Food for My Daughters Radio Show

Whoops--I realize you haven't been getting my radio show episodes each week!  Sorry!  I read excerpts from Food for My Daughters.  See that link for the previous ones.  The show records every Thursday, and then I'll post the show here from now on.  The episodes are short--5 to 8 minutes long.  You'll get a feel for the diversity of topics (memoir-kinda'-stuff about what I chose to do after the towers fell, practical gardening and sustainability advice, loosely-defined recipes, and some brief issue overviews called Woes, Wows, and What You Can Do Now) that are included in this 327-page book (scheduled for release August 15, 2011).  Here is this week's radio episode--my recipe for Mama Bread, plus a whole lot of asides.  The "obnoxiously large bowl" part (around 2:20) made me laugh out loud afterwards because I am using it to make bread even as I write this:

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Food for My Daughters Radio Show

Why Composting Is Hard Work, and Growing Food No Longer Is

It is a blur, these past 16 years since I left my corporate job and started my freelance writing business.  Since I had my children.  The past ten years since I started my garden.  Since I grew roots and then wings.

I thought of that this week, when I snapped this photo.  My teenager, with her heart rate monitor for PE class strapped on and a workout due for uploading, appeared pitchfork-in-hand to toss the compost pile for her first time ever.  Her heart rate hit her target zone within moments. ("Tossing compost is a good workout!" she said.  "Um, yeah, how about same time next month?" I replied.)  Half-decomposed materials flew from one pile to another.  And I ended up with a wheelbarrow full of about 50 pounds of the good stuff, my usual monthly output from that garden debris pile.  (The EnviroCycles yield another 25 pounds or so per month from kitchen scraps, and the worm bin adds more.)

I remember the big things, and lots of the little things over these past years, mostly thanks to the fact that I wrote about them, but I find more and more of it is becoming a blur.  The years are running together, with a handful of key lessons boiling up to the top.  Kindness.  Honor.  Passion.  Purpose.  Intention.  Patience.  Trust.  The seeds that we planted grew, and that seems to be all that matters.

I walked around the community garden yesterday morning, pulling up the plants that had bolted, that were sending up their flower stalks and signaling it was time for their next stage, which, in these beds we grow for those in need, would mean the compost pile so the summer tomatoes and peppers and basil can now get their long-awaited turn. And I saw one bed still shoulder-to-shoulder with mixed lettuces that I had planted from the first bulk order I had ever placed for seeds, an action that made me feel so completely that I had made the transition from gardener to urban farmer that I changed my LinkedIn profile to reflect this (even though I see the title, for me, as more of a personal descriptor rather than a career path).  

We cut these abundant patches of lettuces like hair, and the harvesting of them is fast.  It feels less precious, more basic, than the careful picking-of-the-outer leaves we had been doing on more generously-spaced lettuces in other beds.  It feels less connected to the local food hoopla or the know-your-farmer rhetoric now co-opted by industrial operations.  It feels ordinary.  It feels routine.  It feels natural.  It's just food, and people have been growing it for thousands of years.

Back at home, I see long swaths of hairy vetch and crimson clover and Austrian winter peas, all ready to be chopped down and laid to rest so that microbes can manage the rest of the job, in preparation for an entire truckload of biodynamic planting mix that's on its way from Farmer D.  So much is coming out of those beds now--daily salads and big-as-bats leeks and armfuls of herbs--that I think perhaps I may not even join the CSA this year (sorry, Charlotte and Wes, but you did this to me!).  Perhaps I'm finally at that point, where the efforts and outreach of all these years have brought me to where providing food for my daughters is habitual.  Everyday.  Easy.  Perhaps I need to honor more conscientiously what I have rather than augmenting it from elsewhere.  Perhaps it's time to focus on the next stage of this journey.

The knock-out rose bush I planted last year has exploded with flowers, and vases throughout my house abound with them, along with tall spikes of purple sage flowers and fistfuls of lemon balm.  And I realize, as I'm out there snipping, that we have flowered as well.  

Perhaps it's time to just sit with that. 

