Dark Night

Obviously, if you haven't already guessed, this little eat-everything-local experiment has been put on hold. What ridiculous expectations I have of this world thinking that one person working full time and raising children can figure out how to eat everything locally. This is definitely where the road hits the wall in terms of individual action. I salute all you radical homemakers out there that have time to sew your own canvas bags for produce, make pizza from scratch on friday nights, and bargain shop at the farmer's market. You know what I want to spend my time doing these days? Sleeping! I'm frickin' exhausted trying to keep up with this silly American lifestyle of career woman, working mom, supportive wife, friend to all. Just getting a moment to weed the garden is a luxury these days. When I decided to expand my garden to grow all my own food - even enough to can for the whole winter - I guess I forgot that the last time I could garden all day was when I was on full-time maternity leave. Although on a positive note my tomatoes are doing smashing. Someone will have to come over and can them all when they are ripe - I won't have time.

Not to mention the cost. We are already living beyond our means - and buying local currently means expensive! Farmer's just hiked their prices a the market. It's almost unbearably expensive. I started looking at Sunflower and Smith's for deals. I will start working part time next month. It'll likely be bye-bye organic, not to mention local then.

It's 11:30 and my toddler just woke up crying for mommy and is now taking every book and toy off his shelf and piling them on the floor. Next he'll pace the floor talking about "grasshoppers coming!" My husband thinks I shouldn't go in there. I say tought doodie hubby. 2 minutes of cuddling and he'll be back to sleep rather than an hour of toddler silliness and crying.


I'm not impressed with the green food movement. We can do better. Makes me want to move back to the subsistence village in Panama where growing your own food actually is a viable option - as long as you like eating only rice for days at a time.

See ya'll later when we all stop trying to lead these crazy lifestyles - I certainly can't do it alone.

P.S. This doesn't mean I am giving up, just lowering my personal expectations - ALOT!

Framing the Cold

My tomatoes have gotten too large to keep on their indoor growing racks. They are starting to bend over to fit on their shelves. So I made a make-shift cold frame out of strawbales and recycled sunroom windows we picked up from the second hand pile behind Brother Sun window shop.

I actually decided this year to follow John Jeavons' (How to Grow More Vegetables on Less Land Than You Thought Possible - or something like that) advice and prick out my seedling plants twice. Once from the flats into small pots and the second time from their pots into the ground. The real test is still yet to come - putting them in the ground. But they are looking great so far. Next year I think I'll do a third round for the tomatoes from 2" pots to 4". They are ready now for that, but since the last frost date is only a week away, they'll have to bide their time just a little longer. The tomatoes that I didn't have pots for transplanting into remain small and spindly as all of my plants were last year. The transplanting makes a true difference.

Arriving Flavors

I love Mondays. I make a habit of saving Mondays from work and using them for weekend recovery. I stay home to catch up on life, sustainable living, and the joys of mothering my son Clayton. And I try to stay off the computer.

We had a fun and busy weekend. Saturday started with an essential trip to the farmer's market (now that we are officially locavores, we must not miss the market), then joined a political puppet parade and pageant for May Day, followed by a few moments in the sun pulling crab grass from the asparagus patch, chatted with a visiting friend from Colorado, and ended the evening with ceremony. Sunday morning we woke up late and rushed out the door for a cheesemaking workshop in Estancia, NM at Old Windmill Dairy, followed by a blessed hour on the couch doing nothing, and another attempt at dinner without a recipe to guide me in preparing the day's local fare.

One of the greatest things I have heard yet this year was when Sir Kennith Robertson asked the audience I was sitting in to consider for ourselves how we are creative rather than how creative are we.  Think into that for a moment, it is quite profound given western culture's view of creativity as exclusive to a gifted few.

I'm a recipe girl. I play my guitar by reading music, I sew using patterns, I do Yoga with an instructor, I follow directions when building things, I check my books often when gardening. My creativity does not flow from practical things until I have year's of experience at it that I can stop thinking about it. My more natural creativity comes from the universe, through the soft spot on my head, straight to my intellect. I create and manifest what is not tangible. I take a vision of the future and make it a reality. But not a practical reality - an educational, social, cultural, political, paradigmatic reality. This necessitates that I keep my hands in the dirt often, otherwise my head gets so heavy it knocks me over.

Cooking is not yet a successful creative experience for me. So, when cooking I prefer to follow a recipe or things turn out pretty bland. My joy in cooking comes when I follow the Joy of Cooking for great tasting meals. The stuff I make up on the fly usually doesn't inspire great complements or sparkling reactions from my pallet or my husband's.

This is turning out to be my greatest challenge so far in being a locavore. For years I really haven't done a whole lot of cooking. I'm only just getting to know how to cook meat after years of being a vegetarian. And while I was a vegetarian I mostly ate grilled cheese and lasagna. Seasonal recipe books for my agro eco-region are in short supply. Most American families don't really study the art of cooking I've noticed. I've thought about taking a cooking class at the college to give me more of a foundation to work with, but I haven't determine where that fits into my full-time working and mommying schedule. So, learning what goes together to conjure up flavorful inspirations without guidance from one of my many cookbooks is a big challenge for me.

