Free Food Storage Buckets!

I got some free food storage buckets Sunday from the bakery at one of my local supermarkets. I had heard you could do this, but had never before tried it. The ones I got are 3-gallon icing buckets. The lids on these won’t seal air-tight, so I’ll need to either use mylar bags or find another way of sealing them –K thinks silicone sealant will work. But they were free. All I had to do was clean them out and deodorize them with vinegar. That certainly beats paying nearly $10 each from some of the supply houses.

With things going the way they are, I am becoming more and more concerned about keeping enough food stored up to get us through. I’ve read several reports that each estimate global grain production will go down by about 15% this year –and that is an utter disaster. Then there is the Irish Potato Blight, which is devastating gardens and farms alike across the country. All in all, having food stored in the pantry makes me feel a lot more secure. Before K moved in I had enough food to last me three months. That, of course, halved when she moved in. We both agree that building up the pantry is a priority, so I am working on that as much as possible. Our eventual goal is to have a year’s worth of food on hand. That will not happen tomorrow, but we think we can do it in about 6 months.

If you don’t have any idea how much food one person eats in a year, go take a look at the LDS food calculator. It will give you a rough idea. There are several other calculators out there that do the same thing, and have roughly the same numbers. Those numbers are sheer calories –grains, beans, fats, cooking aids. They don’t include fruit and vegetables. The water requirement listed is for one week, as its generally considered impractical to store more water than that.

Here are the numbers for two people:
Grains -600 lb
Legumes -120 lb
Fats and Oils -26 lb
Sugars -120 lb
Milk -170 lb

It’s quite a lot, but my estimates indicate it can be done for around $1000. Less, with really smart shopping. But remember, ANYTHING stored is better than nothing if things go south. A year is a goal we’re striving for, but not one everyone can or even wants to meet. If you don’t have anything stores, start small. Buy an extra jar of peanut butter or a pound of dried beans the next time you go to the store. Every little bit helps.

Peaches, peaches, everywhere!

Peaches, peaches, everywhere!

My peaches are ripe. Last year was the first year I had any peaches from my tree and this year it just exploded. We literally have peaches everywhere –on the counters, the table, in baskets, in the cast iron skillets. The first ones were of course eaten properly. That is, we ate them underneath the tree with the juice running down our chins. The only bad thing we’ve discovered is that these peaches don’t keep well off the tree, so we’re rushing to preserve them.

Georgia peaches or Chilton county peaches? Neither, thank you, good sir –I prefer the ones from my own backyard!

Some more about my peach tree: it’s a Belle of Georgia peach, planted four years ago when it was about a year old. It is a semi-dwarf tree, which means it’s “only” about 15 feet tall. Currently it has a roughly 12-foot spread. It has never been affected by serious disease or pests, but some of our peaches developed a harmless fungus. These were mostly lower on the tree, and we’ve learned how to prevent that next year.

Happy peach season, everyone!

Of Farmer's Markets and Corruption

We have a farmer’s market in our community, like many others. This market is open year-round. It has two anchor stores at either end and then other farmers come in three seasons out of four and sell their wares in the middle section. The anchor stores used to be held by two large local farmers who supplemented what they grew with bananas, extra produce, and the like so that they could stay open year-round.
‘Used to be’ being the operative term. All that changed this spring. The contracts were up for renewal this spring. There were competitors, for the first time ever, and so the commission had a bidding process. A secret bidding process, mind. That alone caused outrage among much of the community. When the results were revealed it turned out the old stores had lost –big time. The new tenants had bid DOUBLE the old rent. Furthermore, they had signed the leases before the results were made public.
That might have been the end of it, if the old stores hadn’t appealed and certain other details hadn’t leaked out. Like how the bidding process was rigged –the new bidders were told what the old tenants bids were and how much over that they’d have to be to get the commission to accept their bids. Then it turned out that the new tenants were actually part of a corporate chain who was trying to take over farmer’s markets using franchises. And then it came out that the county commission had not vetted this chain –no background or credit checks even, which are required by state law. And this chain has filed for bankruptcy twice. Oh, and the final straw: the two franchise owners are….the husband and brother-in-law of the head of the county commission. Nepotism, anyone?
There was outrage. There were hearing. The local news and the mayor got involved. And in the end…nothing happened. It was all allowed to go forward. Now the main place in town for poor people to get fresh vegetables has been co-opted by corporate interests who have driven up all the prices, and ran out a lot of the small farmers as well.
Even farmer’s markets aren’t immune to corruption these days, it would seem.

