A Life Organic

The Feminist Bride: The Ring

2012-01-27T13:37:00.000-08:00

I am not a Gollumn- but it when it came to thinking about a ring, I became just as bad as any of the creatures in Lord of the Rings. It was an instant case of my precious.

When I decided to ask my boyfriend to marry me, I did what any man would have done- I went out and got a ring. I found one that fit within my ethical framework. It hand crafted by a local craftsperson from metals I could stand behind. It was beautiful, practical, symbolic, and it wasn't going to cost us our first born child. I did what I would have wanted someone to do for me- at least that's what I thought.

Once I my proposal was accepted, I did what any bride to be would have done- I began to tell people about our engagement. I told everyone I could think of that we were engaged, and there first question was always- can I see the ring?

Now- if you recall, I proposed. I got him the ring. So every time I was confronted with the question- can I see your ring- I had the same obvious answer- I don't have one. For the first week I felt fine about my bare naked ring finger. I was a feminist- and I was standing up for female proposers everywhere- why did I need a ring?, I thought.
But as Christmas started to loom, and the onslaught of holiday family pressure mounted- I began to panic.

Questions like What will the relatives think? and Will they judge my new fiance because he didn't get me a ring? began to ring in my ears. And so, with a week to spare before Christmas eve, my partner (probably sensitive to my distress) handed me his mother's sweet-16 ring, which, mind you, had a very small, but noticeable diamond. In giving me this ring, it was not a gesture of- this ring is going to be your wedding ring, it was more of a- wear this and see if you like it- or a- I had this in a drawer and thought you might want to wear it type of gesture.

And- I was grateful. I slipped the slightly too large ring with the slightly too small diamond onto my finger. Relief was noticeable. So was the fact that the ring was too big. So, in order to beef up the amount of metal on my finger, and to keep his mothers ring from slipping from my slender fingers, I added my grandmother's gold wedding band for good measure. With a sweet sixteen ring from the 60s and a wedding band from another wedding on my ring finger, I marched into the Christmas cocktail parties.

However, my input subsitutionism only made matters worse. I was stuck explaining the small diamond and the wedding band from another wedding (as if a small diamond or a grandmother's wedding band were something to be ashamed of). And, to make matters worse, people who hadn't seen me, assumed I was already married, as I was double banded. At every turn I was confronted with the social expectation of what I should have on my finger- and from experience, De Beers has done an excellent job of convincing every American, that if you don't have a big new diamond on your finger- your engagement should be questioned.

After enough comments and enough cocktail parties, even I began to question myself. Thoughts like- I should just go out and buy myself a diamond- began to appear in my head. By the end of the holidays, I was compulsively googling diamond rings and trying to figure out how I could justify the purchase of such a rock to the ethical part of my brain.

Come the New Year, I was so exhausted by the whole ring diamond thought train, I was ready to give up. When a thought occurred to me. Why don't I just ask my new fiance to get me a ring?

Honestly, since I was the one who proposed, I thought I wouldn't get a ring until we were married. I mean, the guy doesn't ever get a ring until the wedding. However, when I proposed I clearly had NO idea of how deep the cultural expectations of engagement rings are in this country.

When I finally told my fiance that I couldn't take it anymore, and asked if he could buy me a ring- he laughed. I think he jokingly said something like you were such a feminist, so hardcore, and now look at you before hugging me and saying of course. My dry reply was probably something like being a feminist means be able to determine when you want to acquiesce to cultural norms.

So he got me a ring. We went back to the house of the ring maker who made his ring, and now I have a matching band, made out of the same piece of metal- and when I slipped it on, I knew I had made the right choice.

The Feminist Bride: A bride to be

2012-01-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

In the two months following my proposal, I have learned enough about the American wedding phenomenon to last me two lifetimes. With luck, this is the first, last, and only time I'll need to be a bride-to-be.

For those of you who haven't had the good fortune to become a bride in training, the psychology runs deep. Social training begins at a young age. The expectation of the proposal, the engagement, the ring, the dress etc, are all set before the story begins. Indeed, now that I'm a bride-to-be, I'm swimming in the expectations I've created and been coerced into over a lifetime.

Alongside many latent psuedo-protestant christian values (to be discussed later), my mind has been taken over by a deadly trilogy of societal norms. It is a lethal cocktail of one part Disney heroines, one part Martha Stewart, and one part 1950s Betty Crocker house wife fantasy.

Since becoming a bride-to-be, I have begun to dream of dresses that look like badly iced cupcakes, a million and one ways to gussy up ball jars, and the inescapable wedding registry gift: a brightly colored Kitchen-Aid mixer.

Since when did I want to wear something that was so ruffly I feel like I'm swimming in a pool of whipped cream? Or turn a thousand ball jars into a wedding alter? Or acquire a kitchen implement that is so heavy no one in gods name wants to pull it out of the closet?

Answer: Since the American wedding industry crept into my head and stole my brain. Out with my well formulated counter-cultural values- in with the dreams of an American girl so steeped in the wedding phenomenon she has forgotten who she really is.

Stay tuned for more adventures of The Feminist Bride and the search for a meaningful wedding.

The Feminist Bride: Engagement

2012-01-16T20:44:00.000-08:00

I'm a 28 year old white, upper-middle class American female, trained by Walt Disney and Cosmo and Seventeen Magazine. Since I have been able to understand what a wedding was, I have fantasized about how the man would propose. Where it would happen, how he would kneel, how I would act surprised but shyly confident beneath my blush. As a feminist I suppose I should be embarrassed about these confessions, but when it comes down to it, fantasies of this type are common. I am not at all different than any other woman I know. I don't know another woman my age who hasn't envisioned how her engagement would transpire. Ready to say yes or shake her head in reply.

Before I decided that I was ready to marry I hadn't the slightest idea of how deep my pre-conceptions of engagement were. It was not until I decided I was ready to wed that I discovered how thoroughly my expectations (and everyone else around me) were already imbedded in my American cultural soul.

Six weeks ago I flipped my socio-cultural norms on their head. I kneeled down on a beach in California, and asked my boyfriend for his hand in marriage.

Since that day I have come to understand that engagement is actually the last bastion of cultural misogyny.

A personal example: How many women in your life do you know who asked their partners to marry them?

Lesbians aside, your answer should be apparent. We are few.

And why- is it that it's difficult to be the one who asks? Is it that we are too weak or indecisive to execute? Is it because we don't know his ring size? No. No. and No. The only reason we as women allow ourselves to continue the gender biased process of a traditional engagement is because society hasn't let this last stand go.

True discrimination happens when something is so ingrained in society that no one notices it. Indeed, I myself hadn't realized I too expected the man to propose until when cleaning the house a few years ago, my boyfriend approached me (then on a ladder 8 ft in the air, in my filthiest clothes, hair full of cobwebs) with a small blue velvet ring box. My mind immediately jumped to Oh No! Not Here! He can't propose to me like this! It was at that moment I realized my assumptions. I had never stopped to consider that I might be the one to pop the question.

Similarly, it occurred to very few of our friends that in our case, my proposal was the perfect and most logical way for this to transpire. He had already told everyone he was ready to marry- he was just waiting for me. So when I became ready- I had to reevaluate my position on engagement. It didn't make much sense for me to tell him that I was ready, and for him subsequently to propose- where's the mystery, the magic, and the surprise in that?

So I set to planning. I created my fantasy of a proposal. There was a beach, a sunset, a hand crafted ring from a local artisan. And in the end, my proposal was accepted, and heartily I might add. It didn't faze him in the least that I had been the one to ask. I'm adding the comfortability with flipped gender norms to the many reasons I'm grateful for my groom to be.

And to all you ladies out there- here's an encouragement: Proposing was one of the most empowering actions I've ever taken. And, as a bonus, I got to create the proposal that I had always dreamed of.

They Pepper Sprayed MY Students!

2011-11-21T22:10:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't turned on a radio or television or the internet in 3 days: peacefully protesting students at UC Davis were dispassionately pepper sprayed at close range. It was video taped by phone and the video went viral. (It may be one of the most watched videos of the year on you-tube.) The event is a media disaster for UC Davis linking it as never before to police brutality and the squelching of free speech on campus.

Here is Ellie, a sophomore in the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major, who, together with former students of mine, was pepper-sprayed last Friday. Their action speaks to the power of the type emancipatory education that is being taught in SAFS. Civil engagement is one of the learning outcomes planned into the major, if this isn't civil engagement... I don't know what is!?

Here are some photos taken by my friend, Chris J Kim of the student General Assembly today where Chancellor Katehi attempted to make amends- unsuccessfully- with students.

Chancellor Katehi

Monday 11.21.11 General Assembly, UC Davis by Michele Tobias

Occupy is everywhere

2011-11-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

It seems to me these days, that Occupy is everywhere. Scribbles on hats worn backwards by skater teenagers in town, small snippets popping up in Obama's economic speeches, special editions on the nightly news.

In every city that I have visited over the past week- Occupy is there.

In Santa Cruz, the Occupiers have erected a 20' dome to keep out the rain. This is not burning man: this is is Occupy- and what would have seemed unlikely a month back-- a geodesic structure inhabited by anarchists, retired peace activists, and homeless folks alike plopping itself down in the middle of the front entrance to the county Courthouse-- is now common day.

In Davis- the most benign suburban valley town-- a whole encampment has sprung up in the park that usually houses the Farmers Market, behind a sign that reads 'All Together Everywhere'. A perfect, seemingly non-political, kum-ba-ya Davis version of Occupy.

Our friends in Oakland were at the protests that shut down the Port. They had great stories of blockading banks, marching thousands strong down the main streets of Oakland, of banding together against hostile hummer drivers.

Occupy exists both in the concrete- the visible, and in the ethereal- through tales like these. In conversation it comes up often. A close friend's 19 year old daughter, I was told, vacated the studio she's been subletting in San Francisco and moved into Occupy San Francisco- as if that was a place to move into. My friend mused first as she spoke about it- proud of her kids' choice to be politically engaged- then she mentioned that it seems, rather coincidently, that all of her house hold sleeping bags have gone missing.

So it is. The movement many of us have been waiting for has finally arrived. People are talking about it, the message is clear-

Join Us-

Occupy is Everywhere.

Little Capitalist Pig

2011-10-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

But no-one told me. My culture, as I understand it, values independence above all things- in part to ensure a mobile labor force, grease for the machine of a capitalist economy. Our fairy tale commands: Little Pig, go out and seek your fortune! So I did.

- p 14, High Tide in Tuscon, Barbara K.

Barbara, it seems that you've hit the nail on the head of my generational issue. As I wrote about in Community Development 101 my generation has inhaled the idea of movement as a right of passage. Uprooted from family, from home, from an environment where you know the streets, trees and shrubs out of habit and not study, we've chosen to blow where the wind takes us. On to wherever the next, better, sexier, more profitable job takes us. City life of the far-off land has been glamorized to the point that no rural town has a chance to keep its' youth. Before they can realize the difference between reality-TV and advertisements, they are already sold.

I was too.

Go Little Pig! I breathed in.

I exhaled the hot breath of a teenager, dying to yank my fifth generation roots out of the fertile soils of coastal California.

When my father yelled at my 18 year old self- Your great-great-great grand parents moved to California to get an education! I yelled back- So what?! I'm moving to New York.

And I did.

A conversation with Barbara K

2011-10-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

I'm reading for the first time High Tide in Tuscon by Barbara Kingsolver. I can't believe I haven't read this before. So much of her analysis, her prose, resonates with what I think and feel and believe.

In honor of that creative inspiration and the brain synapses firing off around my skull, I'm going to do a bit of back and forth with Barbara K (and not Barbara Kummer- for those of you who know my grandmother).

