Food Day

Today is Food Day - a day to promote awareness of and advocate for real food: locally and sustainably grown and raised products and equality of distribution and availability of good, healthy food for all.

There are so many reasons why support for sustainably grown and raised food from local farmers is vitally important: economic, environmental, health-related, community-building, hunger and equality/access to fresh foods, and so on... Our current system of industrial food production is entirely unsustainable, unrealistic and unjust and these problems are not contained in the agricultural system, their effects are wide ranging. You can find some great basic information on the Food Day website, and below I've listed some additional resources I've found helpful.

There is a lot to be done to change the current food system, but there are great strides and exciting things happening throughout the country and especially in our area at a local, sustainable, small farm level: from farmers markets to local food policy councils, to growing numbers of small farms to greater availability of fresh local foods in grocery stores and restaurants, and more.

So take a moment to check out Food Day's site and learn more about the issue(s), find some sources of local food close to you, and pay attention today where the food you're eating came from, and what implications that might have. Eat local and fresh if you can, and enjoy how good it tastes!

Bringing It to The Table by Wendell Berry
Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Food Politics by Marion Nestle
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Deeply Rooted by Lisa M. Hamilton (which I am about to read on a recommendation)
Food, Inc. directed by Robert Kenner
Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy

Introducing...

It is official: We are a farm! Or are in the process of (re)creating one. 180 years ago when this land was settled it was farmed by the family who traveled to it by ox cart, who built this house. It is exciting to be returning a portion of the original property to its roots.

Depending on how you look at it, this is either a few months or years in the making. We started seriously considering the option of starting a farm business last Fall and were able to participate in a class through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park's Countryside Conservancy in November that gave us a framework in which to explore the possibility further. But more fully, this is a progression from our years of growing interest in homesteading, sustainable, simple living, and being involved in the process of growing and raising our own food and more recently being able to share some of this food with others as well.

Our decision to take this step has several motivations, on both personal and societal levels.

At the most basic level, we enjoy this work. It is what we wish we had more time to do. It is what gives us a sense of satisfaction, of having done something of value. It feels real and good. Our hope is that in the future we will be successful enough for both Jim and I to be able to work full-time on the farm. To be able to integrate our work and family lives. For the time being it will be my project, with Jim's help as much as he is able on top of his current work.

As we've gotten satisfaction from growing and raising food for ourselves, so also we have felt satisfaction at being able to provide friends and family with some of our extras. Our current food system in this country is rapidly reaching the point (or, you could argue has already reached the point) of unsustainability. The need for more small farms using sustainable methods of production, producing food for local markets is growing rapidly. For us to start a small farm, then, is an opportunity to do our part in changing the food system for the better, to meet the need for good quality, sustainable and local food in our surrounding communities, and for us to put our skills and passions to better use.

As our farm - far from the 150 acres it was at one time - is just under 3 acres and about two thirds wooded, we face some unique challenges. By necessity we will have diverse products and within those we will have the opportunity to learn how to work intensively and efficiently. We are excited to learn as we go how to make our farm as closed a cycle as possible - using the land as efficiently as possible, using outputs from one enterprise as inputs in another, finding the ways that different systems work together and even enhance each other.

This year we are starting with some basic products that we have experience in: a market garden, chickens for eggs and meat, honey, maple syrup. We will be planting berries this year, and preparing for a small orchard as well. Several other possibilities are on the table for later in the year or next year as well, awaiting more research and getting the basics underway. We're also exploring options for the "off season" that might use some of our other skills.

It is an exciting time, and a time of held breath and crossed fingers. With Spring just around the corner we are gearing up quickly. Chicks have been ordered with plans for additional orders soon, seed catalogs have been poured over and soon there will be seedlings sprouting ...somewhere..., bees have been inspected once (one hive gone, the other now fortified with extra honey), the layers are laying and the sap is running.

We are working on a farm website which will include a blog if you'd like to follow us as we build this new venture. We hope to share it with you, as community is an essential part of this journey: what makes it all the richer and more full of life.

Integration

The weeks have flown by this month and this past Monday was our last class in the "Exploring the Small Farm Dream" workshop we've been taking. It has been an intensive process of reflecting on what it is that we want to do, why and how. Four weeks later, we still have quite a lot of research to do, and many decisions to make. We're faced with the unique challenge of starting a (profitable) farm on a relatively small, largely wooded property. Which is at turns an exciting challenge and a (seemingly) crazy idea.

