find the information, I started thinking that maybe it might be worthwhile to see if I could turn this thing into a book. I started becoming way more interested in sharing the book within me, rather than the books around me. The FoodShed Planet Summer Reading Book of the Week was transforming, little by little, into the FoodShed Planet book.

So I had the whole magilla printed at Kinkos one day. Over 1200 pages (more than 350,000 words!), at a cost of about 100 bucks. When I went to pick it up, the guy behind the counter handed me a huge box that I could barely carry.

"What on earth do I do with this monster now?" I wondered.

Well, I did what any good gardener would do. I weeded, ruthlessly. Anything that was too local or too time-sensitive got put aside. That included some of my personal favorite titles such as Loony Bin Organic Milk Momma and Danny Devito on a Segway and a Baby Llama with Roses on Its Head.

As I was doing this, I tried to find some inherit structure in what the thing would become, and I felt as if a title would emerge naturally. For awhile I thought, "Is it A Year on FoodShed Planet, organized seasonally?" No, no,no (although I love books organized that way). But not this one. Too sequential. Too rooted in "place." A Tale of Two Wormbins, and Other Stories made it sound like an Edgar Allen Poe knock-off. And that wormbin photo I took is particularly disgusting.

A whole pile of posts seemed to be natural sidebars in a book--recipes, quick tips, even a bunch that gave "the woes, the wows, and what you can do now." I separated those to add in at the end, and kept culling. I started jotting down topics, and an A-Z list developed. Well, actually an A-W list (I never wrote a zucchini post, if you can believe it!). In truth, it was an Amaranth to Worms list.

Amaranth to Worms. From Amaranth to Worms.

"How completely stupid that sounds," I thought. "After 350,000 words, written from the very depths of my heart and soul, this is what I'm left with as a title? From Amaranth to Worms?" Something else may reveal itself, but in the meantime, I keep imagining the fun a talented designer could have with that as a cover title!

And so that's where I was, as of a couple days ago. Dragging my bag (yes, it is down from a box to a bag) of "finalist" articles around with me, from coffee shops to lunch spots, toiling alone, knowing I now had the hard task of putting things in the final order and ending up, by summer's conclusion (I'm big on setting arbitrary deadlines for myself), with a bona fide manuscript to try to sell during the world's biggest economic downturn in decades (do I officially earn the eternal optimist award if I say I have already fantasized about a book launch party at the 2010 Kitchen Gardeners International meetup planned in Australia?) (and yes, I'm still waiting for the answers to reveal themselves to me about the South of France for this year's meetup, Kate!), when I realized, "Hey, why do it alone when you can put it out there for the world's energy to get involved?"

As you know, this is probably the number one thing I've learned during these last three years on our FoodShed Planet. If I continually work on asking more meaningful questions in life, and then open myself up fully to the journey that follows, I have discovered the simple universal truth that the answers always, always, always reveal themselves. (Not always on my timeframe, however.)

So, here we go. Here is my intro: From Amaranth to Worms: Food for Thought to Help You Live More Sustainably. I'm adding a new "chapter" every single day, starting with Worms and ending with Amaranth (so that it is in correct order when I'm done). You can follow along by subscribing here. And you can do me a very nice favor by sending this to all the literary agents you know :) If I ever sell this thing, you can be sure I will dedicate a portion of proceeds to do something positive in the world.

Oh, and for those of you who have stuck with me these three whole years (big, fat thanks, by the way, and don't you think it's funny that in my very first post I apologized for it being long? Little did I know how long my posts would grow to be over time!), I'll be adding updates and lots of fresh info to the chapters as I go along. The journey has changed. I have changed. And with hope, perhaps, with the oddly titled From Amaranth to Worms on your local bookstore shelf, the world will change for the better just a little bit as well.