Check out the ongoing conversation on the sidebar link- Conversations with Barbara K.

Freewheelin' Again

2011-10-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

One of the reason's I appreciate the Freewheelin' Art Show is because it gives me a fabulous excuse to make art. Funny prints, heart warming prints. And better even than the reason to make art- it give me the opportunity to share art with friends.

Occupy Santa Cruz

2011-10-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

Finally made it down to Occupy Santa Cruz. They've got an incredible system and set up. Committees, an internal food system, a complete media team. Props to the body itself for the organizing. They were showing V is for Vendetta in conjunction with the Guerilla Drive In- not exactly the type of revolution that perhaps Occupy is going for (ie: violent)- but a good reminder, on multiple levels of what can happen when people come together to de-colonize their minds.

No longer newbies

2011-10-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

An update on the chicken project... the most recent photos of our now-grown chickens.

Just Label It!

2011-10-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

In case it hasn't come across your radar, over 400 organizations are coming together right now to attempt to get the FDA to label genetically modified organisms. The US lags a decade behind all major economies in making this important step toward consumer awareness of what is in their food. Perhaps this is because we are the largest grower and exporter of GMOs. If you haven't yet gotten involved, check out http://justlabelit.org/ for information and a quick online petition. Better yet, contact your congressional representative and tell them you support the labeling of genetically modified products. The time is now, we've gone too long without labeling, and now that GMOs are in 80% of our processed foods, it's high time we knew.

Eat the Rich

2011-10-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the Occupy Wallstreet # Occupy Everything protests and sit-in, I'm reposting a solid article by Brian Holmes. Holmes, it seems, was perfectly timed in his analysis- just about one month after he wrote this, several people began to camp out on Wall Street in New York City. Now, weeks later, that camp out has spread like wild fire to dozens of financial districts around the nation- and the cries of protesters are now loud enough that mainstream has begun to take notice. I predict that this movement will continue to spread. The dissatisfaction of a nation starved for equality and true democracy- will not continue to wait.

Written by Brian Holmes

POSTED ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31ST, 2011 AT 6:21 PM.

Americans like to keep things simple and direct, so here it is: they rule. For the simple reason that they (the ruling class) have all the money. The top 5% of US citizens own almost 2/3 of the country’s wealth, or 63.5%. Compare that massive share to 12.8% for the bottom 80% — that is, “the rest of us,” as Rhonda Winter puts it in the excellent article from which this pie chart is taken.

Now go a little further, into the research she drew her chart from — a briefing paper of the Economic Policy Institute called “The State of Working America” — and you find that the top 1% holds over 1/3, or 35.6%, of the country’s net worth. Elsewhere, in The Nation, you will find such interesting tidbits as “In 2006, the top 0.01 percent averaged 976 times more income that America’s bottom 90%” — a thousand-fold gap between “them” and “the rest of us.”

click it for the big picture

The whole point is, though, that very few people go any further, because very few people have any idea how unequal the United States has become. We are, apparently, a nation of idealists, which is a good thing. We are also, however, a nation of blind idealists, which is a pretty bad thing across the board. A couple of psychologists named Norton and Ariely did a study comparing people’s ideas of what inequality is and what it should be with the actual facts on the ground. Anyone interested in creating a more progressive political order should turn up the attention meter right here.

It turns out that in strictly economic terms, Americans are not full-on egalitarians, but on average, they think everyone should have at least a piece of the pie. They think the top 20% should have around 30% of the wealth, the bottom 20% should have around 10%, and so on according to a smoothly sliding scale. They realize it’s not true, of course, and they estimate that the top 20% may in reality be holding over half of the spoils. What they do not realize is not only that the top 20% swallows a whopping 85% of the pie (with, of course, the top 5% taking the lion’s share of that). Even more crucially, they also do not realize that the bottom 40% — what economists call the 4th and 5th quintiles — are for all practical purposes off the chart, simply invisible, because they (or maybe “we,” depending on who you are) own only 0.2% and 0.1% of the wealth respectively. Let’s put that in plainer terms. Almost half the people in this country get virtually nothing from the deal.

source: Norton and Ariely, pdf here

I would draw two conclusions from this psychological study. The first is that the United States is ripe (and even wildly overdue) for a political revolt against the plutocracy. No doubt you will reply, “But that’s exactly what the Tea Party is calling for!” And so they are…in part. But every day the newspaper shows that most of the Tea Party rage against Wall Street is being successfully channeled into rage against Big Government, while the resentment against taxation acts to preserve the massive tax cuts that for the past thirty years have overwhelmingly benefited the super-rich. An atavistic fear of Obama’s black skin and a constant barrage of ideology from Fox News and the Koch brothers’ think tanks and political action committees seem to be doing the job just perfectly for the plutocracy. However, as unemployment rises even while the profits of the super-rich increase, I am not sure this situation can go on indefinitely. Beware the day when right-wing rage from the red-state grassroots finds a serious political translation, because even if it castigates the rich, the sound of that vengeful and nationalistic voice will not be agreeable to your ears.

This leads to my second conclusion. We organic intellectuals on the Left — and this “we” is finally serious, I am speaking to those who might actually read this site — are not doing our job. We have no Tea Party. We are for equality, social democracy, outright socialism, a workers’ revolution, all power to the multitudes or whatever, but we are not getting the word out to the left-of-center masses. We have the information, thanks to studies like the ones I have been quoting, but we are not able to turn information into action, not even on the simplest of demands: tax the rich and control the banksters. Yet these very simple demands could lead directly onwards to more progressive policies that we are all support, such as cutting the military budgets, achieving universal health care, restoring public education and replacing the prison economy with job-producing community development programs. It’s clear that the Dems will not do these things, because in their vast majority they belong to the upper 5%. So we have to create the conditions for a political revolt from the grassroots, and we have to do it in a way that is not simply cooptable by smooth-talking people like the current president.

Here’s one idea, only one among many. Copy the image at the top of the article and take it down to your local button-making shop. Pick a fat button and ask them to put big letters around the bottom that say, “Eat the Rich!” Get a whole bunch of those buttons, wear them, distribute them and start talking to whoever you meet about the facts and figures that are discussed in this blog post and in any of hundreds of readily available left-of-center publications. Start an open, public, regular meeting group to discuss those facts and figures and many other things that make the present what it is. Do your job as a public intellectual, educate the people around you and learn from them, build grassroots awareness and rage wherever your roots happen to be. Hold the course in that direction as the unemployment figures rise, and make contact with as many similar groups as you can find. All of this will lead in very interesting directions. Keep it up and maybe soon we’ll all get together for a big ‘ole political banquet and finally eat the rich!

Family

2011-10-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

This past week my grandmothers partner passed away. I say partner because Jim O'Loughlin was not her husband or her boyfriend, and he was more than just a friend. Grammy aptly called him her partner, and the rest of the family agreed.

When he passed I got to witness what it's like to live near your family. When crisis hits, who sounds the alarm, who makes the call, who responds. In this case we all did. With the advent of my sister moving north from San Diego- there were many hands to be on deck when my grandmother called. We appeared to handle paper work, to book churches. We appeared to clean the house, to cook for guests, to arrange flowers. We appeared to sing at his funeral, to take up an entire pew with our bodies, to support my grandmother in whatever she needed.

That, I thought to myself all weekend, was why I moved home. That, I thought to myself, is what life is really about. It's about relationship. It's about showing up when the call is made. When you are needed. When you are called upon.

I didn't have to book a flight, or worry about whether I'd miss it because of the weather in Chicago.

I, along with the rest of my family, heeded the call, came together, and out of support and love we became partners, more than just friends- we are family.

The Truck Stop

2011-08-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

Thank you Ms Fran Grayson! Happy to welcome a new quick and inexpensive organic food source (not to mention the first food truck) in Santa Cruz. Stop on by The Truck Stop and Filling Station on Mission Street at the Goodwill drop near Bay Street. Officially opening Saturday August 27th!

Appreciating Abundance

2011-08-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

CSAs in the Central Valley

2011-08-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

While a graduate student at UC Davis, I was privileged to work on a large research project on CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in California's Central Valley. The essential findings of that project have just been published in an easy to read report. Please click title to be taken to a pdf of that report and share with others who may be interested!

Dahlias

2011-08-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

It's gotten to the point in the season when we have too many flowers. I mean (comically), I suppose you can never have too many flowers, unless you live in a small space and grow 1/3 of an acre of dahlias with little time to market.

Regardless, I thought I'd share a little beauty to brighten your day (and, if you know anyone with a wedding coming up, drop me a line!) ...

Miel

2011-08-13T15:29:00.000-07:00

First batch of honey out of our hives. Just one frame. Must leave enough for the bees themselves.

Sweet to have another life skill. Making honey could be as satisfying a spinning straw into gold....

Room to Bathe

2011-07-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

In response to the constant badgering about pictures of our home in progress, I oblige. Our bathroom, save the solar water heating apparatus is finished. We're still looking for some engineering help on that one, if you know anyone, do tell. More updates on that anon.

New Arrivals on the Homestead

2011-06-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

Now that I've finished with school and have few plans to leave for the summer, we've decided it a good time to raise some new chickens. Our older ladies, bless their hearts, are more pets than producers these days-- really mere place holders for the egg layers of the future. Breeds of choice for this new batch: New Hampshire Reds, Delawares, Speckled Sussex, Black Australorps, and my personal favorite Buff Orpingtons. Chicks, if you haven't raised them before, may be the worlds most endearing baby creature. Their fuzzy heads and butts would melt a heart of stone.

Rebuilding the American Dream

2011-06-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Last night we came home to eat dinner, and entertained a live stream of Moveon.orgs' Roots concert and Van Jone's talking about the fall of the American dream. The talk was so good I've decided to repost it. Jones, who was targeted by FOX news when he joined the Obama administration to work on a Green Jobs initiative, is now speaking out about the 'broke' economy and who broke it. Grab your lunch, sit down with some friends and check it out:

Watch live streaming video from rebuildthedream at livestream.com

Teaspoons of change

2011-05-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

This week I will graduate. My best girlfriend brought me a perfect white box with a gift inside, to celebrate the occasion. I lifted a set of silver teaspoons out of their wrapping.

Teaspoons, I thought. Perfect.

Everything these days seems to be coming in waves.
Waves of change. Oceans of change.
Jobs and marriage and schools end and houses- big grown up change.

A teaspoon I thought. Perfect.

I could use a teaspoon right now. To moderate my ocean, season the transition.
Though I know I can't stop the flood, can't avoid the high waters.
A request to the gods. Once the current deluge abates, I request mere teaspoons of change.

The Good Life

2011-05-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

There is nothing better than a good dinner with close friends. Here in the land of milk and honey, we are fortunate as it happens often. Not only does the quality of the food seemingly get better the more we learn to grow and cook, the quality of the relationships too are aging like a very fine wine.

Dahlia time

2011-05-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

Every spring the pressure comes on. Our dahlia tubers are sprouting- coming up for air.

Our serious passion for dahlias this year has out grown us. From the 800 row ft of gopher wire protected nursery beds we planted last year, we have thousands, literally thousands of tubers. It's almost laughable. With no tractor in sight, we've been digging beds by hand (and- soil forgive our sins, a rototiller) for almost a month now. We're set to have somewhere around a quarter of an acre of dahlias. Lord have mercy on our souls. For anyone in the area between July and October- do come by and pick a bunch for your sweetheart.

