Conspiring with the World's Energy

This only-writing-to-you-once-a-week thing is starting to catch up with me--the backlog of things to tell you, that is! Do you realize I never even told you that I passed my two-year anniversary as a vegetarian? Back in March! My kids (who both decided to join me after we volunteered on Team Chicken to help take care of the coop at the Oakhurst Community Garden) have passed the one-year mark (my husband is a once-a-month bacon kind of guy).




(cue the chicken)







So, it's easy in our house. Eating out has gotten easier, too, although we don't eat out that much. And for anyone who cares, I may be the only vegetarian who didn't lose an ounce of weight through the process. The chocolate is a little bit of a problem :)





And speaking of cooking at home, here are a couple highlights from this week (with a special shout-out to Maggie because she loves seeing the pizzas!):















Here is the solar cooker at work (today I'm trying a quiche) (oh, and you can use a glass bowl over the pot instead of the plastic but I have to get that yet):


Yesterday, I put stuff in it before chaperoning my teenager at the semi-annual trip to the mall with her friends, and I came home to a delicious meal. I will admit that I kept peeking through the mall skylights to check the sun!


Speaking of the mall, the only bright spot I found yesterday was a company named Lush that makes all natural, vegan body care products. I was particularly excited about this little pot of perfume (I don't wear perfume, but this had a very faint smell of walking out of a forest carrying a bowl of oranges) specifically because of the marketing of it. It is being pitched to eco-commuters! Called Go Green, it is designed for those who don't feel so fresh after bike riding or riding a crowded train! I love, love, love that a company is giving thought to this, and look forward to more helpful aids for our changing lifestyle.






















What I don't love is this (which I found at Target):

















What I do love is this (which I received from Charlotte as the first CSA delivery of the year!)

















Talk about driving to pick up my CSA box reminds me to tell you how I feel about the Prius. I NEVER KNEW I COULD FEEL THIS WAY ABOUT A CAR! I am deeply in love. Honestly. I can't say enough good things. If the folks at Toyota are looking for a testimonial, send them my way!

As for my city (the newest city in the United States of America, just started this past December 1), so much good is happening. If you are interested, please tap in to my other blog, Sustainable Dunwoody. Our Sustainability Commission is a well-oiled machine already (or, should I say, well solar-powered!). The farmers market is up and running. And, oh, the big news I mentioned a few weeks ago but forgot to tell you! We have embarked on our 20-year Comprehensive Plan and each City Council member got to appoint one person to the steering committee. And guess what?! Yes! I got appointed! I'm in there talking and writing about best practices from other cities and countries, post-peak oil, local food security, multimodal transportation options, triple-bottom-line sustainability, demographic shifts, Smart Growth and Complete Streets and aging in place and greenspace and all the stuff that keeps my mind twirling while I mow the lawn!

The lawn! Oh, yes, the lawn. In fact, that's where I'm heading after I write this. I'm fighting it this year, folks. My head is fighting it. I am trying to remind myself that something good happens every single time I use that manual push reel mower (and it does!). I'm trying to get over this mental "I don't want to mow the lawn" barrier. Is this mowing thing sustainable long-term? I don't know. Lawn reduction is definitely the answer.

In the meantime, I do have other big lawn news for you. Alan of the Appalachian Trail, who is also the homeowner association president, arranged for a consolidated buying group for lawncare services for anyone in the neighborhood who wanted to participate, and in order to reduce costs and reduce environmental and safety impacts of constant lawn companies every single day in our 'hood. More than half the homeowners signed up. This means that these lawns will all be mowed on the same day. This means I may be able to WORK again without getting headaches from all the power tool noise! The bad news? Alan did try to find a company that offered eco-options but came up empty. And I believe most of these homeowners are on board with all the chemical treatments. We still clearly have a long way to go with that one . :(

On the other hand, my mailbox garden has daily visitors, usually of the short, diapered variety! The latest visitors are the luckiest yet. They get to reach down, grab the green stalk firmly, pull it up and walk off with their very own fat onion! I always turn the onion upside down so that the roots look like hair, and then I wiggle out the greens so they look like arms and say, "An octopus!" and then I watch the smile break across the faces like the way the sun rose across that deck when I took a ship from Brindisi, Italy to Corfu, Greece so many years ago after college (when I traipsed around ten countries of Europe with my friend Julie from Portland, Maine).

