yearofplenty

Downtown Spokane Farmers' Market Moving to New Location

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Due to construction on 2nd Ave. this summer the Downtown Spokane Farmers' Market will be moving a couple blocks to the south of its long time location in the parking lot of the Covenant Church. The site, just south of 1-90 freeway between Division and Brown on 5th Ave, will have the capacity for far more vendors than the old site. The market has arranged with the hospital to be at this location for two years, but after that they may need to move again due to the hospital's plans for the property.

You can follow the news at their facebook page here.

The Saturday Downtown Market will open 5/15/10 and the Wednesday Downtown Market will open 6/9/10.

Become a Writer 750 Words at a Time With New Online App

 

Picture: Fritillaria pudica (yellow bell, yellow fritillary) taken two weeks ago in Spokane Valley.

I'm in a season of doing some long form writing, working on a writing project with a publisher. I've been drawn to the idea of being a writer since I was young but translating that into the reality of actual disciplined writing has been a challenge through the years. The blog does help provide a kind of discipline. Part of my life routine is to get at least one post up every day. The best thing about the blog is that when I hit "Publish" it's out there, which tends to really focus my attention (typos etc. not withstanding). But there is another kind of writing that takes a longer view, with time for revisiting and editing and boiling down.

There is a new online App called 750 Words that has the simple premise of providing a venue to get in 750 words of writing every day. Here's how it's described on the site.

I've long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist's Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in "long hand", typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day. Unlike many of the other exercises in that book, I found that this one actually worked and was really really useful.

I've used the exercise as a great way to think out loud without having to worry about half-formed ideas, random tangents, private stuff, and all the other things in our heads that we often filter out before ever voicing them or writing about them. It's a daily brain dump. Over time, I've found that it's also very helpful as a tool to get thoughts going that have become stuck, or to help get to the bottom of a rotten mood.

750 Words is the online, future-ified, fun-ified translation of this exercise.

Your writing on the site is private to you, so it's not a blog. It's more personal, intended for personal nurture and development. The site will track how many words you've written and has a point system for your progress. I'm not using the site but I am running with the concept of 750 words or three pages a day.

The other best advice in writing that I've heard, and something that I will keep dear to my heart as I tackle my three pages a day, is Anne Lamott's motto; "sh%$#ty first drafts."

Study Claims Jamie Oliver's School Lunches Improve Test Scores

The Times Online in England has an article up reporting on a 2 year study on the impact of Jamie OIiver's efforts to improve school lunches on test scores.

Eating Jamie Oliver’s school dinners improves children’s performance in tests, according to researchers who claim that the celebrity chef’s campaign to improve school food has had more impact than government literacy programmes.

The findings of the two-year study indicate that scores in national curriculum tests at 11 rose in English and science at schools where Oliver’s menus were introduced.

Control schools, where junk food was still available, showed smaller or negligible improvements, researchers said.

Here's an interesting tidbit;

The academics failed to find evidence that the campaign specifically helped children on free school meals — a measure of social deprivation.

“On the contrary the campaign seemed to have affected most the children from richer socio-economic backgrounds,” the study said.

Oliver is trying to innovate some of the same changes he helped start in England in the U.S. with his TV show Food Revolution. Check out the video clip above for a scene from one of the first episodes. If you're interested in the future of school lunches in the U.S. you'll be interested to read up on some legislation working it's way through congress called The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

Spring Gardening Update

Just checking in about the seed starting calendar I put together earlier in the Spring. So far we're right on schedule. We're just about 7 weeks out from the last freeze date here in the Spokane area so everything is planted in the greenhouse except the Zucchini and summer squash. The picture to the left is what the greenhouse looks like at this point. If I cranked up the heat some more I could get things growing more briskly but I don't like to run the heater all the time. The barrels with water pictured to the left are full of water and are designed to absorb heat during the day and slowly release heat at night. Our greenhouse is the Costco sourced kit that sells for about $700.

The peas I planted in the garden about three weeks ago are now popping up as are the radishes. No sign of the parsnips or beets. It's going to get pretty cold later in the week so I may put some plastic over these sprouts overnight just in case.

I went to Northwest Seed & Pet last week and bought my seed potatoes. Legend has it that you're supposed to plant your seed potatoes on Good Friday. I mentioned that to a real potato farmer one time and he laughed and said, "Yea, That or when the soil reaches a temperature of 52 degrees." (I actually can't remember the exact temperature.) I think I'll stick with the Good Friday rule. I've said it many times but I recommend planting funky varieties of potatoes, like purple or fingerling or pink. There is nothing more discouraging than growing Yukon Gold or Russett type potatoes only to go to the grocery store and see them being sold for .50 cents a pound. We've still got about 50 lbs of potatoes left from last summer's harvest.

