I'm Choosing Grace

I realize that it's been a while since I've updated this blog. I feel kind of guilty because I've been posting something EVERYDAY on my Other Blog. I guess I find the One-Photo-One-Paragraph-A-Day thing a tad more manageable. Well, like the title of this post suggests, I'm rejecting the guilt and I'm choosing grace for myself on my laziness around here, and I'm not even going to try to catch up. Thank you all for understanding.

And it seems that my laziness has spread from the world of blogging to taking photos of Cadence. Have I already mentioned this? I don't even remember. But yeah, it's true. I looked through my flickr stream and these are the the only photos of her I can find from August. I better get on the ball with that, or August is going to look pretty bleak when I make my annual calendar for the grandmas.

Well, I do have a few other shots of her, but they're set to private because they're part of photoshoots I did that I've chosen to keep private for the sake of the other kids in the photos. This one happens to be from last week's VBS at our church.

I know I said I wasn't going to try to catch up, but I did want to mention that we visited Scotch Hill Farm last Sunday to help weed the vegetable patches and to hang out with Tony and Dela, the farmers, and their CSA subscribers. Spending a few hours down in the dirt amongst the prickly squash plants pulling weeds with your own bare hands (although I recommend gloves) gives you a new perspective on something that seems as ordinary as putting food on your table.

And then I happened to pick up Wendell Berry's novel Hannah Coulter for my commute last week, and I felt that familiar lump in my throat and aching in my heart for a slower, more connected way of life.

And then while researching cooperative nursery schools, I stumbled upon this website that sparked the hope that our family might actually be able to participate in a housing cooperative someday.

Daydreams, I know...But I'm thinking of writing all of mine down in one place so I can refer to it regularly and keep hope alive...

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.

Tell Another Joke At the Ol' Choppin' Block

We had our first chance to taste the fruits of our labor this weekend with the first delivery through our CSA, Scotch Hill Farm. Oh, the yumminess! It really DOES make a difference to eat produce that's been locally grown and freshly picked.

And just in time for our first CSA delivery, I took a knife skills class with Dave and Becki at The Chopping Block Cooking School in Lincoln Square. It's no secret that I am a disaster in the kitchen and in need of some serious help. I can't tell you what a source of shame and embarrassment this is for me, considering Ted comes from a family that has some mad kitchen skillz. One of the things we want to do w/ our CSA delivery (which we're sharing w/ Dave and Becki) is to cook a meal together regularly with our goods. Sort of like Slowfood, I guess.

I wish I could say that the knife skills class bestowed on me some actual knife skills. Unfortunately, the muscle memory apparently can only kick in if you actually use the muscles involved in the skills. That would mean lots of practice for me.

I foresee a lot of stir-fry in our future...

Oh Crap.

You know, it was bound to happen. I bring my laptop home from work everyday, just in case something happens (like a blizzard, migraine, or the stomach flue) and I can't go into work the next day. So I shouldn't be too surprised finally to have my first accident involving liquid and my laptop.

Yes, it's true. Cadence spilled water on my laptop. I wasn't home when it happened, so I'm not sure what the details are. I don't think the laptop was on at the time, and it was in its closed position, but things aren't looking good...

After waiting a few hours for everything to dry, I tried turning on the laptop, and it just can't get itself started. It'll turn on, the fan will start, and then everything goes dead. It'll turn on, the fan will start, and then every goes dead again. And again. And again. Until I turn it totally off.

It's times like this that I can't help but start believing in miracles, because what else can you do but hope and pray or curse? Like how sheepish am I going to feel when I have to tell my boss the bad news tomorrow? The IT guys are totally going to make fun of me. I don't really care as long as they can resurrect the darn thing.

Well, that's what I get for leaving it lying around within reach of a toddler.

The good news is that I already uploaded my photos from our trip to our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm, Scotch Hill Farm, in Brodhead, WI. I spent most of yesterday weeding the strawberry patch and the lettuce rows, so I'm pretty sore right now. I have to say, though, that it was a great experience.

You definitely gain a deeper appreciation of where your food comes from, especially if you get your food from a local organic family farm. Holy cow, the WEEDS! The WEEDS!! And the ones invading the strawberry patch were the WORST. Crimeny! You could barely see the strawberry plants through the tall dense forest of weeds!

Pulling weeds is a great way to bond w/ your fellow human beings. I had a great time chit-chatting w/ my gal pals from church, collectively realizing what a blessing it was to have this opportunity to be close to the earth and see (literally) where our food comes from.

I highly recommend participating in a CSA if you have one available in youre area, or just spending some time getting your hands in the dirt.