Best Shots Monday--Blog Action Day for the Environment

Today is a Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers around the world will post about a single topic for the purpose of raising awareness and activism and discussion. This year, the topic is the environment. I normally participate in Tracey's Best Shot Monday on Mondays, so this week, I've decided to incorporate the topic of the environment into my post.

On Saturday evening, Ted and his brother Dave took our week's delivery from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscription and cooked a delicious meal. What you see in the photo above are herbed potatoes, broccoli and leeks with some garlic cloves thrown in for good measure.

Our friend Erik came over, and we had a lovely spread on our table. The boys made a soup which consisted of 4 different squashes, and they even roasted the seeds from the squash to add to the green salad. Ted also made a pumpkin bread that was absolutely perfect (and the only thing Cadence wanted to eat).

And to top it all off, we toasted some of Ted's homemade dandelion mead, which was made from dandelion flowers that he and Dave and Cadence had picked themselves this past spring.

So what does a home-cooked meal prepared and shared with friends and family have to do with the environment? Well, let me tell ya...

As a non-farmer or gardener (like many urban dwellers), our family is dependent on other people to grow and raise our food for us. And more likely than not, most of us have absolutely no idea who or what corporation is responsible for the meals we put on our tables to feed ourselves and our loved ones on a daily basis. We may know what company is selling the products in the stores, but we don’t know much else.

CSA attempts to connect communities to local farmers so that they develop a relationship with each other that goes beyond the transactional. This way, we can "put the farmer’s face on the food," which is what the Japanese who pioneered the concept of CSA refer to as teikei.

And indeed, we DID think of our farmers Tony and Dela Ends, whose family-owned and operated Scotch Hill Farm delivers our CSA subscription every Saturday. We toasted them as we ate, knowing that our meal was the product of their sweat and tears, as well as their love for the land and commitment to stewarding it gently and naturally. Ted and I have been to their farm and seen the incredible amount of work that goes into growing food without the use of pesticides and other chemicals. The weeds, oh, the WEEDS. And to have to pull them up with your bare hands…

We are also lucky in that Farmer Tony is an eloquent writer, having been a journalist for 14 years prior to becoming a farmer. I look forward to his newsletters every week. Here is an excerpt from one of his newsletters:

"What it's all about--Every spring, Dela and I feel the same strange mix of sensations. In a progression that starts in January, we plan, budget, finance, order, purchase, seed, tend to the start of a whole season of vegetable and herb crops. The first few weeks of delivery, we sing in our hearts a joyful praise of delicious spring greens and herbal delicacies that arrive first among more than 100 wonderful plant varieties our subscribers will experience over the next 5 months. Yet as closely as we work with the cycles of life, we catch ourselves thinking these first weeks we should be able to give you the same uniformity, weight and variety you can find in any convenience-oriented store, any day or night of the year. Here we all are trying to be conscientious about the Earth, trying to do something daring and different, eating outside the Happy Meal box. We read and hear about what’s happening to the Earth and its resources every day. We all know human beings cannot conveniently and efficiently deliver mass quantities of plants and animals without mass quantities of synthetic chemicals, fossil fuels and farm and business practices that ironically kill Natural diversity, kill local economies, kill families. Yet when we have to adjust our appetites, food schedules, meal expectations to Mother Nature, we still feel somehow that she should be like a modern grocery store manager and warehouse distribution center. Seasonal eating can be delightful and frustrating. You are called on to be creative with each week’s fresh produce. We'll do our best for you. We’ll offer suggestions. We’ll give you what Nature gives us, on her schedule for this climate, these soils, this year’s rain and temperature. Yet we share in the discipline and the mental work of healthful change together." –Tony Ends of Scotch Hill Farm

This was the newsletter that opened the delivery season this summer in June. It was before we knew that there would be absolutely no rain in July and floods in August, wiping out a significant portion of his year’s harvest for Tony and Dela and so many other small family farms.

And this is the other thing our CSA-provided meal has to tell us about the environment…Global warming is real, and it affects small-time farmers in a big way. Tony mentioned in one of his newsletters how he and his fellow farmers experience first-hand the climate-changing impacts of global warming. It makes it that much harder for them to produce our food in an environmentally responsible manner. If global warming gets worse, it will have a grave impact on food production worldwide.

That being said, I want to focus on hope. I know there is a lot more to the environmental crisis than local farms, but this is the part of the story I want to share because it's something I've come in contact with in my own life that gives me hope. There are a growing number of small family farms that are committing to providing local communities with food grown naturally and sustainably. As a parent, I want to provide my daughter with food that was grown not with money in mind but the well-being of the land and water, animals AND consumers in mind. As a parent, I want to know that our kids and their kids and so forth have a beautiful world to look forward to, instead of inheriting the burden of environmental disaster created by greed and gluttony on the part of individuals and corporations.