As my pallet slowly adjusts to local, seasonal-only fare, I have begun to realize that with local food,  I can rely more on the natural flavor of things. Things that go from garden to plate in a matter of minutes don't need a lot of accoutrement of any kind. My experience with the first asparagus of the season from my garden clued me into that secret kept from me by my global-industrial-food system-adjusted pallet.

That said, local flavors in April are in a bit of short supply thus far in my experience. This Saturday I bought a pound of spinach, seven over-wintered potatoes, five overwintered apples, the first tiny beets and carrots of the season, white radishes, sunflower sprouts, arugula, salad greens, greenhouse-grown heirloom tomatoes, Nativo (all local ingredients) bread, bacon and some  beef.

All good stuff. But not great. Except for the radishes that did surprise me with their zesty spring-time bite. But as for the rest, I have to say I excitedly await July when the full flavor roles in and returns to these sorry step-cousins of the glorious summer time vegetables!

Don't get me wrong. I am grateful we even have a spring time farmer's market in Santa Fe. And I am especially grateful for the heroic efforts our local farmers are making to extend the growing season in this desert that makes being a locavore even a remote possibility. But I LOVE the summer farmer's market and its abundance of flavors. Nothing makes my taste buds ring like Gemini Farm's beets, or the short-lived onslaught of japanese turnips sliced and tossed with their own greens in homemade vinegrette. Yum! It makes being an untrained American home cook a lot easier.

In the meantime, I'll continue to be grateful for the peach colored carrots and the fact that we are still draining my cupboard of leftover non-local items that add a little extra something in a season of arriving but still scarce flavors.

On another note, chesses never cease to fail this time of year. Flavor may change slightly on some dairy farms in winter or mating season (I'll blog later about what I learned at the cheesemaking workshop about why that is). But the high buttermilk content of Ed and Micheal's nubian goats at Old Windmill makes for some delicious chesse varieties anytime of year. Especially the incredibly delicious blue cheese they make. At $20/pound it doesn't necessarily fit into my budget. But given all the challenges and costs of running a small local dairy farm, their seven year-old operation is not even turning a profit yet. The local consumer vs. local farmer buget is a conversation for another blog. Right now I'm happy to give my support and anty up for the flavor rockin' blue as long as I have the dollars in my pocket. It is every bit worth the price.

No Impact Man Southwest

Wow! I am watching No Impact Man. They just switched off the lights. Good for them. They are doing what I learned to do while living in Panama with the Peace Corps. And what my entire village is still doing. And what most of the world is doing right now while I sit here with two computers on - one playing the movie and one for late night work projects (or blogging in this case) - and a lamp and wood burning in the woodstove, refrigerator running, music playing in Clayton's room, little glowing lights everywhere charging mobile electronics and sucking phantom power, wireless internet blinking in the back room, mini-hot tub keeping itself warm on the porch, irrigation timers running on their batteries to water the garden, solar powered lights lighting the pathway from car to door. So all that energy is coming from the solar tracker in our yard, but still. American ways of living lightly are still on a whole other level than the rest of the world. I have grown soft since my return to the U.S.

I also watched a movie called End of Poverty? earlier tonight. (Getting my documentary fix). It's like Open Veins of Latin America on screen. If everyone in the world lived like Americans it would take 5 planets to support us. Okay, so I have heard that one before. But on the other end of the spectrum - if everyone lived like they do in Burkina Faso, we would need 1/10th of our planet. I hadn't heard that before. Measured by mass, there are more ants on the planet than humans.

I like that they did their No Impact project in phases. We're still eating up the non-local fare leftover in our cupboards and freezer. I have one can of pickled beets, half can of peaches, and a few jars of homemade jelly left in my cupboard from last year's garden harvest. Luckily the farmer's market is picking up and the co-op too. The co-op is trying with the 300 mile radius, but they aren't quite there yet. They're still selling stuff from Mexico. I guess that's better than New Zeland kiwi at WF. The co-op selection is improving with the season - more options in the produce section I should say. My peas actually came up! My tomatoes on the growing rack are looking much better than they did last year. I gave them a boost of fish emulsion recommended by farmer Romero for flats.

I'm having fun with this project. I'm very much looking foward to the summer adundance in the farmer's market. And I find myself still wanting to do more and have more time to do more. Who knows, if they economy keeps plummeting in NM I might have a lot of time on my hands. But learning to do this while working full-time is a great challenge too.

