yearofplenty

God's Golf Course

 
The Palouse as seen from Steptoe Butte. I guess God is into links courses.

It's Time for a Spokane County Local Foods Initiative

As recent events have shown, our community’s farmers’ markets are vulnerable to unexpected regulatory action. Thankfully it looks like things are working out this go around, but I’m more worried about the next surprise. The rapid growth of farmers’ markets has moved out ahead of the regulatory environment, meaning that most energy is spent trying to retro-fit and deal with things as they crop up (pun intended). Instead of continually reacting, it’s time for interested parties in Spokane County to put together a good piece of legislation that strengthens our local food systems and provides needed support to farmers’ markets and other organizations seeking to close the gap between farmer and consumer.

A year ago the Seattle City Council passed a local food initiative that could serve as a good model. As reported in the Capital Press:

…the initiative’s goals include strengthening local farmers’ markets, securing their locations, expanding resources for food banks, developing solutions to reduce the cost of food for urban consumers and planning for a secure food supply during emergencies and disasters. One year later, the initiative has borne fruit, and work is continuing on implementing the goals that received funding.

Lowering fees is perhaps the most important part of any such kind of initiative we might pursue in Spokane County. At a Farmers Market Managers meeting early this week, high fees paid by farmers, especially from the Spokane County Health District, were the greatest concern expressed in the group. If a Farmers’ Market is not a restaurant, a grocery store, Pig Out In the Park or Hoopfest  - why should it be treated with the same set of fees.

An example of the change in Seattle is that the Lake City Market has gone from paying $4500 to close the street for the day of the market to $251. That’s change you can believe in. It’s in everyone’s interest to move towards a healthier, more local and sustainable food system. The question is, which organization or, as in the case of Seattle, which politician, is going to step up to the plate and take the lead on these issues? Slow Food? Spokane Ag Bureau? Washington Extension? Or maybe it will be you. I look forward to seeing if our community has the activist mojo to pull it off.

Inland Northwest Wildflowers Site Up and Running

Noel and I have the first post up on our web site on local wildflowers. The plan is to add posts and then categorize them for those wanting to investigate and learn. It's a summer project and based on the first post it looks like we're going to learn a lot about Lewis and Clark. Clarkia Pulchella is a beauty!

View From Your Garden - Upside Down Tomatoes

Awhile back I invited folks  to submit some pictures of their gardens as the summer progresses. I plan on posting some of the pictures with an ongoing “View From Your Garden” segment on the blog. The pictures are starting to trickle in and thought I would get us started with a garden I ran across in the Millwood area. (That’s right, if you don’t send in pictures to the email address listed to the right, I’ll come to your home and take pictures myself.)

They have taken a plain old lawn and turned it into a raised bed garden. I noticed the upside down tomato plants on hangers. I’m not sure how those work but they seem to be all the rage this year. Let me know if anyone has had experience with them. If you’re limited by horizontal space in the yard, go vertical.

Tiger Lily

Food Inc. Movie Is a Shot Across the Bow of Industrial Food Practices

Here’s the latest installment in the Public Relations wars around our sick food systems. First there was the book, “Fast Food Nation”, then Michael Pollan’s series of books culminating in “Ominvore’s Dilemma”, and now the two authors of those books, among others, join forces on the movie, “Food Inc.” I’m thinking it’s probably similar to the the wonderful documentary, “King Korn”, but with a much larger budget.

Here’s the description from the web site;

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

I think we have to be careful not to demonize people involved with industrial ag and I hope this film does not do that. Michael Moore styled gotchas get the blood pumping but they don’t do much for constructive engagement. As the folks at the Spokane Ag Bureau told me, they want the Foodie Revolutionaries to know that these are families too. The big corporations are made up of families too.

I’m eager to see the film. Unfortunately Spokane is not groovy enough to have a release date listed. Where is the Magic Lantern when you need it?

Could a Farmers' Market be an Act of Worship?

The Spokesman is running an article in today’s paper on the situation with churches and property taxes that I’ve recently highlighted on the blog. I scanned the the comments on the article and this one jumped out to me; “Why are churches tax exempt anyway?” That’s a great question among many others that I’ve heard percolating around this issue.

For example, while talking with the photographer from the Spokesman he mentioned something about the church as engaging in “spiritual” activities while the Farmers’ Market was a different kind of activity. Is a Farmers’ Market in any way a spiritual activity? Are churches as defined by our culture relegated to a “spiritual” ghetto? Are churches as defined by the Bible and Jesus spiritual entities that have nothing to do with material realities like the marketplace and farming?