While we don't yet know just what this farm will look like, or quite how we can make it work, this class has been a confirmation that this is the path we both want to be attempting to walk. Early on, before the first session, we were asked to fill out a worksheet describing our dream. One of the questions was especially telling: It asked how an agricultural business would become integrated with the rest of our life's pursuits. Our responses were the same: it would allow us to follow our lives' pursuits. Making our living from our land and hands would give us the opportunity to do the things that give us the most enjoyment, the most fulfillment. It would allow us to stop being constantly pulled in two (or more) directions. For both of us the idea of being able to live an integrated life: where we are able to work and live together, providing for ourselves (in real goods and income), is the goal. To be sure, as the boys continue to grow, we will still have the challenge of juggling their needs with the needs of a growing farm. But to close that gap, to integrate "work" and "the rest of our life's pursuits", is a dream worth pursuing for us, and hopefully, with a lot of hard work and creativity, one we can bring into being.

The next month or two will continue to be filled with research and thinking and decision-making as we look ahead to the coming year and what we hope to accomplish. In some ways, this is a rough time of year, as Advent starts and Christmas is just ahead, to be attempting to focus intently on such a prospect. On the other hand, perhaps it is not such a bad time after all: to integrate this season of waiting, anticipation, preparation for the celebration of Christmas with the waiting, anticipation and preparation of fleshing out this dream of ours for the year(s) to come.

...if we are to wait, let us wait in purpose;

...if we are to watch, let us watch in wisdom;

...if we are to expect, let us expect in hope.

May we be prepared. May we be ready.
(...a meditation from our church bulletin this past Sunday)

Harvest Day

There has been a lot going on around the homestead lately, one of the biggest things being the harvesting of our flock of meat chickens a couple weeks ago. When we began this project, we invited anyone who was interested to put in an order and to join us, when the time came, for the processing. Our plan was to take a Saturday to harvest the birds and then celebrate with a harvest dinner at the end.

The road to harvest day was a pretty rough one and we arrived at the appointed day with 12 birds left (three had been processed throughout the week). Four of the six families/individuals who had requested birds were able to participate, either helping to process or helping in the kitchen to prepare the meal. All told, things went very smoothly. It may seem a strange thing to say given what we were doing, but it was a truly good day. We had a house and yard full of people who wanted to work together to provide food for themselves and others. Even though the reason we were all there was the death of 12 chickens, it was a day full of life: kids running around (inside, for the little ones...), grown ups working together to prepare a meal, or to process chickens to be saved up for the winter. It was chaotic and rather stressful at times, but it was real, satisfying and joyful.

We have been on a journey that started, perhaps, ten years ago with our college trip to Honduras, of becoming aware of where our food comes from. In recent years it has grown increasingly important to us to not only have a better understanding of where and how our food is produced* and to purchase foods with that in mind, but also to actually produce a portion of that food ourselves. That's easy with vegetables (well... sometimes more than others), but it was important to us, since we eat meat, to experience raising and processing our own meat as well. That experience would give us the chance to do a few things: 1. raise the chickens the way we think they deserve to be raised, with good, anti-biotic- and hormone-free food, as much room to move around as they would like, and a chance to live outside in nature rather than in an enclosed environment, 2. be present and involved in the entire process from beginning to end - both the good and the difficult parts - to have first hand experience of what it means to eat chicken, and 3. to be able to provide some friends and family with good, well-raised meat and to have the opportunity to share in the harvest with many of them.

It was definitely a learning experience for us, and we're coming away from it not just with a freezer-full of chicken, but with greater knowledge going forward. We made some mistakes, and next time will opt for a different breed of chicken (the breed we raised this time was the same as the commercial operations raise, and though they had a life exponentially better than those in commercial operations do, we still ended up feeling sad for them due to their breeding which favors greatest meat production in the shortest amount of time irregardless of body structure), but we also found affirmation in the satisfaction we feel at having been able to raise and process our own meat and in the sense of community that we had the chance to experience on harvest day which was a rich reward for all the hard and sometimes difficult work.

*If you are interested in learning more about where and how your food is produced, some of the best resources that I've found are the following: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and the film Food, Inc.

Keeping up with the Joneses, Simple Living Style

There is an ironic place I've been bumping up against lately, which is this: The whole point (well, one of them) of living the life we are striving to live is to eschew the whole notion of "Keeping up with the Joneses". To exit that whole rat race in favor of a freer, less frenetic, more personally authentic way of life. To be able to live not focused on what we need to obtain, but on what (and who) we have and are, and on tending and creating the place and time in which we find ourselves.