Pickles!

I made pickles on Monday. Sweet and sour pickle chips. It was fun, and incredibly easy. The pickles look so pretty in the jars. Just seeing them makes me smile. I used the recipe in the Ball Blue Book. It will take six weeks for them to fully cure, but then I will have pickles to last for a year.

I spent an afternoon making pickles and I have enough to last a year. Take that, Monsanto.

One more skill I've learned. I've now canned jam, tomatoes, and pickles. I've also dehydrated and frozen lots of fruits and vegetables. Every thing I do and learn to do is one more step on the path to self-sufficiency and food security. And pickles look might pretty, too, especially when you've made them yourself. :)

Update

I have a feeling this may be a really bad year for agriculture. Why? Available evidence and the weather thus far seems to indicate as much. We had a really cold winter here in the South. That almost never happens, these days. Then it warmed up around the first of March and stayed warm –I’m talking 70 degree days, with a couple of days in early March that were around 85. Then Monday and Tuesday of this week we had another hard freeze. Now, that would not ordinarily be a problem –our frost-free day here is technically April 15, and we usually get a couple of frosts in early April. But because the weather has been so warm everything has popped –including the fruit trees. There may be no peaches this year. Sigh. To make matters worse, all the rain we’ve had has swamped a lot of early spring vegetables and made it too wet to plant more. The early corn can’t go in right now because the seeds would rot in the field. Later on we’ll probably have droughts.

My rented farm is doing well. The greens are doing okay, but I planted them after the last round of torrential rains. Everything else is still in pots in my office. I knew better than to go ahead and put out my tomatoes like so many folks have been doing. I had the feeling we’d have another frost or two. I finally got an offer on the house, which is a very good thing. As long as it passes the inspection it’s sold and I’ll get a bit of money out of it.

The first copy of Walk-About came in yesterday. Am I ever excited over that! It looks wonderful. It’ll be in stores soon and I’m taking a bunch of orders from people I know. For once, most things are looking up.

Rain, rain, and more rain (again)

We had six days of rain last weeks. I’m not talking about light, gentle rain either, or even mostly light rain with periods of downpours. No, we had six days of mostly torrential rainfall. We had some intervals without rain, of course, but mostly it was six solid days of rain. Then Monday was nice; Tuesday it rained again (light rain this time); Wednesday was nice, and today it is supposed to storm. It is a good thing I did not get my seeds planted last week; they would have been absolutely swamped. I worked all weekend, which is good because I needed the money.

Monday I finally got my greens into the ground. They are so pretty. Yes, not many have come up yet but there are a couple of dozen shoots all ready. As long as the rain isn’t too hard today they should be fine. It is only a couple of weeks until tomatoes and peppers can go out, sans hot caps.

Also, Monday, after I planted the greens, my girlfriend and I drove up to Amish country in Tennessee. It is so pretty up there. There are no suburbs and little in the way of subdivisions. One of the things that struck me was the difference in the grass between the Amish and the non-Amish. We went by one farm that had “English” neighbors. The Amish grass was lush and green. The “English” grass, while also green and growing well, was a decidedly different shade of green and looked rather…unhealthy. It was the same sort of grass, so obviously that is not the difference. It would have been hard to notice if the two had not been compared side to side.

We each got a dozen eggs and a gallon of real milk. Right from the farms where they are grown, of course. The eggs were $1.50 a dozen and the milk was $2.00 a gallon. I had never dreamed milk could taste so good. I drink the organic milk all the time, but this is another order of magnitude beyond that. It has a rich, complex flavor that I can’t even begin to describe. Sunshine and clover is the closest I can come, and that makes no sense whatsoever. I have been drinking entirely too much milk since we brought it home. I gave some to the cat and ever since then, when she sees me bring out the jug she tries to grab it. (She is Siamese after all.) I set my glass on the counter the night before last because the washer was empty, left the room, and came back a few minutes later to find her on the counter frantically dipping her paws in the glass and scooping up the bit of milk and cream that was left. She had the most comic look on her face. Then she gave me a look that said, plain as day, try to take it and die.

I don’t agree with everything the Amish do and believe in, but you think they know something we don’t?

The 'farm'

I had quite the adventure yesterday. I spent most of the afternoon working on my rented plot of land. It turns out I didn’t get the greens in; I had underestimated the amount of work I still had to do. However, I did get all the beds ready. I also didn’t know I would have two small and very eager helpers –the two and four-year-old grandsons of the property owner. That distracted me quite a bit, even though their mother and grandmother were present (and the mother helped me out as well). They were really curious and kept asking me questions and showing me their toys, in between helping.