Why Composting Is Hard Work, and Growing Food No Longer Is

The Rest Is Still Unwritten (or, What's Happening with John of the Bottle Tree, Harry Hurt III, and Shawn Who Fell From the Sky)

So I come traipsing down the street, ten minutes late having gotten snarled into an almost-endless centrifuge of on and off ramps by a critical moment spent daydreaming when I should have been exiting to the right, not the left, in Atlanta's version of Spaghetti Junction.  John of the Bottle Tree (my bottle tree is made from his old Christmas tree) is already there, waving to me, from in front of the Morningside Farmer's Market. 

John crosses the street, we grab cups of coffee from a local joint named Alon's and sit on a bench to watch the world go by.  Or, rather, to watch his world go by. 

After serving in the U.S. Navy aboard a ship during the first Gulf War; after working at CNN/Turner Broadcasting these past 19 years (the first three with me); after weekends spent working at his friends' restaurant, Sun in My Belly, to learn the business that really interests him, and overnights spent making his own branded pickles at a shared commercial kitchen; and after several trips each year to his favorite place anywhere, Provincetown, Massachusetts, John took the steps needed to make his dream reality.  He saved money.  He secured two cool jobs in Provincetown (one being with a restaurant named Ten Tables, which features fresh ingredients from carefully selected local purveyors).  He quit Turner.  He leased his house.  He cleaned out his basement.  He's leaving.

Farmers market shoppers with baskets full of greens and bread and flowers stroll by us, many with the requisite large black dog they then tie loosely to the bench on which we are sitting so they can pop into Alon's and finish out the weekend's meal purchases.  A storm had pelted Atlanta the night before, golf-ball-sized hail, the works.  I sit there thinking of rain, and of change, and I remember a time I walked these very streets five years ago, right after I started writing this blog, when the editor-in-chief of Edible Atlanta asked to meet with me and subsequently offered me feature writing assignments (which led to writing for a regional publication, which led to writing for a national publication, which led to now).  I left that meeting just as it started to pour.  Umbrella-less, I felt the rain on my skin, and these words from Natasha Bedingfield's song, Unwritten, which was then a favorite song of my daughters', poured out of my mouth, audibly:

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten 

I may have even skipped.

Driving home, carefully navigating Spaghetti Junction this time, I think of John, how much I truly love him and how happy I am for him.   

And I think of Harry and Shawn, too, both at crossroads right now.  I wrote about Harry Hurt III in July, 2009, right as he set out on his cross-country trip in a Smart Car to find "a world of hurt" right here in the United States.  See that post here--it has one of my fave FoodShed Planet headlines of all time: "Once People Realize I'm Not Going to Blow Up Their Zamboni or Butcher Their Ballerinas . . ." (Harry's Journey with Two Turtles in a Smart Car).

photo: courtesy of Harry Hurt III

Now, Harry, an award-winning print journalist who wrote 98 participatory journalism columns for the New York Times (which is where both John and I fell in love with his brilliant writing and complete willingness to toss himself with reckless abandonment into his work) and then was unceremoniously laid off just about the time he endured a very public divorce (yes, he wrote about it here), has chronicled that road trip in a multi-sponsored non-fiction book that will be available online complete with embedded videos and photo albums.  Harry gives me early access to the whole shebang, and I read it cover to cover on a road trip of my own, my recent Spring Break with my family to south Florida.  I coil up in the back left-side seat of the Prius in such a way that the manuscript is higher than my head so I don't get nauseated reading while in a moving car.  Harry has me at the very first line: "Muse texts me in a tizzy."

Hours later, I drop the manuscript with a thud on the floor of the car, my right shoulder in a cramp, my heart heavy at what can only be one of the most moving endings I've read in a book in a long, long time.  My husband, not used to me being so silent and having thoroughly enjoyed his ability to drive exactly the way he wants without any comments from the peanut gallery, expresses remorse that I have finished the book.

"Can Harry write another one so you can read it on the way home?" he asks. 

