yearofplenty

Something Glenn Beck and Barack Obama Can Agree On

Joel Salatin of Omnivore's Dilemma and Food Inc. fame is profiled in the November edition of The American Conservative. Mr. Salatin and his 500 acre Polyface Farm in Virginia is one of the centerpieces of Michael Pollan's reporting on sustainable alternatives to the massive industrial food complex. But here's the thing, this darling of the Berkeley/Whole Foods/Prius crowd is a dyed in the wool conservative and a Bob Jones University graduate to boot. He refers to himself as a “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist lunatic.”

These quotes from the article caught my attention:

He wants a big-tent local-food movement. While two decades ago, most customers at his farm store were “liberal, hippie, tree-hugger types,” he now estimates that an even number are traditional and libertarian conservatives. Surveying his customer parking lot, Salatin says, “It’s absolutely typical to have three Obama bumper stickers alongside three that say, ‘Abortion stops a beating heart.’” He is encouraged by the movement’s broad appeal, but laments that he cannot convince more of his fellow churchgoers not to “stop for happy meals on the way home from the pro-life rally."

Salatin, who grew up going to natural- food stores, found this hostility from the Right troubling. Today, he is delighted that so many conservatives have joined what he calls the “heritage food movement.” (He chuckles, admitting that this is a subtle “slam” at the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks that he claims are in bed with agribusiness.) As for Bob Jones, it has evidently changed its outlook. The university recently honored Salatin as “alumnus of the year.”

Concerns about food short-circuit political divides in some wonderfully mischevious ways. Farmers' Markets may be the most politically diverse gathering in the community, with Glenn Beck conspiracy theorists rubbing shoulders with neo-hippie peace activists. The recent Whole Foods CEO curfluffle highlighted some of this diversity and forced the question, "Is it OK for conservatives and liberals, who disagree on so much, to agree on food and work together in that agreement?"

I sure hope so. In today's intense, hyped up political landscape, a good potluck with arugala and country style pork ribs (and of course grandma's jello salad) could do us a lot of good. There's something about gathering around food that makes us more human.

Judge Puts Roundup Ready Sugar Beets On Hold

In genetically altered crops news, a Judge has put a halt to the propagation of sugar beets that have been genetically altered to withstand a dosing of Roundup herbicide. The AP report states:

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco found the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service violated environmental law by failing to take a “hard look” at whether “Roundup Ready” sugar beets would eventually share their genes with other crops.

Noting that pollen from genetically altered sugar beets could be blown by the wind long distances to related crops, such as chard and table beets, the judge ordered the agency to produce an environmental impact statement examining the issue.

I think chemicals are a part of our lives and there is no way to extricate our food system from their use, but I do have to wonder about genetically modifying crops (strike one) so that we can use more chemicals on those crops (strike two), not really knowing the long term consequences to human health and earth impact.(strike three?) I’m glad to hear that they are taking good long hard look at this.

This little tidbit from the article caught my attention.

The ruling was a second blow for St. Louis-based Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops. While soy beans, corn, cotton, and canola genetically engineered to withstand the company’s popular weed-killer have been in wide commercial production for years, a similar ruling in 2007 forced a ban on planting Roundup Ready alfalfa until a re-examination was done. That environmental impact statement is not yet done.

In that soy beans and corn make up a huge part of the current food chain (cow eats corn and soy, human eats cow; chicken eats corn and soy, human eats chicken; human eats corn and soy), I wonder how much of our bodies are Roundup Ready.

The Story of the Industrialization of Food In One Handy Chart

Workforce chart from flare, data visualization for the web.

This chart is fascinating in so many different ways. It takes the reported occupations of the U.S. labor force between 1850 and the year 2000, and brings the data to life through this image. I love the image because it clearly shows the dramatic changes in the way food is produced. We’ve gone from over 50% of the U.S. workforce involved as farmers or farm laborers in 1850 to just a little over 1% in the year 2000. Go here for the full-sized interactive chart.

Eco-Experiments: Gimmick, Writer’s Muse or Test Pilot Venture on the Green Frontier

When we started our year-long experiment in January of 2008, seeking to consume everything local, used, homegrown or homemade, I can honestly say we didn’t know about all the other similar experiments working there way into the cultural mainstream. We hadn’t read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” or the “100 Mile Diet” and we hadn’t been following the blog of “No Impact Man.” We didn’t know that “locavore” had been selected as the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year just a month before we sat down and plotted our year of local food.