No Pants

2011-05-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

This blog post has nothing to do with politics or with ecological living. It's simply funny. It's a guide for the young ladies of the world who have grown up in an age of lycra- an age that has blended the concept of a pair of pants and a pair of tights so completely, it's difficult to distinguish what you can wear outside. It's also for the California yoginis out there- who think that's it's ok to rock yoga apparel at any time of the day in any situation. Ladies in question, please take note.
Click on the image for a larger jpeg.
(Reprinted from the Huffington Post)

B-town Food

2011-04-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

This post finds me in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NYC. A California foodie girl amidst a sea of concrete, a barren pre-spring reality. I always find my reaction fascinating when I land in a city. The food system is so different here. Gone is my chicken and trees that bare, gone are the blackberries and collards that grow like weeds. Gone is the possibility of foraging. To tell you the truth, having lived near such abundance for so long, cities make me a tad nervous.

Fortunately, as featured earlier on this blog (http://alifeorganic.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html), Brooklyn has become a hotspot for all things local. My previous impression is that the food scene here is a tad on the precocious side, a lot of energy into the style of the offering, much less the substance. Not grounded literally in dirt like much of the West and Midwest.

Regardless, being in Park Slope, I figured I'd check out the old school heart of the Brooklyn foodie movement, so I made a pilgrimage to the famed Park Slope Co-op, hoping to be able to pick up some morsels for a late dinner. When I arrived at the exterior door, I was greeted by two women in bright orange construction vests that prominently proclaimed: PARK SLOPE FOOD COOP- members on their shifts I assumed. They did not stop me. At the interior entrance, there was a very nice man who was checking IDs, and giving some sort of receipt to enter and by, when I approached and looked quizzical, he told me that if I wasn't a member already, I would have to go up stairs and sign up for a two hour member sign up class and tutorial, then I would have to pay a membership fee and deposit.
Wow, I thought, hard core! I let him know I don't live in Brooklyn, nor do I intend on living near here ever. At this, he looked sympathetically at me. His eyes seemed to pity that I wouldn't ever know the glory of being able to shop here. Well, after a pause he said, would you like a tour anyway? Grateful for opportunity, I said yes. A woman appeared, another member volunteer I assumed, and gave me a brief tour. During that few minute walk through, I ascertained a few things.
1) It's about one third of the price of a regular natural foods store,
2) It was small, cramped and totally packed with people, and
3) The hipster crowd I'd expected was only a small portion of the the scene- there were people of all stages, classes, and ethnicities. Way more diverse than any natural food store I know of in Cali.

I was impressed. This place was roots. Unpretentious, inexpensive, and diverse, it immediately made me comfortable. I felt more at ease surrounded by the intimate, communal bounty the space provided.

On my way back to the apartment I'm staying in, I stopped by a small Jamaican raw organic food store on Washington Ave. Again, a mix of cultures challenged my assumptions. After eating a delicious smoothy and some soup, I literally ate my judgement. Good organic, locally made food. Go Brooklyn. Go.

American Thought Police

2011-03-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

March 27, 2011

American Thought Police

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state’s political turmoil. He started a blog, “Scholar as Citizen,” devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council in pushing hard-line conservative legislation at the state level. Then he published an opinion piece in The Times, suggesting that Wisconsin’s Republican governor has turned his back on the state’s long tradition of “neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.”
So what was the G.O.P.’s response? A demand for copies of all e-mails sent to or from Mr. Cronon’s university mail account containing any of a wide range of terms, including the word “Republican” and the names of a number of Republican politicians.
If this action strikes you as no big deal, you’re missing the point. The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment.
The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.

The demand for Mr. Cronon’s correspondence has obvious parallels with the ongoing smear campaign against climate science and climate scientists, which has lately relied heavily on supposedly damaging quotations found in e-mail records.
Back in 2009 climate skeptics got hold of more than a thousand e-mails between researchers at the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia. Nothing in the correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety; at most, we learned — I know this will shock you — that scientists are human beings, who occasionally say snide things about people they dislike.
But that didn’t stop the usual suspects from proclaiming that they had uncovered “Climategate,” a scientific scandal that somehow invalidates the vast array of evidence for man-made climate change. And this fake scandal gives an indication of what the Wisconsin G.O.P. presumably hopes to do to Mr. Cronon.
After all, if you go through a large number of messages looking for lines that can be made to sound bad, you’re bound to find a few. In fact, it’s surprising how few such lines the critics managed to find in the “Climategate” trove: much of the smear has focused on just one e-mail, in which a researcher talks about using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a particular series. In context, it’s clear that he’s talking about making an effective graphical presentation, not about suppressing evidence. But the right wants a scandal, and won’t take no for an answer.
Is there any doubt that Wisconsin Republicans are hoping for a similar “success” against Mr. Cronon?
Now, in this case they’ll probably come up dry. Mr. Cronon writes on his blog that he has been careful never to use his university e-mail for personal business, exhibiting a scrupulousness that’s neither common nor expected in the academic world. (Full disclosure: I have, at times, used my university e-mail to remind my wife to feed the cats, confirm dinner plans with friends, etc.)
Beyond that, Mr. Cronon — the president-elect of the American Historical Association — has a secure reputation as a towering figure in his field. His magnificent “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” is the best work of economic and business history I’ve ever read — and I read a lot of that kind of thing.
So we don’t need to worry about Mr. Cronon — but we should worry a lot about the wider effect of attacks like the one he’s facing.
Legally, Republicans may be within their rights: Wisconsin’s open records law provides public access to e-mails of government employees, although the law was clearly intended to apply to state officials, not university professors. But there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like.
Someone like Mr. Cronon can stand up to the pressure. But less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.
What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed.

Republican War on Working Families

2011-03-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't written about the Wisconsin rally's yet. But I saw a video today that moved me to do so. Finally, the Democrats and the labor movement have figured out to to frame an issue effectively! The video, aptly named, is called 'The Republican War on Working Families."

(To see the video click here.)

The labor movement, which has been gasping its last breath in the wake of 30 years of legislation that has stripped the movement of almost all support- is kicking. And kicking hard! There are hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of states that have come out in support of the Wisconsin workers, who have staged a sit-in to protest the Republican governors proposal to curtail collective bargaining, the life blood of unions.

By connecting the Republican party to the death of the middle class American dream- the union rank and file have created an effective message. Let us only hope that this Mainstreet Movement grows to be an effective counter weight to the Tea Party. I hope that the Mainstreet Movement will argue for the restoration of middle class benefits, social services, education, and the accountability of the individuals and corporations that caused the financial crisis at the nexus of this recession. Lastly, I hope that the Democratic party capitalizes on the momentum and rage heard across the nation over the last month. They need to continue to make the connection between Republican & Tea Party aspirations to cut all government benefits and services with the tax cuts for the wealthy that were extended just months ago. I'm pleading with the Democratic leadership to wake up and smell the coffee. Join the chorus calling for the end to the Rublicans War on Working Families!

Political Ecology of Story

2011-02-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

I just joined a group of students at Berkeley- for wine, around a wooden table- at a French delicatessen named after one of my favorite animals- the chicken. Connecting over glasses of vino as academics have done for eons. En vino veritas- in wine there is truth. I felt seriousness, a connection that I miss at Davis- a criticality that they bring to what they are doing and where they are. It challenged me.

We met with a professor with a big heart. A man who once wore the vesicle on his sleeve – but had it gnawed at by Berkeley. By vested interests. By moneyed interests. By forces larger than any of us around that wooden table have seen in battle.

It’s so important for students to understand what their mentors are going through- the hazing they’ve encurred to get where they are- and what their research threatens. I’ve only heard the story from my mentors, who are young, and yet unscathed. Without the shared knowledge we are all complicit in our own silos- captive- alone- isolated. Thinking that we are the only ones to feel this way or that.

But we are not alone. Somewhere in an office somewhere- there is someone very much like us- wishing they were telling their story around a wooden table of like minds with some cheap wine to loosen the tongue.

Eco Farm, again

2011-01-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

I'm here at ecofarm again. Every January, this conference serves as a yearly reflection on my life- a pause to look back at where I've been, and forward to the possibilities that I am creating for myself in the next year. Over the past six years I've gone from student to professional to student again. From attendee to presenter and back. I've been a farmer, a film maker, an organizer. Thinking about it now, it seems a perfectly even representation of my chaotic self- my ability to shape shift it seems with the seasons. A chameleon for all times. Though sometimes difficult, I try to appreciate the different hats I've worn- my ability to wear boots and heals, blue jeans and business suits. Which costume will befit my next post has yet to be seen. For now I'll just sit by the fire. Waiting for the moment to let the next possibility unfold.

US- China State Dinner Menu

2011-01-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

When I first saw the menu for the State dinner to host China's president Hu Jintao in the Huffington Post, I immediately thought-- the Obamas are such foodies! Pretty much all seasonal veggies, and the few accouterments easily preservable from fall. Domestic meat and wine. Nice work White House chef team!

First

D'Anjou pear with Farmstead Goat Cheese Fennel, Black Walnuts, and White Balsamic

Second

Poached Maine Lobster
Orange Glaze Carrots and Black Trumpet Mushrooms
Wine: DuMol Chardonnay "Russian River" 2008 (California)
Lemon Sorbet
Main

Dry Aged Rib Eye with Buttermilk Crisp Onions
Double Stuffed Potatoes and Creamed Spinach
Wine: Quilceda Creek Cabernet "Columbia Valley" 2005 (Washington State)
Dessert

Old Fashioned Apple Pie
with Vanilla Ice Cream
Wine: Poet's Leap Riesling "Botrytis" 2008 (Washington State)

Community Development 101

2011-01-19T19:18:00.000-08:00

After seventeen months pursuing an MSc in Community Development, I can boil most of what I'm taking away into two simple words:

Stay Home

My generation, generation Y that is, has been enculturated to believe that success is defined by how far you go in life. Go, meaning of course many things-- how much money you make, how much you travel and, quite frankly, how far away you make it from your home town. In the small town that I'm from, anyone that ended up staying home was immediately chastised- "What's wrong with them" we would all say, "I guess they can't make it in the real world." Following this logic, most of my peers moved to the city. Metropolitan areas all over the county have played a large role in the depopulation of the rural and peri urban landscape. And who wouldn't blame youth for going? Cities boast exciting nightlife and professional opportunities.

But- after nigh on two years studying community development, I've decided the most powerful choice a young person who is interested in social change can make, is to Go Home.
When you work in your home town, or close to it, you avoid the neocolonialist issues that come with bringing your ideas and opinions about how others should develop/rehab/change their community. When you work in your home town you bring your inherent knowledge of political problems with you. When you work in your home town, you have relationships that you can rely on, and people you can trust. Let's face it, when you're from somewhere, you immediately have more street credibility walking into a room than you would as a newcomer. And, more importantly, you have more at stake- which ultimately will make you a better community developer/advocate etc.

Having something at stake is perhaps one of the reasons people choose not to work in their own communities. When I was working for environmental change in Central America, I had stop working before my goal was accomplished- and at the time it was easy to get up and leave the issue without a thought about long term ramifications of my actions. Were I to be making those same decisions for my own community, I would not have walked away, fearing community consequence and ultimately the tarnishing of my good name.

I suppose this post is in reaction to what I see as a glorification in the academy of those who choose to work in low income communities of color both domestically and abroad. Of course, those communities need allies, they too need the resources and connections that we as outsiders often have. But I wonder that it may be better for those of us from privilege to work in our own communities- changing the very structures at home that disempower other communities from changing themselves.

While I realize that not everyone has a home community that they identify with, and that not everyone wants to go home, going home has been a powerful decision for me, as a young community developer, to make. It hasn't been easy, and there are definitely nights when I wish I was in a city with more available restaurant choices, but ultimately, I'm very happy with my choice. I feel that the decision to return to my home community has given me a location to engage in true praxis- challenging my assumptions about my community, my self, and ultimately, discovering the most affective way for me to engage in social change.

