New Faces, Ideas, and Energies--and Knowing When My Role Has Changed

I swung through the decorated-for-Christmas doors of Home Depot, made a right and headed straight for the back of the store, to the rebar.  

I searched through the 1-foot metal bars, choosing the ones with neat cuts on the top so the thin-walled PVC pipe I had cut with my hydrolic cutters would fit easily over them as I constructed yet another little hoop house over one of my garden beds at home. 

Keeping the Garden Going in the Cold from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.


That brings me up to five productive, over-wintering beds, with lettuces, cilantro, arugula, rutabagas, radishes, bok choi, mizuna, kale, broccoli, mustard greens, leeks, and more, growing in them.  

But as I stood there, the smell of cedar and pine strong from the wood aisle (and knowing the difference between them now--their rates of weathering, their costs, their advantages and disadvantages), it hit me.  How much I've learned.  Rebar!  Hydrolic PVC cutters!  I even own a sledge hammer now.

I thought of my friend, Van, who helps harvest as part of Team Food Pantry, who said to me this week that he is surprised, as well, by how much he's learned.  

"What have you learned?" I asked him, and he paused a moment before replying, simply, "I've learned who I am."

And yesterday, there, in that store, and then as I spent the day visiting many of the gardens in which I've had a hand these past two years, I thought of his words.  

"I've learned who I am."

"I've learned who I am."

I kicked off my rounds at the Latin American Garden in Norcross, the remnants of tomatoes still evident, the poles still wrapped with bean vines. Twelve families, apparently, had tended this garden all summer for low-income children attending a camp. It is now cleaned out and cover cropped for winter.

At our new greenhouse operation, two of the eight food pantry beds are ready for their first harvest next week, in time for Thanksgiving.  

More than 20 pounds of lettuce heads and a variety of greens have been harvested from the St. Pat's garden already, most of it by the food pantry clients themselves.  

The Georgetown Community Garden has cute signs and other details that show it is clearly loved, and a food pantry bed still in production.  

The school garden bed which was recently converted to organic growing methods is exploding with crops, and more than one child has sampled lettuce and radishes for the first time in their lives, with turnips, carrots and broccoli soon to be ready.

The main Dunwoody Community Garden shows no sign of slowing with the seasons and, in fact, is more robust than it has been in awhile as many new members have recently gotten off the waiting list.  As I stood there yesterday, talking with Robert Wittenstein, a city councilor, about the soil results he just received back regarding Garden Isaiah, where he has somehow become one of the garden leaders, and Rod Pittman, our beloved gardening mentor, I didn't think of who I am.  I thought of who I am not.

I am not the person needed here anymore.  I have done my job.  I have, perhaps, served as a catalyst and connector.  I have planted seeds, literally and metaphorically.  

And now, there are new leaders.  

New faces.  

New ideas. 

New energies.

What's more, my suburb of Atlanta, which is the newest city in the United States, turns two years old December 1.  That is the day that it will be presented with a plaque honoring its achievement of Atlanta Regional Commission Green Communities certification (see A New Road for Dunwoody for a post from two years ago about this).  A team of folks, many of whom I don't even know, have completed the requirements for this after I left the sustainability commission in March to focus more on access for all to healthy food.  A city-specific sustainability plan is on the short-term work plan for 2011. Councilor John Heneghan just accepted an award for the city from PEDS called the Golden Shoe Award for making sidewalk construction a priority, especially near schools. Master plans for greenspace, parks, and several character areas include many sustainability attributes. 

Will the 2020 vision I imagined for this city a year ago right now come to fruition?  It's not in my hands.

And so my other blog, the one that has been holding up a mirror to the creation of a new city and the sustainable choices it chose to make or not make, has moved on to follow the larger Atlanta metro area instead, starting in the new year.  Atlanta's new mayor, Kasim Reed, has made a commitment to move Atlanta into a top ten spot on the list of the most sustainable United States cities, and in fact just went to London to meet with Prince Charles for insight creating new urbanism communities here.  My hyper-local days have ended.