Another question came up while talking to a reporter from the Inlander. He mentioned at the end of the interview, “On a lighter note, what about Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers? Could holding the market in the parking lot be seen as something comparable to that?” He meant the question in jest, but it’s actually a great question for the church and for the community that seeks to understand why a church would have tax exempt status.

My question that I’ll open up now and revisit with a Sunday Edition faith related post is, “Could it be that a church’s involvement with a Farmers’ Market is an act of spiritual worship?” You might be surprised at my answer.

Spokane Farmers' Markets & Department of Revenue Update

I previously reported that the actions of the Department of Revenue may disrupt several Spokane Farmers' Markets by removing the tax exempts status of the church parking lots used to host the markets. Of the three markets effected, both the Millwood Farmers' Market and the Downtown Farmers' Market will accept the ruling of the Dept. of Revenue and absorb the costs of property taxes into the operation of the markets. The session of Millwood Presbyterian has agreed to cover the cost of around $700 in annual property taxes for the parking lot and the downtown market non-profit corporation will pay the much more substantial cost of just under $3,000 of annual property taxes. I haven't heard about the plans of the South Perry Market. I think the Spokesman Review is running an article in tomorrow's edition about the situation.

Summer 2009 Wildflower Project

One experience from our Year of Plenty has been that sometimes when you decide to do something unlikely and audacious, you actually do it and it's wonderfully fruitful. It wasn't just the decision to consume local for a year. It was all of the smaller big decisions like taking our insurance money from the car and buying $4,000 worth of plane tickets to Thailand and starting a blog and tearing out the lawn and putting in a labyrinth. This year we bought some chickens, built a coop and even ended up on the chicken coop version of the Street of Dreams. Sometimes you say you'll do something bold and challenging and it works out.

Another contrasting experience is that sometimes you make a bold statement of action and intent and things don't work out. The realities of time and energy and resources conspire against its fulfillment. We said we would do a field trip to every local producer during the year and that didn't work out. We said we'd buy coffee from Thailand, but ended up settling for Thomas Hammer and Craven's. I said we'd facilitate an Eat Local Challenge in September 2008 and I didn't have time to pull it together. I said we'd get a Community Garden going in the West Valley this summer and it didn't quite come together. (I had trouble getting my own garden planted.)

So I'm aware of the tension between these two experiences as Lily, Noel and I embark on a project of chronicling the wildflowers of the Inland Northwest as our summer adventure. We'd like to take some nice pictures of each flower and put them in a journal and also start a blog on wildflowers. And it may not work out. The kids may get bored with it. I may get sidetracked. It may not be realistic. Who knows? Regardless of the result, it's worth the risk of stepping out in hopefulness. The enduring lesson from our year is that sometimes things do work out in a series of wonderful serendipities that rekindle joy and wonder.

Besides, when they don't work out there's always next year. I haven't given up on the eat local challenge. The folks at Community Minded Enterprises are already on the ball with a bunch of other activities in September that will fit well with something like the Eat Local Challenge. And the community garden in Pasadena Park is still on the long term agenda.

Does anyone know the identity of the flower pictured above. The leaves are oval when fully bloom. I'm think some kind of Forget Me Not or Phlox.

"What Can One Do?"

Wendell Berry's observations from the book of essays, "What Are People For";

Many times, after I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, "What can city people do?"

"Eat responsibly," I have usually answered. Of course, I have tried to explain what I meant by that, but afterwards I have invariably felt that there was more to be said than I had been able to say. Now I would like to attempt a better explanation.

I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as "consumers." If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive consumers. They buy what they want-or what they have been persuaded to want-within the limits of wifery of the old household food economy. But one can be thus liberated only by entering a trap (unless one sees ignorance and helplessness as the signs of privilege, as many people apparently do). The trap is the ideal of industrialism: a walled city surrounded by valves that let merchandise in but no consciousness out. How does one escape this trap? Only voluntarily, the same way that one went in: by restoring one's consciousness of what is involved in eating; by reclaiming responsibility for one's own part in the food economy. One might begin with the illuminating principle of Sir Albert Howard's The Soil and Health, that we should understand "the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man as one great subject." Eaters, that is, must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used. This is a simple way of describing a relationship that is inexpressibly complex. To eat responsibly is to understand and enact, so far as one can, this complex relationship. What can one do? Here is a list, probably not definitive:

1. Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer, Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will he fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.
2. Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and household. This should enable you to eat more cheaply, and it will give you a measure of "quality control'': you will have some reliable knowledge of what has been added to the food you eat.
3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The idea that every locality should be, as much as possible, the source of its own food makes several kinds of sense. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and to influence,
4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. All the reasons listed for the previous suggestion apply here. In addition, by such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers. and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers.
5. Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions?
6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.
7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.