Olive Oil Take 3

2011-01-05T22:01:00.001-08:00

For the third year running Damian and I participated in the UC Davis Students for Sustainable Agriculture olivepick on the UC Davis campus. I took a greater leadership role in organizing it this year, with mixed results. For the last few years two dozen or so students and alumni have harvested a ton of olivesand taken them to a local farmer for pressing. This year, with the expectation that we would have a similar turn out, and with a therefore similar infrastructure to handle the pickings, we were completely blown away by the attendance and subsequent poundage the group harvested. Due to good publicity (ie the announcement going out on random Bay Area listserves) 130 people turned out and collectively picked 7300 lbs of olives. As the day wore on it began to rain and our infrastructure (folding table) proved inadequate, the boxes that people picked into melted, the olives spilled, and our pick overwhelmed the farmer we had contracted with to press. By the end of the day, everyone - particularly myself- was wet, anxious, and upset.

Though it felt like a disaster mid-flight, participants and onlookers were so excited about the turn out from event that we've formed a team to expand the event for next year, encompassing more on-campus programing, agricultural education, and the alumni network. And Damian and I, we went home happy, between the two of us we picked 5 gallons of oil in one day very full day.

As we watch...

2010-12-14T17:16:00.000-08:00

If you haven't called your senator or congress person yet to let them know your pissed about the tax breaks for the super wealthy, I'd highly recommend it- at the very least it's cathartic!

In Solidarity with British Students

2010-12-10T08:28:00.001-08:00

As was the case a year ago here in California, the British state moved in a narrow vote this week to triple the tuition of UK students. Citing government budget deficits, the brits are following California and other US states in out pricing many students. Tens of thousands of students have protested in the last several days, denouncing the hikes, which will result in hike that is the equivalent jump from US$4,700 to $14,000.

I'm here in California reading about the protests, in mental solidarity with students across the Atlantic. This move by parliament is another step in the road towards the further fulfillment of a neoliberal agenda that were it to have its way, would not have any state sponsored services, but rather only fee-for-service. Moves like this will ultimately exclude lower class citizens from their right to education.

More on the protests if you click the title.

No Country is Free without Free Press

2010-12-09T16:18:00.000-08:00

I am reposting this OP-Ed because it was not, nor will it be widely published in the US. I believe firmly that no country is free without free press, and though I value national security, I do not value it above the first amendment rights of free speech. I believe that a free press, that which Assange is just one of millions, is essential to a democratic government.

"The Truth Will Always Win"
By Julian Paul Assange, WikiLeaks Founder
Op-Ed for The Australian today:
07 December 10

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.

Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests."

Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

Young Farmer Mixer

2010-10-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

The young farmer mixer held last Thursday at Pie Ranch in Pescadero was full of energy and enthusiasm for building a new agricultural vanguard to replace America's aging farm population. Over a hundred people showed up to participate in workshops, shuck corn, feast, and watch the newest iteration of The Greenhorns, a documentary about young farmers in America.

Although I sound like quite a pessimist in the Sentinel article below, it was hard to escape

the joy and excitement generated by so many young people excited about farming. I did however run into a few friends who are farming and having a tough time making their land tenure situation work. More fodder for my MSc thesis on land tenure for small and beginning farmers.

Young Farmer Mixer This Thursday!

2010-10-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of young farmers expected at 'Greenhorns' screening tonight By Jennifer Pittman Posted: 10/27/2010 08:19:00 PM PDT http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_16451368?

PESCADERO - Hundreds of young farmers are expected to leave their wet fields early today to gather for some local food, music, workshops and a preview screening of "The Greenhorns," a documentary about a burgeoning new generation of American farmers.
The Greenhorns is a 3-year-old nonprofit organization focused on rallying young farmer entrepreneurs into an agricultural movement. It has grown out of a film project of the same name by Severine von Tscharner Fleming, a UC Berkeley graduate who is screening her documentary at regional farm events across the country before its public release in 2011.
The film includes interviews from several local young people for the project including farmers from Freewheelin' Farm in Santa Cruz and Pie Ranch and Blue House Farm in Pescadero. Pie Ranch is hosting the event starting at 3 p.m.
"It's a really powerful and fascinating world to be involved in," said Jessica Beckett, a UC Davis graduate student and "market gardener" who toils part-time in a 1-acre parcel on Ocean Street Extension in Santa Cruz. "It's a cultural movement."

Beckett, who sells flowers and avocados as La Semenza Farm, plans to attend the event to socialize and gather more information for her thesis on land access and the viability of farming. The harsh economic reality of the business can be daunting for young farmers.
"I see people going into it and they're not making money," Beckett said. "A lot of them are getting spit out the other side."
The organization has already hosted 37 similar mixers across the nation "to create a space for young farmer entrepreneurs and up-and-comers from the nation's leading agricultural state to hang out, network, share skills and connect with statewide support organizations." A couple of the events in the Pacific Northwest drew more than 300 people, according to von Tscharner Fleming, who expects an equally good turnout in Pescadero because the area is home to many teaching farms.
"It seems like the community is a prerequisite to progress in our agricultural system," von Tscharner Fleming said. "Farm by farm, the changes we make in our growing practices and policies that govern the way land is managed - all that community-building happens in face-to-face contact. Greenhorn has done a lot of stuff online. That's how we're familiar with communicating, but you can't get around how in-person time is the center of our culture."
Although young farmers often don't own land and often use novel business models, the greenhorn phenomenon is hard to track, but a 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture census found that principal farm operators in California under the age of 35 made up a greater percentage of the total than they did in 2002, according to "The Greenhorns."
Santa Cruz has been out front of the young farmer movement but it is one of the most difficult places to get established due to land costs and regional market saturation, von Tscharner Fleming said.
"We're seeing people coming from Indiana and Kansas and New Hampshire to apprentice in California and then leaving and bringing those practices with them to farm elsewhere," she said
Representatives of several support organizations will be at today's mixer including people from UC Cooperative Extension, Mendocino Organic Network, Living Lands Agrarian Network, the Center for Land-Based Learning, California Farmlink and Ecological Farming Association.

POSTPONED due to rain until Nov 7th: Freewheelin' Harvest Party+Art Show

2010-10-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

Living in a Yurt

2010-10-13T14:43:00.001-07:00

Recently people have been asking me a lot of questions about life in a yurt. What's it like? they ask. Do you miss living in a house? My answer thus far is well, No. Life in a yurt is beautiful, it's simple, it's elegant.

Like other people we study, work, and even throw the occasional dinner party. The simplicity of our home does not deter us from having guests, lighting candles, nor entertaining. In fact, we almost like it more.
We dine inside an example of alternative living. A manifestation of the idea that there are ways that your life can be simultaneously lower-impact and beautiful to boot.

Pictures of the homestead (in process)

2010-09-27T11:03:00.001-07:00

I've had several requests from readers to see more visuals of our homestead in process. Here I oblige.

Our yet unfinished bathhouse, a recycled greenhouse and it's former foundation, complete with composting toilet, clawfoot bathtub (run with on-demand hot water heater and grey water system)...

... both yurts and the bathhouse with our dahlias in front and avocados to the left.

.... and a recent flower harvest.

Our Modern (peri-urban) Homestead

2010-08-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it, when I thought, ' yes, we're going to build our own home this summer,' I had no idea what I was getting into. I suppose that I believed that building my own home out of recycled material would be easy, that it would take a few weeks, perhaps a month, that it would be stressful, but not too taxing. I assumed that my partner had done it before and would be able to guide me seamlessly through the project. And, I admit it here in plain text;

I was wrong.

I think that growing up with parents who are architects, contractors, and interior designers set me up for inevitable disappointment in any type of housing project, much less building my own structures. Pretty obvious I'd imagine to the casual observer, that I have high expectations for form, function, and feasibility in my housing. However, I had no idea how hard this would be, or how long it would take to build, plumb, and electrify two yurts and a bathhouse. Imagine if I was actually trying to build a real house! Wow.

So here we are, several months into working on our structures. We have running water and electricity, a fully functioning kitchen. Our grey water systems need attention, but we can heat water and chill food- both which feel luxurious. We are half done with a bathhouse, planning on building the roof and putting in the floor this afternoon, our tub with instant hot water and our composting toilet are not far off. I am dreaming of bubble baths... but I digress.

In moments of true stress, my partner and I look at each other and laugh- how did the original homesteaders, my great great greats who came across the plains to 'settle' the Central Valley do it? No power tools, no hardware store, no craigslist. Not to mention having animals to care for, and children to feed. I realize that what we are doing today is mere child's play, so padded by the comfortability of our surroundings, the ability to take a lunch break and grab a ready made organic burrito down the street- that my duress is laughable.

So we ride the paradox. Feeling my very real stress as we finish our bathroom, and electrify our office. All the while acknowledging that our daily questions (which hose connection for the sink) are not matters of life or death. They are instead the very soft learning curve of a modern (peri-urban) homestead.

Decorating Bird

2010-07-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this in reference to my recent yurt decorating frenzy. I had to share the photo, follow the link to read more about the Bower Bird- an actual avifauna who builds these nests unaided.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/07/14/128520554/bowerbirds

CFL: Not a bright idea

2010-07-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have a bone to pick with Al Gore. Yes, I saw his movie, yes I was scared, yes I've been doing my part to solve climate change every since. Just like any other green tinged American I took his number one advice, and began to use compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs in my home. Until now.

Last Friday, I was unscrewing one of those modern looking twisty CFL lightbulbs when it did what many lightbulbs have done before. It broke. In my hand. Over my head. It was at this point that some distant memory of a news story flashed through my brain- mercury my brain murmured to me. Mercury, I thought as I stopped breathing, doing my best to hold my breath until I could exit the room.

My news savvy instincts proved correct and sure enough, and after a quick Google search- mercury was all I thought of for days. You see, those new CFL lightbulbs Al and his climate friendly buddies are pushing onto the public have vaporized mercury suspended within them, and when the bulbs break these odorless colorless invisible droplets of heavy metal burst into the environment and settle, tainting whatever they land on. Now picture me with my hand holding the lightbulb- over my head.

I wanted to share a few cheery highlights I found from the EPA website entitled "Cleaning Up A Broken CFL" http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html.

#1 Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more. Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.

# 2 Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.

# 3 If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.

Now, if these tidbits aren't a sell on why you should keep CFLs near your women and children, I don't know what is! I realized as I read this website, that in my choosing to use CFL lightbulbs, I purposely put myself in harms way. Sure, CFL lightbulbs are better for climate change, but what about my unborn children? Mercury, like other heavy metals, is stored in your fatty tissue- and never, that's right never goes away. Aside from the gore of mercury poisoning after sufficient accumulation, there is also the possibility of serious birth defects due to high amounts of mercury in the mother's body.

So, Al, were you weighing the possibility that someday, one of those lightbulbs might break? Or, more practically, that many of them would indeed break, putting millions of people at serious risk in their own home? My major question is to you- why, when there are so many ways to save energy, would you push this one, dangerous alternative as the first thing people should do to stop climate change? Because of your advice, my partner and I spent the weekend calculating how to clean our space without further contaminating other areas. Because of your advice I threw out some of my favorite cloths that, when the bulb exploded in my hand, were irreparably laced with mercury. Because of your advice I now further worry that if I do choose to have kids (a hard enough choice in and of itself) they have a higher chance of a major birth defect due to my body's exposure to mercury.

Al, I will never buy another CFL until there is nothing to fear about them except the minor chance of some innocuous broken glass. Until that day, I'm going to fight climate change the old fashion- by simply turning my lights off more often.

The ladies are back.

2010-07-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

Our Dahlias are back... and their too flamboyant not to share!

