The Harvest

We've taken to just calling it The Harvest every week, when we meet to pick from the community garden for the food pantry delivery. I find myself saying things like, "See you at The Harvest," or "I won't be at my office until later because I'm at The Harvest."

This week's Harvest may have been one of the best yet.  My friend, Stacey (the current chairperson of the City of Dunwoody Sustainability Commission) and her daughter came with their weekly delivery from their home garden and to help pick.  They are also now in charge of one of the food pantry beds and are getting ready for fall planting.  Half their bed is currently filled with peppers and sweet potato vines.

"When are the sweet potatoes ready?" Stacey asked me.

"Oh, not until late September," I said, nonchalantly, snipping hot peppers into my bag.

"How will we know when they are ready?" she asked, looking suspiciously at the vines, the bed, the hidden jewels that we relied on faith to believe were actually under that soil.

I was about to explain when I realized it would be easier and more fun to just show her and her daughter, so I put down my pocket knife and strolled over.

"You dig your hand under the soil a bit and feel around, sort of like a veterinarian checking on about-to-be-born lambs or something . . . ."

And then I shouted.   Something like, "Whoaaaaa!" or maybe, "Oh, my gosh!"

Had you been in the park, you may have come running.  

I had my hand wrapped around an absolutely huge sweet potato! 

What next ensued was nothing short of hilarious as people spanning 75 years in age dug out monster-sized sweet potatoes, oohing and aahing and proclaiming their finds every step of the way.  In fact, I have a classic photo of this scene, but I promised Stacey I wouldn't use it (actually, I think it's more like she forbids me from using it!), because, let's face it, a shot of grownups bent over digging ferociously and taken from the back is not exactly flattering! But it was one of the happiest series of moments I've seen in a long time. And the look on that little girl's face every time she got the honor of releasing each newly-found sweet potato from the earth will stay with me forever.

For me, it was a lesson, once again, of not assuming when or when not something (or someone) is ready.  Just being eternally grateful for when it (he, she) is.

And so, the next day, after dropping off the crops at the food pantry, I came home to make dinner for my own family and saw that I had the exact same ingredients the food pantry clients were getting that day.  Rice.  Beans. A beautiful variety of peppers.  Tomatoes, which have suddenly become so dear as we know the end is near, and basil, basil, basil.   Oh, and I harvested my own sweet potatoes as well, which I never would have checked this early had it not been for the discovery at the community garden.  

I cooked it all up and told my daughters that we were truly sharing a meal with those in need that night. 

Still curious about the sweet potatoes, I looked it up and apparently sweet potatoes grow like crazy in the heat, and yes, we're just starting to get some relief from one of our hottest, most relentless summers ever.  

And, of course, I got to thinking how, perhaps, the heat has made me grow a little faster than usual as well.  I took a look back at these last three months.  And I could see, clear as day, what I had harvested in my life.

Now, the season is starting to change, and the preparations are well under way for a new set of crops.  The buckwheat and cowpeas are cut and turned back into the soil.  I nearly asphyxiated myself driving from Farmer D's to the community garden with 200 pounds of chicken manure in my Prius trunk (which, please note, is a hatchback so everything in the back might as well be in the front).  I've spread the manure (and yes, I'm sorry I did this the day before the one-year-anniversary meeting and potluck! Stunk to high heaven, or so I hear.  I actually wasn't there--but that's a whole other story).  Our expanded Food Pantry Team will now plant the seeds in the individual beds (there are about 15 now) over which they have volunteered to serve as stewards.  And we will continue to harvest, more than we ever expected, on a piece of land that's now a place where food and community and people of all ages grow, faster than we could have even imagined.

The Harvest

I Once Believed in Causes, Too

It has been busy these past two years, ever since I had that beer with the slice of orange on the rim at Joe's Tavern in the midtown section of Atlanta, ever since citizens in the place I had lived since 1995 voted to become the newest city in the United States (a title I think the city still holds), ever since I decided to hold up a mirror and bear witness and show the world what sustainability decisions were being made (or not), ever since I got more involved than I intended, ever since my life changed.

