Sharing Summer’s Abundance and Summer’s Work

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

You never know what might result from posting a request on Facebook. The other day I asked our neighborhood Facebook gardeners’ group if anyone would take my zucchini in exchange for peppers. Because really, how many zukes does one household need? This led to the idea of a veggie swap ‘n share. So I invited any interested gardeners to bring their surplus over yesterday for some trading.

Only a couple folks showed up, but it was just right, and no doubt more will come in the future.

Summer’s abundance shared at the veggie swap. (The eggs are a side deal.)

Julie brought heirloom tomatoes, the only thing she grows. I was thrilled to take some off her hands, since mine are ripening ever so slowly after initially falling prey to blossom end rot. Her cherry tomato variety is called Doctor and rivals my beloved Sungold for sweetness.

As the most ambitious gardener among us, Laura brought a slightly squirrel-chewed pumpkin that needed to be harvested because of an issue with the vine. She had also just picked yellow squash, collards, basil, and more lovely heirloom tomatoes, including a variety called Principe Borghese, reputed to be great for drying. (I’m happy to say these are in my dehydrator as we speak.)

Collards and basil straight from the garden.

I offered the aforementioned Zucchini Explosion, specifically a variety called Cordello, as well as some jalapenos and various herbs. Laura went home with catnip for her kitties (sorry Kitley and Maggie!), sage, and rosemary.

Funny how these things all work out and people go away happy to try something new. I think swapping could be habit-forming.

Clowning with cabbage at last year’s kraut party

On a related note, last summer our kitchen was home base for group preserving efforts, loosely connected to our community garden. With polka music on Pandora, we shredded up several heads of cabbage and packed them in crocks at the Kraut Party.

Kraut Party Action

Later in the season we switched the sound track to the Three Tenors and Andrea Bocelli at the Pesto Party.

And a couple of us got together to make a gazillion varieties of salsa as well, to share with the community at a Salsa Party.

When you try to cook and preserve seasonal produce, summer can be a crazy time, especially if some of the produce comes from your own garden. Most of us don’t live in the kind of multigenerational households that were the rule back in the day. So we don’t have the built-in helpers that our foremothers did. It can get lonesome, toiling away in your kitchen on your own.

So it’s been great fun to turn some of that work into social events.

There’s talk of another Pesto Party, and maybe even a group effort to “put up sweet corn,” as my people say. We can get a boatload of sweet corn from one of our many local growers and just go to town.

Hm. What musical genre would work for a Corn Party?

From the Low Food Chain Chronicles

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Weeks ago, months really, I pledged to try sardines in an effort to eat lower on the food chain. I went out and bought a tin of skinless, boneless sardines. I asked for your serving suggestions. I browsed recipes. I learned that you can fry them (“the bones get crispy!” said food blogger friend Melissa, which gave me pause), or put them in a potato salad, or mix them into pasta. Or just eat them on a cracker.

I got inspired.

Then I put the tin in the pantry. And there it sat. And whenever I reached in for baking powder or pasta or whatnot, I would think, Oh yeah, sardines, I promised I would eat those. For the blog. And then I would close the door again posthaste.

I am proud to tell you that yesterday I actually pried that sucker open. And I didn’t stop there. I actually ate sardines.

Yesterday’s lunch.

I’m here to report that these little fishies, which feed the farm-raised fish so many of us prefer…really aren’t that bad! The smell is a bit oceanic, but taste is mainly salty, at least when mashed in small (microscopic) amounts on a lovely sesame rye cracker.

I was worried the mouthfeel would be slimy, because just look at the sheen on those puppies. But they were actually quite palatable.

I had lactofermented veggies on the side, figuring two strong flavors would cancel each other out. You can never have too many cultured veggies, and these collards and cabbages were homegrown and -cultured.

Unfortunately I had to move indoors to eat because my cat was so interested in the meal.

“I’d be happy to finish those sardines off for you.” –Kitley

I told myself that if lunch turned out to be a train wreck, I’d put a good taste back in my mouth with dessert: zucchini cornbread baked in the solar cooker. Not just any cornbread but blue cornbread. Over homemade yogurt with organic Indiana blueberries.

Sorry I don’t have a photo for you. I was too excited about eating it to pause and snap.

