What We Need Is Here

Attack of the Seminole pumpkins

Seminole Pumpkins are everywhere! I like them for so many reasons: They are native to this region; they grow in the summer; they are very productive; they're fairly high in calories for a vegetable (a good thing if you are aspiring to live off what is grown here); they're high in vitamins and minerals; and they are pretty tasty. Their only flaw: They are ridiculously hard to peel. And for that reason we had collected quite a few on our pantry shelf before I decided to make use of them.

The sloth's method of peeling pumpkins? Cook them first. We halved ours, removed the strings and seeds (for the most part) with a metal spoon, placed them insides down in a baking pan filled without about an inch of water, and baked, uncovered, for about an hour. Then we put them in the fridge to cool off. I understand you can do this in a microwave as well, if you have one, for less time - about ten minutes.

For Wednesday's "cafe," we made another soup inspired by the wonderful Mollie Katzen (in Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special), but substituting pumpkin for a number of other ingredients. Here's the recipe, in the loose style of our grandmas who used what they had in the amount that they needed. I have found again and again that the actual ingredients and amounts don't matter very much. It's very freeing to create the amount you actually need with what you've got on hand! And it's worked for generations...

Spunky Punkin & Potato Soup

Ingredients:
onions
butter or olive oil
finely chopped potatoes (between a chop and a dice)
water
salt
cooked pumpkin (see above), peeled and chopped
frozen peas (we don't do this often, but till there's more local "green" at the market...)
spunkiness: chopped olives, pickled jalapenos or banana peppers, capers, or a mix of these
optional: sour cream

Directions:
Chop finely enough onions to cover the bottom of your pot by 1 or 2 inches. Saute in a little butter. When onions are soft, fill the pot to the halfway point with potatoes, bring to a boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until potatoes are so soft they are falling apart. Remove from burner for a moment and, with a potato masher, gently mash potatoes in the pot until they are fairly pulverized (there will still be pieces of various sizes). Put back on burner and add chopped pumpkin to the 2/3 mark, while bringing back to a boil, add some frozen peas - and a little water if necessary. Finally, add something "spunky" from the list above. We used a mixure of green olives and pickled jalapenos. Sour cream produces a creamier - and very pretty - soup. To use it, place it in a mixing bowl and stir in a ladle of soup. Add the mixture back to the soup and stir. Salt and pepper to taste.

Garden Update - Going with the flow (or lack thereof)

Lettuce growing in its new home in the front garden

The owner of our empty lot garden never returned our calls or letters, and since the water was turned off over a month ago, things have really deteriorated. So little rain and such extraordinary heat for this time of year! This is one of the challenges of living in the city and having very little space for growing your own food. Flexibility and perseverance are virtues worth cultivating.

But "necessity if the mother of invention" as they say, and we are re-imagining our garden -  right back to the original vision of raising food intensively in small spaces. We have a small, south-facing garden space at the front of the house, and plan to add containers on the steps and possibly window boxes. We also had some trees trimmed in the side yard which may allow enough sun to grow some leafy vegetables. It's a challenge, but a good one. We all need to learn to grow as much as we can in small spaces and maybe this will be our role; we can share what we learn.

Just as this new/old idea was percolating, our next door neighbor called and asked if we could talk later in the week about sharing some space in their back lot - another step in this new direction.

All Saints

Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. –Plato

Today is All Saints Day on the traditional Christian calendar. I tend to like these minor holidays, appreciating how they celebrate some deep, human part of ourselves - but without all the commercial hoopla attached.

This one sets aside a time to honor “all saints, known and unknown.” In Catholic churches, the holy day kicks off a month-long remembrance of family, friends, and famous folk who have died, and their names are read off solemnly from the “Book of the Dead” at each mass. I have always found this practice hopeful. Naming the names, recognizing some you have known and loved among the long list that goes on and on throughout the month, embodies a sense of continuity between life and death. The “official saints” are in there too – the ones canonized because they did something extraordinary, like die for their beliefs or create something outstanding that witnessed to them. Also included in some lists (Robert Elsberg’s book All Saints is an inspiration) are those we may not have known personally and have not been “canonized” by the Catholic hierarchy but whom we generally acknowledge as saints for our time – a diverse group that includes people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Stephen Biko…  The list as a whole reflects the “cloud of witnesses,” folks who  put their particular talents and experiences to work toward the betterment of the world and time they lived in, and who still inspire us.

Most of them had fairly ordinary lives up to a point; many had some pretty spectacular falls from grace as well. Scratch the surface, and I’m sure even the most revered and “holy” saints venerated by the church racked up their share of mistakes, failures, and “sins.” What we often remember them for is that they got up again - and for what they did with their broken lives afterwards, in service to others.