But coming home from New York City recently, wondering if my husband and I had really made the right decision leaving there all those years ago, I heard these words from Billy Joel's classic song, Angry Young Man, over and over again (yes, I played the song obsessively):

I once believed in causes too;
I had my pointless point of view,
But life went on no matter who was wrong or right . . .

And so, I got home, many swirling thoughts in my mind, wondering what matters, wondering if I was really getting the "quality of life" for which I moved here, wondering what quality of life really is, and I found a review copy of this book had arrived: Twelve by Twelve, by William Powers.

I picked it up and carried it around reading it for days, savoring it.  It is the story of a man who previously traveled the world with an aid organization, imposing western standards on communities that seemed impoverished but may have had more to teach us than appeared at first glance.  

He then got a chance to house-sit for 40 days and nights in a 12-foot by 12-foot structure owned by a doctor who pretty much donated her services and lived under the poverty level so that she didn't have to pay taxes, 50% of which would have gone to war efforts she opposed, on rural acres dedicated to permaculture and shared by others living intentionally.   Now dog-eared and rain-warped and chocolate-stained, my copy of this wonderful book is also underlined throughout, including these lines:

* I began to question the whole notion of who is impoverished.

* Vernacular culture is the enduring wisdom that sustains a spiritually rich life.  Nearly all vernacular cultures embrace abundant idleness, the "beingness" that binds human and nature.

* A humble path seems to open.

* Adapt and reshape what already existed so that people could feel the nurturing cycle of personal authenticity, robust community, and connection with nature.

The overriding lesson of the book is to "listen, be, do," in that order.  I've been doing a lot of doing.  And now the doing is done for awhile, with the exceptions of my writing business, my family, and some very select volunteer projects already determined (and about which I am excited to tell you in the near future).

I have moved on, my "leading meetings" days now officially over for at least a year, but many seeds already planted have grown:

* The City of Dunwoody Comprehensive Plan includes commitment to sustainability principles of greenspace, connectivity, transportation options, reduced energy use, water conservation, local food production, and the creation of a city-specific sustainability plan in 2012. (Unfortunately, in contradiction to the support of local food production expressed in the plan, the city did not approve the backyard chicken ordinance, and this boy no longer has his beloved chickens, nor do citizens of my city have the ability to provide safe, daily eggs to their families.  As I wrote in an email to City Hall this week, especially now that 500 million eggs have been recalled throughout the United States, local food production is not a hobby.)

* The City of Dunwoody Sustainability Commission has new, strong leadership and has submitted its application for Green Communities certification. As my friend Mitch told me when I kicked and screamed about getting involved with policy-creation, "That's the only way that your efforts live on, Pattie.  Otherwise you're wasting your time."  I learned patience, at least for a short while (is that a contradiction?) Here are the policies that have been created, while I was involved and afterward.  Thanks, Mitch.

* The Dunwoody Community Garden celebrates its one-year anniversary tomorrow and will receive this proclamation at City Hall.  I'm not big on proclamations, but I like how this one is written and I feel hope for the future when I read it.

* The Ton for Hunger Drive has yielded almost 600 pounds of food given to those in need for a donated value of over $3500, and an ever-expanding team of people are involved.  After last week's enormous basil donation (which, by the way, retails for $2.99 for two ounces) one of the women who runs the food pantry emailed me and said if everyone in the world had basil, there would be world peace, and last week, I feel we came a little closer to that.

* The informal Dunwoody School Garden Network met this weekend, with representative parents from all five elementary schools in my city.  I strongly suggested folks not overthink things--as my friend, Bob, famously stated when advocating for approval of the community garden from both the county and city last year, "It's just dirt!"  

Keep it simple.  If it doesn't work out in three years, ya' move the dirt.  Not rocket science, folks.   

Our children don't have five years to wait for approvals and perfect curriculum tie-ins (you show me one homework lesson that I can't tie in to a garden and you win a nickel).  

* Half the 160 third graders involved with the one developed school garden in our city had never planted a thing before in their lives.  

