Seed Starting: Round #4

On Sunday, May 1, I started my second to last batch of seeds:

• Serge garden peas
• Pioneer shelling peas
• Eureka cucumbers
• Marketmore cucumbers
• Burpee pickler cucumbers

I was hesitant to start peas since these are best direct sown into the ground. However, we weren't sure when we were going to be able to get into and work in our community garden plot where I plan to plant these guys. So, because peas are cool weather crops and tend to be done by mid-June when the weather gets too warm for them, I wanted to be on the safe side and start a few, giving them a head start in case we can't get into our garden for a while. The main reason for my caution is that I really want a lot of peas for freezing. They make such a wonderful (and easy) side dish throughout the year and they don't take up much freezer space. Just a winning preservation crop all around!

I am also very excited about the cucumbers. Supposedly these vining vegetables are prolific, but that's never been my experience. In years past, the cucumbers we planted from seed in our community garden plot have always been first ravaged by cucumber beetles in their early stages and then killed by a powdery mildew. So, again in my attempt at preemptive vigilance, we are starting cucumber seedlings and planting those seedlings in our newly constructed raised beds on the side of our house.

I'm glad there's only one more round of seeds to start (squash and zucchini this Saturday) because it means it's almost time to plant! Though spring has somehow passed over us and we've gotten very few gorgeous mid-60s days, I am ready for summer and the harvest it brings.

It's Catching On...

For all those who like to be early adopters, it looks like time is running out to jump on the "grow your own produce" hay wagon. The other day, Josh and I saw this sign outside an apartment building on Jackson Road.

So, if you simply must be the first of your friends to do something, better start with a garden this summer! Not sure where to begin? I'd love to offer whatever help I can. Leave a comment with your inquiry and I'll certainly respond.

On Location: Michigan's Original Maple Syrup Festival

Vermontville, Michigan

This past Saturday you could have found Josh and me in Vermontville, Michigan. And what were doing in Vermontville, you ask? Well, as the town's name might suggest, we were participating in the very well attended Maple Syrup Festival.

I'm kind of a sucker for agricultural festivals, something that I'm increasingly recognizing as one of my many midwestern characteristics. There's something so great about the idea of a community coming together to celebrate the end of another's year's harvest of their local product (in Vermontville's case, maple syrup). Of course, many of the original qualities of agricultural festivals have evolved to reflect modern day socio-economic practices as well as modern values. Relatively few people are professional farmers today, meaning the "end of the harvest" significance of the celebration is less salient than it certainly once was. Similarly, what I imagine was once a giant potluck (and, granted, I may just have an active imagination) is now a commercial enterprise for some who sell any number of products made with the ingredient of focus.

But, those differences aside, the reason I love these festivals is their sense of jubilant and proud community gathering. In this small town of 750 or so residents, cars were parked on both sides of Main Street (a two lane road through the downtown area) for at least a half mile out of town. The parade boasted more than 60 local businesses and organizations and was led by the volunteer fire department (members of which knew by name most of the crowd). On display were goods for sale by local craftspeople as well as the local career technical school, demonstrating wood processing skills they teach their students. There was even old-fashioned ice cream made by hand with nothing but some cream, maple syrup, an ice bucket, and a John Deere diesel engine. 

I guess all of this seems so wonderful because in our too often violent and fractured modern world, this is a perfect, albeit momentary, manifestation of what community can be: a common interest bringing together a group of people.  

At any rate, Josh and I have five more festivals on our calendar for this summer and the Maple Syrup Festival was a lovely opening to the season.

A Man and his Tractor (during the parade)

M-C Auto Repair Towing Little Miss Maple Syrup Hopefuls (during parade)

Career Technical Education Demonstrating Wood Processing

Old Fashioned Ice Cream

Old Fashioned Ice Cream Ice Bucket

Real Time Farms

I've always found that it's much easier to stick to my values at home than it is out "in the world." For instance, Josh and I only buy meat that was grass-fed, had no hormones or growth steroids, and was raised using humane and sustainable practices (Niman Ranch is a shining example). However, while we feel perfectly comfortable interrogating the butcher at our local specialty grocery store before buying $25 worth of steak, we tend not to be as aggressively questioning with the very friendly college student waitress when picking up a quick sandwich at a local coney island for under $8.

I'm sure some would argue that I have the absolute right (and perhaps even responsibility) to ask about the restaurant's practices and there's definitely validity in this viewpoint. However, at this point in time with high unemployment rates and the rising cost of living, the ability to be choosy about food sources is a privilege and I would hate to be perceived as uppity in asking about local sourcing and organic certification in the middle of the restaurant.I suppose one way around this would be to make a phone call or send an email to the restaurant to avoid the in-person confrontation, but that's one of those things that's so far down on my to do list that it probably won't ever happen. 

 

Luckily, there is this great online resource: realtimefarms.com. At the site, you can enter your zip code and find out which local restaurants are purchasing produce and other food products from local farms and food artisans. Each entry has a small profile, a sample menu, and some photographs. What's even better, however, is that you can also search the other way, identifying a single farm and finding out what restaurants use their produce. Again, every farm has a small profile and some photographs, giving users a better sense of the people, produce, and the production process.

I think sites like this are great localization tools because they provide easier access to information that consumers need to make informed decisions. By joining the site, both food producers (e.g. farmers) and food purveyors (e.g. restaurants) can show their commitment to a certain type of sustainable, local food system and in doing so, can send signals to would-be customers who hold similar commitments. While I might not question the origins of my convenient (and inexpensive) lunch, I certainly won't refuse the insight provided by this compilation into how I might better stick to my values outside the walls of my own home.

"The Femivore's Dilemma"

I was going through my much too large hierarchy of email folders yesterday and stumbled across a gem: "The Femivore's Dilemma," an article by Peggy Orenstein from the March 10, 2010 edition of the New York Times. It's entirely possible that I'm breaking some kind of unspoken blog ethics by simply reproducing an article as a post, but Peggy Orenstein said it better that I ever could. Enjoy!

The Femivore's Dilemma

By Peggy Orenstein

Reproduced from the March 10, 2010 edition of the 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 the Vatican 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.

Human Empire graphic

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?

Source: The National Gardening Association

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.