The most ‘interesting’ part of the afternoon was when the older found the small pruning shears in my tool bucket. No, he didn’t hurt himself. But we looked up and he had decided to see if they were sharp enough to cut the fruit trees at the back of her property. Needless to say, I spent some time doing emergency surgery on cherry and peach trees. ;-)

The End of Small Farming and Farmer's Markets

This bill (link below) would require all producers of food (on any scale) to register with the government, follow strict regulations, and open their properties to inspection -including anyone who sales excess produce, small farmers, etc. It would do the same for any vendor of food -including farmer's markets, pick-your-own-farms, and roadside produce stands.

What this means is that anyone who sells excess squash can go to jail and be fined a million dollars. Per squash. The regulations and inspections are deliberately designed to be expensive and time consuming.

What will this really do? Put small farmers and farmers markets out of business. Who wrote this bill? Monsanto and other agribusiness. Becuase you see, a 3,000 acre patch of broccoli is much less likely (and much easier to inspect) to be a safety hazard than a small farm were the farmer visits everything every single day. Not. That explains why every major outbreak of food borne illness in this country comes from industrialized food production.

We can't let this happen. Call congress today.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875

What are they going to eat?

What are they going to eat?

Several of my friends have a problem. At least, I consider it to be a problem. They are picky eaters. I mean, really picky eaters. Most of them won’t eat soup. Or any salad more complex than the standard Caesar. They won’t eat greens. Or beans. Or squash. Most of their meals come from a drive thru. My best friend also has that strange almost disorder where she can’t stand it when different foods are touching. (Hence the reason she won’t eat soup: too many different foods mixed up.)

The next segment of my generation, who are currently between about 14 and 21, are even worse. Every single thing the majority of them eat comes from a drive thru, a box, or a bag. They’ve never seen raw meat, much less a chicken. They’ve never eaten a carrot. They know what peanut butter is but not peanuts. Step down the age ladder a bit more, and you see the same patterns, only even worse. Not too long ago I heard a six-year-old, when asked where a tomato comes from, proudly proclaim that they come from a certain big box store based in Arkansas.

I don’t think I need to go in-depth into the problems facing our world. Every one who reads this blog is certainly aware of them. But here’s a short list: economic depression, climate change, topsoil depletion, peak oil, peak water, drought, genetic engineering, and the breakdown of the industrial food system. This last is what concerns me most. Anyone with eyes to see can tell that our system of food production is slowly breaking down. This is only going to accelerate as time wears on and these other problems become worse. Relocalization is not really an option. It is going to be forced on us sooner rather than later. All of our food production is going to have to be done closer to home. Before many more years have passed there will be no more McDonald’s, no more Wendy’s or Subway or Burger King. There will be no more 3,000 mile Caesar Salads or chicken mcnuggets from a bag. No more corn chips, cheezdoodles, and soda pop.

Which has me seriously worried. Not so much for myself. I can grow food. I can find food –I know most of the local edible plants. I can even hunt if I get hungry enough. Oh, I wouldn’t want to, but I could and would. Not so most of my friends and the others my age and younger. Which leads me to a very important question:

What are they going to eat?

We are talking about people to whom food comes from a can. They could not recognize a carrot plant, or an okra plant, and wouldn’t know what to do with a carrot or some okra if they had it. They might recognize a tomato plant, if it had a red ripe tomato on it, but that is about the extent of their knowledge. Most of them wouldn’t know a pecan if one hit them on the head (quite literally, as that is often what happens). We have an entire generation and half of another one, with very few exceptions, who do not know what real food is. They do not know what it looks like or tastes like, how to grow it or how to cook it.

As the growth economy and the industrial food system continues their contraction and conditions deteriorate further, all those things mentioned above are going to slowly disappear. What are these children and young adults going to do? Are they slowly going to transition to squash and beans and soup, will they riot in the streets demanding their cheez doodles back, or are they going to go hungry? This is not an idle concern, especially as so many of those in this category are children and they are totally dependent on their parents, who have trained them to like this food (which they probably also eat) and who also do not have the skills necessary to grow or cook real food.

And none of this takes into account the very addictive properties of MSG. A major dietary shift coupled with withdrawal? That’s a recipe for disaster.