There was a 12-hour period earlier this week when I felt I got an overwhelming glimpse of how this all might work, why we need to remember, how important it is to see that hint of greatness and the reality of true courage in the ordinary lives of people – even at their most broken.  It was a “graced” moment for me, one of those times when it seems as though a veil is lifted and you see the goodness right in the midst of the messiness of the present moment.

On Thursday night, we hosted some young women from a local “maternity home,” a shelter which offers food and housing and emotional support for mothers and their young children while the moms go to school and get situated into life as a family. Many come from violent backgrounds, all from some level of poverty. One of the young mothers we spoke to –  a former runaway a recovering addict, a welfare mom  - talked about some of the specifics of her violent and abusive childhood (to make even this stereotypical phrase more clear: her mother, to support her drug habit, prostituted her from the time she was 8 – which made for a very confused, angry and rebellious adolescent a few years later). She expressed the strong desire she has to provide better for her child despite the obstacles. She described the hard work she is doing to get there.

Right after dinner, I had to dash off to the local prison to visit a recent guest at our house who had been picked up after a few days of disappearing from the house to go on a crack binge. A former New York gang member with a rap sheet many pages long, all of his arrests have been drug–related. And he is headed to prison for five to ten years. He tells me it’s not really him that does these things - that he's not that person, or doesn't want to be. And, cynical as I have become when listening to an addict trying to explain, I detect that he is telling the truth. He wants to be the man who planted bean seeds with little Riley, was teaching Johnny Spanish, who made a mean tomato and cucumber salad, who befriended international students and helped them learn English. He is that person at one level, and we have seen that reality shining; But it is being  buried under the heap of bad choices and addiction.  

The next morning, I woke up to a letter from an acquaintance, a yuppie in appearance and profession - powerful, politically-astute, dressed for success - who described some of the unconscionable acts of physical abuse he had undergone as a child by a member of the clergy, some recent personal losses, and the ongoing stress he feels sometimes affects his work in the community. “Welfare mom,” “crack addict,” “yuppie” – all labels that tell such a tiny part of the story but by which we base our decisions as to their character and their future.

The people I want to celebrate this day and this month, are those “unknown saints" for whom great courage is required to keep going on in the face of the odds against them.  From whatever walk of life, and at whatever stage of the journey they’re in – the falling down, the on-the-ground, the getting up again - they deserve our respect, and often our help. At the very least, they merit a true listening ear by which we can hear their stories and begin to understand.

To be re-membered, put back together again so as to honor the big picture of who it is we are underneath it all, and who we might be.  This is something we all long for, and something to celebrate.

The CIW and Publix - Davids and Goliath

Last weekend a group from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers visited our house and we joined them at their protest at Publix, our area's largest supermarket chain. The CIW has approached the corporation asking that they join other large businesses in supporting fair labor practices for tomato pickers by doing the following:

• Paying an additional penny a pound for tomatoes.
• Implementing an enforceable code of conduct to ensure safe and fair working conditions, including zero tolerance for modern-day slavery.
• Ensuring a voice for farm workers in monitoring improvements and reporting abuses.

The grinding poverty these folks live with has left them vulnerable to terrible abuses by employers. There have been seven cases of slavery convicted in the last twelve years - one less than a year ago. The support of big chains like Publix would go a long way in ensuring that this never happens again.

As a family and community, we look very forward to our visits from the CIW. They are kind and hardworking people, and their cause is so unquestionably just. What an irony that the folks who put food on our table cannot afford to feed their own families. And what a food system that ignores the human rights of one of its most vital components. It seems so simple - just a penny more a pound, and some basic human decency. 

 Soccer break after breakfast

Truth be told, we don't shop at Publix very often these days, preferring to patronize a small grocer that sells local food. But I have often in the past, and most of the folks I know here in Gainesville do. I am sending the following letter to the mangers of our local Publixes and to the corporate office. If you live near one, will you consider doing so as well? Also, if you can, please take a moment to listen to CIW member Gerardo's eloquent and moving plea for justice last Sunday at a local church (it's between minutes 29 and 35 if you don't want to listen to the whole service :)).

Dear Publix Manager,

I have shopped at Publix often in my life. As a child I accompanied my mother  on her trips to the Plantation, Florida store.  As an adult, I have lived near and shopped at your stores regularly and not only because of familiarity. I have appreciated your efforts to employ developmentally disabled folks in our community. I have seen firsthand how going that extra mile to recruit, train, and support them in their work has been helpful to them and heartwarming to shoppers.  In addition, your recent efforts to offer “greenwise” products that are more sensitive to the environment and, at some stores, local produce has been appreciated by me and many others.

