Monday, December 21, 2009

Obamano

Be forewarned. Shopping for groceries with an eye towards local and a pallet towards vine-ripened in December is a practice in frustration. Walking through the natural food store today with my list of necessities for this week's recipes, I ended up with a litany of things I won't be able to buy when my year of "buy local or grow it" begins. Really, how much longer will they call those peppers "red" for? In addition to giving these new recipes a taste rating, I've taken to giving them a month in which their ingredients would be available locally. After about 35 recipes I think I've covered July and August only. Every tag of produce now has a foreign country next to its name - Argentina, Chile, Mexico, New Zeland. That's a lot of miles, and not a lot of choice left if you cut your eating radius down to 300 miles or less. It's enough to make a person give up before one begins. But begin I must...

Coming off of two weeks of listening to Democracy Now's War and Peace Report from Copenhagen, it looks more and more like symbolic individual actions are the only actions that are going to take place. My Obama bubble has completely burst. On the home front he seems to be forwarding his espoused values of justice - appointing people of color to positions of power despite the far rights mantra of "racism." But internationally, the hegemony and thirst for empire continues. He and his negotiators doing business behind closed doors. Coming out with a non-legal, non-binding agreement that has not one single voice of a developing country in it and absolutely no significant carbon reduction goals for the U.S. Then chastising the audience for not working together? Yuck! Asking others to do what he himself won't commit to? I am tempted after the past two weeks to agree with Evo Morales, Bolivia's radical indigenous President when he said the only thing that has changed is the color of our President. Looking at it through the eyes of any South American that is paying attention, it would be hard not to agree. (Minus Brazil who was included in the closed door talks - what's up Lulu?)

This "eat local" mission which started out for me as a love affair with food and the desire to harmonize my relationship with the earth, has become deeply political. Where politicians fail, we must succeed, or suffer the consequences (insert any number of climate change statistics and predictions here). My mantra has always been to keep it positive, keep it focused on the solutions. But right now I feel too duped and angry to keep it on the chipper tip. Having eight years ago shut out the political realm after the brick-wall-hitting-like re-entry back into the States from my three year stint in the reality villages of Panama, I recently started paying a little attention to the political realm again because someone looked like they might actually come through on a platform of hope and change. POP! The fall from that bursting bubble is turning out to be quite steep. I find myself turning to a last vestige of hope - Michelle. Come on darling, get that boy into shape. PLEASE!

Anyway, I am snacking on aged cheddar cheese from California, rosemary sourdough bread made locally but ingredients from who knows where, and, ahhhh! some delicious bread-and-butter style pickles from my very back yard, cucumbers and onions grown right out my front door and canned this august on my very stove. I can't tell you how good it feels in a land of foggy, hidden deals to know exactly where at least one bitty part of my life and my plate has come from and what went into every step of these pickles existence from growing, packaging, and devouring them!

Thank God for small yet significant acts in the kitchen and garden.

Friday, December 4, 2009

What is local?

So if I/we are going to eat local for a year, I first have to figure out what local means? 50 miles? 250 miles? My husband recently bought a share of a cow in order to get a gallon of unpasturized, raw milk a week - good for making yogurt and cheese I am told. But the cow lives in Lubbock, Texas - 385 miles away. Does that count as local?

There are many words used to describe a local area: bioregional, foodshed, watershed, the metropoloitan area, "northern new mexico."

La Montanita's foodshed project/Beneficial Foods Cooperative is bringing food from as far away as Canon City, CO - 300 miles. Should I use that definition? How about defining it by the furthest away farm that shows up at the Santa Fe Farmer's Market? Or, like Kingsolver, should it be food only from those who I have direct access to - that I knock on their door and ask for an extra load of squash blossoms and goat cheese when I have visitors?

I imagine you can define local in California pretty narrowly and still find lots of food to eat all year. Do I get to stretch those boundaries in the desert where farms are fewer and farther between? What is feasible here. I guess this is my experiment so I get to decided. But I'll need to do some more research first.

The average plate of food these days travels 1500 miles. If I can get that down to 1/4 (about 300 miles) - that might be a good place to start. But, traveling to Pueblo, CO to pick up kale and potatoes doesn't sound feasible either. Obviously more research is needed.

I'll have to return to this question later as I have to go to work now.

CS

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

A Full Moon Beginning

December 2nd. Wednesday night. A full moon. Feels like a good marking point to start.

Locavore. Someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with some arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locally grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.

Desert. Dry, arid terrain. A landscape or region that receives almost no precipitation. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250 millimetres (10 in) per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation.


DAY ONE
I recently returned from Resortlandia, Jalisco, Mexico over Thanksgiving weekend, having escaped a weekend of overstuffing - turkeys and people. Although I could have been anywhere in the world for all the global comforts of the resort town that family obligation had us staying in, it did afford me the luxurious opportunity to relax, take in a bit of sun, and actually read a book. I chose to bring with me Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver as it has been sitting on my shelf for two years, unopened. After a summer of uncovering untold delights in ripe from the vine, local vegetables and fruits at the Famer's Market, I no longer could put off diving into Kingsolver's experience so touted by other devoted readers.