One of my special projects for this year is to grow native wildflowers from the seeds I gathered last summer. There is something really satisfying seeing them sprouting up in the Greenhouse. The wildflowers I'm growing from seed include Fireweed, Blanketflower, Lupine, Blue Flax, Hooker's Onion, Yarrow, Deer Vetch, Buckwheat, and Arrowleaf Balsamroot. Everything has popped up so far except for the Arrowleaf which I was told is notoriously hard to start from seeds gathered in the wild. I have a bunch of other native flowers I am starting from store bought seeds.

Richard Bohn, a local artist from the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden group stopped by Saturday to get some of the seeds I gathered to include in the wildflower border we're planting around the garden. Go here for an update on the garden and to www.pumpkinpatchgarden.com for the whole scoop and to sign up to volunteer. Click through to read a nice poem Richard wrote about planting the seeds on Saturday. 

100 Years of Eating in America in Four Handy Charts

The USDA's Economic Research Service now has a full century of data on food availability in America.

This one-of-a-kind data set measures which food commodities are available to eat at the national level and provides the foundation for estimating if the nutrients available support a healthy, well-nourished citizenry. The data date back to 1909, allowing researchers, marketers, and policymakers to examine historical consumption trends and shifts in food demand.

The four charts below from the linked article are great ways to absorb the data and see the trends in what foods are available per/capita. I'll take a stab at giving the charts names.

The "Have You Ever Noticed that Half the Items
on a Restaurant Menu Have Chicken" Chart

The Cheesehead Century Chart

The "Sweet Potatoes, We Barely Knew Ya" Chart

The "I Wonder What Foods the Government is Subsidizing
and Throwing the Whole System Out of Whack" Chart

Feel free to offer you're own "lame attempts at humor" chart names if you like.

Are Community Gardens the Next Wave of Involvement for Churches?

 

picture: Grass Widow or Satin Flower taken near Liberty Lake last weekend.

Plans for the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden are coming together. We've got soil and lumber and irrigation installation all donated. We've got a growing band of volunteers eager to dig dirt on April 10 at 9am for our first official work day. We even have a Tweetup flash mob sort of thing in the works for the work day. You can follow the progress on Twitter and fan us on Facebook if you like.

I have been in conversations about the community garden in the west valley of Spokane for over a year but I always imagined it as something I would pursue in my personal time, as opposed to bringing it into the fold of what we do at the church I pastor. But somehow it has come together for the church to be one of the key community partners in facilitating the garden. (Emphasis on "one of." It's going to take a whole community effort for something like this to work.)

As our church has come alongside others to help facilitate this vision for our community I've become more aware of how churches seem to be embracing community gardens as an area of involvement both locally and around the country.

In Spokane there are several projects where churches play a role;

• Vinegar Flats, a program of St. Margarets Womens and Children's Shelter.
• Riverfront Farms, a program of Project Hope with churches and faith groups playing a key role.
• Holy Trinity Episcopal Church Community Garden
• All Saints Lutheran Community Garden in Brown's Addition
• The Porch Garden project
• East Valley Presbyterian has also hosted a community garden
• The Salvation Army is also launching a community garden this summer

It seems like I hear about this kind of faith community involvement bubbling up all over. Christine Sine over in Seattle has actually developed a seminar on the Spirituality of Gardening and will be giving the seminar in a couple of weeks to people from churches that are endeavoring to start gardens. She has a post up on starting a faith-based community garden that has some good information.

I was intrigued by her link to the blog Sparks in the Soil, written by Holly Lebowitz Rossi. She describes her blog project as inspired by an experience of a church that started a community garden;

Last summer, I wrote an article about an evangelical church in Boise, Idaho that grew more than 20,000 pounds of food in one season on less than a half acre of land. My research got me thinking, what would happen if every house of worship in America grew food in some form?  Let’s find out.

It sounds like she's wondering if this could be a next wave of involvement for churches. We have our worship services, our children's and youth programs, and....our community gardens. Sounds good to me. I've written at length lamenting the sacred/secular, spirit/material divide that in my view stymies the mission of the church. This kind of involvement is a hopeful way of disrupting that divide.

WSJ Article Gives New Meaning to Dairy Bubble

A dairy farmer spent $150,000 to line his open manure pit with plastic only to have it detach and form huge bubbles of gas from the 21 million gallons of decomposing cow manure. The article at WSJournal that describes his predicament offers a telling window into the current plight of many large scale dairy farmers. It also offers these astounding statistics:

How Much Manure Does a Dairy Cow Produce?

• 148 lbs. per day
• 1,036 lbs. per week
• 4,440 lbs. per month
• 54,020 lbs. per year

Go to the article to see a picture of what an open pit of 21 million gallons of decomposing manure looks like. Doesn't exactly make me want to drink milk or eat cheese.

In light of the complexity of the situation facing dairy farmers it seems weird to me that many think the answer for the industry is for more farmers to use rBST. It sounds too much like someone saying the answer for the current mortgage mess is to further leverage the market. 

