From Market and Pantry

So, here I am again the prodigal blogger, back from another long hiatus to report on how our experiment worked out with eating only from our market finds and our pantry for 21 days. In a word, failed. But that is too simplistic an assessment, because we learned a lot from the experiment and in that regard it was a huge success! So what did we learn?

Plan ahead: One of the primary reasons that we only made it to day 9 was because we ran out of a staple (butter) and had to go to the store for it. Once in the store, Hubby saw several other things that appealed to him. He arrived home with 2 full bags.

Plan ahead: Yup, that again, and this time I mean with regards to your meals. Taking some of your free time on a day off to prep a few things ahead that keep well or can be frozen and defrosted quickly will save you from those temptations that occur on the days when meetings run late, traffic is snarled up or for one reason or another you arrive home late and/or exhausted and just don't feel like preparing a meal. This is where we ran into downfall #2 on day 11 when it was my turn to cook and I just didn't have it in me. So a quick pop into a convenience store on the way home yielded a rising crust pizza. I consoled myself with the fact that it was at least vegetarian. 

These next few are going to sound a bit trite, but they are true and applicable. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Don't give up if your attempts to eat local run into some stumbling blocks. This is bound to happen. You may get a sudden urge for pineapple and, after all, who ever saw a pineapple growing in Maine, or many of the other places in the world where you may find yourself for that matter?  Which leads to the next cliche, 'every little bit counts'. If every person ate one locally sourced meal per week we could reduce oil consumption by millions of barrels and carbon emissions by tons! Every week! And also, 'everything in moderation'. There is no substitute for fresh local food in season, but you do have to eat in winter when there isn't much of that readily available, and you also want to develop a lifestyle that is healthy for your body and your mind. If you are driving yourself nuts over all the things that you CAN'T eat or consume, that's not going to be good for you either. It also needs to be something you can sustain and not give up on after 2 weeks or 2 months. So find yourself some Caribbean,  free trade, shade grown, organic, locally roasted coffee and cut back on your overall intake. Enjoy it knowing that this small change in your lifestyle is making a difference to your health and to the health of the planet. 

When you do go to the grocery store read the labels, even on the produce, especially on the produce, and choose from those things which are sourced from as close as possible. If you live in Pennsylvania, cheese from Michigan is at least more local than cheese from Germany. We also learned that groceries, even large chains, are starting to recognize the demand for more local produce and that if 10 people ask the produce manager of the same store to bring something in, they will, because they know that for the 10 who asked there are another hundred who wouldn't ask, but would buy the product. Another thing about shopping in the grocery is avoiding highly processed foods. These foods represent the most food miles, the most processing and the most packaging which taken together result in the most carbon emissions and the least healthful products to consume.

I had promised you recipes, but we have found that when sticking to the market and pantry we make simple, mostly vegetarian meals of salads, steamed and roasted vegetables and vegetable soups and home-made bread which we just whip up without recipes. When we do use recipes, we simply search by ingredient on Allrecipes.com. This is a great resource and ties in quite nicely with a modern lifestyle. It's also great for finding ways to prepare that interesting new veg from the farmers' market like giant kohlrabi. 

To sum it up, I guess I would have to say that the over arching lesson is that when it comes to eating locally, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing approach. That isn't going to get us where we need to be. Because few of us would be able to achieve and maintain over the long haul a lifestyle of 100% local eating, and the alternative of nothing is not an option. We need to find a sustainable lifestyle that most of us can achieve that will result in a large portion of our foods coming from fresh, local, organic sources. In this way we can make a real impact on the overall health of the planet and of course, our own health as well.  

10 Reasons to Eat Locally

Here are 10 great reasons to eat locally provided by Slow Food Seacoast.

1. Taste the difference: At a farmers market, most local produce has been picked inside of 24 hours. It comes to you ripe, fresh, and with its full flavor. Did you know that on average your food travels 1500 miles to get to your plate? Also local food varieties can be bred for taste rather than their ability to withstand long journeys and a long wait in the grocery store before  being purchased for consumption.

2. Know what you are eating: When you buy from the farmer you have the opportunity to discuss what their farming practices are, whether they used chemical fertilizers, genetically modified seeds, Were the animals fed a healthy diet and raised humanely  without pesticides, hormones or antibiotics.

3. Meet your neighbors: Studies show that people who shop at farmers' markets have 10 times more conversations than their counterparts who shop at supermarkets.

4. Get in touch with the seasons: When you eat locally, you eat what's in season. You'll remember that cherries are the taste of summer. Even in winter, comfort foods like squash soup and pancakes just make sense- a lot more sense than flavorless cherries from the other side of the world.