For these reasons, I was surprised to hear that you refused to talk with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to discuss their requests for minor changes that would raise their standard of living and help them support their families.  I understand workers earn only 40-50 cents for every 32 lb. bucket of tomatoes and must pick 2.5 TONS of tomatoes in order to earn a minimum wage during a typical 10-hour day. Their poverty leaves them vulnerable to the most exploitative employers and there have been some terrible labor rights abuses, including modern-day slavery.  Since 1997 there have been seven convicted cases of slavery involving 1000 Immokalee farm workers – the most recent of which was less than a year ago. As purchaser of tomatoes from both Six L’s and Pacific Growers, it would be especially helpful for Publix to work with the CIW to ensure that farm workers are never again held against their will, beaten, and deprived of their pay. You seem to be the kind of business who would want to stand against this injustice.

A number of other corporations have recently done this. Yum Brands, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Bon Appetit, and Whole Foods are all working with the CIW to directly improve the wages and conditions in their tomato supply chains. Many of us are extremely disappointed to see that Publix has responded to their request by announcing that “we respectfully decline the opportunity to participate in this program.”

Please reconsider. You can help ensure fair wages and dignity for the farm workers who pick Publix tomatoes by working with the CIW to:

• ·         Pay an additional penny per pound for tomatoes purchased to directly increase the wages of tomato pickers.
• ·         Implement an enforceable code of conduct to ensure safe and fair working conditions for farm workers, including zero tolerance for modern-day slavery.
• ·         Ensure a voice for farm workers in monitoring improvements and reporting abuses.

 I am sure you have found your other efforts toward justice – employing the disabled, providing environmentally friendly products, and offering local food at some locations – to also be good business practices.  “Fair-trade” is also an idea whose time has come. You will keep the customers you have and attract new ones by joining this movement.

As a Publix customer, I look forward to Publix living up to its reputation as a good neighbor by partnering with the CIW to end the human rights crisis in our backyard.

Baked Bean Soup - another vegetable drought recipe

 

This time of the year, the pickin's are still pretty slim at the market and in the garden. It's been hot, mostly, and dry. Fall seedlings planted in early October are not quite ready - so you see sweet potatoes and peppers... and not much else.

Our cafe menus reflect the situation. More beans, less veggies... even the muscadine grape harvest has ended. While the farmers at the market assure us that the bountiful fall harvest will begin in 4 - 6 weeks, we are digging into the back of the recipe box for hardy soup that's heavy on the dried bean. Baked Bean Soup is a favorite.

Ingredients

2 cups chopped onions
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup chopped green peppers
1 cup chopped, peeled sweet potato
2 Tbsp. chili powder
4 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
2 cups water
1 14 1/2 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups white pea beans (about 1/2 cup dried, soaked overnight and boiled till soft)
2 Tbsp. vinegar
2 Tbsp. molasses
salt to taste

Saute onions in olive oil till transparent. Add chopped green peppers and sweet potatoes, sprinkle with chile powder and stir in oil for a minute or two. Add water, mustard, and tomatoes, and bring to a boil. Add beans, vinegar, and molasses. Salt to taste. Serve with grated cheese if desired.

We served ours with oat-flax bread and our own variation of Boston brown bread (and the last of the muscadines...).

Wanted: Great Minds to do something different

"After the Industrial revolution's two hundred years of inventing more and better products, we may have come to a point where certain products have reached their zenith. We may have come to the point of diminishing returns. We may have reached perfection. We may have reached the point where using more resources may actually make us less happy - where there may not be any more progress to be had.

Continuing to do what we've done for the past two hundred years is not progress. It's more of the same. Staying on the same path is not the definition of progress.

I simply feel that now that we've so utterly perfected the walkie-talkie to the point where it has become the iPhone, maybe we could turn the great minds that brought us the Nintendo Wii to, say, getting fresh water to the 1 billion people on our planet who don't have it."

Colin Beavan,
from No Impact Man

Keeping it Simple - Does it matter?

I've been part of several lively debates lately about whether or not changes at the personal level can affect Big Problems like peak oil,climate change and pollution levels.  Of course, I want to think “yes!” partly because it would be so gratifying (and simple)to imagine that what we do matters and will matter -  that if we line-dry our clothes, ride our bikes, grow some of our own food, and recycle we will be making a positive difference that will keep the world liveable for our grandchildren.

Well, dang Derrick Jensen for throwing a bucket of gray-water on this kind of personal idealism.  In a recent article in Orion titled “Forget Shorter Showers,” Jensen contends we do-gooders have been duped by a “campaign of systematic misdirection” that seeks to have us blame ourselves and waste our time taking little, meaningless acts of self-denial. While these actions may make us feel righteous, they don’t take on the real problem - big corporations and our economic system, which he says are responsible for 80% of our environmental woes.

I think he’s right. And I think he’s wrong.