Where the seeds of growth take me now, I cannot predict. I know there are many experiences yet to have, and people yet to meet, and stories yet to tell.  And I know I will be telling them.

Now, it's time for my annual blogger break. See you in the new year, with new stories about food, and food for thought. And, perhaps, some new understanding of who I am.  Or, rather, who I am becoming.

New Faces, Ideas, and Energies--and Knowing When My Role Has Changed

Precarious Nature of Life

I was there maybe eight minutes early, the morning icy cold, the fog on my windshield forming as I waited.  I almost drove down to the main garden, just to see how the crops had done overnight, swaddled under row covers.  But something told me not to.  

Rod would be on time--he always was--and I didn't want him to show up to no one.  I unlocked the gate surrounding the greenhouse complex and went in, sliding its big door open.  Just then, he pulled up and backed in his truck, bringing the compost that, later in the morning, after the excitement I didn't know was about to happen, would fill two of the eight new indoor food pantry beds. 

Rod stepped out of his truck, told me he wasn't feeling well (something this 81-year-old man had never said to me in the year and a half I have known him), complaining of sharp pain in his head, and I saw that half his face was drooping.  A 911 call and screaming sirens followed, and Rod was rushed away.  

 



One week later, he is back.  Unloading.  Digging.  Advising.  As usual. 

And in this still of early morning, as the events of the last week still swirl in my head, the precarious nature of life for all of us front and center in my mind, I would like to share with you this photo essay of Rod Pittman, a lifetime organic farmer who has had his hands in farms all over the world and who still works full-time consulting on farms on both coasts of the United States.  

We are extraordinarily grateful to have Rod as our mentor, friend and fellow advocate for organic agriculture in all its wonderful proven and experimental forms (no one does more experiments than Rod!).  Thank you, Rod.  You continue to change the world for the better with every seed you plant, every conversation you have, and every new community gardener and urban farmer you inspire.

And, now, the greenhouse food pantry beds planted, the bones of our year-round growing operation in place, Rod talks of vertical growing, of hydroponics, of solar water heating.  Rod said to me yesterday, as we stood in the greenhouse surrounded by so many new faces, "You won't believe what we can do in here."  With you involved, Rod, I do believe.  And I can't wait to see what grows.

 

Precarious Nature of Life

Introducing the Next Michael Pollan

I had just finished reading American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half Its Food.  I had just interviewed the extremely talented author, 34-year-old Jonathan Bloom (think Michael Pollan is a household name?  Pay attention to Jonathan Bloom--he has blasted on to the scene in a big, impressive way and I predict he will make a huge impact in his career).  And so it was ironic what happened next.

My CSA box, brimming with collard greens and beets and every other seasonal pleasure, somehow got shoved to the side of my kitchen as I was running here and there that afternoon (basically, from community garden to food pantry garden to school garden to get them ready for our first frost this weekend).  I forgot about it.  By the time I discovered it, the greens were holding up little white flags, begging for mercy.  I thought of chopping them, steaming them, adding them to soups and pasta and everything else to which I've been adding them each week, eating them practically three times a day just to keep up, but one glance in my fridge showed there was still a bagful from last week.  And one glance out my window revealed Swiss chard and arugula and radish greens and more, growing, growing, growing right in front of my eyes, taunting me, even as I breathed.  And let's not mention the gardens on the side of the house, or by the mailbox, or my plot at the community garden.  In short, I was drowning in fresh food.  A good problem, no doubt, but a problem just the same.

I wish I had donated the collards to the food pantry, but for that moment, there, as we passed boxes from Charlotte's truck from hand to hand and stacked them on the ground for the 35 families or so they would feed, I thought I'd use them. I ended up adding them to one of my two EnviroCycle compost bins (which I continue to love, by the way).  So, ultimately, I will use them to nourish my soil to grow more food.  So, all good.