If you know someone who falls into this category and you have any influence over them at all, you can start trying to get them used to ‘real food’ now. Start slow. Invite him/her over to dinner if the person is a young adult and serve real food. For children, have some real snacks out the next time they come over. It is often necessary to eat a new food several times before adjustment takes place. At the very least, introducing these young people to real food now might help them to make the adjustment later. As for the rest…the Goddess help us. We are going to need it.

Odds and Ends

The weather here has been absolutely crazy for the past three weeks or so. It generally is crazy to one extent or another these days, but it has been much worse. It will start with a really nice day or two or three –mid 50s, even 60s. Then we have a bad cold spell for about a week. When I say bad, I mean lows in the teens or single digits and highs in the 20s or 30s. Then it will slowly warm up and we will have another day or two of really nice weather. Then the cycle repeats. We are in our third or fourth round of this. The night before last the low was 12 with a windchill of 5 and the high was, oh, around 32 or so. Today and the next few days are going to be in the 50s and 60s. Sunday the temp is going to be 67 –and next week it is projected to cool down again. Does this seem to be completely ridiculous to anyone else?

There is a reason it is called ‘climate change’ and not just ‘global warming’. But I am beginning to wonder if we have shut down the North Atlantic Current and that might be plunging us into a temporary miniature ice age. I hope not, but it a possibility that some researchers have been warning against.

I ran out of frozen blueberries this week. I froze 15 pints last summer. Note to self: stop eating so many blueberries! LOL. I now have a website for my crafts but it is not completely up and running yet. I will post a link in a few days when I have it ready.

On a much more somber note, there have been three high-profile suicides around here in the past week. Two of them jumped off bridges into the river, and the third jumped off an overpass onto the highway. It makes me wonder how many more there have been that did not make the news. The financial crisis is resulting in a very human toll, and one that will only get worse as time goes on.

Here is a scary news report from China:
China Declares Drought Emergency
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7871964.stm
I don’t think I need to point out that this will be a disaster.

Corporate Psychopaths and Sociopaths: The Peanut Butter Killer

Corporate Psychopaths and Sociopaths: The Peanut Butter Killer
psychopath psy·cho·path (sī'kə-pāth')n. A person with an antisocial personality disorder, especially one manifested in perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior.
sociopath [(soh-see-uh-path, soh-shee-uh-path)]
Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others. (Compare psychopath.)
(Both definitions from Dictionary.com)

The headlines have been everywhere. There is a massive recall of peanut butter and peanut butter products underway, courtesy of a salmonella outbreak from a peanut butter plant in Georgia. When I was at the store last night my receipt had a huge list of things on it that have been recalled.

More than 500 people have been made sick. Eight have died. But it gets worse. This same company has knowingly shipped products contaminated with salmonella over the past eighteen months. Let me repeat that: this company has knowingly shipped contaminated products, resulting in multiple deaths and illnesses. (Sources: NPR, the AP, etc.)

Let’s change things for a moment. Let’s assume that a single person was responsible for all this. What would the headlines say then? Not ‘peanut recall widens’ or ‘FDA investigation expands’. No, they would read something along the lines of: “Police Hunt for Peanut Butter Killer”. This person would be labeled a psychopath or sociopath, and rightly so. He or she would be charged with murder, or at least manslaughter.

But what will happen to this company? A fine, possibly some lawsuits. Then they will probably declare bankruptcy (to get around the fine and lawsuits) and be right back to manufacturing in a few months. A few people will lose their jobs. But that will be about it.

Does this make sense to anyone? It certainly does not make sense to me. Corporations are legally considered to be persons. They have all the rights of people. But none of the responsibilities. A person kills another person, and we scream “murder!”. But a corporation kills someone, and it is a ‘regrettable accident’. And yet, in this case as in many others, the incident was not an accident at all. It was a direct result of actions knowingly taken. The results could be foreseen. The corporation and its managers simply did not care. What is the definition of a psychopath again? A sociopath? I should think that if we could morph these companies into actual people we would quickly lock them all away.

This has got to STOP. We can not keep granting personhood to non-entities. This is what caused the Exxon Valdez spill, this is what caused the coal ash spill in Tennessee, and this is what killed 8 people. Other factions of our culture are also complicit, yes, but if these companies did not have personhood they could be held accountable. And they need to be.