* A kindergarten teacher in support of the chicken ordinance told City Hall that her students didn't know what color worms were.  

* Kids from other parts of the country and world with whom our children will be competing for college spots and jobs are far ahead of us in all-things-environmental.  

Teachers and administrators care about this year's test scores (and I know they are pressured to do so, so I am not faulting them on this).  I care about my children's and grandchildren's lives.  Let's not raise eco-illiterates, ill-prepared for a changing world.  We have the power, parents.  Now.  Today.  Let's find a way.

* And speaking of my friend Bob, I would be remiss if I didn't share with you the best news I've heard in a long time.  This man, who has had high blood pressure for years, no longer does.  The only thing he has done differently this past year is participate in community gardening.  Oh, and eat tomato sandwiches.  Lots and lots of tomato sandwiches.

And so, that's it.  The doing is done.  These efforts will live on, or not.  I wasn't an angry young woman, and I don't want to be an angry old woman.  

It is time now to listen, to be.  To see where the journey wants me to go.  

To watch the shadows cast by pickled peppers.  

 

To stand at my kitchen door and celebrate the welcome rain, imagining the next book I'll read in that hammock when it is dry again. 

To play checkers at the community garden.  

To learn to relax while teaching a teen in chartreuse shoes to drive. 

To grow more food where there was lawn just last year.

To show up at a blue house in Clarkston for reasons I don't yet know.  

To do what Bill Powers, the author of Twelve by Twelve, told me in a phone conversation last week he is doing--continually exploring alternatives to the Gross Domestic Product, with bigger intangibles and a smaller number of material possessions.  (And, for those of you who are curious, what he misses most about the 12 by 12 is the freedom to spend days in tune with nature.)

I often hand my camera to children who visit the community garden and give them one simple direction, "Take pictures of what you find interesting."  It fascinates me to look at the photos and see through their eyes, for just a few moments.  Here is the latest photo a child took.  A "writer spider."  I hadn't even seen it there, hanging in the cucumber teepee.  But there it was, quietly "writing."

And that's what I shall be doing now.  Listening.  Being.  And quietly writing.

I Once Believed in Causes, Too

Hallelujeh (or What Biking to School Just Might Have You and Your Children Singing)

It's sweaty.  It's time-consuming.  And its safety is questionable.  But my younger daughter is back to school and we're biking every day.  

Once we get out of our neighborhood (the most difficult part of the trip), it's pretty much downhill for the next mile and a half and I can tell she gets lost in her own world, quickly forgetting I'm behind her.

I often hear her singing, and it's always the refrain from this song (you may enjoy clicking it to play while you finish reading this post):

The number of bike riders is holding pretty steady at this school of 900 students at six.  Not six percent.  Six.  Less than one percent.  Five boys and my daughter.  Two other moms and three dads.  Two of the kids are in the same class, the one taught by the Environmental Committee teacher. I'm tracking the numbers over the school year to see how and why they change.

One mom rides with her son, and his dad has been driving the overstuffed backpack and meeting up with them at the school's bike rack.  They asked me about my panniers Friday.  We talked about all the reasons kids don't ride and the various solutions my daughters and I have discovered over the years, such as:

* Advocating for lighter backpacks (the number one reason folks tell me they don't walk or bike to school is because of the weight of their children's backpacks.)  

* Advocating for Public Works vehicles to NOT park on sidewalks. ("Well, drivers in this city do not like when we inconvenience them by parking on the street," does not make a more Walkable/Bike-Friendly City!)

* Advocating for enforced crosswalk laws and leash laws. (The overwhelming majority of drivers in my city literally "speed up to beat" a child in a crosswalk rather than stop to let the child safely cross, and you don't know stress until a large unleashed dog charges your child on a bike.) 

* Frankly, there's a whole lot of advocating!  I'd like to give a big shout-out to City of Dunwoody Councilor John Heneghan who not only always listens to all citizens but always takes concerns seriously and tries to solve problems proactively. 

* Getting the panniers, and the front basket, and the bungee cord.  