In retrospect, this was a cultural moment that didn’t need intentional awareness as if to copy what others were doing. These experiments on the margins of our consumption status quo were bubbling up all over as if from a common hidden underground aquifer of unrest. In fact the conversations and discoveries that awaited us during our year had been brewing for decades. That being said, it didn’t take us long to discover these books and resources and they served as wonderful conversation partners throughout the year.

With the realease of the “No Impact Man” movie this month, these kinds of eco-experiments have attained a new level of cultural status and with that, more than bit of scrutiny and skepticism. The New Yorker has taken the biggest swipe in the article, “What’s Wrong With Eco-Stunts?”.

After a meandering comparison of “No Impact Man” with Thoroeau and his book, Walden, the article offers the following rather heavy-handed critique;

A more honest title for Beavan’s book would have been “Low Impact Man,” and a truly honest title would have been “Not Quite So High Impact Man.” Even during the year that Beavan spent drinking out of a Mason jar, more than two billion people were, quite inadvertently, living lives of lower impact than his. Most of them were struggling to get by in the slums of Delhi or Rio or scratching out a living in rural Africa or South America. A few were sleeping in cardboard boxes on the street not far from Beavan’s Fifth Avenue apartment.

What makes Beavan’s experiment noteworthy is that it is just that—a voluntary exercise conducted for a limited time only by a middle-class family. Beavan justifies writing about it on the ground that it will inspire others to examine their wasteful ways. But…The real work of “saving the world” goes way beyond the sorts of action that “No Impact Man” is all about.

What’s required is perhaps a sequel. In one chapter, Beavan could take the elevator to visit other families in his apartment building. He could talk to them about how they all need to work together to install a more efficient heating system. In another, he could ride the subway to Penn Station and then get on a train to Albany. Once there, he could lobby state lawmakers for better mass transit. In a third chapter, Beavan could devote his blog to pushing for a carbon tax. Here’s a possible title for the book: “Impact Man.” 

Ouch. So is this proliferation of eco-stunts just a publishing/writer’s version of “greenwashing”? Are they just carnival side shows to the real work of environmental activism? Tomorrow I’ll offer a response to the critique from the perspective of someone who has participated in one of these eco-stunts.

Inland Northwest Milk Mystery Revisited

Last year in our quest for local food we took on the surprisingly challenging task of sourcing milk that comes from Inland Northwest farmers and cows. We visited the Inland Northwest Dairy site on Francis near Division, we talked to grocery stores and finally got a somewhat definitive answer from Behm's Dairy on how to identify local milk. It's been one of the most referenced and linked posts from our blog.

I've got some new information that may muddy the waters (or milk) when it comes to identifying local milk. The last year has been a complete mess for the dairy industry. Farmers' have been going under as worldwide demand for milk has plummeted in the down economy. Prices have crashed and the business of milk has been in turmoil. Apparently Spokane's Inland Northwest Dairies L.L.C. has not escaped the changing milk landscape.

When we visited in January 2008 they explained that the company was majority owned by the employees. Darigold at the time had a minority ownership stake. A friend told me last week that at some point last year Darigold bought out the employees. I checked the Inland Northwest Dairies site www.inlandnwdairy.com/ and there is nothing there. I need to do some more investigating but with their near monopoly of milk production in Washington I suspect milk is moving more freely across the region than maybe it was before.

Does anyone have any more information on this?

Spokane Familiy Farm is a sure fire way to get local milk.

Are Christians More Committed to Caring for the Environment?

There as a recent conversation on Andrew Sullivan’s blog about atheists, Christians and the environment that caught my attention and I think a response is in order.

The instigator for the discussion was a statement by the Pope that centered around Christians and the environment. His address had this curious statement:

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where His existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

The implication is that somehow atheists are prone to ravage the earth while Christians are rooted in a creatureliness that lends itself to a responsible relationship with the environment.

There was some interesting back and forth at the Daily Dish in response to this. With one person reporting that they’d never met an atheist that wasn’t concerned for the environment and another suggesting that indeed those lower class Europeans are more atheistic and less environmentally aware. I can’t speak to the situation in Europe but in America we actually do have more than anecdotes to rely on in understanding the relationship of faith and the environment.