Seed Catalogs

It's that time of the year again. Seed catalogs have been pouring into my mailbox over the past few weeks. I'm a sucker for them. During this time of the year I will spend hours poring over them, a pen in hand, dreaming of growing green things while the landscape outside is cold and dreary. I have all ready gotten nine seed catalogs this year. Of course, I do not order from that many companies but I seem to have a talent for getting on gardening mailing lists. Here are my favorite seed companies:
Bountiful Gardens, out of Willits, Ca -they are part of Ecology Action, which does research into Sustainable Gardening. They are not a big seed house, but their products are affordable and the quality is high. All of their products are open-pollinated.

Territorial Seed out of Cottage Grove, Oregon -They have a huge selection, but some of their things are hybrids. I've had good luck with the things I've tried.

Seeds of Change -all organic, the corporate 'good guy'. They have a lot of nice offerings you can't get elsewhere, especially not organically.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds -all open-pollinated and the owner started it when he was in his teens.

Southern Exposure Seed Catalog -a worker owned collective focusing on producing seeds for the Southeast U.S. I had problems with some of their seeds last year, but that might be a fluke as everyone else I know has had good luck.

This is what I would like to grow this year:
Pole Beans
Dry Beans
Corn
Carrots
Beets
Brussel Sprouts
Broccoli
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Collards
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Garlic
Onions
Kale
Lettuce/Salad mixes
Beetberry
Mustard
Melons
Watermelons
Okra
Parsnips
Parsley
Peas
Peppers -Sweet and hot
Sweet Potatoes
Pumpkins
Radishes
Turnips
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Summer Squash -yellow crookneck, zucchini, and scallop at least
Winter Squash -butternet, acron, and vegetable spaghetti
Tomatoes -several kinds, including yellow pear, roma, and cherokee purple (three of my favorites)
More herbs

Is that enough? Lol. But with my situation, I probably will not grow anything.

Winter has arrived

Winter has arrived. Old Man Winter and The Crone are making themselves known. We’ve had hard frost the past two nights and it is going to be one cold week –an Alberta Clipper is coming through tonight. I sleep more in the winter, partly because of the dark and partly because of the cold. We are just over a month from the winter solstice and then the light will start coming back.

My garden is all tucked in for winter and has been for some time. I have some cleaning up to do, but that is it. Just about everything is taking a well-deserved nap. My greens, however, are not –we can grow certain greens year round here if we get them in the ground soon enough. Spinach, collards, cabbage, mustard, chard, lettuce –all survive our winters just fine. Some of them stop growing for a bit if it gets too cold, but they resume as soon as it warms up. Part of the purpose of getting them in the ground early is so they get big enough for you to keep picking if they hibernate.

Winter is my least favorite time of the year, but still I love it. I love the nippy air, the frost on the windows in the morning. Hot apple cider and hot tea, soup, and pumpkin pie. Time off from my gardening to do other things, cuddling on the couch with all my animals in the evening (who needs heat when you have pets, lol). Parties and festivals, bundling up and the chance for snow.

Last night I made a healthy dinner –baked chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed greens from the garden. Tonight I’ll take some of the leftover chicken and make chicken soup, then I’ll freeze the rest of the meat (sans enough to have leftovers from last night tomorrow) so I have a ready source of cooked meat the next time I decide to make chicken soup or a chicken pot pie.

The funny thing is, winter is here and two of my rose bushes are still blooming. They are on the south side of my house where it is sheltered. Usually they bloom until the first week of December. They are gorgeous, but completely out of season. Oh well.

Famine is coming

Famine is coming.

I understand hunger. I understand it bone-deep, in the way that only someone who has been hungry can understand it. My childhood was spent in extreme poverty and only rarely did we have enough to eat. I sometimes joke that my small size is due to childhood malnourishment. Going to bed hungry was so common an occurrence that it went unremakred upon. When I started school the free lunch (and later, when they started the program) the free breakfast were often the only meals I had. I have eaten out of trashcans. I have lived off of food stamps and donations and dented cans pulled out of the garbage and fish caught from a nearby pond and been happy to get the meal. To make matters even worse, my mother was not all there. That is an understatement. She was bipolar and borderline schizophrenic. She sometimes thought it was fun to get food and eat it in front of us. Particularly me, as I was the scapegoat in our very dysfunctional family.

So I understand hunger. It affects me in ways most people in the so-called developed world can not fathom. When I read that 25,000 people a day die of hunger (or did before the numbers started climbing this year), I feel that in my gut. I know what that means and what it is like to be that close to the edge. When I saw Gone With The Wind in high school the one time I empathized with Scarlett in the entire movie was when she swore she would never be hungry again. I understand that feeling.