A Femivore's Future

2010-07-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

In two recent conversations I've had with women I consider my elders- people who've been around the block, seen it all, a common theme is emerging. It usually begins with the benign question- So how about you and you're future? What is next, post grad school? This question would have been all well and good a few years ago, when the footloose young twenty-something version of myself would answer confidently- career- of course.

However, something recently has changed. There's a softer edge in my voice. Perhaps it's all of this writing and thinking I've done about how the personal is political, how the individual choices that we make in our lives can affect change as in the case with activism or advocacy. Perhaps it's hormones, growing older, the awareness that at some point I may have to decide if children and family are in my future.

In one of the conversations, my friend was sure that the first wave feminist ideal that women can do everything, be super-moms, have amazing careers and be mothers too- was baloney. She was convinced that her generation had attempted to make that dream a reality and they had ended up with careers that fell short of glass ceilings, and children that had learning disabilities and resented their parents for not spending enough time with them. I've since heard this sentiment echoed from other women of the same generation.

I feel this question is my femivores dilemma. To be a feminist and a food activist. To be someone who truly values the assets the women bring into the world as mothers and home-makers, and who craves to embody many of those qualities. And on the other hand to be someone who has climbed the ladder high enough to know I can affect real change in the world if I'm willing to lend the cause my time.

I've decided that there should be a fourth place in this debate- not pigeon holing women into categories: (those who play traditional feminine roles, those who choose career, or those who attempt career and children) by creating new opportunities instead of forcing women to choose between several flawed paradigms. What about changing the expectations for women who choose to have kids, like honoring child rearing as a skill building activity- not hole in their resume? What about creating the social agreement that co-parenting should be the norm? What about a social safety net that supports working families? We have to reverse the rhetoric, the pressure that's put on women that have to 'choose' between one sad choice and the next.

In short, I didn't have, nor do I have an answer to their question. I do believe however, that my generation will create the answer.

Localization

2010-05-14T15:19:00.001-07:00

I'm ready for localization to be the word on everyone's lips.

I've tired of the constant analysis of globalization.

Of the analysis that global is 'in'.

I am ready for people to start buying, and participating and focusing on the local, their local, their lo-cal call to action.

Localization will be the wave of the future. From farmers markets and CSAs to Slow Money reinvestments in communities.

When I googled Localization today, Wikipedia told me the word was associated with high tech, with the locality of figments of cyberspace. Hubs of imagined spacial dimensions.

I laughed.

I imagine a world where cyberspace will not be as important as physical locations. Locations of personal interaction, of commerce, of relationship.

I imagine one day, localization be in.

UCD Students Stand Up: Immokalee and Arizona

2010-05-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

Students at UCD have have been standing up to racism and slavery of late holding multiple rallies over the last week. Students gathered to demonstrate on campus regarding both the recent passage of legislation in Arizona condoning racial profiling of immigrants, as well as an ongoing labor dispute in Immokolee, Florida, where tomato pickers have joined forces with college campus nationally to urge corporations to pay one cent more per pound for their tomatoes, passing that additional cent directly to the worker.

It was good to see so many UC Davis students out this week, organizing and speaking out in support of social justice.

True Community Supported Agriculture

2010-05-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

I'm currently part of a group of researchers here at UCD that's doing a study on CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture programs on farms here in the Central Valley of California. CSAs, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, are subscription contracts between community members and farmers, basically consumers pay up front for goods (which can be produce, meat, eggs, dairy, processed farm goods) and the farmer, or CSA manager grows or procures that product and gives the consumer a weekly or bi-monthy portion of that product for a season. Now, as I'm learning doing this research, there are a lot of ways to run a CSA. Large and small, communities and farms are redefining the meaning of the traditional CSA.

As I've been driving to and fro in the Valley, hearing the trials and tribulations of farmer after farmer, I've been thinking-- what would true community support for agriculture look like. I'm not talking about the CSA- which, don't get me wrong, is revolutionary, definitely an exceptional way to turn traditional capitalist relationships of consumers and producers on it's head -- I'm talking beyond the CSA. What can whole communities- not just well meaning individuals in a community-- but entire municipalities, states, and dare I say- the feds, do to support agriculture.

Much of this thinking has been prompted by my Masters program in Community Development, witnessing the tangible ways that communities choose to support education, housing, healthcare-- why not agriculture? Again and again I speak to farmers who are struggling, who, despite their creativity, wit, and sheer physical force feel like they are fighting a loosing battle. In the midst of the most expansive time in the public history of alternative food systems, they feel unsupported.

I don't pretend to have the answer yet. My thinking lately has been towards securing land tenure for farms, renewing the Williamson Act (at least in California), increasing market access for beginning farmers, and increasing the willingness of the public to pay the true cost of food-- but I know there must be other more pragmatic ways that communities can truly support agriculture.

Back on the Farm

2010-04-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

It's April again. A year ago I was moving into a tent at the top of the world, cutting down cover crop, and introducing myself to fifty new friends.

I'm a year older. And, just like the generations of 'farmies' before us, my partner and I returned to the farm last week to cook for the new apprentices. No longer am I part of the buzzing crowd entering the farm center. Instead I am behind the scenes, supporting them as they adjust to their new life. Supporting them as they move onto the top of the world, and introduce themselves to fifty new friends.

Life coming full circle. The passage of time marked by almost familiar faces, home-like spaces, and love shown through the simple act of cooking food.

Round House

2010-04-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

Reflecting back, I've oft writen about the want to build a home. Most times, I've written about my passion for tiny houses, small victorians on wheels, built by ordinary people, with sensible ecological design.

Two weeks ago, and a short search on craigslist, brought a different sort of home into my life- a round house.

My partner lived in a yurt for most of his doctoral program. I loved staying over, surrounded by canvas and lattice, a simple pleasing design. A nest. He has suggested before that were it up to him to decide, he would remain a yurt dweller permanently. As this school year draws to a close, and we are looking to return to Santa Cruz, our hometown, and we had been discussing housing options. Enter craigslist. (A foot note here: craigslist is a splendidly dangerous adventure of a website, where I've bought, bartered and sold everything from chickens to cars. Browsers Beware! ) Anyway, enter craiglist. Thursday afternoon I was eating lunch, browsing the sale items on Bay Area list. There it appeared, a twenty food diameter, three year old (off-gassed), well kept yurt, minutes from down town Santa Cruz. I told D and less than 24 hours later, we were shaking hands with its now former owner. Within 48 hours, we had it on the back of a rental truck bound for its new home. Within a week, it was back up at its new site.

And what proud new round home owners we are...

Health Care, A Small Sign of Reason.

2010-03-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's 10:43 eastern standard time.

C-span is live streaming the health care debate into the kitchen here in Richmond Virginia. Yesterday, we spent the day in DC, observing angry picketers with signs that read 'Kill the Bill' and 'Stop Obama', proud confederate flags steaming over the crowd of thousands of white middle aged people on the capitol steps.

Damian and his mom infiltrated. Armed with a small sign of protest, protesting the protest, they waded through the crowd. Unnoticed. A small sign of reason.

As I write this, back in Richmond, C-span has erupted in applause. 219 votes, have passed the first of the three bills that spell

H-E-A-L-H C-A-R-E R-E-F-O-R-M.

Finally.

Finally a small sign of reason.

The Femivore’s Dilemma

2010-03-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

This recent article in the New York Times speaks to the contradictions I feel often. As a feminist, my more reactionary political instincts often trigger when I talk about some of my favorite activities. Canning, gardening, baking pies from scratch, keeping chickens... for first wave feminists, all of these activities were things they were trying to escape, for me and many young women farmers that I know, we've come full circle, we're third wave femivores. Reclaiming the very activities that our mothers rejected. Ornstein speaks to grappling with that paradox in her article The Femivore's Dilemma below.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN

Published: March 11, 2010

New York Times

Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is theVatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.

All of these gals — these chicks with chicks — are stay-at-home moms, highly educated women who left the work force to care for kith and kin. I don’t think that’s a coincidence: the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper. “Prior to this, I felt like my choices were either to break the glass ceiling or to accept the gilded cage,” says Shannon Hayes, a grass-fed-livestock farmer in upstate New York and author of “Radical Homemakers,” a manifesto for “tomato-canning feminists,” which was published last month
Hayes pointed out that the original “problem that had no name” was as much spiritual as economic: a malaise that overtook middle-class housewives trapped in a life of schlepping and shopping. A generation and many lawsuits later, some women found meaning and power through paid employment. Others merely found a new source of alienation. What to do? The wages of housewifery had not changed — an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on your husband — only now, bearing them was considered a “choice”: if you felt stuck, it was your own fault. What’s more, though today’s soccer moms may argue, quite rightly, that caretaking is undervalued in a society that measures success by a paycheck, their role is made possible by the size of their husband’s. In that way, they’ve been more of a pendulum swing than true game changers.
Enter the chicken coop.
Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?
There is even an economic argument for choosing a literal nest egg over a figurative one. Conventional feminist wisdom held that two incomes were necessary to provide a family’s basic needs — not to mention to guard against job loss, catastrophic illness, divorce or the death of a spouse. Femivores suggest that knowing how to feed and clothe yourself regardless of circumstance, to turn paucity into plenty, is an equal — possibly greater — safety net. After all, who is better equipped to weather this economy, the high-earning woman who loses her job or the frugal homemaker who can count her chickens?
Hayes would consider my friends’ efforts admirable if transitional. Her goal is larger: a renunciation of consumer culture, a return (or maybe an advance) to a kind of modern preindustrialism in which the home is self-sustaining, the center of labor and livelihood for both sexes. She interviewed more than a dozen families who were pursuing this way of life. They earned an average of $40,000 for a family of four. They canned peaches, stuffed sausages, grew kale, made soap. Some eschewed health insurance, and most home-schooled their kids. That, I suspect, is a little further than most of us are willing to go: it sounds a bit like being Amish, except with a car (no more than one, naturally) and a green political agenda.
After talking to Hayes, I rushed to pick up my daughter from school. As I rustled up a quick dinner of whole-wheat quesadillas and frozen organic peas, I found my thoughts drifting back to our conversation, to the questions she raised about the nature of success, satisfaction, sustenance, fulfillment, community. What constitutes “enough”? What is my obligation to others? What do I want for my child? Is my home the engine of materialism or a refuge from it?
I understand the passion for a life that is made, not bought. And who doesn’t get the appeal of working the land? It’s as integral to this country’s character as, in its own way, Wal-Mart. My femivore friends may never do more than dabble in backyard farming — keeping a couple of chickens, some rabbits, maybe a beehive or two — but they’re still transforming the definition of homemaker to one that’s more about soil than dirt, fresh air than air freshener. Their vehicle for children’s enrichment goes well beyond a ride to the next math tutoring session.
I am tempted to call that “precious,” but that word has variegations of meaning. Then again, that may be appropriate. Hayes found that without a larger purpose — activism, teaching, creating a business or otherwise moving outside the home — women’s enthusiasm for the domestic arts eventually flagged, especially if their husbands weren’t equally involved. “If you don’t go into this as a genuinely egalitarian relationship,” she warned, “you’re creating a dangerous situation. There can be loss of self-esteem, loss of soul and an inability to return to the world and get your bearings. You can start to wonder, What’s this all for?” It was an unnervingly familiar litany: if a woman is not careful, it seems, chicken wire can coop her up as surely as any gilded cage.

Peggy Orenstein, a contributing writer, is the author of “Waiting for Daisy,” a memoir.