Harry Hits the Road: Adventures in Love, Labor and Modern Manhood is about a man at a crossroads, who crosses the country in search of answers supposedly to the nation's problems, but really, in fact, to his own.  In that little Smart Car (here's my Smart Car test-drive, by the way), with two turtles in a pan of sloshing water, Harry meets with the George H. W. Bush, the 41st U.S. president, in Kennebunkport, Maine (walking distance from where I served as maid of honor when my friend Julie-with-whom-I-went-to-Europe-on-20-dollars-a-day got married); leaps out of a plane with the U.S. Army's Golden Knights, works on an Amish farm in Intercourse, Pennsylvania (yep); leads a mule-and-buggy tour in Charleston (and shows some real promise as a tour guide); straps on skates and practices with the Tragic City Rollers roller derby team in Birmingham, Alabama (this becomes quite unfortunate); works on a medical marijuana farm in California; and many other George Plimpton-esque escapades.  

With a truly terrific subplot involving his German girlfriend to whom he refers as Muse (and which escalates this book to movie possibilities), Harry Hits the Road becomes less a timely snapshot of America's world of hurt and more a classic quest of one man trying to find himself and not seeing the reflection in the mirror, written by someone who I dare say is one of America's best contemporary writers.  Bravo, Harry. (Sponsors of Harry Hits the Road will be sending out release announcements via Facebook and Twitter May 3--see a sneak peek of chapters 1, 7, 9, and 19 here, and follow Harry on Twitter@harryhurtiii).

And then there's Shawn.  Shawn Bard dropped out of the sky to lead a new garden for those in need.  She embraced the possibility so fully that I sensed there was deeper meaning to it for her.  I had no idea, however, about this. (Warning: that link requires a tissue.)

Fundraising for that garden is slow and other barriers are presenting themselves, and the path meant for Shawn has not become clear yet.  She, like John and Harry, is at a crossroads.  And the rest is still unwritten.

Read the complete lyrics of that song, and hear it for yourself.  And see if, perhaps, they stir something inside you as well:

Harry quotes St. Augustine of Hippo (who was born on the same day of the year as Harry): "The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only one page."

The words of my book are almost all written.  The words of the book of my life, and John's, and Harry's, and Shawn's, and yours, well, the rest is still unwritten.

The Rest Is Still Unwritten (or, What's Happening with John of the Bottle Tree, Harry Hurt III, and Shawn Who Fell From the Sky)

"And I Could Feel the Sun's Rays on Me Once Again"

 
I journeyed this past week, passing pecan groves leafing out in bright spring green, Vidalia onions, and the final seasonal oranges and grapefruits before I arrived at tomatoes at a south Florida community garden that looked worse for the wear since I saw it last, perhaps because of the new For Sale sign on the corner of its lot.  Or maybe the crops are just between seasons.  Or perhaps this is what sometimes happens to a community garden after its initial bloom of energy.

The Delray Beach Tourist Board should pay me, really, for how much I rave about that "Village by the Sea." (Here are some old posts, with pix, about it: Thinking Outside the Air-Conditioning Box and National Model of Sustainability.) It continues to be a model sustainable city, and I only regret I didn't have enough hours in the day to attend the city council meeting, catch the ribbon cutting for the new eco-lights and solar trash compactor at a city park (the family vetoed this exciting outing), and see how Buttons the Clown Goes Green at one of the many Earth Month events.

I did, however, once again, enjoy:

* the walkable, bike-friendly grid-design of the city (there are an uncountable number of bike racks and every single one always had at least one bike locked to it); 

* the predominantly local art, restaurants and shops (many of which are in preserved historic homes); 

* the "turtle-friendly" lighting ordinance that protects critical turtle nesting areas; 

* the pristine, free-access ocean beach; 

* and the general creative, comfortable, come-as-you-are vibe.  

I have family that lives about fifteen minutes from downtown Delray Beach (although we stay at a renovated Spanish-style hotel right at the beach now owned by Marriott--and let me just say Marriott could do more to go green), so that, of course, is a major highlight as well.