The food crisis this year has horrified me. I know, deep down what it means: starvation. It is going to get so much worse next year. Early this year food agencies warned that without record harvests there would be famine next year. We did not get record harvests. Not only that, but next years crops are going to go down even more. When I read stories like the one discussing the impact of the credit crisis on farming, which states that wheat alone is going to go down by 4% (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aox4ZwDlWkvQ&refer=home) I get a chill. It gets worse when I read about the water supplies in California being cut by 85% next year. A lot of food comes from California. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081031/ap_on_re_us/california_water#full) Then I read about grain shipments stalling due to credit problems and wheat rust and climate change and I get physically sick.

All of this adds up to one thing: famine. Massive, widespread famine. The developed world has no concept of famine. We have not experienced it since the 1930s. The few remaining survivors remember it and the lessons it taught; I think my adopted grandmother could live off her food supplies for 6 months without leaving her apartment. But most people have no idea what famine is, no concept of it. If this gets too bad, they might learn. The number of hungry in this country is all ready going up. NPR said yesterday morning that almost 30 million people in this country are on food stamps. That’s about 10% of the population, folks. What is going to happen with the economy crashing, food prices going up, and food supplies going down? The answer should be obvious: shortages and hunger. Famine.

I can not explain how badly this scares me. I have been down this road and I know where it leads. Famine is coming, and trouble will follow on its heels.

Of course, I could be wrong. We could end up with bumper crops next year and everything will be fine. The Easter Bunny could also be real. If I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to celebrate.

I’ll leave off today with the words to Famine Song, a song I have performed many times with my choir:

Famine Song
arr. Matt Culloton (b. 1976)
Ease my spirit, ease my soul,
please free my hands from this barren soil,
ease my mother, ease my child,
Earth and sky be reconciled.
Rain, rain, rain.
Weave, my mother, weave, my child,
weave your baskets of rushes wild.
Out of heat, under sun, comes the hunger to ev’ry one.
Famine’s teeth, famine’s claw on the sands of Africa.

Watching the world tank

I know that is wrong of me to watch the 700 point drop in the Dow today with glee, but I am human after all and just can’t help it. After being forced to watch the looting of the lower classes and the pillaging of the earth for so long, it feels good to view what may finally be the unraveling of it all. Yes, I am well aware of the pain and hardship that will result from this and feel guilty over my feelings, but as I said, I am merely human. My dog may think differently, but I know better. ;-)

Autumn is here in the southeast. We had our first ‘cold’ spell last week. It got down into the 40s at night –and yes, here that is considered cold. Then it rocketed back up into the 90s a day or two later. I harvested my last watermelons just before the snap hit. One was slightly overripe and one slightly underripe, but the latter was edible. There is a secret to harvesting watermelons at just the right time and I still haven’t gotten it quite down. As I sat there eating that watermelon (these are small watermelons, I should point out) it occurred to me that it doesn’t much matter what happens on Wall Street as long as I have a roof over my head and food on the table.

For those who are reading this and are thinking of last minute just-in-case preparations to make, here are some things to consider getting:
-Vitamins. These are invaluable in a crisis situation.
-Toothbrushes and toothpaste. Huh? Yes, I wrote that correctly. Dental hygiene is important, especially when you can’t get to a dentist. A minor annoyance right now (like an abscessed tooth) can quickly become fatal without treatment. The best thing to do is not to let it happen to begin with.
-Baking supplies. Never underestimate the value of a chocolate chip cookie when the world has gone to pot.
-Alcohol (the drinkable kind). Even if you don’t drink, alcohol = money in most crises.
-More rice and beans. You can donate them to the food pantry later if you don’t use them.

Happy Lammas!

I'm still working on the post I promised, but I don't want to let the blog die while I do so.



Today (or yesterday, depending on which calendar you're using) is Lammas. For those not familiar with Pagan holidays, Lammas is the festival of first harvest. It occurs midway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. This is the time of the year when the first of the harvest's bounty is coming in. In the ancient cultures of Europe Lammas was celebrated with large festivals and a general holiday.



In honor of the holiday I made a rather elaborate meal tonight: rotini with garlic, onions, two types of peppers (bell and sweet bannana), eggplant and squash in homemade pesto sauce. I had corn on the cob as a side dish and blueberries for dessert. Every bit of this meal with the exception of the pasta, the oil, the pine nuts and the butter for the corn came from either my garden, the farmer's market, or a pick-ur-own farm. And the pine nuts were a gift from a friend. (Hey, you think I'm going to pay $9 bucks for a small bag of nuts? Not hardly.)