Sunday Dinner

Tonight for our locavore dinner we are eating lion's mane mushrooms ($24 for two large bags), asparagus ($4/bunch), fresh salad greens ($8 big bag), radish sprouts (holy cow they are spicy!) ($3) with overwintered carrots ($4) and goat cheese ($5) - all purchased at the Saturday Santa Fe Farmer's Market. Since we are still cleaning out of fridge and freezer the non-locavore fare included:  puerco adobado made by my friend and neighbor Tanya for a Community College Culinary Arts event last fall. It has been in my freezer since - yikes! Thanks T! Shitake Seseame salad dressing (CA), lemons, and olive oil (CA), balsamic vinegar (CT). The butter came from our raw milk butter supplier from Texas. We'll have the popcorn for desert. So dinner is about 90% local. Hmm...the condiments might be a challenge to find locally.

The lion's mane mushrooms is a gourmet treat grown by Desert Fungi. My husband thinks it taste like crab. I think they taste like gourmet mushrooms. We tried them a number of ways (all sauteed):
1) with olive oil only
2) with olive oil and balsimic vinegar
3) with butter and salt
4) with butter and balsamic
5) sauteed with olive oil then sprinkled with fresh lemon juice after out of the pan
6) with butter only

My favorite was butter and balsamic. My husband liked them with the lemon juice. Whatever you do remember Julia Child's advice when you cook them "don't crowd the mushrooms!"

Buen Provecho!

And So It Begins

And so the desert locavore adventure begins. Today we ate our first asaparagus dish of the season. Straight out of the ground, sauteed lightly in the pan with water only and then straight to the plate. No butter or garlic necessary. Delicious. I've never tasted something so fresh. (Especially after a long winter of wanna-be vegetables). I love spring!

Transplant

This locavore blog seems to be turning into a lot of gardening entries. But bare with me, it is that time of season. Spring! The weather outside is lovely, affording me full days of working outside. Getting my own garden plots going and helping neighbors with their ambitious efforts putting up greenhouses and such have kept me away from the Farmer's Markets and other locavore consumer havens. I'm still waiting for the asparagus to poke its little spikes up so I have an official marker to my locavore endeavor.

My next research project is to decide which local CSA to join. There is also this guy Sam who has a backyard garden operation over by the community college and my neighbor has organized a modified CSA with him as well. Last year we got a few bags of produce from him, it was pretty good. Stay tuned for more on local CSAs.

Both me and my plants are not from here. We are growing slowly accustomed to the desert landscape. But transplants take special care and special measures to make sure they survive and succeed.

A couple weeks ago my husband and I built a seedling growing shelf. They cost anywhere from $500 - $800 new. We built ours for about $120 - lights included - in about three hours. A bunch of 2x2s and screws are all it took really. It is great when you want to increase the amount of seedlings you are growing and don't have a greenhouse, sunroom, or otherwise. We found the design online and added a foot of width to support the size flats we are using. Two weeks later the plants are doing great.

This weekend (5 weeks before last frost date) I transplanted tomato, eggplant, and broccolli seedlings from the flats to small individual plots. The survived and are recovering from the move back on their shelves.

I also planted peas, a strawberry patch, and four bushes including Western Sandcherry, Currant, and a third edible bush I can't remember at the moment. (Too much sun I guess). I'm a little behind as last year I was successful in starting peas the first week of March. These were seeds saved from my 2008 garden. I hope they come up.

Back to the work week...onward.

Reorienting

Being in the nonprofit and activist world these days requires a lot of time on the computer. When I was living in Panama working in agroforestry I had callouses on my hands, a dark sheen on my skin, and plenty of room in my lungs from all the laboring on the land. Not anymore. Now my body is soft and underused. The mind is dominant. Exercise is rare. But yesterday began my reorientation and that of my garden. I dragged out the pick, spade shovel, round shovel and rake and went to work. My body aches today. But it is a good ache.

I wanted to reorient my garden beds to a north-south orientation to see if it makes a difference. I also dug paths down 2 feet rather than having flagstone throughout the garden taking up space. This gives me more access across the beds, and hopefully will encourage me to be more efficient in the growing space. In years past I've always had blotches of empty space left after everything was planted. Going for a more intensive garden in an already intensive space.

Here's the result. This is looking out my front/kitchen door.

Gardening in the Spaces Inbetween

This month I had the pleasure of spending some time in Oakland and San Fran, CA. I can't quite wrap my head around San Francisco. I feel as if I am floating everytime I am there. It definitely has something to do with those tall roads that go straight into the sky.

But Oakland definitely has its feet firmly on the ground. While there I visited People's Grocery's urban agriculture sites. First of all you must know I think PG is just about the coolest organization out there. I love their philosophy, strategy, look, creativity, strident adherence to empowerment. It is an inspiration to all of us at youth organizing types.




They, along with City Slickers on the other side of West Oakland, have taken over a number of small to medium sized plots and begun gardening and farming. Using a small staff and lots of volunteers and youth, they are harvesting upwards of 1500 pounds of produce from sites as small as 2000 square feet. They take this produce and sell it at affordable prices to families in the food desert of the urban inner city. That's the basics of their program, with layers wrapped around it like and onion that address food security, poverty, health issues, economic opportunity, and youth empowerment.