Rally to Save Public Education

2010-03-09T18:54:00.001-08:00

I was in the state Capitol last Thursday, March Fourth, along with thousands of my fellow students, faculty, administrators and allies to support the refunding of Public Education. (That's me in the hat, holding up the N in a giant sign that read SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION.) We were supporting the states return to California's Master Plan- whereby the state pledged support for free higher education for California's students. They have strayed from that plan. Constricted in part by a deadlock in the state senate, California has cut funding for public education, and people came out in mass Thursday to speak out against the trend. One of the best speakers at the Rally was George Lakoff, a professor at Berkeley, who began the drive that has resulted in the Californian's For Democracy Act- a ballot initiative that will change the votes needed by the state senate to raise taxes and/or pass the budget from the currently needed 2/3 majority, to a simple majority of 1/2. I encourage everyone to sign the petition for the ballot initiative. Currently, the initiative needs just over 550,000 more signatures before April 1st to make it onto the next election cycle. Click the title of the post to be taken to the website.

Hope

2010-03-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it's the winter, or perhaps it's living in an antagonizing environment- maybe it's graduate school, an experience filled to the brim with facts and figures about how and why the world has gone mad- but I've felt overwhelmed lately. Definitely not the embodiment of the witty pollyanna I've always considered myself. My lack of self-reflection was allowing me to pass judgment, as I remarked to myself that perhaps 'cynicism is just a mark of getting older'.

However, spring is upon us, and I am creating the new possibility of hope. Hope that even though it seems as if the world is upside-down, that capitalism, sexism, racism, classism, globalization, and privatization of the commons are coming together in one giant convergence to tear apart everything that is right and good in the world- change is happening.

I see my friends growing vegetables, the proliferation of farmers markets, I see campaigns against obesity, for the refunding of public education, for local economies, slow money, community infrastructure, and movements that seek to redefine society into something that favors community support rather than surrender.

I need to remember, in all of my studies and passions, to focus on the positive. Pick myself up. Look in the mirror, assure myself that positive change is possible, and that I will be a part in its happening.

Are Academics Relevant?

2010-02-26T11:15:00.000-08:00

A question I've been asking myself recently. Good to self-reflect, as I currently identify as one. I came across a journal article of the same title in a class recently. Randy Stoeker, and academic, community organizer, and participatory action researcher came up with this list for academic guidance. Love it. Especially the last one.

Another grey day in Davis but,

2010-02-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

Daffodils.

Tulips.

Almond blossoms.

Allergies.

Harbingers of spring.

Not Voting with My Fork

2010-02-04T10:25:00.001-08:00

The sustainable agriculture catch phrase "vote with your fork" has always plagued me. I understand its sentiment. The idea that we, as consumers, have the right to choose the type of business practices that we want to support with the 'vote' of our dollar is powerful. Originally it made me feel elated, like I had a voice in a decision and therefore could create a shift in the market towards what I value. I liked the idea that there was an alternative to what at the time seemed like an ineffectual process of voting in US elections, (which has continually landed us with appointed representatives who favor and fund the support of large scale industrial agriculture- save Kathleen Merrigan.) Voting with my fork (or dollar) seemed like a clear and easy way to encourage people to participate in choosing the type of agriculture they would like to support.

However, recently, the idea of 'voting' with my fork has rubbed me wrong. You see, we in the sustainable agriculture movement are conflating basic democratic principles, such as the concept of voting, with the tenets of free market capitalism, like the market will determine which enterprises succeed and which fail. And by encouraging people to 'vote with their fork' we will squander the limited attention of our audience on a method of 'voting' that at the end of the day will mean nothing in the face of the hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies, corporate write offs and contracts, and favorable legislation toward large agribusiness.

Instead of encouraging people to be better consumers, we should be encouraging them to be better citizens. We should instead be encouraging people to become increasingly active in civil society, to change the laws that make it rare for a small scale farmer, a beginning farmer, a sustainable farmer to be viable in todays economy. Yes we need to continue to support those enterprises economically, but until we change the political climate in which they operate, we'll all have to increase our appetites exponentially to change our food system.

The new Agrarian Question

2010-01-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

Over the last decade I've been had the privilege of flying around the world, visiting cities and farms, studying and working in agriculture. Now again a student, I am integrating the images I absorbed during my travels into applied theories of social change.

I'm realizing that the expansive slums that I drove through outside of Deli corresponded with the enormous spaces of uninhabited farm land in the Punjab, now mechanically cultivated. And that this rural displacement is not isolated to their state. I've seen the same pattern the world over, Guatemala, India, Egypt. Massive agricultural zones characterized by heavily capitalized export cultivation, green revolution techniques, mechanization, the privatization of land as capital, the depopulation of rural landscapes, mass migration to cities, or immigration to new states. Marx's proletarianization. Doubtful he would have predicted the speed and scale in which it would occur. This new proletariate resides in black plastic mega-slums surrounding major metropolitan cities, the shiny black transitional scars resulting from world agriculture's rapid integration into the neoliberal new world order- the newest iteration of capitalism.

I knew much of the story before my travels. Neoliberal economic theory- comparative advantage, structural adjustment, deregulation of agriculture, free trade, etc etc-- but the relatively short history of agricultural capitalism and its systematic dismantling of the world's agrarian peasantry is new and overwhelming. Mass migration, urbanization, starvation, unraveling before me like some giant unwieldy puppet show. I'm now realizing that the slums, and hunger I've witnessed were not a steady-state of affairs, status quo for time eternal, but rather the most recent belch of the first world neoliberal capitalist agenda. To paraphrase Mike Davis, another capital casualty of 'oops a million more dead'.

Perhaps that was why, when I heard Elliot Coleman, one of the fathers of the small-scale organic farming movement in the US, speak last week- I was moved to stand and shout, when he proclaimed in the face of a popular organic food company's CEO that although organic was now a branded seal of the USDA, capitalism would never be able to deny that small scale agricultural producers are amongst the most subversive and powerful people on the planet. Because as long as peasant producers can hold on to their means of production, he argued, they and only they, have the power to resist the capitalist paradigm.

My aspiration to be a small-holder remains true.

Gentrification

2010-01-28T22:39:00.000-08:00

Hilarious, and somewhat terrifying portrayal of gentrification. It's an issue I definitely grapple with being a white upper middle class chick. Click the title to be taken to more insightful political images.

Coming Home

2010-01-28T16:57:00.000-08:00

I am fully in graduate school now. A student academic- worldview blown open.

New possibilities unfold.

I've learned, or rather remembered, that school is all consuming. There is no time-sheet to check off, no reason to stop at the end of the work day. The possibilities of learning stretch on ad-infinitum. No end.

Recently the infinitum has zeroed in on an academic discipline that I'm thinking, looks more and more like home. Political Ecology. I could claim I had been doing it for some time. My interests and actions over the last few years to those in the know would look like Political Ecology in practice. But to state that it was knowingly so, would be misleading. For years I've categorized my academic interests as laying in the cross-section of environmental studies and politics. I identify with Feminist research methodology- academia, action, and emancipation combined. I favor a Geographer's view of the world as an interconnected whole. I study agriculture. But it took a certain professor here, and two weeks worth of Political Ecology readings, to realize- that all of this time, a collection of like minded individuals had been out there. I've read their theory, I've studied their research with interest. The sur-names Davis, Blaikie, Muldavin, Watts, and perhaps even Guthman kept coming up in my life, on my book shelfs, in my references.

And I've put it together. I am a first-world political agroecologist. Hurrah! My people! I'm home!

To Teach

2010-01-28T16:25:00.000-08:00

In my time here in Davis,

I've learned that I can teach, that I love to teach, that I am challenged by it. It is, perhaps, one of the most difficult things I've ever attempted. Standing in front of a room of wide-eyes. Leading them into the complexities I am still untangling. I know that teaching is important because I wake up thinking about it, and go to bed wondering if it will go well. I know that it matters because my heart races when I begin to speak, to council, and to guide them.

Philosophically, I am attempting to democratize my classroom, using the ideas behind Popular Education as my beacons in the dark. I've had guides that lead in this direction, but as they're modest, they'll go unmentioned. Democracy in our public education system is, to be light, a challenge. As student- teacher ratios increase it's difficult to remain participatory and democratic. I struggle to simply grasp all eighty of their names. How can you have participation and democracy without names? What's in a name? Personality, life history, culture, background, belief, influence... and on and on. All that plays a role in how people learn, what the gravitate toward, what they value.

I'm learning by doing. Falling, faltering, getting up, trying again. Attempt, re-write. Breath, sigh. Wake up. Try again. True hands on learning. Learning about learning, learning how to facilitate and inspire and ultimately teach. Again, a challenge.

In short, my new understanding of the courage that teacher's possess is profound. As a student I am grateful for their daily leap into the unknown, a giant trust fall. As one of them, I am thankful for my ability to practice- and hope one day to be able to execute the feat gracefully.

A New Model of Urban Agriculture in NYC

2010-01-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

Here is a little shout out for a new project in NYC started by one of my UCSC apprenticeship crew.

BK Farmyards is a new urban farming network in Brooklyn. Our mission is to increase access to healthy affordable food to Brooklyn residents through increasing urban food production and providing jobs for urban farmers. We started last year by turning backyards into farmyards, offering the first CSA with all produce grown in Brooklyn. We are building on last year’s success with new sites, more farmers and more CSAs. We are working with the High School for Public Service to create a new Youth Farm. We will be turning the school’s one acre lawn into a thriving, productive and educational farm. The Farm will provide fresh affordable food for the community through a CSA, while providing educational and employment opportunities for the students.

Urban farms across the country have been offering a glimpse of what is possible, but we want to push farther. We believe that cities have the capacity to grow more food and employ more people in agriculture. There are currently over 10,000 acres of vacant land in NYC, 1,500 in Brooklyn alone. If just 10 percent of the backyards in NYC were farmed we could grow enough food for 700,000 people. There is high demand for local and healthy food, all 26 Brooklyn CSAs have waiting lists, and farmers markets are becoming more and more popular. Additionally we have an abundance of people who are skilled and talented in growing food, and even more who are interested in learning how.

BK Farmyards is creating a new model for urban farms. Our goal is to create financially sustainable farms that serve the people and neighborhoods subjected to the worst systematic oppression from our current food system. Our model lowers the cost of farming by building relationships between existing assets in our community: an abundance of experienced and enthusiastic farmers, underutilized land, schools, homeowners, developers and government support for local farms and low income consumers. Our model allows for us to be independent of continuous grant funding, allowing us to expand our work as more land becomes available and more people want to farm.

Though we plan on becoming financially sustainable, we need a lot to get everything going. We are currently fundraising through grants, special events and online tools. We are using kicktarter.com as a fundraising tool and so we need to reach our $10,000 goal by February 26th to receive any of the money. Please consider giving us your financial support, even $5 will be of great help!

If you are interested in working with us please shoot us a line. There is a lot to do, a lot of land and a lot of food to grow!

www.BKFarmyards.com

bee (@) BKFarmyards.com

"Is Wal-Mart the future of local food?"- Grist

2009-12-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Author Tom Laskawy candidly writes about how Walmart is considering using it's huge distribution network to underpin some of the burgeoning local food movement. Recently published in Grist- click the title to link to the page.

A Tiny House on the Mind

2009-12-11T00:34:00.001-08:00

So my mind has been wandering of late. Mom says that it's just a nesting instinct, but it feels stronger than that. I've been thinking about window and trim, about what to build the floors out of, about roofing material and skylights. A space, a small space to call my own.

I wrote a couple of years back about my growing interest in Tiny Houses. Studios on wheels. I figured that the obsession would soon pass, but as I'm a farmer graduate student in recovery from living in a very small tent at the top of the world, my mind has begun to wander. And where have I wandered in my finals week procrastinations you ask? Why google image of course.

Candyland for creativity, filled with a world wide movement of tinyhome pioneers, rife with photos.