Speaking of traipsing around Europe, I have other big news. Well, it's not big news, really. It's more of an intention that I am putting out there in the world so that the world's energy can conspire in my favor. Ian of A Kitchen Garden in France is hosting the first global meetup of kitchen gardeners this September. Kate from Australia will be there, as will Roger from Maine (Roger, do you know Julie? Wouldn't that be a kick).

When I first heard about it, I thought, "Gosh, I'd love to do that," but then of course, I thought of how I can't afford it, the kids are in school and that is always a logistics juggling act, who am I to go traipsiing off to the South of France . . .

The South of France. Ian. Kate. Maggie. Roger. Lavender. Sunflowers. Cheese . . .

I tried putting it out of my head, but I found myself thinking things like, "I wonder what the weather is like in September in the South of France . . . I wonder if you can catch the high-speed train right there at the airport in Paris . . ."

So, finally, one day, nonchalantly, I said to my husband, "I was invited to the South of France."

And he said, immediately, "Go."

God love that man.

Yet the twelve-years-of-Catholic-school, granddaughter of immigrants, daughter of Depression-era parents, and current participant in a down economy person that I am needs to justify the thing. So I've decided that if I can get some paid writing assignments from the trip, I can do it as a business trip. I have a few fresh angles in mind and have already started pitching. I just need you to send out positive vibes for me. Okay?

And if I do decide to go, I can leave here on foot, walk up that hill, catch the bus to the train to the plane and somehow end up in the South of France.

Okay, full confession. I bought little airline-regulation three-ounce toiletry bottles yesterday at the mall. Hey, doesn't hurt to be positive, huh?

Now, what book should I read on the plane?!

(How did that work as a segue to the FoodShed Planet Summer Reading Pick of the Week?) As for the summer reading albatross I've somehow created for myself (not that I need to be persuaded to read; it's the reporting about it that's starting to feel forced), I'm simplifying this thing, folks. I'm going to do this in the sidebar, and I'm going to give Bakers Caps (1 to 4)--4 Bakers Caps is for something comparable to Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest. Plus, I'll give you one of my favorite lines from the book. Well, okay, I'll do the first one here:




Three Baker's Caps (yes, I know I need a cute graphic here)

This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm, by Scott Chaskey (farmer/poet!)

This book is mostly about a farm on the east end of Long Island (New York). Since I am originally from a town on Long Island (but 16 miles from New York City--an hour and a half away from this farm), I loved smelling the salt in the air as I read this (here in land-locked Atlanta). Here's a line that keeps knocking in my head like sneakers in a dryer (not that I do that!) It is supposedly about earthworms:

"We provide the living space. They arrive."

And so I leave you with this. For what in your life are you providing the living space? What are you conspiring with the world's energy to help arrive?

Conspiring with the World's Energy

The Cost of Making Dinner--UPDATED

So the spring crops are wrapping up in my garden, the tall, fat onion greens laying down in submission, letting me know that the big white and red bulbs underneath are ready for picking. The "romaines of the day" are the last of the lettuces. The peas are starting to yield their vining space to the beans coming up fast behind them. And the rest of the gang are bolting, their little yellow and white flowers filling the air with pollinators that are looking for the squash flowers that are not yet here.

"You do a lot of work to put food on the table, don't you?" a neighbor asked me last week. I don't think of it as work anymore. It's just what I do. Yet that afternoon, I read a letter to the editor in the New York Times that literally stopped me in my tracks. Here is an excerpt:

Nicholas D. Kristof is right to point out that pneumonia is the leading cause of death for children around the world. When the Women’s Refugee Commission researched the adverse effects of firewood collection by refugee women and girls, we found that in addition to rape and environmental degradation, acute respiratory infections caused by burning wood indoors were a huge problem. These infections, left untreated, often lead to pneumonia and other infections.

In addition to rape and environmental degredation? In addition to rape? In addition to rape?

That just kept leaping off the page for me. A quick Google search revealed that women in refugee camps due to the Darfur genocide are regularly getting raped when trying to find increasingly scarce firewood to cook their meals. The Jewish World Watch, in conjunction with several other organizations, has discovered a way to reduce the incidence of rape, environmental degradation and respiratory illness.

Solar cookers.

These simple cardboard and aluminum foil contraptions use the power of the hot sun to cook daily meals in two to four hours, enabling the women and girls to stay in the refugee camps instead of taking their lives in their hands to find wood.