I wasn't able to work it out to be there when to help out with the work, but I did drive around a bit and snapped some pictures of the sites. Very Cool! Thanks People's Grocery and City Slickers for all you do and all those you inspire everywhere.

Check out the slideshow to the right.

My first experience of gardening after leaving home was in Minneapolis where I got myself a plot in a community garden. I was living in a basement apartment on the edge of Uptown (a mostly white middle class neighborhood) and the Phillips (a mostly black poor neighborhood). The garden was also poised at the edge of the two and used by people living in both neighborhoods. An urban bridge builder. It was a large and well established garden near the train tracks in what would have been an other wise abandoned piece of land. We had a shared toolshed, well organized compost piles, and organic regulations. I rode my bike there two or three times a week to plant, weed and harvest my 10x10 plot. I inherited a raspberry bush from the previous renter and enjoyed that luxury. I was vegetarian at the time so the garden provided pretty much all I needed for the summer. I remember being there for hours in between my summer classes and job. Enjoying the calm and peacefulness of the place in the middle of a loud urban environment. I would occassionally be there when other gardeners arrived to tend their own plots and we would trade accolades and tips on the specific varities of vegetables we were growing. That summer remains one of the strongest in my memories. I can still smell the tomato leaves and resulting lasagne.

Seattle where I have also spent a lot of time has an incredible network of community gardens. Immigrant farmers from various parts of Asia take over steep hillsides in between roads and houses and farm like they would were they at home in the steep jungle. Youth groups set up by rivers and in parks. Regular folks take over otherwise abandoned spaces. They call them P-Patches.

For the three years I was in the Peace Corps in Panama the women in the village of Cano Quebrado and I worked together to help each other grow kitchen gardens. We literally dug up the land and planted right next to their outdoor kitchens. We grew herbs, peppers, some vegetables. Whatever delicacies that didn't do well in the "monte" - cultivated plots in the jungle. They like to broadcast tomato seeds in areas that retained water all year round and let them grow like weeds or like the vines they really are. And grow they did. We had no shortage of water there, our struggle was fungus from being too wet. Many of those backyard gardens are still there today and the women still rotate from home to home helping with the work and trading varieties of vegetables and herbs.

Thankfully, Santa Fe now has a burdgeoning community and school garden movement. Although I no longer have a need as my own 2 acres keep me busier than I can handle, I am grateful that others are utlizing this incredible resource. The City has pilot gardens in three parks and will be adding a fourth this summer. Youth Allies have a plot in each garden and merrily grow what they need for their free Food Not Bombs meals served fresh and hot twice a months in City Parks.

Everywhere around the world there is evidence of people gardening in the spaces in between. Inbetween full-time work and home life, inbetween two houses, inbetween rich and poor, black and white, one country and another, jungle and kitchen, desert and rainforest, inbetween languages, cultural barriers, wet and dry, long-term and just starting...but we keep on gardening.

Falling in Love with my Tumbleweed Farm

My farm started as a garden. My garden started as a driveway. A severely compacted gravel ridden urban heat island. We moved into our home 4 years after it was built. The previous tenants were renters, the builder/owner had never lived there. The renter did the best she could with the outdoor space. And she took most of it with her when she left, leaving only a few thorny rose bushes, crowded periwinkle, overbearing mint, and zealous iris bulbs for us to work with. Despite the obvious challenge, my husband and I thought this was the most logical place to put the garden given it is right out our kitchen door, southwest facing and in “Zone 1” – the area you walk by everyday, multiple times a day as long as you leave the house. We dreamed of picking sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes not yet hardened by the hot New Mexico sun each morning on our way out the door to work.

He was willing to do the digging, so dig he did one weekend while I was away. I came back to a space of about 200 square feet that he soaked, fought with, broke shovels and axes on and finally dug down as far as he could in concrete slab like clay we were calling earth. What happens to earth when you drive ATVs, construction equipment and cars over it for years. He got about 12 inches down and hit what felt like bedrock. We trucked in a thick layer of compost mixed it with the clay and quickly put in our first garden since it was already July when we finally unloaded our boxes at the house that first year. After a slow start after which we did a soil test and added lots of bonemeal for a needed nitrogen fix, we got a bumper crop of zucchini, and that was about it. I’m convinced that in the wild zucchini would be a pioneering species – the first to come in after a fire, volcano, or other such disturbance to repopulate the area. It does well anywhere! Funny enough, we’ve hardly gotten any zucchini out of our garden in the three years since. In fact every year we seems to get one crop that does better than all the rest, but it is never the same thing from year to year.

We did install a drip system that first year. Most of the water soaked down about 12 inches and then ran off like a sheet of rain on that bedrock– still too concrete underneath for it to penetrate. The downhill side of the garden and driveway got most of the watering that year. But over the years it has worked itself out. I am reminded of the Growing Power gardens in Milwaukee where I grew up. One the south side of the City where it is mostly concrete, they just lay topsoil mixed with compost on top of paved parking lots and grow tomatoes in raised beds. After seeing those big, red bright tasty tomatoes that came from the urban gardens, I firmly believe Nature will work with what ever you have if you give her enough attention, love and care.