Yes, there are bigger forces than our little families out there running the show – this most recent act especially.  No matter how bad off we are economy-wise, there always seems to be enough money in the corporate coffers to pay off our elected officials, and no end to the number of folks willing to sell their souls to stay in office.  Not to mention the question of how ethical our capitalistic system is in the first place. As long as money is THE bottom line, emission controls on cars, restraints on factory and agribusiness pollution, cleaner power plants, and other big fixes don’t happen, or happen way too slowly. The people profiting from these systems keep finding ways to continue business as usual.

But he’s wrong that individuals and families don’t have an impact. We pay the corporations to do what they do through our consumption of their products – gas guzzling cars, stuff we don’t need, food from far off, excessive climate control.  If we ALL cut back it would make a difference – not just because green house gases would be cut back by 22% (the amount he cites would result if we all followed the directions on “An Inconvenient Truth”), but because the Big Guys rely on us go keep them in business.  If we change, they change (some).  

But still, I hear him. A lot of people are arguing that it is too little too late. A few of us doing some things here and there and regulations forcing a few more things over the next 20 or 25 years is just not enough to turn around the problems barreling down on us.  Deciding we did our part by changing out all our light bulbs to compact fluorescents – or taking shorter showers, and then sitting back waiting for the world to get better is clearly a bad idea.  Unfortunately Jensen, like the no-impact-man-backlashers, are short on suggestions regarding how exactly to “confront and take down those systems.”

I want to argue for continuing to change our ways – while we learn how to take on the systemic problems.

First it makes sense to learn to live with less because we are simply going to have to at some point.  As peak oil and climate change affect prices (at the very least) of food, growing our own will become more and more important; conserving water, fuel, and “things” will too. Most thinking people think we can’t continue our rate of consumption, so learning to live with less makes sense regardless. Learning to share is going to be important to, which is going to call into question our whole dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself system of greed and consumption many of us have been living in.

Second, most of these conservation activities have the side effect of building community. They get us out of our houses; they require that we work together; they sometimes even require sharing and bartering knowledge and tools. If we are going to fight against large-scale systemic problems, we’re going to have to do it together. Working together on the little positive things can lead to working against the big, bad ones. 

Third, 22% is something.  And personal integrity is too. It’s not just about that warm feeling of self-righteousness. Making changes in how you live your life based on what you believe to be right – and real - is both mentally healthy AND an important part of change. Living a life reflective of what you’re advocating gives us little people authority when we confront larger structures. Al Gore, for instance, has received constant criticism for not living his life in a more environmentally sustainable way, Michael Moore is being raked over the coals for "gaining capital" from the system he criticizes (this critique is just ridiculous).  Whether it’s making a huge difference or not, actually changing your  ways goes a long way in inspiring others to change theirs. Not to quote refrigerator magnets, but some famous wise people have recommended it:  Margaret Meade’s “Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” and Gandhi’s “Be the change you wish to see in the world” come to mind.  

In the end, I appreciate Jensen’s rallying cry to work toward changing something bigger than light bulbs as well. The fact that he can’t name how to do it and that many of us are drawing blanks are just signs that we are at the beginning of figuring this out.  Clearly it’s going to require large groups of people to stop “the industrial economy from killing the planet.”

 Where are the gatherings starting in your community? One that comes to mind here in mine is Sustainable Alachua County and the groups listed as members so far.  It’s time those of us inspired to make personal changes to start transforming the movement into a revolution.

 

A daring adventure

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger in the long run is no safer than exposure...

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

-Helen Keller

You need a swig of Jamaica

It is so very hot here - nearly breaking a 100 year-old record. Today the heat index is forecast to be 102. We have also had half as much rain as we normally do so far in October. AND the owner of our empty lot garden has turned off the water. So. Only the hardiest of heat-loving plants are surviving.

One of these is "Roselle" aka Jamaican Sorrel or Hibiscus sabdariffa, among other things. It is a beautiful plant - red stems and calyces, dark green leaves, lovely yellow hibiscus flowers with pink centers. In the past we have harvested these in the late fall and early winter, but these are already producing the prized calyces (stress?) and so we are picking them now. 

These calyces - the base of the flower - are the source of a famous Jamaican holiday drink called "Jamaica" (pronounced huh-my-cuh). There are a number of recipes for this but all involve boiling the sepals (removed from the calyx) for 10 minutes or so and adding spices and sugar (and often rum). Here's a typical recipe; you can google to find others. 

We made a lighter drink by removing the sepals from about 40 calyxes and boiling in a quart of water for ten minutes, straining the sepals out, adding sugar (quite a bit) and then another quart of cold water. It makes a nice tea, reminiscent of Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger. Very pretty and delicious over ice. A nice island treat for this extended summer we are having.

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

-- by Wendell Berry, The New Yorker, September 28, 2009

(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre<
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.