So, I managed to get half way through, and am now squeeking through the rest at a snails pace back home in the quite minutes after I come home from my more-than-full-time paid gig during the day, make dinner for my husband and 20 month-old son, spend some delicious play and winding down time with my son, pet the cats, cuddle with the dog, and find a few moments to read before giving into heavy eyes and much needed sleep.

I've been cooking up a scheme since mid-summer when my love affair with fresh, local foods began. A love affair which really took off when I found a magazine which offered recipes and shopping lists for healthy, delicious 20 minute meals for a month and I reengaged with the joys of cooking. My saddest day this year was when I discovered that the grapes no longer held their delicious sweet flavor of those I enjoyed all summer from my own vines and from local farmers; and if I wanted tomatoes, I would have to endure the mealy orangy-white knock offs that come from the hot house. Having the luxury of eating almost strickly organic foods for the past three years - a budget item my husband and I agreed early on not to base on cheapness but quality instead - I realize now I still did not understand what wonders dining on food grown for taste instead of size and looks can do for the soul.

So, my scheme that has been cooking is to see, like Kingsolver and Pollan, how one can live a life based on local food. As she often does being my favorite author, Kingsolver has a good point made eloquently, and as my friend Ben who is an emerging local ecologist and amazing photographer of everything micro who I'll ask more about this later would agree -- we may already be over carrying capacity here in the desert and should get out and leave it to its original inhabitants - plants, animals, and Native Americans. In Santa Fe we engage in frequent debates about just how much water is left if there is more to use for new developments, if we should be leaving any for the non-human community, or even, let some flow down the river once in a while. Kingsolver having been raised in the mid-south but spent 20+ years living in the southwest makes a good case for leaving the dry heat of Tuscon for the hollers of Virginia in order to embark on a locavore-for-a-year adventure with her 5 person family. Maybe we weren't meant to live in the southwest, or at least not this many of us. I myself grew up in Wisconsin - rolling hills filled with dairy cows, corn and the birthplace of Organic Valley Farmers Cooperative. Or, is going back to greener pastures just an excuse for wimping out on probably the toughest challenge around - can you live a sustainable life in the desert with thousands of other humans and non-humans vying for limited resources?

Santa Fe, for all its poshness, cultural airs, and economic divides, is still small in size, possibly still small enough to figure out how to become a sustainable city. But that remains yet to be seen. What better place to attempt the ULTIMATE HUMAN CHALLENGE - sustainable living - than in the desert. If we can do it here, we should be able to do it anywhere and everywhere, right? I doubt that even as I write it. Having lived as a Peace Corps volunteer in a subsistence village in the tropics - no lack of water there - we still ate more than a few meals of only rice cause nothing else was available from the farms at that moment.

So this is my task at hand - to take on the challenge that Kingsolver was unwilling or felt unable to do - figure out how to be, and if it is possible to be, a true locavore in the desert, work fulltime, be a mom and a wife, and still enjoy life. And while I am at it, I figure I will also embark on the one trash can a year idea recently being touted by Louise because I just can't stand throwing away all that packaging anymore!

What I have going for me:
  • 2 acres of my own and 16 acres surrounding me inhabited by mostly like-minded neighbors
  • a community well shared by 10, soon to be 12, houses (not city water)
  • an organic garden on its 3rd year with lots of room to expand
  • 4 chickens and a chicken coop
  • neighbors who might also participate in this challenge with me and help grow the food we need to survive a year of local eating
  • a handfull of vege seeds for next season
  • a small orchard (which has yet to bear fruit in any quantity but this year will be year three and I am told they should begin)
  • a somewhat flexible work schedule
  • Solar powered home
What I have working against me:
  • Both my husband and I work full time (sometimes more)
  • the possibility that gardening or farming with water mined from an aquifer isn't in the "sustainable" category (I've yet to come to an informed conclusion)
  • lack of storage space
  • no greenhouse to start the amount of starts I'll need to feed us all
  • even though we've managed to do enough restoration to slow the tumbleweed population the dusty forgotten park adjacent to my property keeps throwing those rolling seed bombs over the fence at us - that is going to have to be dealt with one way or another.
Can a full-time working mom make ends meet as a locavore?

That's the challenge at hand.

I figure I will start now on this project so I can build a "sense of place" before planting season begins. I have dabbled in the history of the land I am on, but in the next few months I plan to become a student of this place - the history, ecology, economy, and society of La Resolana. That's what we call these 18 acres at the end of the road adjacent to a park and a sandy river bed. What is the history of Agua Fria Village? Where did the trading route pass through exactly? What was going on on this land before these houses were built? Where is our water coming from and how much of it is there? Is the water and land really radioactive from the Los Alamos National Labs bomb building efforts? Will my neighbors join me and buffer the burden of individual actions with community efforts? And so on and so forth.

My timeline?
December - March: Grow my sense of place, plan, convince my husband, son and community to join me
April: Start Locavore diet - as soon as, like Kingsolver, I think there is enough to begin from nothing with.

Join me on my daily journey in a land of Tumbleweeds and a Handfull of Seeds.

Christina