This is not the kind of "waste" about which Jonathan ( or "Jon" as it said on the name tag he wore when he worked at a supermarket as part of his food waste research--an average of 800 pounds a day of edible food at each of the 35,000 supermarkets or so nationwide, by the way) is talking.  

* He's talking about the 75% of cucumbers grown that are not sent to the buying American public because they don't fit the uniform size and shape.  

* He's talking about items that have hit (or are going to hit) their arbitrary sell-by and use-by dates but yet are still perfectly fine.  

* He's talking about crops in the field that don't get picked and just get plowed under, while 49 million Americans won't get enough to eat, including 22 percent of all American children, who live in food-insecure homes.  

* He's talking about the food waste that makes up 60% of a restaurant's waste stream, including an average of a half pound of waste per customer. 

* He's talking about the 90% of edible food that isn't recovered and donated to those in need each year. 

* And, for those of you who couldn't give a hoot about food, he's talking about the extraordinary waste of embedded energy and dollars food waste represents.

Jonathan started digging in to waste (literally and figuratively) while pursuing his masters degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina.  After that achievement, he was offered a coveted job with the news organization, Bloomberg, and turned it down.  He was knee-deep in waste (again, the visual you imagine is appropriate) by this time and knew that if he didn't stay with it, he'd never finish what he started.  Thus, his blog, Wasted Food.  

Which led to this book.  Which is perhaps one of the best-written, most definitive, highly entertaining, must-read books I've read in awhile.  Whether you're interested in farm, fork, feeding the hungry, or anywhere in between on the food distribution chain, you'll find a palatable overview of the latest facts and figures, plus first-hand honesty from an engaging journalist who gleaned, chucked, delivered, and questioned.   

If you've been following topics like this for awhile, I can guarantee you you will still learn something from this book (like what anaerobic digesters are all about, and why many places with extensive food waste claim they don't know about the United States Good Samaritan Law, and exactly how things work every step of the way) and you will not find this full range of information in any other place.  Plus, Jonathan gives a great wrap-up of what he'd do if he were in charge.  And, I personally felt the shift of the earth beneath my feet when Jonathan predicted that most colleges and universities in the U.S. will be tray-free by 2014 (when my older daughter, my loyal partner in collard-eating, will be there)--an idea that started at one college (St. Joseph's in Standish, Maine) just three years ago and has since swept the nation's institutes of higher learning. (But don't worry, students can still request trays if they are handicapped or just want to use one or if there is a good snow storm and they want to go "traying"--those of us who went to school in snowy places will remember this fondly!)

For those in Atlanta, Jonathan is speaking at the Centers for Disease Control, Emory University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology next week.  As for me, I am giving some thought to additional ways to deal with my "good problem" of abundance.  Donating more from the CSA box and preserving more (I just got a dehydrator), for instance, and considering the possibility that I may have literally "outgrown" my need for participating in a CSA at all (although the thought of this just breaks my heart since my CSA friends and farmers have become such a big part of my life over the last nine years).  

Perhaps I'll add another EnviroCycle to my little kickline of them.  

Perhaps I'll make more collard green smoothies, or search for yet more recipes.  

Perhaps I'll challenge my daughters to find more ways to use them up.  

Perhaps I'll even start selling stuff one day (but I doubt that one, although, my goodness, I'm certainly not doing enough with those herbs). 

Perhaps I'll get back involved with the Zero Waste Zone movement and the amazing work Holly Elmore is doing. (However tempting, I know I won't be advocating for curbside pickup of food waste in my little bedroom community of Atlanta anytime soon, although, yes, that's a good idea that other cities are doing.) 

Perhaps one day way, way, way in the future, I'll finally get three little chickens of my own to which I can feed some of this, or I'll find a friend with a pig (like sweet Olivia, pictured below, from Farmer Sue's--don't miss the photo and story at "When pigs fly").  

Who knows? But once you start thinking about food as a resource and not as waste, the whole world of possibilities changes.  

Related post: Waste Will be a Relic of History

Introducing the Next Michael Pollan