I've begun to enroll my home building family members in my story. As one set of my parents sign the papers on a new house with thousands of square feet to decorate, I muse about the freedom of no furniture, little dusting, no frills. I aspire to park my house in the footprint of their garage. I never rebelled in my teenage years- perhaps this is my form of uprising. Except, in my mind I've designed the uprising to be one that brings me closer to my family- Oh yes, and it's very very tiny.

The photos are of the Martin-House-to-Go, a spin off of the popular Tumbleweed design.

Wordle of my whole Summer

2009-11-30T23:53:00.000-08:00

I input all of my blog postings from the summer UCSC apprenticeship into Wordle-- the instant word cloud service online that accounts for words in the cloud by frequency, and here is the picture I got back. Pretty darn accurate to my experience. Fascinating way of seeing associative links.

Department of Justice Public Comment Period on Monopoly issues in Agriculture

2009-11-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

This is the biggest opening in 30 years. The Department of Justice is on a fact finding mission about agribusiness and they need to hear from us!

Are you concerned about where your food comes from? Do you care about the working conditions of farmers and food workers? Is it inconvenient to get to the store? Do you have access to fresh produce in your neighborhood? Are you concerned about meat and poultry packing conditions that threaten your health and that of the workers? Are you worried that corporate giants like Monsanto control a large share of our seed supply?

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are seeking our comments on consolidation in the food system by December 31, 2009. We have just five weeks to tell them what's wrong in our food system and make suggestions for how to fix it.

Please take the time to e-mail your comments to agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov.
Or you can submit two paper copies of your comments to Legal Policy Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 5th Street, NW, Suite 11700, Washington, D.C. 20001. All comments received will be publicly posted.

Please forward this e-mail to friends who may also like to submit comments. Thank you.

Five workshops will be held in 2010 in Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Washington, D.C. and Wisconsin. But the best way to get your concerns heard is to submit your written comments.

For specifics about the workshops:http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/workshops/ag2010/index.htm#overview

Thanks for sharing this message with others.

Olive Oil!

2009-11-25T13:40:00.000-08:00

Students for Sustainable agriculture hosted our annual olive pick this year. With permission from both the UCD Olive Center and Grounds, students, faculty, and alumni harvested olives on campus last Sunday in a joint effort to produce oil. This year the crew of over 50 people harvested a total of 3,326.5 pounds of olives. The organizers and volunteers carted the raw olives to Mike Madison's farm, Yolo Bulb, in Woodland, where he used his small scale industrial olive press to make the oil. Grand total: 47.5 gallons of oil, which was happily distributed via a serve yourself olive oil stand behind one organizers' house. And as we've picked up our share, and patiently wait for the oil to settle, we're already looking forward to next year!

UC Students Protest!

2009-11-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I was at home on my computer, still in my pajamas reading email, grading papers, checking the news. Feeling generally down about the state of the world, the privatization of the education system, and my current lack of involvement in political activism- or rather my lack of causing visible change instead of just theorizing about it. That's when I got the news.

Two of my Community Development peers emailed our group listserve saying something to the effect of; 'for all of you sitting on your --- reading your email, get over to Mrak Hall (UCD admin), there's a sit-in happening!' I mentioned it in my last post, but a quick recap- last Wednesday, the UC Regents voted to increase student tuition by 32% for next year, the largest increase ever in UC tuition. For the last 10 days, students all over the state have been protesting, yet UCD has been conspicuously absent from much of the ruckus. Thursday changed that.

I arrived at Mrak at 2pm. Hundreds of students lined the main entrance hall, the stairs, and the elevator lobby. Sitters were littered amongst backpacks, computers, and posters. Organizers were urging people to text and email their friends, to send the word out virally for a flash mob. A few cops were milling about, and school administrators had to step over clumps of students as they made their way towards their business.

Over the next few hours, hundreds of students came and went. Top level administrators came down from their offices and encouraged us to leave, news crews wandered through with cameras interviewing people, and police warned that the building would eventually close and students would have to leave. For those hours the sit-in shifted between students chatting amongst themselves and spirited waves of cheering, jeering and chanting.

By 6pm it was a different scene. Having officially 'closed' the building at five, the number of police officers and TV cameras had quintupled. No-one was being allowed in the building, and officers had begun to read the remaining protestors their rights. The first person was arrested around 6:30 and cops in riot gear led them out to a patty wagon stationed outside. The building was slowly emptied of protesters, as one by one, folks willing to participate in civil disobedience were cuffed and escorted through the double glass doors, past the hundreds of supporting students, faculty, and staff who had amassed themselves outside. Paraded into a police escort, the arrestees- totaling 52- walked through a gauntlet of heavily armed police in riot gear, lit up by TV lighting crews and helicopters with spot lights flying overhead.

It was a sight to be seen. UC Davis, long lauded as the campus with the least amount of politically outspoken students, had more arrested students than all of the other campuses to date. UCD represent.

height="344">

Education for the Masses?

2009-11-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

While I sit comfortably in my TA office, debating whether or not to pick up cookies for my students this class, the UC Regents are passing and unprecedented increase in student tuition. Student tuition UC wide have just been increased 32%- The largest jump in student fees since the beginning of the institution.

My great grand parents would be outraged-- as my father once said- "Your great grandfather moved to California to get an education!" Now what dad?! Now that UC tuition will out-price all but the upper middle class kids. What are we waiting for? Do I actually expect Arnold is going to increase public education funding- flying in in the face of his great republican forefathers?! No.

I encourage my readers who are voters in this great state of California to write Arnold. Join with the chorus of students who protested today at Berkeley, and the faculty who held classes off campus. Say no to the increasing public disinvestment of public education.

Here is an article detailing the fee increases:

http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/2332774.html?mi_rss=Education

Here is a website you can log onto to send a letter to our state legislature, nothing too radical- it's even endorsed by the president of the UC Regents!!!:

http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/uc4ca/home/

All together. Now. Save one of our nations last public education systems!

Education in Flight

2009-11-15T11:30:00.001-08:00

Sitting in my new kitchen making breakfast for a new friend.

He is another former farm & garden apprentice, also on a quest for knowledge. We mainly discuss what it's like to search for meaningful educational experiences in a world dominated by positivist paradigms and bubble test quantifications of knowledge.

There is much to know in this world, so much to learn. My new question- 'how do we access that information, in a joyful, meaningful, lasting way?' is now prevalent, having transitioned so quickly from the apprenticeship world to Davis.

I'm positive now that humans are social creatures with a drive to work, and as such, one of the most productive and positive learning environments is in a situation that encourages both. A social working environment, where people with common interests come together to accomplish some task. The learning is therefore on several levels; first in the doing of the task where the learning is a product of the social negotiation that takes place. Secondly learning occurs within the social interaction itself (read experience and skill sharing) and happens as the work is done. Add to the experience the shear joy and excitement that happens when you're surrounded by an enthusiastic, smart, charismatic group of people- and you've got the perfect environment for learning. Peer to peer education, building the plane while flying it, in it for the love of it.

As I wind my way around the bowls of UCD, I'm looking to replicate that experience. Finding a cohort, support, inspiration, real learning. And again, I repeat, it's hard.

The Winds of Change

2009-10-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's blowing hard in Davis.

Central Valley winds, coming down from the North. Bringing leaves, and school, and fall. As it gets darker I'm finding myself inside more often- reading for classes, and correcting papers.

Graduate School, thus far, is satisfying. I enjoying the matrix of complex theory, stacks of new literature, and academic writing, but most of all, I'm liking teaching. A TA for the new Food Systems course on campus, I get to apply what I've learned over the last decade, and indeed over the last few years specifically. Sharing my own life experiences and creating new ones with a group of 15 undergraduates. It's inspiring to see them interact with food and agriculture, subjects which to many of them had been previously foreign. A whole new world.

Wondering now if that might be one of the most satisfying things to experience, finding something you love, and having the capacity and the courage to share it with others.

Apprentices are everywhere

2009-10-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

I now know that coming down from the shear high of the apprenticeship program is already, and is going continue to be, rough. But while my heart is aching, and my head distracted by still palpable memories of the farm, reality has sunk in, and I am moving on.

Thankfully, the fall has been padded by apprentices of the past. I am currently teaching in what will be the new Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major at UC Davis. (Though the major has not yet been passed, it seems to be well on its way.) The class that I'm the TA for, CRD 20: Food Systems-- was co-created by Damian Parr, a past apprentice. And today, I took my lab section on a field trip to Soil Born Farms, an urban farm and educational project in Sacramento which was created by two past apprentices.

So even though at noon today I was in my windowless reality, mourning the loss of my former life, by four pm I was touring a farm that reminded me very much of home. With me I had 15 undergraduates, all experiencing the agro-foodsystem. Little did they know it, but their experience was facilitated by 4 UCSC apprentices. One who designed the course, two who created the farm for them to visit, and me, the facilitator who got them there.

That's powerful learning. When you learn something and are so impassioned, that you have to keep reproducing it, and you are driven to rope others into learning, and growing with you. Again and again, UCSC.

Heartache I suppose

2009-10-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in my new space. New lab room. A windowless fluorescent reality.

Reading emails from farmies who are too experiencing the loss. A pain behind my t-shirt feels like heartburn, but I know it's not.

One email described the wreckage left in the wake of the apprentice exodus like a grungy christmas. A mass indeed. Massive departure of farmies that is.
Now, I sit massively missing the religious experience of community,
of communing on the land,
now that I've landed somewhere new and foreign.

And in my windowless glowbox,
Just experiencing heartache I suppose.

It's over

2009-10-19T21:44:00.001-07:00

It's over.

Finally done. My season at the UCSC Farm and Garden is Finished. Finito. Finality.

To paraphrase Orin Martin, who paraphrased someone writing about baseball- a poem for the end...

It's about waking up to the sunrise over the Monterey Bay,

It's about walking in to fresh cooked breakfast, groggy eyed farmers, hot tea,

It's about biking up the big hill to the Chadwick garden, past the students, overlooking the sea,

It's about double digging, and weeding, pruning, and propagation,

It's about farming,

It's about gardening,

It's about the field, and production, about feeding people,

It's about classes taught outside, under trees, in the dirt,

It's about learning,

It's about people come together, from far flung corners, to share,

It's about sharing space, and stories, and seeds,

It's about friendship,

It's about more than any pamphlet or extension credit, or letter home could tell,

It's about six months of magic and synergy,

It's about more than blog posts will explain,

and in the rallying cry of Orin--

Terra Pretta! Terra Pretta! Terra Pretta! Earth First! Earth First! Earth First!

(and we with that- we beat their swords to plowshares)

Rocking to an end

2009-10-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

Last night, while the wind blew at the farm center windows, and the wood fire heated up the main room,

The realization set in.

It's almost over

Six month later, this group of 4o some odd folks is now a family. Coming together in perfect time just to split back apart. Splinting back to our corners of the world.

As the storm set in, our rabble rousing musicians blew in from somewhere, set to make music on one of their last nights together. Raucous as usual but with a tinge of sadness, they sang our favorites. Musically thumping and bumping and whooping- the diligent cooks, crafters, and computer laden apprentices put down our knives, wreaths, and screens to lend our voice to the chorus.

So rock me mama like a wagon wheel

Rock me mama anyway you feel

Hey mama rock me

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain

Rock me mama like a southbound train

Hey mama rock me

Rocking us into the night, and into the storm. By singing along I was attempting to forget that this is my last week as an apprentice, and the last week in one of the most powerful experiences of my life.

Prom fit for Royalty

2009-10-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

One of the other apprentices and I threw a Prom friday night. Full on dinner and dancing, ball gowns and boutonnieres. Folks showed up regally decorated in insect theme, and we practically brought the barn down with laughter and dancing.