The next year I just had just given birth to my son in the spring and was lucky enough to spend 6 months off work home with him through the growing season. During every single nap I plotted, planned, dug, planted, weeded, harvested, and enjoyed my summer garden. When he was awake I would sit him in his squishy practice seat in the middle of the garden. He would reach out for the nearest plant and gum basil leaves, corn stalks, and spinach as I picked through the tomato patch. His first experience of solid foods was from those green leaves fresh off the stalk. From the look on his face, he loved it as much as I love the earthy smell of tomato leaves when you brush up against them in the hot sun. YUM! Breathe deeply. My son and I spent most of our first months of his life together out in that garden and continue to every year since. Even in the winter we play in the garden. Protected by a coyote fence to keep the dogs and rabbits out, it is the warmest place in the whole yard in late afternoon. On a warm winter day, it feels like summer, and an exquisite place from which to watch the sunset.

In year two, I expanded the main garden plot adding about 80 square feet and taking over the front flower beds adjacent to the walls of the house for another 150 sq feet. I added a few key flowers and shrubs to the flower gardens to attract beneficial insects and filled in the rest of the space with kitchen herbs. I love the convenience of reaching out my front door for the fresh rosemary and thyme the soup recipe calls for. No more “I forgot the ____!” runs to the grocery store. The herbs last most of the winter too – I just consider them “dried on the vine” in January and harvest them brown.

We also added asparagus trenches, cherry tomato & basil patches, raspberries, fruit trees, rhubarb, and a few choice wild strawberries in our front yard the second year. This April will mark three years since we planted those asparagus. We are still learning what they need. Every year we have added about 2 inches of new compost, but they are still slow in coming and a few have died off. We are trying to stave off the crab grass that is threatening to take over the trenches. The third year is supposed to be the charm with asparagus. Once they pop their crowns up this year it will mark the start of our year as locavores. Asparagus season. I talked to a local farmer recently about having youth help out throughout the season. He said sure, anytime between asparagus season and blackberry season. His way of marking the start and the end of the natural farming cycle in northern New Mexico. I am planting blackberries this year too so we have a marker for the other end of the season.

The cherry tomatoes were the bumper crop that second year. We had so many our neighbors wouldn’t take any more from us. So we learned how to roast them, dry them, add them to every imaginable dish we could think of. We did manage to eat them all up before canning season came. Roasted cherry tomatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper are irresistible. Once we learned that, we did the tomato patch in pretty quickly. But many did fall to the ground and get squished, only to leave seeds that came up the next year as volunteer plants. They didn’t produce as much the second and third years but they keep doing decently enough.

It seems every year one plant shines above all others, and it is never the same one. The third year of our garden, we only expanded about 20 square feet to add a strawberry patch to the front yard. That year we got a bumper crop of pumpkins. Delicious sweet, round, small sugar pie pumpkins. My favorite. And enough purple green beans to freeze and can and last us into the early winter.

This year we plan to take over another portion of the driveway and turn it into terraced vegetable gardens, making room for more variety and more harvest to last us into the winter with canning and freezing. We will also plan green manures on the southwest side of the house in a fairly flat spot getting it ready for a future grain crop. I also plan to diversify our food forest. Last summer we added four raspberry bushes and 5 egg-laying chickens to the mix in the orchard. This year we will add 4 more chickens to give us enough for all our needs including baking from scratch. Then I’ll expand the wild strawberry patch – which my son treats like a treasure chest of delight!! The berries grow small but they are packed with sweetness. He cherishes them, months after the harvest ended last year he still went out into the yard everyday to check the plant for berries. Plus blackberries, sandcherries, and other native fruit bearing edible shrubs.

I’ve just started my tomato, pepper, eggplant starts two weeks ago. I am working slowly towards my plan of having a 1.5 acre urban farm that can provide us with food year round. We have a 2 acre plot but about .5 of that is too steep to do anything with except nurture it and help it go native again. Maybe plant a windblock on its contours. We will add 3 goats for yogurt and cheese this summer and focus on the food forest. I await the day when I can lie on my little patch of bluegrama grass under the pear tree and pick fresh, juicy fruit while harvesting eggs with my other hand while my son gorges on tamed wild strawberries, and my husband milks the goats. That is when I will have achieved true wealth and abundance in my life.

I’ve been closely observing the land I call mine for four years now. I’ve walked every inch of it, listened and looked closely where the sun falls, how the water flows, where the good dirt is still left, how the wind blows, how it changes over the course of a day. And still I feel as I am just getting a sense of it. The land is responding well. It was so abused, misused, and ignored when I arrived it has been a slow healing process. Working on one eroded, compacted patch at a time. Working on building corridors, stringing together patches that have a bit more vibrancy in hopes that the land in between will respond as well some day and fill in the holes.