Meanwhile the salad balanced the sardine experiment nicely. I’ve said it before: I know this isn’t a food blog, but still I must share the ingredients of this super-duper salad:

Grated zucchini, because it’s summer and everything we eat must include zucchini from the garden in some form.
Oxalis, purslane, sorrel leaves, chives, catnip, young dandelion leaves, and possibly other things I can’t remember, gathered from the yard (and the neighbor’s yard, but who’s looking?)
Sungold cherry tomatoes, first of the season and sweet as can be. I’ve waited all year!
Pumpkin seeds toasted in the solar cooker.
Nettle seeds. Herbalist Greg Monzel says these are “one of the only herbs that can restore compromised kidney function,” not that I really need that. And they’re too small to give much more than the teeniest little crunch. But I like using every part of the nettle patch, so I can tell Judy, “I’m still harvesting from it!” when she threatens to whack it down.

What culinary adventures are you having this summer?

Advice for Writing and Living

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

I’m home from the Midwest Writers Workshop, where the keynote speaker, mystery writer Hank Phillippi Ryan, shared “What I wish someone would have told me.”

By Kartikay Sahay via Flickr Creative Commons

The advice was writing-related, from how to deal with solitude (“You write alone, but you are not alone”) to the inevitability of self-doubt (“Before you burn your manuscript, make a copy.”) Still, I was struck by how much of her guidance also applies to those of us invested in the critical work of remaking the world.

First up: mention was made of the classic Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. In which Anne’s brother, in grade school, waits to begin a report till the night before it is due. The topic? Birds of North America.

Not surprisingly, he comes nearly unglued in panic. Their father, a writer, counsels him, “Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Bird by bird.”

Then there’s this:

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? Do that. Be brave.”

And finally, the need to be happy, to love what you are doing, and to enjoy the place where you find yourself. “This race goes to the stubborn and bullheaded, but it’s also wise to have a good time.”

I was planning to discourse on how these nuggets inform the life of a hopeful thrivalist, but my brain is pretty much a mashed potato right now. So how about this instead:

Discuss.

Releasing and Emerging

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Along my street, the sycamores are shedding. Great scrolls of bark pile in drifts around each trunk’s base. The new “skin” is a tender green. It’s like the trees have hit a sudden growth spurt.

Seeing this always makes me wonder what I myself need to release in order to grow.

Sycamore in process of shedding

Lately I’ve been thinking about the concept of emergence, introduced to me by an Ohio group called Simply Living. Emergence happens when networks form around a common vision, allowing powerful social change movements to arise seemingly overnight. Witness the local food movement.

The term also appears in Marjorie Kelly’s book Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution. She contrasts the phenomenon with top-down policies imposed on a community. Instead, change emerges organically at the local level, rooted in community need.

Once again, it’s trusting the power of smallness.

Simply Living notes that emergence requires “staying present with the work at hand, yet paying attention to emerging opportunities.”

It’s a tough thing to discern, in both working groups and in individual endeavors. Clearly we can’t do everything. What to pursue, what to leave aside? Which brings me back to those sycamores.

My own life has taken a few twists of late, leading to surprises and unexpected opportunities—emergence on the microcosmic scale.

Two examples.

I didn’t expect to take on a new cat just now. He appeared on the block, scared and wounded, spatting with the other neighborhood roustabouts. I befriended him, took him for veterinary attention and a certain necessary procedure.

Note the cats playing poker in the “picture window.”

Now Kitley’s fully claimed me—and the little house Judy built for him using (mostly) upcycled materials. He can’t come indoors due to her allergies, so she made him a bachelor pad that’s the envy of the entire Feline Nation, or should be. He lifts my heart, racing up to me to touch noses when I’m puttering outside. He makes me laugh when I’m caught in some bleak mental loop of my own making. And then I’m renewed.

I wouldn’t have thought of keeping him as an outdoor kitty, if not for a friend’s chance comment about home-built cat shelters.

Then there was FoodCon. I was a last minute pinch hitter with foraging and solar cookery tables, which led to a friend recommending me to the organizer of Bluegrass Bioneers. Suddenly I’m a teacher in the “reskilling” portion of the weekend. (Happening Oct. 25-27 in Louisville, KY. Psyched!)

More difficult is the paring away. As I embrace emerging opportunities, I must also release what no longer serves, whether it be plans, possessions, or projects.

I’ve always hated that I can’t do every single project that draws me. “Life constantly reaches out into novelty,” says physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra. It also prunes away what is no longer needed. I’m working on allowing space for these twin aspects of growth in my own life.

And you? What’s emerging for you and your community?