Flurry of Legislation That Will Change the Food We Eat

The biggest news on the legislative front is that the Health Care bill that Obama just signed includes provisions that will require fast food restaurants to post the caloric content of menu items, So starting next year you'll see the calories of a Big Mac combo meal on the big board along with the price. I wonder if there will be any menu tweaking before the law goes into effect to bring down the calories in some menu items that are really high?

On a more local level, the Idaho legislature has been working to update their animal cruelty laws to circumvent a flood of California farms seeking to avoid their stringent new laws prohibiting cruel confinement practices. Northwest Food News reports:

It appears that a bill sponsored by Idaho Senator Tim Corder to update Idaho’s animal cruelty laws, which passed the Idaho Senate with a 34 to 1 margin, has been stalled and perhaps killed thanks to House committee leader Representative Tom Loertscher.

Idaho’s animal cruelty laws have been ranked by several organizations as some of the most lax in the country. Attempts to address that issue was the subject of a recent Edible Idaho program called “Animal Welfare on the Farm.”

According to AP reports “Rep. Tom Loertscher, an eastern Idaho rancher and House State Affairs Committee chair, won’t give [the bill] a hearing because he doesn’t like provisions that threaten livestock owners who don’t provide medical care to sick or injured animals with a misdemeanor.”

And finally Washington State Governor Gregoire signed into law the HSB 2402 yesterday to exempt non-profits that host farmers markets from paying property taxes. And it all started in Spokane.

Michael Pollan, Betty Crocker and the Food Kids Like to Eat

We've got a b-day in the Goodwin house today and while shopping for the occasion Noel thought Lily would really like a Lunchable to celebrate the occasion. Sure enough, when Lily opened her backpack today to discover a Lunchable she leaped for joy and (I'm not kidding) hugged her mom with a long embrace like she had just been gifted a pink pony. I wouldn't be surprised if that is her favorite birthday present.

Hmmm. It's got me wondering about our food journey (Michael Pollan, etc.) and the ways our kids experience it. For the most part they go along with our emphasis on local seasonal food. They've drawn the line at tofu, and the fact that I don't eat chicken anymore has changed things up but it's not like we're eating mustard greens and kale every night. But based on Lily's rejoicing at a Lunchable you'd think she had been eating a regular diet of gruel.

Unrelated to the Lunchable, Nancy broke out her old Betty Crocker's Boys and Girls Cookbook last night and it's quite a sight; hotdogs, SPAM and American Cheese are the staples of the Betty Crocker kids food pyramid, the precursor to the Lunchable. I guess kids have been pining after heavily processed foods for a long time.

I'm wondering about how other families are doing with trying to get kids to eat healthy sustainable foods. We've talked a lot on this blog about getting healthier meals at school but I suspect that getting kids to eat healthier food at home may be the greater challenge. How do you make it work at home?

Click through for more pics from the cookbook.

Seed Starting as Soulcraft

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Matthew Crawford
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If you're following the seed starting schedule I laid out a couple weeks ago it's a good time to start your tomatoes and cabbages. I'd wait another week for the squash/pumpkins. We're just about 8 weeks out from the last freeze date here in the Spokane area.

I'm reading Matthew Crawford's intriguing little book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, and I can't help but find connections between his musings on the virtue of working with your hands (in his cases motorcycles) and my experience with seed starting and learning the craft of gardening.

The book is a philosophical commentary on the modern drift away from handiwork toward a narcissistic fog of predetermined consumer choices. He says;

As every parent knows, infants think the world revolves around them, and everything ought to be instantly available to them. At an earlier stage of technological progress, I am sure that contending with a motorcycle, like contending with the farm animals that likely inhabited the same barn as the motorcycle, helped along the process of becoming an adult. When your shin gets kicked, whether by a mule or a kick-starter, you get schooled.

It would be strange to pine for the inconvenience of old motorcycles. They truly are a pain in the #$@. My point rather is to consider the moral significance of material culture...On all sides, we see fewer occasions for the exercise of judgment...

For the one who takes on the yoke of working with a mule or a motorcycle;

His will is educated - both chastened and focused - so it no longer resembles that of a raging baby who knows only that he wants. Both as workers and as consumers, technical education seems to contribute to moral education.

His thesis as far as I can glean it from the first couple chapters is;

...the mechanical arts have a special significance for our time because they cultivate not creativity, but the less glamorous virtue of attentiveness.

In some ways farming and gardening and seed starting are an even better manual practice for nurturing this kind of virtue. Instead of just connecting me to the created motorcycle, it forces me to engage the whole created order of things - earth and sun and seasons. My gardening efforts have never been able to stand up to the cold hard calculus of the cost of seed starts at Walmart or the cost of potatoes at Albertsons, but that's not the best way to judge its importance. There is more going on in this "manual" labor than can be captured on a spreadsheet or calculator.

It is a kind of education, a cultivator of otherwise unattended virtues. At least it has been for me.