Additionally, the women are able to earn money by:

* Working in the small manufacturing center to make the cookers
* Making covers for the cookers to prolong them
* Making warming baskets to help keep the evening meal warm
* Teaching other women how to use and maintain their cookers.

They use this money to buy milk, bread and clothes for their families.

I literally didn't sleep for three nights thinking about this. Rape. Solar cooker. Renewed hope and dignity. Such a simple, simple way to change lives. Such a brilliant outside-the-box approach.

I told several people about the solar cookers and I saw eyes glazed from feeling helpless about Darfur open wide with astonishment. Turns out Jewish World Watch has provided solar cookers to every family in two refugee camps already (Iridimi, with a population of 18,846 refugees; and Touloum, with a population of 23,441 refugees--together, that is more people than the 42,000 who live in my city), and is currently working on a third. Its goal is to provide solar cooking for all 12 refugee camps in Chad.

"What does it cost?" my friend asked. Thirty bucks. For thirty bucks, a family gets:

* Two solar cookers per family
* Two pots
* Two pot holders
* A year supply of plastic bags
* Skills training.

I was at the dentist the other day and he suggested putting sealants on two of my teeth. Sealants. For an adult. Sealants that are guaranteed for only three years and that contain questionable materials.

"How much does it cost?" I asked.

"Just fifty bucks a tooth," he asked. Fifty bucks. And I don't get a cavity for the next three years, even though I've hardly had one in the last twenty. Thirty bucks and a family of girls and women don't get raped when they try to make dinner.

I interviewed Rachel Andres, the director of the Solar Cooker Project at Jewish World Watch. She lost 22 members of her family in the Holocaust. Her grandmother was the only one who survived, because she had come to the United States before World War II started. And her granddaughter went on to provide solar cookers to women and girls in Africa. Such a world.

I asked Rachel about something I read on the Solar Cooker Project website, about how the family gets one cooker for sauce and vegetables "when they are available." I asked how they get vegetables (and in the back of my mind, I could already see Farmer D on a plane heading there).

Turns out that each family has a little space for a veggie garden, but that the harsh conditions and lack of water make growing food very difficult. A new project on which Jewish World Watch is working gives each family some PVC piping and a bowl so that they can capture some of the water they use to clean their bodies (from the meager 5 liters they are allotted a day) and redirect it to their gardens.

This simple solution (yet again) is creating abundant gardens that help to feed these families. The photo above is a photo Rachel recently received of one of the gardens. My eye first went to the okra, and I thought of the okra I planted around my mailbox garden last year and how this year, when I see my okra, I will think of these women so far away. But then, look at that face. Look at that pride. Just look at it.

I didn't get the sealants. I sent in the $30, plus I ordered myself the exact same solar cooker that the refugees get, as part of a project kit that "is ideal for anyone considering an international or domestic solar cooking and solar water pasteurization project."

I have no idea where I'm going with this. I just know that there is something for me to do here, that I am being called somehow.

Oh, as for the FoodShed Planet Summer Reading Pick of the Week? I've had a change of plans.

UPDATED: May 29, 2009

My solar cooker arrived yesterday. I'm hoping to try it out today--wild rice, lentils, and onions and lamb's quarter from my garden. Here is a wonderful video that shows the women of Iridimi with these cookers.

The Cost of Making Dinner--UPDATED

"Gotta' Start Somewhere"

I have this voice in my head that says "I'm tired" sometimes, too many times. I tried changing it to say, "No, you're not, you're full of energy" but let's face it, after a day of kids and work and garden and all this activism stuff (when did I become an activist? I never intended that), "full of energy" is just plain a lie. So about two months ago, I tried changing myself by replying to the voice in my head something completely unexpected. So now, when I hear, "I'm tired," I say, "and I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be tired because I am doing work I love."

And sometimes the "tired" is not physical, but emotional. From just not getting the support I want sometimes, as fast as I want it, from the places I want it. This is how I felt the other day, about the roaring lawn care equipment and chemical application trucks that have returned with a vengeance. About the zoning battle over the relocation of our farmers market. About the constant stream of fast food sponsorships at the schools. About the fact that crossing the street at a crosswalk with a child with a backpack is downright impossible at times because so many drivers simply don't stop.

"I'm grateful," I told myself as I slumped in the hammock, a wonderful dog-eared, chocolate-stained book in my hands (yes, the third annual FoodShed Planet Summer Reading Book of the Week starts next week, if you can believe it!), but for what?