According to a study reported in the book Unchristian, the actual lifestyle differences between people identifying as “born-again Christians” and those who are "non-born Again Christians" do not are minimal, but surprisingly “recycling was less common among born-again Christians (68 percent versus 79 percent)” - page 47.

A recent pew study on religion and American life states that;

“Although a majority of every major religious group in the United States supports stricter environmental measures, there are some differences in degree. For instance, only slim majorities of members of evangelical and historically black Protestant churches (54% and 52%, respectively) support the imposition of stricter environmental laws. Members of non-Christian faiths, by contrast, are much more likely to believe that stricter environmental regulations are worth the economic costs. More than two-thirds of Jews (77%), Buddhists (75%), Hindus (67%), Muslims (69%) and the unaffiliated (69%) support stricter environmental laws. Further, more than seven in ten atheists (75%), agnostics (78%) and the secular unaffiliated (72%) say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, with somewhat lower levels of support for environmental regulation found among the religious unaffiliated (59%).” page 104 of linked article

As a Presbyterian pastor with evangelical roots, I am sorry to report that Christians in America aren’t the exemplars the pope makes us out to be. I agree that the church and people of faith should be leading the way when it comes to concern for issues of sustainability and the environment, but it just hasn’t been the case. This reality is one of my motivating factors for writing this blog.

If anyone is interested in exploring more of the connections between faith, food and sustainability I’ll be teaching a class next week through the eministry network called”The Kingdom of God is Like a Farmer’s Market: Exploring the Intersections of Food, Faith and Justice.” Go here and scroll down for the class info.

The Year the City Slickers Took Their Chickens to the Fair

One fun annual tradition we started a couple of years ago is to enter items in the Spokane County Fair, mostly veggies from the garden. I remember visting the Puyallup fair growing up, and walking through the displays of animals and agriculture and eating a pile of raspberry jam smothered scones. (By the way, why don’t we have those at the Spokane County fair?) But I had no experience as a participant. It was always something other people did who lived very different lives from mine.

This move from observer to participant has been a real highlight for us in the Fall. Last year the girls got second place in the giant pumpkin contest and second place in the tallest sunflower contest. And we’ll never forget claiming the coveted Grand Champion Rutabaga ribbon.

This year we took it to a whole new level and the girls and neighborhood friends who have a stake in the coop entered our five chickens in the Spokane County Fair. Last Thursday we rounded up our brood, (it took about 45 minutes to run them down and box them up), and rolled into the exhibitors parking lot of the fair ground, nervous that someone would correctly identify us as being terribly out of place and tell us to go home. We parked our poultry stuffed mini van next to all the farm-worn trucks and put our birds in their assigned cages. One of the older students really saved the day in helping us get settled in. We returned on Friday for a lesson on how to show the birds for the judges on Saturday.

In a real surprise we showed up Saturday and discovered that Cheesy, Lily’s Buff Orpington, was on champions row, boasting best of class and best of breed ribbons and Zeina’s Golden Laced Wyandotte won “reserve” best of breed and best of class. Everyone got blue first place stickers. And then it was time for showing.

Lily was first up and you can see from the picture of smallish birds next to the towering Cheesy, that if it was a version of cock fighting we would have had the advantage. But this was about knowledge and the craft of displaying chickens, and with every other child drawing on experience as part of 4-H or FFA, we were our of our depth to say the least. I had been coaching soccer all morning so I instinctively yelled out instructions to Lily in the middle of the showing. The judge gently reprimanded me. I'm not up on chicken show etiquette, but I'm guessing that trash talking the ump isn't OK, so I refrained from any more coaching. All the kids received blue ribbons and really learned a lot from the experience. Thanks to all the mentors and leaders who help make these kinds of events possible.

I think the fair is one of the best things going for young people. It gives them a chance to recognize that they are not just observers of their environment, but they are participants in it. They are not powerless observers of food systems, they are powerful shapers of them. I think County fairs are one of the great untapped resources for engaging issues of the environment and food systems. I can see the way that the Fair is shaping my children as responsible participants in the environment, and they love the Mutton Busting and riding the Zipper too.