Farmy Olympics

2009-10-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

For one day only, the farm olympics came to CatFace Farm yesterday. Dressed in spandex and wigs, sunglasses and knee socks, the apprentices duked it out for metals made out of oversized zucchini strung onto necklaces of combined red twist ties.

The english fork toss, an irrigation relay, apple bobbing, hose coiling, and of course- 'whats up?!'-- we laughed till our sides ached. Mad chaos of competition and squealing devolving into the all-too predictable rotten tomato war.

It's good to remember to have fun as a farmer. Sometimes we get too serious and self important about food production, and saving the world, and whatever, that we miss how important laughter, and spandex, and rotten tomatoes really are.

Farm Art Show

2009-10-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite yearly events, the Free Wheelin' Farm Art Show has come 'round again. Double click to examine flyer and come out to support bike powered young organic farmers!

Back in School

2009-09-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable, I mutter to myself as I bike to school.

Here I am. In Davis. It's 10 am, 95 degrees outside, and I'm in bike traffic, thousands of cruisers on their way to class somewhere. I speculate that a goodly portion of these cyclists have never ridden before today. Perhaps that's why we are crawling along the two way intentionally designed bike path. (Like a highway system for bikes. Complete with small traffic lights, parking lots, and street signs)

Strange.

Evidently, I'm going back to school. I'm awakening quickly from my arrogance into a new reality. Again I think, I've underestimated what I signed up for. Overhead compact fluorescence lighting my way into buildings without windows, and indeed into my immediate future- I've arrived.

Back in school.

Crazy.

Strike, Walk out Rally

2009-09-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you who aren't aware, I've just started graduate school in Community Development at UC Davis.

I just participated in a rally of several thousand students, faculty, and staff to protest student fee hikes, faculty furloughs, and staff lay offs and pay cuts. Held in the middle of campus, representatives of students, faculty, and staff spoke eloquently about the mission statement stray that has befallen the UC over the past 20 years. They spoke about the major transition from a university system that was conceptualized at inception to be publicly supported- free to the top 10% of California high school graduates, to one that now costs 100% more than it did 5 years ago, with an expected 32% fee increase this year.

I was shocked to see the amount of students who came out to the demonstration. It included both the usual percentage of ruffians and rabble rousers as well as hundreds of average looking college freshman in attendance. I suppose I'm surprised because I expected Davis to be a complacent mild-mannered college town. Contented to ride bicycles, and distracted by GE requirements, constant testing, and fraternity parties, I expected students here to be disengaged from the political reality of the world around them.

Not disregarding the circumstances, it was inspiring to see on the first day of class. I hope that the UC administration and indeed the state legislature, who are both in part responsible for the budget deficiencies and subsequent decisions take due note.

For more information about the concerns of graduate students, and for a more in-depth analysis of the issues, please see links provide.

Our subculture

2009-09-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

One of my best friends visited the farm this past week. She's a lawyer from DC, we went to college together, have traveled together, have shared some of life's more intimate moments, and see eye to eye politically and humanistically. But I never can get past just how how foreign her experience of my environment is.

It's such an incredible reminder for me when I experience my life through her new eyes. When I remember that not everyone lives in a tent, makes bread from scratch, and knows intimately where every part of their dinner comes from.

Every time she comes to visit my foodie haven on this left coast, she leaves me with new insights and ideas about how I am living now and perhaps how I can evolve my life practice. Her most salient comment this last trip was an appreciation she made about the culture that I exist in.

You know the one, that young-hip-urban-rural-radical-artistic-back-to-the-farm-life-cooking-dancing-biking-punky-outdoors-intellectual crowd that I have surrounded myself with. Perhaps I had thought about it before, noticed that there were more people around with similarities in style and cadence- but when she encapsulated it with that word- culture- that's when it really hit home.

We organic farmer gardener activists have an honest to goodness subculture. A translatable traversing of time and space cross borders. An ongoing conversation between people who can already finish eachother's sentences, and who will always invite you in to supper. Having mulled over it since she flew home, I've noticed it more, and mentioned it to a few. How lucky are we? To be part of something that's bigger, to be creating and feeding off of some giant upwelling of support. I'm thankful for that subculture. It's like coming home.

A new eye

2009-09-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

I'm realizing I've developed a new eye for plants. Over the last six months my world of greenish blur has begun to distinguish itself- sectioning out into plant genus and species, native and invasive, weedy and wonderful.

I'm beginning to get a glimpse of how much I've learned.

Plant Sale

2009-09-10T13:14:00.001-07:00

It's now fall.

Brought on by the oaks loosing their leaves,

and the sun slipping over the horizon earlier,

it's glowing orb awaiting my morning alarm before cresting the field

Apples are appearing in farm meals, a new addition to the array of summer loving pies

Hard to imagine how fast it's gone.

Our Fall Plant sale- yes, note the title

is tomorrow

We'll leave Santa Cruz having graced the streets and lined back yards with perennials and winter loving vegetables and flowers,

We're keeping the hope alive for yet another summer,

Now just a glimmer in father time's eye.

Transition Hiku

2009-09-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

Going back to school

While still living at the farm

Is now difficult

Desert to oasis

2009-09-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

From the wiles of the black rock city I've emerged into my oasis of green.

White dust to black dirt.

Barren to lush.

Again I've taken the abundance of farm camp for granted.

Although camping at Burning Man has never felt so lush.

I've returned to the rustic life of having the bathroom 1000 feet from my bed, solar showers outside, no closet etc. My spirits wear thin though my convictions are still strong.

Thank goodness for morals.

My partner's inspiration

2009-08-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

My partner recently entered my blog posts into a word cloud called Wordle, it clouds words based on frequency. Pretty cool!

http://www.wordle.net/

A deal with the devil

2009-08-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

I did it. I made a deal with the devil.

The devil with a petroleum engine, start plugs- who smokes smog and guzzles down swills of freeway pavement.

After a few years of being car-free. I bought an auto-mobile. A girl on the go.

Months of debating the options on a hopeless quest to find a car I can believe in- I settled on the VW TDI Super wagon. One part sports car, one part mom mobile. It gets 50 mpg and can run b-5 biodiesel. Ranked the green car of the year.

I took the train from Santa Cruz to Roseville and biked into the auto mall, built like a race track, four lanes of people test driving their new cars. Car sales man turned their heads to stare at my bright pink 80's speed racer, paniers, toe clips and all, as I pulled in to the dealership.

Everything checked out, and I came home with an almost new car. One that will last me a good long time, keep me safe, and allow me to cart flowers, any where I so choose. In living in America, sometimes we're forced to make these deals. Sell our souls to be able to fully participate, show up for family, and market goods. I'm grateful for the opportunity to challenge my inhibitions and make friends with my own personal demons.

Down Garden Flowers

2009-08-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

It's incredible being in the down garden, the floral center of the farm. There must be 40 different types of flowers on at present. Dahlias, zinnias, roses, perennials, annuals, filler. It's like gardening in a florist shop. Two days a week we spend an entire morning with the flowers; cutting, prepping, and arranging them for our market cart. It's one of the most magical things, arranging flowers- I'm convinced it slows down time. Makes us pause to reflect on the beauty and peace in life. Exquisite.

Al's big 100

2009-08-20T21:34:00.001-07:00

Allan Chadwick turned 100 a few weeks ago.

The farm center was enshrouded in a thick fog that morning, the grey blue light seeping in through the cracks in the walls.

Our desert farmie had placed candles along the tables, side lined by roses, the small flames held tribute to our founder.

A crazy passionate high knee sock wearing poet, who probably would still fit right in.

10 phone calls and a mouse

2009-08-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

It's the peak of summer, and it seems like these days, I don't have time for anything more than existence on the farm. Between bounty and harvest, celebration and education- my brain and time is packed full, leaving just enough space so that any disturbance throws my delicately balanced existence out of wack. So when my inbox started to pile up, and my voice mail box was full, my laundry left undone and my tent uncleaned- I already felt overwhelmed.

Enter the mouse.

Who knew that such a small creature could reek such havoc in such a small amount of time? Some of my favorite shirts, gone the way of summer nest making.

Perfect straw to break the camels back. Mouse straw. Real living outdoors.

Farm life where:

2009-08-10T01:00:00.001-07:00

Orchard Lecture

2009-07-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

Orin brought the orchard into the class room today. In order to teach pruning, he needed sufficient props, and it necessitated cutting down whole saplings to bring to class. He came in, draped in apple branches, fruit still hanging- fully committed to giving us a visceral learning experience. I appreciated the integration of learning styles- tactile, auditory, visual, sensual. Teaching us how to fall in love with gardening.

Toes full up

2009-07-30T13:29:00.001-07:00

We planted the last beds in the main field today. A pre-emanation that things will eventually come to an end. Sooner than all of us have imagined, fall will arrive, the dregs will be turned in, and cover crop seeds will be spread- tucking the fields in for winter.

After we transplanted the tiny seedlings into the rows, the whole group lay down in the furrows- shoulder sized walls of dirt mounted up on both sides. Nestled in the the dirt, eyes at plant height, staring up at the sky.

Toes full up, we lay in wait as our seedlings might- to be watered, to grow, and to start the cycle again.

Abundance and Scarcity

2009-07-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

It's hard to remember in the midst of such abundant chaos that there is

Scarcity

Barren Land

Poverty

Resource Depletion

and Starvation

While we're here, our arms full of vegetables, it's almost impossible to remember.

So many beans, zucchini, salad greens, and beets, we rush to keep up with giving them away.

Would that we'll give them to the right people.

If only the world had the ability to experience this good life. Perhaps they'd put down their arms and help harvest.

Russian Beets

2009-07-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

We cleared oversized beets today. Huge beets so impressive that we named them as we pulled them out of the ground. Mostly male Russian sounding names. Vladmir, Gorback, Putin. 321 pounds of magenta colored calories, headed for the walk-in.

First Fruit

2009-07-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

Today after work the apprentices who had been stringing the tomatoes gathered us all in a circle. They said they had news, and with somber faces, they told us it wasn't good.

Then the three of them smiled wily at each other, and from behind their backs they produced three red glowing orbs.

The first tomatoes of summer.

Beneath the elderberry tree our crew busted out harvest knives, split the three equally, and relished the soft reminders of just how sweet farm life is.

Actually Farm

2009-07-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

Today in the field I coordinated a harvest. A small one by all standards, but a harvest none the less.

It felt so good! To know to run things, and to be able to direct the class of 20 undergraduates who were out to learn. Topped beats, string beans, cucumbers- the icons of summer. It was empowering to feel like I had a solid grasp of field scale packing. How to pick, pack, and the post harvest handling information flowed from the nether regions of my brain almost unconsciously. It's amazing how teaching others allowed me to realize just how much I've learned in the last few months. I had yet another moment feeling as if I could actually do this- I could actually farm.

Whoa.

Late night central

2009-07-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday night. The Farm Center is trashed.

Mugs, cracker boxes, gargantuan metal bowls and sticks of lavender traipse across the bowling alley tables.

Salt shakers and pots and baskets with the dregs of berries stand lonesome in the over head lights.

Half filled mason jars and huge wooden cutting boards attest to a cooking project long over.

Outside, our fiddler plays a slurring late night tune to the half moon,

a good night serenade to the trappings of an eventful weekend.

Dry Flowers

2009-07-09T21:17:00.001-07:00

I began to dry flowers today. And I will love me a few floral wreaths come November.

Recipe:

Cut the flowers with short stems, trimming the ends evenly.

Wrap with rubber band tight.

Hang on nails or twine or wire out in doors out of the sun.

Recipe works best with some combination of the currently available plants: Lamb's ears, Zinnias, Larkspur, Lavender, Calenjula, Nigela and Statice.

Add others as they come on.