Lessons from Sugar Man

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

The documentary Searching for Sugar Man came up in conversation with friends last night. If you haven’t seen this Oscar-winning gem, go immediately to your preferred film source and get it. (Immediately after you finish reading this!)

Photo by David Ingram, via Flickr Creative Commons

I won’t give too much away, because the joy of this film is experiencing the discovery. In brief: Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose lyrics and style rivaled Dylan’s, made two records in the early 70s. Both flopped. End of story—as far as anyone knew in the U.S.

But in sequestered South Africa, where apartheid had a stranglehold, his anti-establishment message galvanized a generation. There Rodriguez became a superstar—and a mystery. Rumors circulated about a dramatic onstage suicide, involving self-immolation or a gun. Because South Africa was cut off from the rest of the world, in those pre-Internet days, there was little to go on. Who was he, and how did he die?

The story unfolds from there.

In our case, the film sparked a discussion about the impossibility of ever knowing the impact of your deeds.

Clayton said he recently talked with his young son about what it means to be a good person, and how important it is to get off your duff and do something. “You can’t just sit around your house and say you’re a good person. You have to get out and make a positive effort.”

And it doesn’t matter if you fail, because the simple fact of your trying may inspire someone else, Clayton believes.

To my mind, “positive effort” could be as simple as a kind word or smile. We don’t know how these little things might bolster someone facing an inward darkness, or outward danger.

I seem to write about this often: that acts we think of as small actually have great power. Most of us, living our lives in defined spaces, consider our influence very small. Our lives seem circumscribed by smallness; we go to and fro, following our routines, taking care of the details that make up a life.

We may feel that we are too insignificant to make a difference in the fate of our planet and our race.

Yet everyone can do small things with great love, and who can know the ripple effect? Especially if we work in tandem with others.

Photo by Lisuebie, via Flickr Creative Commons

The row we plant might be just the encouragement our elderly neighbor needs to start seeds on a windowsill. Which might nudge her granddaughter to visit a farmers market and buy a farmer’s tomatoes, and one of those funny-looking squashes while she’s at it. Maybe she’ll come back in ensuing weeks and bring her children and a friend, buying more locally grown food. Which shows the farmer that his produce is desired, and keeps him from throwing in the towel after a tough summer.

Think about it.

(And seriously, see the film. Then watch the “making of” extra. If you’ve ever been so discouraged that you nearly gave up a dream, you’ll connect to the story behind the film.)

Building Resilience One Vertical Garden at a Time

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

At FoodCon I met two of the people behind the innovative Bloomington-based Garden Tower Project. Check out their garden-in-a-barrel design with built-in worm composting. Up to 50 plants can be planted in this unique vertical garden.

Garden Tower on Planting Day

The center tube is perforated down the entire length, allowing red wiggler worms to travel between the compost tube and the soil. Kitchen waste goes into the center tube and turns into compost and worm castings. Bonus: The protection of the soil in the barrel means the worms can survive through the winter.

How genius is that–worm composting right in your container garden?

Finished compost, with happy worms

From the website:

“In an era of rapidly rising food prices and industrial farming practices that strip our food of nutrients essential for good health, we believe the Garden Tower is one small step in empowering people towards their own food security.”

The company hopes to nurture a community of growers. They’ll soon launch GrowingCircles.org as a space for networking and collaboration among those with an interest in the Garden Tower Project’s mission. The goal is expanding food self-sufficiency, promoting homegrown vegetables and herbs that are:

organic
non-GMO
low-input
ecologically sustainable

Tom Tlusty tells me that the Garden Tower’s unique design capitalizes on “evaporative cooling and a large thermal mass”–making it possible to plant in hot temperatures normally prohibitive in a traditional garden plot.

So… it’s not too late to start gardening this season!

Top view of the Garden Tower.

I’m so excited about this design that I ordered my own Garden Tower, and I’m picking it up from the Good Earth later today. I’m psyched to sow some crops I didn’t have room for, like beans and carrots. I’ll also scour local garden centers for leftover seedlings (probably quite sad and stressed by now, but maybe a little TLC would bring them along).

It’s nearly time to start fall crops, like kale, lettuce, peas, and spinach. That’s something I always intend to do and never seem to manage in the thick of late summer. But this is the year, with my sweet new protected microclimate as incentive.

Plus I’ll finally have livestock on my homestead, if only in the form of worms. I’m in heaven!