* Riding one way and then me picking up the bike during the day with the car and then my child and me walking home with this bag for holding the backpack, lunch, violin . . . (We call it the Mary Poppins bag.)

* Riding one way and then me parking at the mile point so my daughter can at least ride halfway home (before the uphill really kicks in--remember that lovely downhill on the way to school?) and I ride the Razor scooter or walk with the Mary Poppins bag since we can't fit both bikes in the Prius.  

* Riding one way and then my daughter takes the bus home (which we'll do one day a week). 

* Being a "quick change" artist. (Yes, I often have to be at a work meeting or conduct an interview in person at 8:30 or 9 AM.  I have become a master of "switching gears" quickly--washed, changed, out the door.  And guess what?  My workout for the day is then behind me.)

* Accepting that it's not "all or nothing," and that it's not always going to work.  It rains.  Kids get crabby or overtired.  Large cardboard box projects sometimes need to get to school.  Sometimes the challenges of the day are just too great.  That's okay. 

I saw one bike-rider's father hop a curb, a big smile on his face, and I thought of how one of the greatest joys of life is feeling like a kid again when you ride your bike.  But you can't feel like a kid again when you ride your bike if you didn't ride your bike when you were a kid! 

I think one of the biggest gifts for life we can give our children is that memory.  I just want you to know that if you live somewhere where biking to school is at least a mile-long trip and it involves hills and heat, there is a very small aperture of opportunity during which you can do this--when the kids are strong enough to go the distance and young enough to not care about their hair when they get there.  

That window closes faster than you think it will.  And then those days of saying "maybe we'll ride someday soon, honey" are gone. (We hear kids at the bus stops we pass asking their parents if they can ride and that's often the answer.)  

Additionally, here in my city with an elementary school start time of 7:45 AM or so, once the time changes in October, it is pitch black in the morning and riding to school presents a whole different set of challenges.

Also, for those of you hitting your late 40s right about now, have you noticed the new sounds coming out of your joints?  The slowing of your metabolism?  The way pain lingers a little longer?  I certainly have.  And it has become abundantly clear to me that if I hope to ride bikes with my grandchildren (which I do), then I simply must not stop riding bikes now.  This isn't just about the kids and their health.  

When we got to the school the first day, the carpool line stretched as far as we could see.  And I couldn't help but think of our nation's children (61% of whom used to walk or bike to school just a generation ago), their wings clipped, when I found this dead butterfly as I was riding home that day.

In fact, I found a dead butterfly every single day this week, and I wished I had not been the one to find them.  I wished children walking to school had found them.  Had stood and marveled over them.  Had brought them to school and shown their teachers and their friends.  Had discovered their names and researched facts about them.  Had written a story or painted a picture inspired by them.  Had wondered all day, while gazing out the window, what else was out there, what else could they find, what else would they learn, what else would tomorrow bring . . .

My city's schools held a number of Walk and Bike to School Days last year that were very popular.  One woman told an organizing parent, "We should do this more often," and he said to her, "You know, the sidewalks are actually open every day!  You can do this more often!"  

I stopped at Your DeKalb Farmers Market (a year-round indoor facility) in Decatur the other day and saw this bike.  I took some pictures of it because it would make a perfect Food Bike for delivering to the food pantry from the community garden (I'm still on a quest for solutions--my panniers are inadequate for the amount of food we've been harvesting!) When I left the building, I saw its owner and we got to talking.

Meet Thor.  He is from San Francisco and lives in Atlanta now.  He rides his three children to school each day in the bucket of this bike.  He said to me, "Today is, what, our 14th Code Orange smog alert day this year?  It's not going to change unless people stop driving."

And that's another thing.  I used to tell people it was easy to ride to school and to grow your own food and to recycle and to use less water and to go drug-free on your lawn and to vote with your dollar when you shop and to . . . 

You know what?  It's not.  It's hard and continual work, especially at first until it's a series of new habits, but even after that, even always.  It's often uphill.  It's often sweaty.  And it requires change.