Yet lately I've been noticing that "Keeping up with the Joneses" is alive and well in the sustainable living sphere: In a meeting of moms striving to live with a holistic, sustainable mindset, a discussion of the best organic lawn care company to remove clover from a lawn; My afternoon, searching for the "right" rain gear to send with the boys to preschool and the "right" meal to cook for new friends coming over for dinner later this week. I have this uncomfortable, nagging feeling lately that while we may be in a pretty good place (according to our hopes) in terms of not striving after "things", perhaps there is a different level of keeping up that has a very real presence in my life: one not comprised of things, but of actions taken, decisions made.

And when it comes to the boys: We believe strongly in limiting to as great an extent as possible their exposure to advertisements and the madness of kid-centered brands and character franchises. We try to teach them that it is better to have fewer things and to value the work of creating and tending things oneself, of spending time outdoors or making up a game together over sitting in front of the TV (with a few exceptions a week, full disclosure). But are we just teaching them to value and seek after a different set of things: the "sustainably-superior" version of the Joneses?

Maybe, in reality, there is just no getting around some extent or manner of yearning to keep up with our peers - current or desired. I imagine it has been hardwired into us from the beginning. So perhaps the goal to strive for is not necessarily to become immune to or rise above the impulse, but to be aware of it when and how it shows itself at various times in our lives and to strive to direct, rather than be directed by, it. To be aware, to be intentional.

Evolution

Thinking about the way forward has had me thinking about how it is I and we have come to the place we are, and where exactly that is. Not necessarily our home, though that is a reflection of the place we are, but the place of mind and perspective on how we want to live. Without really being aware of it, there has been a definite evolution over the years since we first started out together. From a focus on being ecologically minded, environmentally conscious as a means to an end, we've moved to a place of simple, sustainable living, as a means to being environmentally conscious, but more than that as well.

What do we mean by "simple, sustainable living"? At the place we are now, and the vision we have that we would like to live true to, it involves a number of things. It means living simply in the sense of (trying to) not fill our lives and home with lots of material things. The whole "less is more" idea. And in trying to live simply, to focus on living authentically and with a greater understanding and knowledge of where the things we do have come from and the impact they make. In some cases that means making or doing things for ourselves, because how much more value does a plate of fresh-cooked vegetables or a plate of scrambled eggs have when you know exactly where they came from and actually put in your own energy to help produce, or how much more is the winter chill chased away by a fire made with wood that you cut down, split and stacked yourselves than paying the oil (or gas or electric...) company? It brings us untold satisfaction to do these and other things for ourselves, to live creatively. In some cases that means voting with our dollars, to buy things that will last, are produced locally, or will have added benefit (i.e. fair trade items, organic foods...) A side effect, so to speak, of these choices is more sustainable living, a smaller footprint, our small vote for a better way of living and more sustainable future. And, while not the entire picture, that is not a small thing.

The statement on our blog "Intentionally simple, because complexity just makes us tired" is somewhat paradoxical. As our perspective has evolved to focus more on living simply and authentically, sustainably, our lives have at the same time become more simple but also more complex: growing our own vegetables, raising chickens for eggs, tapping trees to make maple syrup, baking our own bread instead of picking those things up at the grocery store, cutting down trees and splitting wood to help heat the house instead of just turning up the thermostat and calling for another oil delivery, etc. Those things all, undoubtedly, make our daily lives more complex.

A big influence for me in all this has been learning more about the food industry. In all the reading I've done, one thing that stands out to me very clearly is how interconnected things are. Within the food industry, but from there expanding in ever-widening circles until there is little that is left untouched by how we as a country (largely) produce our food. That, I think, is perhaps the major way my thinking has evolved over the last ten years or so, to understand more fully how complex the issue(s) of living sustainably are and how it's just not possible to look at one facet in isolation. So in trying to be intentionally simple, we are opened up to a whole new world of complexities. But, somehow, I find these complexities to be comforting and real, affirming, simple. Such that choices you make can lead to a win-win situation: when I pull a loaf of homemade bread out of the oven, or cook up a pot of garden fresh broccoli, I get to enjoy the tasty goodness, I know what is in the bread, and it's all ingredients I can pronounce and have in my kitchen, I know that the broccoli was grown without any chemicals, and I know that at least for that moment in that admittedly small way, I am voting with my time and resources for a way of life that I believe in. It is a simple act with rich and complex effects and implications. This is what we are trying, quite imperfectly, but always learning, to do.