5. Discover new flavors: Ever tried sunchokes? How about purslane, quail eggs, yerba mora, or tayberries? Count the types of pears offered at your supermarket. Maybe three? Small farms are keeping alive nearly 300 other varieties.

6. Explore your home. Visiting local farms is a way to be a tourist on your own home turf, with plenty of stops for snacks.

7. Save the world: A Study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across country the country. The ingredients for a typical British meal, sourced locally, traveled 66 times fewer "food miles."

8. Support small farms: In areas with strong local markets, the family farm is reviving. That's a whole lot better than the jobs at Wal-Mart and fast-food outlets that the globalized economy offers in North American towns.

9. Give back to the local economy: A British study tracked how much of the money spent at a local food business stayed in the local economy, and how many times it was reinvested. The total value contributed to the local economy was almost twice the contribution of a dollar spent at a supermarket.

10. Be healthy: Eating local usually means more vegetables and fewer processed products, a wider variety of foods, and more fresh food at its nutritional peak. Eating from farmers' markets and cooking from scratch, you'll never feel the need to count calories.

During our visit to the farmers' market today, Hubby and I were inspired to "put our money where our mouth eats" and not make a visit to the grocery store between now and the next farmers' market. We are going to work on eating up the things we canned and froze from our garden, foods we have in the pantry, some of which where gifts from other farmers and wild harvesters and some of which came in our CSA or from our local health food store and local foods market. We are very fortunate to have a market less than 10 miles from our house that sells local produce, meat, and even locally prepared foods such as jams, jellies, granola, candies, coffee roasted locally and more. But even this we will avoid for the next 21 days. We'll have some pretty interesting meals in the mean time, and we'll share photos, tips and recipes.  Tonight:  roasted kohlrabi with old bay seasoning on a bed of greens with local bread from Leaven, falafel and eggplant fattoush from Karimah's Kitchen.

The High Price of Cheap Food

As Americans we are spending less of our disposable income on food then ever in recent history. A Pew study published earlier this year found that from 1970 to 2009 the percent of disposable income spent on food has gone down from roughly 25% to less than 10%. During the same time period caloric intake on average increased by almost 22%! There have been a lot of studies about how all these cheap calories are affecting obesity rates and the health impacts of this increased rate of obesity on Americans. The impact of increased rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes depression, and other health and social impacts upon our society are serious, but only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the high price of cheap food. We have to look into the grain fields in our heartland and the produce farms and orchards of the west coast and beyond our borders to begin to get a picture of the greater price of our cheap food. There are ecological, political and human social impacts of our industrial food system that spread across the globe.

Here are some statistics that start to paint a picture of food prices as percent of income throughout the world. According to an article published by Tree Hugger Americans spend approximately 5.5% of disposable income on food at home while folks in Germany, France and Italy spend 11.4%, 13% and 14% respectively. When we look into the developing world the numbers are even more staggering. Beginning with South Africa at 20.1% and increasing through Mexico (24.1%), Turkey (24.5%) Kenya (45.9%) and Pakistan at (45.6%). This opens up questions about economic and resource exploitation of the developing world by the first world. Many people throughout the world live in areas where more diverse crops can be produced, but over the last  75 to 100 years as the prevalence of large agribusinesses has grown, the habit of growing more diverse crops has given way to monocultures that harm both the environment and the local economy as well as the farmers who depend upon food production for their livelihood.

We have been hearing more and more about the dismal conditions of agricultural workers and farmers throughout the developing world. These workers are being treated very much like indentured servants and in some cases little better than slaves. Farmers in many developing countries have been driven out of business by competition from cheap food imported from the first world as well as by the demanding aesthetic standards of American produce buyers. Further the economic policies followed by many seed producers further victimize the small farm holders in these developing countries. Many have heard that farmers account for 11.2% of suicides in India. Some of the reasons cited for these suicides include stresses from, high operating costs, farm indebtedness, crop failure and pesticide use, among others.  What we haven't been hearing about is that these statistics are similar to those for farmers in other parts of the world. Environmental degradation of farm land is further exacerbating the plight of farmers around the world.

That's a lot of statistics and gloom and doom. So what is the point of all of this and what can we do to change the situation? So many times we feel hopeless and feel that as individuals, there is really very little that we can do to have an impact on these dire trends. The fact is that is the farthest thing from the truth. It is only we, as individuals that CAN have a true impact. But we all have to make the commitment to make a personal change. And what is that change? As with any situation, we can vote with our wallets and pocketbooks. Fresh, local, organic produce is the healthiest produce you can eat. It is also the most economically and environmentally sustainable; because it keeps dollars in the local economy and reduces the amount of green-house gasses used in the production, storage, distribution and sale of factory farmed produce.  And this is only scratching the surface of the environmental impacts of factory farming that can be mitigated by dedicating ourselves to purchasing our produce from our local organic farmers.  The same principle applies to our meat, dairy and grain products.  So please do your part and support your local organic farmer.