But there comes a moment when you lie on the cool, mossy earth and you gaze up at the heavens and you feel the strength of your body and the joy in your heart and you exclaim one thing and one thing only.

Hallelujeh.

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Hallelujeh (or What Biking to School Just Might Have You and Your Children Singing)

When Fred Asks, I Say Yes.

Trains whizzed by.  

Cars sped.  

Butterflies flapped their wings.  

And a group of gardeners came from Sacramento, San Francisco, Michigan, North Carolina and Atlanta to leap out of a bus and dodge traffic, traipse through parks, sweat on street corners in Atlanta's brutal August heat waiting for a light to change, and laugh until it hurt getting to know each other.  (Who knew paw paws could be so funny from the point of view of an expert Southern storyteller?) 

We spent three whirlwind hours yesterday morning as we toured six urban community gardens as part of the American Community Gardening Association's national conference, and I have Fred to thank for it.

Fred Conrad had asked me to lead the tour bus.  Fred is the Atlanta Community Food Bank liaison to over 150 community gardens, and I have never heard the man say no to any request made of him, so when Fred asks, I say yes.  (The picture to the left is of Fred leading a double-dig demonstration at the opening of our community garden almost one year ago.) 

What made it even easier for me to say yes was that Fred kept referring to it as the NEAT tour, which of course made me swell with pride because the community garden I helped start was on it.  Every email I got from him referenced "the NEAT tour."  It wasn't until I got to downtown Atlanta that I realized that calling it the NEAT tour was not an editorial comment by Fred--it was an acronym for the North East Atlanta Tour.  (Would you trust me with driving directions?!)

My job was pretty much to direct the bus where we needed to go and then to wrangle up folks and keep us on schedule, a schedule that allowed for only about 15 minutes maximum per garden.  This sort of broke my heart as the day went on because every garden we visited not only had so much to offer but I could almost feel the ground pulsate with passion from each garden's members.  

The challenge, I found, was to honor each garden by being 100% fully-present for the brief amount of time we had.  And then to see how else I could honor these people who give so selflessly to each other, to their communities, and to complete and total strangers when they turn unloved, unused scraps of land into absolute treasures and then so generously share their stories.

(A shout-out here to Congressman Inslee of Washington State for introducing the Community Gardening Act of 2009, and to the 35 representatives who are currently co-sponsoring it.  If passed, it would make grants available to community groups such as the ones I met yesterday, and to those in your community who are digging in to make a difference.  The Act was referred to the Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry on June 22, 2010.)

And so, I honor you here, now, those of you who spent weeks or even months prepping your gardens with special care because you had it in the back of your mind at all times that the tour groups were coming (not just to these six gardens, but all over Atlanta).  

* In Atlanta, this meant planting a second crop of tomatoes and beans and squash in mid-June or so, so that the gardens would be bountiful at this time of year (when first summer plantings are already spent, and we are actually getting ready for fall plantings now).  

* It meant putting down fresh mulch and tidying up those beds because "company was coming."  It meant gardeners with wheelbarrows tending their plots and Eagle Scouts hard at work, and a brand new checkerboard suggested by a 10-year-old and created by him and his brothers, as at the Dunwoody Community Garden.  

* It meant arranging to have your members present to greet us in the heat of the day, when Atlanta gardeners are simply not gardening.  

* It meant sharing your very first honey harvest, as the Blue Heron Community Garden did.   

* It meant arranging by cell phone so that one of the clearly very busy moms at a wonderful small garden on a piece of land saved from development could juggle her hectic morning and be there to meet us, as those at the Little Nancy Creek Community Garden did.  

* It meant marking a parking spot on a busy street with orange cones and literally sitting by it for ages until we arrived, and also taking the time to create this beautiful presentation for us, as those at the Peachtree Hills Community Garden did.

* It meant connecting from an airport far away the night before, as the head of landscaping services for a national property management company (Post Properties) did, and then meeting us one garden early so we wouldn't have trouble getting past your gate to hear how you provide organic community gardening to residents at 16 apartment complexes (11 in Atlanta, 5 around the country) for free, as an amenity equal to the pool or tennis courts.