A local meal for a celebration of the local harvest.

Happy Lammas!

Is localvorism anti-feminist?

I promise this will be my last post before the essay I promised. But this is something I really want to address, both because I’ve seen this several times now and because our sermon at church yesterday was on localvorism and someone raised this question. The basic premise is that being a localvore may be anti-feminist because it tends to require more work to get and prepare food and thus more time in the kitchen. This is, of course, what women have long sought to escape. You can read a blog post on this subject here: http://www.lilith.org/blog/?p=23

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that not only is eating locally NOT anti-feminist, it is probably the most feminist diet one can eat, and maybe the most feminist thing one can do. I’ll get into the reasons for this as I go through the essay, but first I’m going to take the points in the above post and refute them one by one.

First, as regards winter fruits and vegetables: you don’t eat the same ones as you do in summer. You don’t buy strawberries in December. You buy apples instead. In the place of summer squash you buy winter squash. Secondly, if you want to eat strawberries in December you buy them in May or June –whenever your local season is –and can, freeze or dry them for use in the winter months. This is how our ancestors ate for thousands of years, all the way up to the 1950s when widespread refrigeration and cheap oil made it possible to buy California strawberries in Wisconsin in January.

Second, it doesn’t cost that much more to eat locally, especially if you grow your own or go to u-pick farms. In fact, it can be cheaper. I can pick blueberries here for about a dollar a pint, versus buying them for 2.5 to 3 times that, even now when they’re in season. I have nine pints of frozen blueberries in my freezer that should last me nearly a year.

Next Lilith wants to know if we “can actually cut convenience out of their diets entirely without sacrificing the freedoms that come with not being chained to the stove all day?” There are two points to make about this –the first is that no one says you have to give up all conveniences –I still use my fridge, freezer, and microwave, for instance. The second, and more important, is what freedoms are you giving up? She says she could never work, full-time, get married, or have kids if she would do this all the time. Okay, that’s patent nonsense –there are a lot of married, working moms who are also committed localvores.

Again, I have to ask what freedoms you’re giving up and also what the trade-offs are. Everything has trade-offs; there’s no perfect solution here. To eat locally you do have to spend more time acquiring and preparing food. There’s no way around that. Are the freedoms you’re giving up the right to watch TV for an hour a day? The ability to take your kids to three or four activities a week? That may be okay for you or not. But suppose you don’t eat locally. What are you giving up then?

That question may seem counter-intuitive to some. After all, don’t you get anything? Can’t you eat anything and get it from anywhere? You can eat dinner out every night and have fruit out of season, sure. But it’s going to cost you. The first thing it will cost you is money. As I pointed out previously, it often costs less money to eat locally than not. The second thing it is going to cost you is time. You have to earn that money, after all. And the more money you need, the more you have to work. Maybe you love your job and if so, that’s great. But most jobs in this country frankly suck. The feminist movement liberated us from the kitchen; the corporations made sure we had no choice but to become their serfs. Some success. Where’s the freedom in that? The third thing you’re going to give up is health. Convenience foods are not nearly as healthy as whole, unprocessed food. They are the biggest source of bad health in this country.

But let’s get back to the previous point. Freedom. What is freedom? The right to make your own choices. The right to do what you want and not be dependent on others for your choices. If you depend on the corporate system for food, you are in effect depending on them for everything. Why? Think about it for a moment. Food is basic. Food is the most necessary thing for someone to have. If you don’t have food, you will starve to death. Period. If you have to depend on someone else for food, then you are at their mercy. If you can’t meet their price or they can’t deliver the food, tough. So sorry. A lot of people claim they are not beholden to the corporate system, that they have escaped it. But guess where they still get their food?

Food and food security are not just basic to freedom; they ARE freedom. Throughout history, the first thing a conquering army did to help vanquish the civilians was destroy their food supply. From the Romans, to the English settlers in America, the militias would burn the granaries or the fields to starve the populace into submission. How can you rebel or shrug off a system when you are dependent on it? The answer is that you can’t. So, not eating locally not only does not give you more freedom, it gives you much less. When you are in charge of your own food supply, when you eat locally, when you grow your own, then you cut the most vital link between you and the system that is destroying both you and the country. Which gives you more freedom? And which, therefore, is more feminist?

My very first peach!

When I moved here a few years ago one of the very first things I did was plant two fruit trees, one an apple and one a peach. Both were self-pollinating varieties of course. Now, it’s almost impossible to overstate how much I love peaches –they are just about my favorite fruit and one of the best things about the South. (Ok, nearly the best thing about the South.) I have tended these trees carefully the past few years but knew I couldn’t really expect any sort of crop until next year.