The Eggsperiment: A (Somewhat) Scientific Comparison of Store Bought and Home Grown Chicken Eggs

We gathered a freshly laid egg from Cheesy, the brown egg pictured below, and an egg from our neighbor that they recently purchased at Yoke's, and set out to make an observational comparison. They are both the same size, the brown shell doesn't make a difference in the contents of the egg. Cheesy eats standard chicken feed from Aslin Finch plus some scratch grains (crushed corn), oyster shells and crushed granite. She also spends much of her day free ranging around the yard eating grass (a good source of beta carotine that makes the eggs darker and healthier), bugs, our compost pile scraps and pretty much anything else she can get her beak on. Cheesy has never had any antibiotics or medications.

I'm not sure where the egg from Yoke's originated, but it's probably a large producer with thousands of chickens housed together, and it's probably several weeks old and eats a feed similar to the one we use from Aslin Finch.

Cheesy's egg has a very clear egg white, almost like water, whereas the store egg has a cloudy egg white.

Cheesy's egg white above has some real body to it.

The store bought egg white is cloudy and runny. Notice how it oozes over the whole plate. If I were a pastry chef I'd definitely want Cheesy's egg. Imagine the difference in the firmness of the whites when they are whisked up.

The store bought yoke is surprisingly puffy. It is probably very fresh because over time the yokes will sag and will lay more flat.

Cheesy's egg to the left is much darker and richer looking. All that foraging and free ranging really make a difference in the nutritional value as evidenced by the color.

And the winner is - Cheesy. We didn't have a taste test component to our comparison but the kids report that the home grown eggs are much more rich and buttery tasting.

McGlade's Bistro & Wine Bar on the North Side of Spokane Under New Ownership

This is a little far afield from my usual blogging fair but I couldn't resist the idea of beating David Blaine to the scoop on a local Spokane restaurant shake-up. Nancy and I headed out to McGlade's Bistro and Wine Bar for an anniversary desert. We had a nice drink and pastry but noticed that the grocery section of the store, that has featured local produce from Greenbluff in the past, was boxed up and the coffee shop couches had been moved. We asked our waitress what was up and she explained that there is a new owner as of the beginning of the week. The new owner is also the chef. Can't remember her name. Our waitress said that changes were coming but couldn't be specific about the changes other than the fact that the grocery section would be going. Sounds like the fruit stand turned coffee shop/fruit stand turned wine bistro will probably be looking more like a traditional restaurant, which isn't surprising with a chef as an owner.

I wish them well. It's a nice facility with an interesting location on the north side to the west of Greenbluff on Day Mt. Spokane Rd.

Backyard Farming Follies

A few weeks ago a friend emailed and explained that as a teacher she needed to do some field trips to maintain her credential and visits to farms counted toward this requirement. She wondered if it would be OK to visit our house to see our chickens and garden, the implication being that we had arrived at some sort of farm status. If we are a farm we have to be one of the most comical varieties around.

For example, yesterday morning I let the chickens out at 6:30 am to free range. They have a rhythm where they roam around and two by two take turns laying eggs in the nest. They are usually fairly orderly but yesterday all heck broke loose. They clucked and cawed and made a racket because Cheesy, the Buff Orpington prima donna of the coop, hogged the nest, driving all the other hens insane. Things settled down and it was time to go but Chrysanthamum, one of our two Silver Laced Wyandottes, was missing. We combed the neighborhood yelling, “Chrysanthamum.” (Do chickens recognize their names like dogs?)

After 20 minutes of looking I resigned myself to losing our first bird. I imagined a hawk swooping down in an instant, leaving no trace. Or a giant neighborhood cat or a dog or even those feisty suburban hamsters. Who knows? She was gone. We were a farm under attack. Chicken kidnappers on the loose.

I was headed to my car when Nancy called out that she found her. Turns out she was sick of the drama of the nest and carved out a nice secluded nesting area under the dense asters alongside the house. Determined to teach her a lesson, I plucked her up with both hands and went to put her in the nest before she could lay the egg. That’s what my chicken farmer friends told me to do with renegade layers. Just as I reached for the door of the coop I heard a hard thud by my foot. Chrysanthamum had dropped her egg like a grenade from four feet up, or maybe I squeezed it out of her, but in a miracle of oyster shell supplements the egg didn’t break.

After chasing Chrysanthamum around for 10 minutes this morning I gave up and let her lay her egg in the asters. At least I don’t have to post a bunch of “Missing Chicken” posters around the neighborhood.