* And it meant simple, candid moments like these, that were truly gifts to me.

 

  

(Here is Fred leading a group of children in singing "Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley" a year and a half ago.)  Thanks, Fred.

When Fred Asks, I Say Yes.

"Feel Free to Make Your Pictures"

The Empire State Building dominates the skyline of New York City in a way she didn't when I lived there.  I hadn't been back in a few years, hadn't approached the city via car since before the Twin Towers fell, and I remembered leaving after Christmas ten years ago, with two kids and my husband in a minivan, and watching the towers fade in the back window, knowing we wouldn't be coming up so often, wondering when I would see the World Trade Center again, not realizing I never would.

This time, we arrived in the Prius, which cost us only about $50 in gas from Atlanta to NYC.  The vast expanse of sky where the towers used to stand loomed like negative space.  Yet I intended to be positive.  I decided to focus not just on my family but on how "green" NYC had supposedly become since I left.

And yes, signs of this were everywhere, most notably in the "pedestrian only" spaces that have been created in what were traditionally the busiest traffic areas of the city.

I was surprised to not see as many bikes as I expected, although I didn't spend time by the water and I know that's where the greenway is.

  

And I was surprised to see so much of this.

The energy is palpable and contagious in New York City, and I realized how much I have missed that.  I managed to steal a quiet moment, however, one morning in Times Square where a bleacher of bright red steps ascends into the sky and people come by and sit all day and night, except for this one quiet hour, to watch the world go by.  

During this morning hour, this man and a colleague from a Special Projects team at the NYC Department of Sanitation wash the steps.  They wash away the debris of yesterday.  They wash away the hands that touched and the feet that walked.  They wash away the Tower of Babel, the connections that transcend language, the loneliness that isolates even in a crowd.  

I also managed to find greenspace amidst the concrete jungle. Just to the left of Times Square exists a low-rise neighborhood once known solely as Hell's Kitchen (for all the reasons you would think of because of that name) and now referred to just as often as Clinton or Midtown West.

Hidden down 48th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues is the crown jewel--the Clinton Community Garden, started in 1977 and the first NYC community garden to be classified as a part of the NYC Parks and Recreation Department (although what this means could be changing, and not for the betterment of NYC community gardens--see here for details-- it always seems to be a fight to save our dirt, doesn't it?)  

I met with Mark Dieffenbacher, the chairperson of the garden's Steering Committee and he shared not only what's special about the garden with me, but what he's learned about garden leadership.  The community garden I helped start will celebrate its first anniversary in a few weeks (if you're attending the American Community Garden Association's national conference this upcoming week, our garden is on the Northeast Tour, and guess what?  I'm the tour leader on the bus!  Email me if you'll be on that tour and say hello!) so handy hints from seasoned garden leaders are exactly what we need for our next stage of growth. (I'll do a whole separate post on this soon.)

Here's a little video I shot for you of just a slice of the Clinton Community Garden (correction to my narration: the front section is not open to the public--you have to have a key, and you can only get a key if you live in the neighborhood):

Clinton Community Garden (NYC) from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.

I saw kids cooling off in fountains and soccer in China Town and even a "what on earth is that?" interactive exhibit (yes, you can climb on it if you take a tour) on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which also affords you one of the best views of NYC greenspace--Central Park).  

Turns out this structure, named Big Bambu, is made from more than 5,000 poles from a bamboo farm in Georgia (if you're coming to the national conference from NYC, as I understand a busload of gardeners are, you'll feel right at home at the Dunwoody Community Garden as we use locally-harvested bamboo from our Georgia backyards for all our teepees).

I even had a chance to eat at a renowned vegetarian restaurant, tucked away on the Upper East Side.  Who would have thought to put avocado and cucumber together in a soup?!

 However, I realized with each passing day that the photo I craved didn't exist.  The hole in my soul could not be filled by film.  I kept hearing the voice of the Russian guide on the double-decker bus tour we took who said over and over again, "Feel free to make your pictures."

And so I did.

"Feel Free to Make Your Pictures"