I had a lot of flowers on my peach tree this year but none of them seemed to develop into anything. Most of them I took off myself because many of the trees branches are not yet strong enough to support fruit. Well, sometimes life throws you a delicious curve ball.

Late yesterday afternoon I was leaving the house and happened to glance up at my peach tree. The late afternoon sun shone on it in such a manner that the leaves were highlighted and I saw something pink against one of the branches. I thought it was probably a trick of the light and went on because I was in a hurry. Naturally, I forgot to check it out when I got back home.

Fast forward to today. I got home about the same time I left yesterday and as I’m getting out of the car I look up and see the same flash of pink. No, I think it can’t be. Can it? So I traipse across the yard, packages and all, and look up. There, ten feet in the air, hangs a perfect ripe peach. I let out a yell that could have waken the dead, dropped everything in my hands, and did a silly little dance in the yard that had all my neighbors staring. They must really think I’m nuts now, after dancing in the yard with a silly grin plastered all over my face.

After the discovery I proceeded to go through heroics to get to the peach. I had to bring out the stepladder, step it up on the lawn –which slopes by the way –and stand at the very edge of my reach to get at it. I knew it was ripe before I ever touched it; it had that perfect pink blush peaches get when they are at their peak. It was firm to the touch and came off with just a gentle twist. As soon as I got on the ground I smelled it. That heavenly aroma alone was worth waiting for. Then I bit into it and stood there on the lawn, juice running down my chin, completely lost.

This, I thought, is heaven. This is what life should be. I don’t need an IPhone and an Xbox to make me happy –just a tree and a peach will do it.

Interesting Tomato Problem

I had an interesting tomato problem this week. I was watering a friend's garden while she was out of town and she told me to pick any produce that was right while she was gone, which of course did. Among many other things I got several tomatoes. One of these had the problem. It was a paste tomato, a roma I think. I'm one of those who will eat small tomatoes -particularly paste, cherry, and plum -whole as a snack. Now, this tomato was at the peak of ripeness. It was blemish free and had no markings, cracks, or anything else wrong with it. I've rarely seen such a perfect tomato -particularly from an organic garden. But when I bit into this tomato, it had mold growing inside.

Has anyone ever heard of this? If so, what causes it?

Collapse Hitting Home

The slow moving collapse of western society is finally hitting home. Two weeks ago my neighbor across the street got foreclosed on. A sheriff’s deputy and a goon squad showed up early in the morning with the foreclosure notice and an immediate eviction notice. There not required to give you any time to vacate the premises here, so they didn’t. The deputy gave her the notice and the goons started hauling her and her son’s things to the curb. She still hasn’t got a permanent place to live.

Three of my neighbors moved out today. Just on my street. I know that it’s moving season but that’s a little excessive. Two of them left in a big hurry and left a bunch of stuff behind. A partial list of the things I got off the curb at one house (incidentally next door to the one across from me where the foreclosure happened): two big bags of garden soil, several good shelves, a nice expensive looking coffee table, a TV, a printer (still in the box!), and an unopened bag of charcoal.

More and more homeless are appearing on the streets. The missions and shelters here are overwhelmed. The food pantries are running on empty. As soon as something comes in it goes right back out again. Food prices are skyrocketing right along with the price of gas. And this is only the first of the shocks on the long road down from the Age of Oil.

How am I coping? Mostly by storing food. Don’t laugh. It’s an utterly practical endeavor. Today I froze a bunch of things. One pint each of blueberries and blackberries, half a pint each of raspberries and plums and a bunch of apples, grapefruits, and tomatoes that were given to me. I froze rather than dried the last because there weren’t enough to dry or can and the tomatoes were all ready too ripe.

Another incident happened today that is worth mentioning. I was preparing to leave home to go clean a house and had just checked my mail. I was walking back to the car when suddenly I saw a hawk come winging out of the forest. The hawk is one of my spirit guides. This hawk flew out of the forest and over the neighborhood, then swung back towards me. For several minutes it hovered above me, circling over my head. It was maybe twenty feet in the air. Then with a cry it went on hunting. I watched it for several minutes before it went out of sight and then I went on my way. What it means I have no idea, save that I felt much more relaxed and peaceful after that. Maybe it was trying to tell me something I remember my great aunt saying when I was very young, before she died: this too shall pass.