I have built a relationship with my land and I love it. I get the sense it loves me too. She appreciates the care, the attention, the patience, the light touch I use. I don’t try too hard to get it to do what I want it to. If it doesn’t want to grow zucchinis one year, I don’t force it. I feed it as much as feels right and as much as I have time for. Every small act of kindness is returned. We have an incredible view of the mountains from my house. When I moved in, I thought that might be as good as it was going to get on that damaged spot. But the land has responded with vigor and vibrancy. There is still a lot more I can do for it. Many more troubled areas being cut open by rivers of water when the rain does fall or the snow melts off, needing to be slowed down and redirected, needing time to soak it in. But we are getting there. Growing together, learning from each other, listening to each others’ needs. I won’t force it to feed me all year long if it is not ready. I won’t put too many animals on it. In this way I believe we will continue to tread lightly but grow deeply together.

The Raw Truth About Raw Milk

March 2010

I grew up in Wisconsin, “America’s Dairyland.” Infamous for our cheeseheads, fried cheese curds and weak, watered down beer.

According to a website entitled “Wisconsin by Luke” there are 11 federally recognized tribes in WI today. The name of the state was taken from the Chippewa Indian word "Wees Konsan" meaning the gathering of water. Jean Nicolet was the first European to reach Green Bay in 1634. In 1763 France ceded Wisconsin to Great Britain then Britain ceded it to the United States in 1783. It is also called "The place of the beaver" and also called the Badger State.

Luke, who created his site for a school project, goes on to describe Wisconsin’s important rivers - the Mississippi, the St. Croix, Fox River and Green Bay. The St. Croix flows into Lake Superior which is bound to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario. This web of lakes and rivers is how my great-grandfather came to settle in New Richmond, Wisconsin. He and his brother immigrated to French-Canada settling in Ontario, assumingly got bored there and decided to take a canoe from the Canadian border through Lake Superior onto the St. Croix.

They disembarked on the shores of Bass Lake on the central west border with what is now Minnesota and somehow claimed hundreds of acres surrounding the lake in Dakota Sioux territory for themselves. This part of how my family took the land from the original indigenous habitants – our history of colonization - is not recorded in my family’s history books or memory.

Once there, like many other European settlers who populated the rolling hills of Wisconsin, they began to plant corn, potatoes, alfalfa and raise dairy cattle. Their cows were fat and well fed by the lush perennial prairies and grasslands, shaded by the tall trees of the surrounding forests and a well-quenched by the decent sized lake they drank out of and cooled off in. Outside of being milked in the barn twice a day, they roamed freely all of their days.

My family has since sold off most of the land surrounding the lake to urban escapees from the Twin Cities looking for rural respite, or, sons and daughters of farmers who now make their living by commuting to industrial jobs in the Cities. Their pontoon and speed boats now crowd the lake for sunset parties and water skiing.

I myself spent every summer growing up on and in that lake at my grandma’s cabin. You couldn’t imagine a more idyllic childhood. Me and my 80 cousins spending our summers together fishing, swimming, making forts in the forest, and occasionally helping out at the dairy farm.

I milked a few cows in my days there, but only a few. They were typically cows who had some kind of utter infection and were taken off the machines and milked by hand until they recovered. The days of milking the entire herd by hand were over well before I arrived on the scene. And my mother prefers not to talk about the forced farm chores aspect of her childhood. Mostly we would stand guard of my aunts flower beds as the cows were led from the fields back to the milking barns, or help load hay into the silo at the end of the summer. When I was very little I remember the farm house, no more than 1000 square feet where my Grandpa Ray and Grandma Delia raised five kids followed by my Uncle Dick and his first and second wives who raised eight kids. They since have torn down that teeny villa and built something much larger – more what you expect of a typical American farm home these days.

In the 1997 the farm received a certificate from President Clinton and the White House in celebration of its 100th year designating it a heritage farm. A few year’s later, with none of his eight children stepping up to take over the dairy farm, my aging Uncle Dick after countless triple by-pass heart surgeries decided it was time to switch to beef cattle. We guess it was all the raw milk, cheese, eggs, and other artery clotting food one consumes in excess when you live on a dairy farm. I believe there is a reason the best heart disease doctors and The Mayo Clinic is in the heart of the dairyland.

I remember during those summers on the lake, my aunt delivering raw milk from the farm to my grandma, presenting it to her as some kind of special, coveted treat. Me and my suburban siblings eyed it suspiciously and never did drink it beyond a taste that was quickly spat out. My mother encouraged this suspicion in us. Having left the farm for the city as soon as she was old enough, she had bought only ultra-pasturizied or powered milk since. Like most she was convinced by the urban myths that this was the only milk safe for human consumption. Our young minds, like so many of our young urban counterparts who believed that carrots came from the grocery store, were convinced that raw milk, straight from the cow’s utter, was something not to be messed with. A dangerous warm concoction that at best would make you sick just by smelling it.