And then I got the email. From Kelly of the Persimmons, who, if you will recall, lived in my neighborhood, attended Open Garden with my children, spent a year away from her husband as he "set up the family" in a distant city, and then finally moved to all be together. (Here is a post to remind you.) She wrote:

Believe it or not, you've been the motivating force behind some things Bill has implemented at work. He partnered with a local farm for CSA's starting in June. They're going to do a drop-off at the hospital every Thursday. It runs anywhere between 15 and 19 weeks. He has 24 hospital employees committed (including us). He could have had a lot more. It will probably explode next year.

He's also received a Federal Grant for an organic roof-top garden at the hospital. He and our son spent several hours a couple of weeks ago planting seeds. He has an employee who is a master gardener and she will be overseeing its progress.

Biggest of all - his hospital is doing composting. It was a major undertaking and it required lots of planning, on the hospital, as well as the city's part. He also received grant money for this. Oh, and by the way, he also went 100% trans fat-free at work.

So, you see, we think of you often.

I talked to Bill yesterday. This is a picture of him, with the Mayor of Minneapolis, R. T. Rybak, right before receiving a Climate Change Micro Grant (as reported in the Finance and Commerce newspaper). Besides being a really special father and husband, Bill is the Director of Food and Nutrition Services at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.

* When Kelly says he "went trans-fat free" at work, she means he made the first public hospital in the United States trans-fat free.

* When she says he is doing composting, she means he has helped a hospital arrange to tug all its food waste four city blocks underground to a dedicated composting dumpster.

* When she says he received a grant to do the roof garden, she means that the chef and cooks at this major healthcare facility will now be accessing fresh herbs and peppers from a 200-square-foot kitchen garden for meals prepared for patients, visitors, staff and catering.

What's more, Bill has occasional farm stands in the cafeteria, and is moving to seasonal menu planning, adding rBGH-free milk in the cafeteria and in the pediatric wing, and putting in three coffee shops that serve only organic, fair trade and bird-friendly coffee. Oh, and did I mention that Bill's hospital is the first public hospital in the United States to sign Health Care without Harm's Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge?"

Bill says that Minneaopolis is already extremely environmentally-aware, so these changes have been enthusiastically embraced by others in the hospital. He says his philosophy is "gotta' start somewhere," and these have been the little things that "don't cost much but keep the place alive," which is important especially during a time of so many budget cuts.

Gotta' start somewhere. Gotta' start somewhere. Okay, Bill, today I'm not tired. I'm grateful. For knowing you and your family. For hearing these amazing accomplishments. And for the little things I can do today that just might make a difference, in ways I may not expect.

Stay tuned for Hennepin County Medical Center updates as Bill feeds them to me--and as he literally feeds a city far away with the little things that add up to a healthier future.

"Gotta' Start Somewhere"

Far More Than The Berries in the Box

So I stopped at Harry's (a huge Whole Foods-owned market, of which there is now only one location, in Alpharetta, Georgia) on the way home from the final class in my organic farming course yesterday. We had picked big, fat, juicy strawberries as part of the class and I had a jelly-jar-box full of culled ones (those with slight bruises or other imperfections, which I bought from Lynn for a dollar a pound) on my back seat. I didn't want to leave them there, in the car, in the sun, so I carried them in with me to the store.

I stopped at the customer service desk and the conversation went something like this:

"These are mine," I said, pointing to the box in my arms. "I just picked them at a farm and I don't want to leave them in the car. So I think I need a note."

"A note from your mother?" the nice lady laughed, as she put a "paid" sticker on them.

And so I walked around the store with this box of berries and several people oohed and aaahed when they passed by. With my few purchases at the check-out line (okay, fine, I admit it--I had gotten into the habit of dark chocolate covered raisins on the way home from the farm every other week!), the woman behind me asked about the strawberries, and I told her I had picked them at a class I just finished at a local farm that uses organic practices (you can't call it an official organic farm because the USDA owns that word now, you know, and this farm doesn't get the official national certification each year).

The cashier, overhearing our conversation, asked one question and one question only.

"Cheaper? Are they cheaper?"

I just stood there. Cheaper?