Time to harvest from the Garden Tower

The only drawback I can see is the need for potting soil to ensure that the growing medium is not compacted in the barrel. I hate buying bagged soil for so many reasons. I’ve seen recipes for homemade potting soil. But being eager to jump in, I probably will break down and purchase. (If you’ve found a good peat-free variety available on the market, please leave it in the comments.)

The inventors believe their design will allow people of all abilities to garden in any clime. According to Garden Tower users in the arid Grand Canyon region, this model results in immense water savings. Tom says they used ten times less water with the Garden Tower than their traditional plot or raised bed.

Really can’t wait to dig in!

All photos courtesy of The Garden Tower Project.

Why Forage?

Posted on July 13, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Trout lily was one of the first wild plants I learned to harvest from the greenspace across the street from my house. There’s a thriving colony that appears in a rough circle at the base of a redbud tree for a month or so before fading back into the earth as ephemerals do.

By Jason Hollinger (Dimpled Trout Lily Uploaded by Amada44), via Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes I feel quite fringy bending down in early spring to pick the tender leaves before moving on to check the basswood tree and other faves. Even in my groovy neighborhood, it’s somewhat marginal behavior to pick salad leaves off the ground in a public space.

Then I read something like this:

“Some people think that it’s silly to go for an invigorating walk on a May morning and come home with a lush heap of delicious gourmet vegetables when it would only take slightly longer to drive to the grocery store and spend hard-earned cash to get weeks-old inferior produce with half the nutritional value, doused with deadly chemicals.

I see their point, but I’m sticking with wild food just because it’s a lot more fun.”

–Samuel Thayer, in Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants

Reading on, I find that not only trout lily leaves but bulbs are edible–and are in fact tastier than the leaves.

Hello shovel, goodbye self-consciousness. (I would make sure not to decimate the colony of course. Thayer says responsible harvest practices allow trout lily colonies to thrive.)

What about you: What’s your favorite gourmet wild vegetable to forage, or have you tried any yet?

Midwest’s First Community Supported Fishery

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Many of us concerned about the impact of our food dollars support small farmers through Community Supported Agriculture and farmers markets. Now the Midwest’s first Community Supported Fishery gives those of us far from a coast an option in the seafood arena.

I learned about Sitka Salmon Shares at FoodCon. It’s an operation bringing sustainable seafood to the heartland on a direct-to-consumer model—similar to Community Supported Agriculture.

Anyone in a landlocked area who wants to buy local has a hard time with fish.* Especially when, as in Indiana’s case, the majority of our waterways are tainted with mercury due to coal plants.

Sitka Salmon Shares has a crew of independent, small boat family fishermen and -women who catch Alaskan salmon, halibut and cod with low-impact methods. The flash-frozen fish lands on the dinner tables of Midwesterners hungry for a protein source that’s healthy, delicious, and sustainably harvested.

Fishing Boats in Metlakatla, Alaska, ca. 1856 – 1936. National Archives and Records Administration.

From the website:

“In this day and age, we face a large industrial food system that too often puts profit ahead of people, communities, and the environment … in the process quickly replacing small family producers with huge companies and multinational corporations. It’s hard to feel good about eating food from such a system.”

And how. But here’s an alternative.

Sitka returns 1% of revenue to fisheries conservation. It also pays fishermen more than they could earn from big multinational processors. Further, rather than using trawls that result in large amounts of unwanted fish being thrown overboard, Sitka’s fishing families use hook-and-line methods to minimize impacts on unintended species.

These practices sustain ecosystems, fishing communities, and fish populations, while giving customers peace of mind as well.

At FoodCon I picked up a pocket guide from these folks: I love their sustainable seafood commandments for the Midwest. (Among them: Gear types matter. Also: Frozen and canned fish are often better choices.)

Here’s a great interview with Chief Salmon Steward Nic Mink that explains more.

Nic does double duty, serving as Butler University’s Center for Urban Ecology’s Urban Sustainable Foods Fellow.

As an aside, I really think he has two of the best job titles ever.

He will be speaking at the July 16 Irvington Green Hour about his work with the Indy Food Council, building the capacity of sustainable food systems in Indianapolis.

(*Some readers may remember my pledge to try sardines in an effort to eat lower on the food chain. I have yet to crack the tin I purchased. It is on my list. I guess you could say I’m nothing if not deliberate in my food choices. I could deliberate a long time here.)