As we watched my grandma add it to her coffee, use it for baking those brownies we really loved, or drink it straight, we felt she was taking her life into her own hands. My grandma, the sweetest, hardest working, powerhouse matriarch was really living on the edge in those moments. She didn’t die when she drank it, and for that she earned our everlasting respect for her steel stomach and superpower immune system.

So a few months ago when my husband suggested we join a raw milk group in Santa Fe, I was immediately suspicious. The idea that a farmer in Lubbock, Texas would drive up to Santa Fe once a week with a mini-van full of this forbidden elixir - raw milk, butter, cream, and the occasional side of beef, seemed as equally incomprehensible to me as my grandma drinking from the disease-steaming carafe of milk delivered and living through it.

News of this clandestine activity was whispered to my husband over lunch by an acquaintance after he mentioned he was lactose intolerant. She suggested it wasn’t the lactose, but the pasteurizing that was inconsistent with his constituency. So he signed us up and began bringing home gallons of thick milk with a thin layer of cream on the top.

The first time I joined him in the raw milk pickup it was winter, a dark early evening as we drove through the winding streets of northside neighborhoods following such directions as “one block past the three tufts of beargrass.” It seemed rightfully hidden to me as I was still convinced of its potential deadliness. We pulled up to a suburban adobe home with a line of people, hoods pulled tightly over their heads to keep out the cold, silently standing in line as the farmer distributed the white liquid from the back of his mini-van. My husband got out and went to the back of the line. More came silently after him. I could see him trying to make small talk with the other illegal consumers to avail. It felt like a scene from an urban street. Our drug dealer had come into a big supply and needy users lined up quietly trying not to let their jones get the best of them before they could quietly slip away from wherever they had come to get their fix. And in some ways, raw milk is illegal unless you can weave your way through the complex matrix of food safety regulations the government has created that keeps most farmers and consumers confused about real food.

Even after a month or so of my husband bringing raw milk home from these pick ups, forwarding me emails from the farmer on the successful health inspections they passed, I still felt myself avoiding it in the fridge, thinking it suspicious nonetheless. Not being familiar with its smell I was unsure I would know when it was spoiled. Despite the fact that this milk met my commitment to eating locally, and sustainably from food that is raised humanely, I still couldn’t even bring myself to partake of the cheese he made from this concoction.

Finally after getting badgered too many times because I was still buying milk in the store when there was already “milk” in the fridge, I decided to dig up the “raw truth” about raw milk. Like most things tied to the food system these days it is a matter of wading through corporate spin, urban myths, and getting to the real heart of the matter.

Here are a few things I found out:

• Did you know there is an Annual International Raw Milk Symposium? The 2nd one will be held April 10, 2010. Guess where….Wisconsin.

• What is raw milk? Cow's milk taken straight from animals fed only fresh, organic, green grass, rapidly cooled to around 36-38 degrees F., and bottled. Unpasturized and unhomogenized.
  

A few points on Raw Milk Safety

• Not all raw milk is the same. Look for raw milk from cows pastured on organic green grass their WHOLE lives for the best health benefits to you. Any food can be contaminated depending on how it is produced, packaged and handled.

• To get a “Raw for Retail” permit in Texas your milk is tested for at least three things:

• Standard Plate Count – Number of bacteria in milk, has a strong relationship with the keeping quality of milk and the cleanliness of the dairy; legal limit less than 20,000ppm
• Coliform Bacteria – used as an index of the level of sanitation and/or water quality employed in the handling and processing of milk and milk products; legal limit less than 10
• Somatic Cell Count – used as a parameter to detects udder health and milk quality; legal limit less than 750,000
  

• When kept at the optimal temperature of 36-38° F. (2.2-3.3°C.) you can expect fresh raw milk to last from 7-10 days. Higher temperatures allow the normally occurring lactobacilli to get busy making lactic acid, which gives soured milk its characteristically tangy taste and reduces its shelf life.

But don’t leave it to the government, or me, to make your decision for you, do your own research. Most agree that milk from cows fed a heavy grain diet must be pasteurized to kill bacteria harmful to humans. Know the source of your raw milk and how it was raised, fed, and handled. Start by checking out the information and resources on the website Raw Milk Facts: http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/

And thanks to Luke, whoever you are, for posting your school research project: Wisconsin by Luke: http://www.pocanticohills.org/usa99/wi.htm

Tired nights

A cold winter night in February. A long day at work. A little bit of insomnia. I can see how all this is adding up to dubious thoughts on the viability of living la vida local. It is hard to come home tired everynight from work and feel like making a home cooked meal. Whittle down the ingredients you can cook with based on geography and it is even less fun.

Often with these living-life-alternative-to-the-mainstream endeavors there is a hump to get over and then it gets easier. Once you have done the research and know where you can get/buy/grow/freeze and/or can items and what time of year, things get easier. But it is a lot of research to figure these things out. I'm no longer under the illusion this will be a breeze. Especially so long as I keep spending all of my days at an office and want to make time for a family who doesn't like me to be on the computer when I am home. I'm interested to see how far I can get as in individual before I hit up against the need for more collective action.