Hmmm. Well, I had spent time from January through May watching the strawberry plants grow from frost through full blazing sun. I had seen them fill a field and the bellies of new friends. I had been given the gift of expertise from the woman who grows them. And I, myself, had crouched in that buttercup-studded field, just moments before, shoulder to shoulder with others trying to make a little bit of difference in the world by digging in the soil, and shared stories and smiles and steps we intend to take to apply what we've learned here on the farm to our gardens and communities and future. So, what price did I pay for them? What price is four months of my life worth?

I just stood there blankly, like the village idiot that I find myself being more and more nowadays.

"I . . . I simply don't know how to answer that," I managed to say.

The lady behind me sensed my deeper feelings, I believe, and we got to talking about the farm and the course and the strawberries. She had never heard of the farm. She didn't know she had an option (there are no local organic strawberries for sale in any store around, and this store, on this day, didn't even have organic strawberries from anywhere). And she was interested in hearing more about the CSA. I gave her my card and I hope she is reading this right now. If so, here is the link to the farm for you. Tell Lynn you saw me with the strawberries!

As for the cashier: No. I would not call them cheaper. I would call them dear. I gave a whole lot of myself for them, and I got an incalculable amount in return. And I'm starting to realize how much that's worth, at least to me.

Far More Than The Berries in the Box

When The House of Cards Tumbles--UPDATED

It gets a rise out of me every time it happens, the promotion of fast food restaurants at schools in my county's school district. I have somehow made my peace with the fact that as long as it is being promoted for participation outside of school hours, I can let it go. It's when it creeps back into the school day that the hairs on my neck stand up again. And sure enough, it happened the other day.

An item in the weekly enewsletter from the elementary school promoted, yet again, the school's "night" at a fast food restaurant (from which it gets a cut of the sales) but this time it said that the class with the most participation would get a tray of fast food chicken nuggets for the in-school field day picnic. I shot out my beating-a-dead-horse email yet again, to my daughter's teachers and the principal:

Thank you for being mindful of healthy food during school hours this past year. It has been greatly appreciated by my family. The excerpt below is from this week’s school enewsletter, and frankly, I‘m getting to the point where I’m just plain exhausted from advocating about keeping junk food out of school. It is one thing to promote it outside of school hours, but if this field day picnic is happening during school hours, this is completely inappropriate.

I respectfully request that you do not encourage this in communications with my daughter during school hours. I would also like to suggest that the school consider getting on board with what is happening across the country regarding junk food (and other industrialized food) in school. Here is a wonderful new blog, launched by Ann Cooper of the Ross School in New York (she is the chef, along with Alice Waters, behind The Edible Schoolyard in California).

I will let you know, what, if anything happens, but I'm not expecting anything more than my voice to be added like a small drop of water to a cup that will one day, inevitably, overflow (as my friend, Judy of the CSA, reminded me).

As I was harvesting bowls of lettuces, I pondered yet again the mystery of why parents don't rise up against this sort of stuff in my community, why I feel I am so often one of very few voices that are concerned about this where I live. Four full years ago, my older daughter and I mounted a year-long research and advocacy project to influence change in the cafeteria, which resulted in the addition of daily vegetarian meals to the lunch menu offerings--albeit, processed industrialized GMO food, but I saw it as a step that might heighten awareness and lead eventually to my big dream--an actual organic carrot, right there in the lunchroom. May not sound like much of a dream, but here we are, four years later, and this carrot in nowhere in sight. (Here is the article I wrote for Georgia Organics about that journey.)

I have come to know a few things:

* I know I live in a country where many things are fast, fast, fast, and that to admit our industrialized food system doesn't work in one place (the schools) would mean admitting it doesn't work in all the other parts of our lives as well, and this could cause the house of cards on which contemporary life is built to tumble.

* I know that it is scary for many folks to change, and that one of the normal human responses to change is to dig in our heels holding on to the past, and there are always going to be people who do that, and do that loudly.

* And I know for many people it's far easier to accept the money fast food restaurants offer schools and consider the platter of factory-farmed chicken nuggets a prize, not thinking about the fact that we are technically selling our children to advertisers.

But the day of reckoning has come. The swine flu thing is waking up more and more people to what's wrong with our food system. Success stories of schools that have said no and started building a healthy foundation for their community's children are escalating. And tomorrow's leaders, especially our teens, are starting to organize and demand the kinds of changes that will build a durable foundation for the future.

Dare I allow myself to believe that I will one day see an organic carrot, right here at my community's schools?

UPDATE: May 4, 2009

Apparently, here's what's happening on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC at lunchtime tomorrow.

When The House of Cards Tumbles--UPDATED