Learn more:
http://www.localharvest.org/
http://eatkind.net/
http://www.familyfarmed.org/
http://www.sowtheseedsfund.org/

See who else is participating in Blog Action Day here. And see other folks' best shot Monday on Tracey's Picture This.

Best Shots Monday--Playing with Color and Perspective

I recently got myself Marina's Underground Set List for Adobe Lightroom. These are basically different settings (presets) that can be applied to my RAW (uncompressed)images in Lightroom to achieve specific looks. They are a lot of fun to play with. You can apply the setting and then adjust the exposure, color, etc to make the photo look the way you want it to. The setting I used for this one is called Mello MaiTai3.

It kind of gives the photos an aged, yet dreamy feel to 'em, which I really like. For those of you who have cameras that can shoot in RAW format, I highly recommend it. You have much more options when you edit photos for correcting exposure and color and whatnot. I've been shooting exclusively in RAW since Lauren's wedding.

Something else that I continue to play with is getting a different angle or perspective on my photos by "shooting from the hip." Basically, that means shooting without looking through the viewfinder. I often put the camera all the way to the ground to get a bug's eye view, so to speak. My aim kinda sucks, so I never know what I'm gonna get.

Like this shot here...That's not what I was going for at all. I meant to get Cadence in the shot, but of course I was too close and my aim too poor. Still, I really like the result, which I think is more interesting than what I would've gotten had I actually gotten all of Cadence in the shot.

Go see more folks' Best Shots for the week on Tracey's Picture This!

Best Shot(s) Monday--Cadence: A Symphony in Multiple Movements

I am sad to say that I lost ¾ of Saturday to a god-awful migraine. I finally got desperate and called my mother to send me real migraine drugs via my brother. I haven't taken any of the more potent migraine pills since prior to getting pregnant w/ Cadence, but I just couldn't take it any more. Thankfully, my brother Jim brought drugs and food, so I was sufficiently revived by 6pm to take Cadence out for the last hour of daylight to play at our favorite park on the lakefront.

Here she is conducting an imaginary orchestra of trees, grass, leaves and pebbles while munching on an apple at the park.

And here she is commanding the lake and the rocks to give her more crescendo. Or maybe she's playing a fiddle? Who knows. She's quite dramatic with the hand gestures as of late.

She did actually get some swinging in, although she seems bored with most of the playground equipment nowadays.

Although she got into some good old-fashioned pole-swinging. I used to do that for hours on my grammar school playground.

And, of course, there was running involved. She sure took a long time eating that apple, too, I might add.

Finally, we're back home taking a breather. Oh, ignore the crumbs on the carpet, please. I didn't feel like taking out the vacuum cleaner just to take a few shots.

And that's it for my best shots for this week. Go see more at Tracey's Picture This!

Best Shots Monday--Many Happy Returns of Cadence's Birthday!

Today is our little Cadence's 3rd birthday. I'm off work today to spend the day with her, but we had the official celebration yesterday. That's also when she wore her birthday dress.

Poor thing. Her mama dresses her like a character out of Little House on the Prairie. I just hope she doesn't retaliate by wearing midriffs at the age of 9.

Ted's mom made a yummy banana cake in the shape of a flower. It was simply perfect. Although, I think Cadence covered it in her spit trying to blow out her candles. It literally took her 50 tries and then a little help from Dada to get those things blown out. Which is surprising, considering I KNOW for a fact that there's nothing wrong with them lungs of hers.

The big birthday present we got Cadence was a shiny new red Schwinn Roadster tricycle. We thought she'd be totally into it, but quite frankly, she was only interested in the bell at first. I think she was a little intimidated by the size. It took a little coaxing, but her uncles Dave and Jay got her to finally sit in it so I could actually get a photo.

Apparently, she feels much more comfortable on the trike when she's not wearing any clothes. She may be a future Naked Bike Rider in the making.

It's hard to believe Cadence was ever this little. I'm amazed at the big personality emerging from this still-growing body of hers. Thank you, Cadence, for being the best kid we could have ever asked for. We love you!

Go see more folk's Best Shots on Tracey's Picture This.

Best Shot(s) Monday--All In Green...

Ok, I hate to turn this blog into a fashion show for Cadence, but I'm kinda really digging the old vintage stuff I've been finding. Ted thinks this dress is GAUDY, but I like it on many levels.

First of all, it isn't pink or red or purple.

Second of all, it seems to make Cadence a bit thoughful and moody.

And lastly, I am just a total sucker for smockage.

Go see other folks' Best Shots Monday on Tracey's Picture This.