Tonight we did manage to take one baby step with a mostly local meal in February. We had mealoaf (local ground beef, onions, spinach still frozen from my summer garden, salt) and celery root mash potatoes (thanks to my friend Indigo for that recipe!) Delicious! And minus the salt, it was an all local meal in February! Yea for small successes. April asparagus season is still a ways off however.

Everytime I go grocery shopping in these food stores that although offer organics, are still part of the industrial, global food system, I see all the things I won't be able to buy if my limit is 250 miles or what's available out my own back door. It's a new lens to look at the world through.

I remember after my stint in Panama I never looked at land the same again. Whereas before my life there I saw wildflower habitat, forests, and various lovely ecozones in which to spend my days naming the plants and animals, after Panama all I could see were good hills to grown corn on and bogs that would make a great rice paddy. In college I remember becoming frustrated with the environmental worldview where all I could see was what was wrong with the concrete landsacape and out of alignment with nature. It gets tiresome always looking at the world from that critical lens.

Sometimes I feel that I just need to let go of the critical mind and enjoy whatever is in front of me no matter what it is or where it came from or what consequences it has. I can sometimes find relief from an impending sense of despair by reveling in man's ingenuity and creativity. At least I can marvel at the incredible genius of the human mind that created all our little inventions and huge global systems. I keep myself going in times of overload by grooving on the idea that if we could just start using nature's design parameters, I am absolutely positive we could design ourselves an incredibly ingenious sustainable, harmonious human world too.

It is a bit difficult to not let the locavore lens become a weight on one's shoulder, but rather keep it a celebration of local delights. Maybe if I was a work-in-the-home-mom and could spend more of my days thinking about my purchases and mapping out a plan of attack for local buying in this City, then the delight part would come easier. I'm sure there are other Santa Feans who have done or are doing this locavore thing - so if you are out there, please send me your research! For example, where does one set about buying a new duvet in Santa Fe at a local store that doesn't cost upwards of $350? This has taken me days of research and still no answer. Do without the duvet you say? Certainly one solution. Learn to knit? Another full time job. A duvet could be considered a luxury, and therefore easily done without. But my locavore challenge is centered around food, not so easily done without. So then, where do I find a local olive oil producer? Do without olive oil? Not so sure about that. That might have to go on the exception list.

In order to keep from going crazy looking at all the things we can't have in the winter-time grocery store and absent from the Farmer's Market, we've decided each Selby family member gets to have 3 exceptions to the locavore list. I'm still pondering mine. So far I'm considering coffee, olive oil, and rice. Although I constructed some mean rice paddy/fish ponds in Panama so maybe I can replicate that here, we certainly have enough mud this week! And if I can wean myself off coffee again, I'd trade it for salt. Clayton will likely keep his string cheese, kiwi and strawberries, and Taylor his date-prune-chickory tea drink thing (ingredients from around the world, he needs a cap and trade deal just for that one so that counts as three items).

I'm signing off now. Need to get some sleep so I can have energy to shop local when shopping is a necessity.

Say Cheese!

So we are now part owners of a cow in Lubbock, Texas from which we receive one gallon of unpasturized, raw milk a week. My husband learned of this through an acquaintance. It acts like a buying cooperative - the farmer drops off the milk at a private home and we pick it up gallon every Saturday at 1pm. What you need to do for real food!

Lubbock is 385 miles away - this will be the most distant product we source for our local year, unless we can find the same thing closer. In the meantime we are experimenting with making cheese, which as it turns out is a lot easier than one would think.

For starters you need unpasturized, raw milk - any old milk from the grocery store just won't do.
Next, you throw a piece of wheat-based bread in it and let it curdle for two days.
Then scoop off the whey, strain it and what is left over is the cheese.
For our first try we used 1/2 gallon and got about a 2x3 inch chunk of mexican-style like cheese.
It is almost that easy.

A great local resource for cheese making classes, recipes and a farm visit is Old Windmill Dairy in Estancia, NM. Their two hour classes cover it all. They also sell their cheeses at the Santa Fe Farmer's Market and through the Los Poblanos CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

http://www.theoldwindmilldairy.com/_mgxroot/page_10783.html

Milwaukee's Growing Power

While visiting my family over the holidays, I had the pleasure of visiting Milwaukee's Growing Power founded by Will Allen. Among certain circles, this is a well known urban farming experiment and a great model for intensive production. I was able to take their 2.5 hour tour with visitors from all over the U.S. and Jamaica, including my sister Sarah who runs True Skool in Milwaukee and is also starting a youth gardening project with Growing Power's help. A group here in Santa Fe, including the City and County with Earth Care is looking to start a similar intensive farm here in the desert. It's a great model for a community or individual looking to live locally and off the land.

Enjoy the pics!