Postcard from FoodCon

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

Friday’s FoodCon was a thrill. I haven’t heard the final tally of attendees, but there was a steady stream of bright-eyed folks. I met so many people with interesting stories about foraging (which, as I explained to one non-native English speaker, is like hunting, only for plants).

Swapping foraging stories with a foodcon attendee

People spoke of making elderberry syrup for winter colds and congestion, of becoming more accustomed to the taste of bitter greens to the point of craving them, and of eating oxalis as kids.

One little girl said she likes to eat clover petals, which brought back my own flower-eating past: My friends and I used to pick the blooms off my dad’s tall phlox and suck the nectar, pretending it was a special elixir.

Most of my exhibit consisted of weeds picked that morning. All are available in the typical urban yard or garden. “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em,” was my line.

Trees are a source of unexpected nutrition too: Even seasoned foragers were surprised to learn that basswood tree leaves are great in salads.

I told the uninitiated to start by topping a salad with the tangy, tender oxalis, which is prevalent in urban yards. Then see if, like me, they don’t get completely hooked on picking stuff from their yards to bring in to the dinner table.

My tablecloth got all wet after an early gust of wind blew a few cups over. But it didn’t matter: check that wilty salad!

Japanese wineberries (at the right edge of the above photo) were the star of the show. Though one website calls this bramble fruit a “bio-bully” for being invasive, the berries are dazzling little gems that are sweeter than should be legal. (Last year I learned the identity of this mysterious bramble I’d found just as the buds were forming. I was anticipating some happy picking, then they perished in the drought. This year: bountiful harvest.)

Some were amazed that you can actually eat mulberries, asking incredulously, “What do you do with them?” while others were right there with me on the “nature’s candy” point.

A friend and I had biked around the neighborhood questing for these berries.

Things I learned: There’s a “Poke Salad Annie” song, and you can eat milkweed flowers, and four hours of talking makes one hoarse.

The solar cooker got lots of interest too, though generally more as a novelty from what I could gather (my partner Judy fielded most of those questions, bless her).

As far as the other exhibitors, I was able to make a quick circuit late in the evening and talk to the folks from Wolf-Beach Farm, as well as friends at the “dumpster diving/dumpster dining” booth and the “making easy meals in 5 minutes” table. (These were all people I had referred to the organizer.)

I also found a couple standouts in the resilience arena. I’ll report on them in an upcoming post. Some great innovators there, helping people break their dependence on a shaky centralized food system that is wreaking havoc on both planetary and personal health.

Coal: It’s So Yesterday

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

I confess that when I was asked to write a story about Indiana’s Beyond Coal movement for Indiana Living Green, part of me was a bit ho-hum at the prospect.

Sure, the two ladies leading the fight (Megan Anderson and Jodi Perras, my two profilees) are amazing specimens of fierce feminine energy, each hailing from a different generation, an interesting duo. And of course, I am totally down with clean energy.

It’s just: I’d rather write about yummy stuff, like food, or farming, or foraging. I am drawn to tales of those remaking the world in intriguing, innovative ways. That new emerging story is what energizes me. And sometimes the hard work of calling a halt to the old story seems so…tired.

By Arnold Paul, via Wikimedia Commons

I mean, we all know that coal is bad for the environment and our health. What more is there to say?

So I thought. Then I talked to Megan and Jodi, and got a first-hand glimpse of what’s at stake. I saw that not only are they pushing to retire these decrepit coal plants, they are holding a vision of an Indiana where residents are choosing from an array of clean energy options, even generating their own energy. An Indiana where people have secure jobs that they feel good about, contributing to a cleaner state. An Indiana on the cutting edge.

By Mhassan abdollahi, via Wikimedia Commons

Now that’s exciting.

I was moved to hear Jodi talk about the group meditation where she visualized her descendants asking what she did to fix the climate crisis. Isn’t this something we all think about, what kind of world might be next?

I got fired up hearing their passion for righting the injustices wrought by Big Coal. I learned that children who have the misfortune to be born poor are disproportionately impacted by the health effects of coal—resulting in learning disabilities, asthma, autism, and lowered IQs.

How fair is it that poor kids are effectively trapped into a cycle of poverty because of lifelong difficulties linked to our state’s over-reliance on coal?

Then I learned that coal is ever more costly. And it just seems like a no-brainer from there.

Read the piece for the full scoop. You can join the Beyond Coal Indiana movement at the Sierra Club’s website or contact Megan Anderson at megan.anderson@sierraclub.org.

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Shawndra Miller

Giving voice to the world’s remaking

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