But my very fave thing about the last week?  My daughters woke me up every single day to catch the sunrise.  I had started this tradition years ago, and it didn't always work, what with being out later than usual at night (because there are actually places to go, to which we could walk), but this year they stated it as one of their favorite things to do and were up and out before the crack of dawn every single day. (And please, let's remember one of my daughters is a usually-late-sleeping teenager).

We had the beach practically to ourselves yet our infinitesimal place in the world became abundantly clear as the first rays of morning stretched before us.  As what can only be called "the golden orb" popped over the clouds as if someone backstage was yanking a pulley, our deepest desires for our lives snapped into focus, and we talked about literally everything that lived in our hearts.

In my attempt to keep this clarity front and center following our return home, I asked them, "How about we get up once a week, walk up our hill with our sports chairs and a picnic breakfast and watch the sun rise over the power lines?"  That's the only place to see it clearly where I live.

My younger daughter looked at me in amusement and replied, "Mom, seriously.  Watch the sun rise over the power lines?"

We returned home last night, just before the sun that we had seen rise started to set.  As we came down our hill, I wondered what shade of taupe or beige or other acceptably nondescript color that house in our neighborhood that caused the brouhaha before we left ended up getting painted.  And then, I saw it.  Yellow!  A lighter shade than before, a compromise clearly reached, yet unmistakably yellow.

And I could feel the sun's rays on me once again.

"And I Could Feel the Sun's Rays on Me Once Again"

Feeling Wild

It grows wild, the wisteria, vining recklessly up trees and around telephone polls, kudzu-like.  I pick its dangling flowers and stick my nose in them and inhale deeply, the way a mother might with her child's head after thinking she lost her in a store but then, several panicked moments later, finding her playing in a clothes rack.

"The wisteria is blooming!" I exclaim to my children, who no longer fit under clothes racks. "It smells to me how I imagine those Littmus Lozenges in the book Because of Winn Dixie taste.  You know, the ones that taste of melancholy."

"You say that every year," my older daughter says.

What I don't tell her is that every year it calls to me a little bit more.  The wildness.

What I don't tell her is that the arugula and hairy vetch and rape (so unfortunately named, that plant from which we get rapeseed oil, now called canola), all flowering with abandon, remind me, too, of the year that passed.  Of the inevitable cycles of life.  Of the new stage I'm entering. Of something stirring.

My younger daughter picks dandelions from our lawn, just like she does every year, this year for a penny a piece.  She's earning a small fortune, and it's a completely renewable resource with a fresh batch of picking out there each morning.  She looks out the window and says, simply, "There's money on the lawn," and out she goes.  She's industrious.  Entrepreneurial.  Committed.   She's also the only child in our neighborhood who does this, because, as far as I can tell, we have the only lawn without chemicals.  It feels a little reckless to me.  A little wild.

My neighbor caused a brouhaha yesterday by starting to paint his house yellow.  Yellow!  The architectural control board descended on the painters in moments, like crows on trash, and saved the neighborhood from this "eyesore."  My younger daughter has asked me at least once a year, "Tell me again what's wrong with a yellow house, Mommy?"

My friend Bob and I were asked to help start a new garden for those in need of food, community, and knowledge at an art gallery centrally located in the most densely populated part of our city.  I put the call out for a leader, and a woman named Shawn fell from the sky.  She had had some personal challenges last year, she told me, and she had decided to just jump in on things, to stop living on the sidelines, to take risks.  She twirled for my camera and smiled and threw her arms up and out into the endless sky.  After I met with her and think I actually saw ideas swirling in a cartoon bubble over her head, I couldn't stop thinking about her conscientious commitment to living life out loud.

My younger daughter and I went to get our toenails done, something we hardly ever do but sandal season is starting literally now, today, and the winter has been harsh, even for Atlanta, and this is something mothers do with daughters, even though I've never been a girly girl (and I have square feet like Fred Flintstone).  I reach for the red (having forgotten to bring my toxin-free nail polish with me) and my younger daughter says, "Get something different.  You always get red."

And so I do.  Thinking of the wisteria.  Thinking of the yellow house.  Thinking of Shawn.

And feeling wild.

Feeling Wild