Reflections on Giving Tuesday

Today is Giving Tuesday. I think it is wonderful that some folks have come together around the idea that people should take a little time out from their annual holiday shopping to think about folks in need and organizations that could use a hand up. I'm glad that the organizers of this day have made a point that it's not only about giving money, but also about giving of your time and energy. Ultimately when it comes down to it, all that any of us has that is of value is the time and energy that we personally have to give. 

While I think it is a great idea and a laudable undertaking, I also think it might be one more straw on the camel's back at an already busy and stressful time of year. So, how do we fix that? Perhaps we should examine why this is a  busy and stressful time of year. I would like to encourage each of us to examine how we are spending our time, money and energy during this sacred time of year. Are our activities serving our greater purpose? Is there something that we can let go of that could make this a more contemplative and blessed time of year? Perhaps letting go of some of our shopping and parties would allow us to have more energy and funds for blessing others, and we might find ourselves more blessed as well. 

I would suggest reading the book Hundred Dollar Holiday, by Bill McKibben. Whether you are a Christian in practice or not, this book has a great deal of practical advise about bringing the sanity and sanctity back to the holiday. 

To go back to the idea of Giving Tuesday, let us also remember that these organizations that we are ready an willing to support at this time of the year when we are feeling expansive and generous also need our assistance throughout the year. Perhaps this would be a good time to set up a reasonable, affordable, recurring monthly payment to a worthy organization. This is also a good time to recommit ourselves to giving of our time to groups that are building and revitalizing our communities and helping the needy within them. 

However you decide to celebrate your holidays, and whichever traditions and faith your holidays come from during this very holy period of the year, I hope that yours will be more blessed and peaceful this year than in any year before and that they will continue to grow more blessed and peaceful as the years pass. 

I Voted - Now What?

On Tuesday we elected the officials who will determine the course of legislation for our states and our nation over the next 4 to 6 years. In that election just over 1/3 of eligible voters nation wide turned out to make their voice heard and their vote count. Shame! Before the election I heard a lot of people talking about how unhappy they are with our government. I also heard a lot of people talking about "what is the government going to do for me." It is a statistical probability that many of the people who complain about the current state of affairs in our country are the same people who are not turning out to vote. I just want to take this opportunity to remind everyone that, as a citizen of a democratic society, voting is not only your privilege but your duty. It is one way that we can stand up against corporate greed and the power and money they wield to advance their agendas. That said, this is not a post about getting out the vote. It's a post about what we do now that the vote is over, and about what we should have been doing all along rather than sitting around waiting for the government to solve our problems.

Folks we have been far too complacent in our lives. We have been far too willing to hand over the reins of control and responsibility to someone else. We need to start taking responsibility for ourselves, our neighborhoods, our villages, our towns, our counties, our states and finally our nation. In that order. We need to join together in small groups, in medium sized groups and in large movements to create the future that we want to see. We can't wait for someone at the top to do it for us.  They don't have the same goals, and to be honest you can't blame them. They don't come from the same place you do.

We can't wait for Washington politicians to solve our problems. We need to start at home and ask ourselves what can WE do to make our homes a better place?  And we need to do it.  Then we need to go beyond our own doors and look at our neighborhoods and ask ourselves, what can  we do to make them a better place, and who can we involve in the process? And we need to DO IT! If we need affordable day care, access to healthier food, better educational opportunities for our children; then we need to form coops,  community gardens and CSA's and we need to go to school board meetings and vote in our local elections for the people who will sit on those school boards. Perhaps we should even run for local office. I understand that we all work hard, but that does not absolve us of our responsibilities as members of society. If we wonder why our society is broken, we need to stop looking to the people in Washington DC and start looking at ourselves. 

The results of the recent election may be disappointing to many, and there may be many who have given up on exercising their right to vote because they just feel hopeless about the outcome and that it wont matter regardless of how they vote. To both of these groups I say, you now have a unique opportunity to show what you can do when you mobilize on a local grass roots level to bring about the vision that you have for the future of your family, your community, and your nation. As Gandhi once said, we need to be the change we want to see in the world. 

Happy New Year Revolutionaries

Happy New Year, and welcome to a new revolution! One year ago today I began One Earth Revolution to see what could be accomplished for our planet in one year along with the help of my family and friends. I will be honest, it has been a slow start. There have been some personal and logistical challenges, but I also have a sense of real progress.  I have seen myself and my family begin to truly live by ethics and principles which we believe will help to sustain our community and our planet well into the future. We have become involved in many groups that are rebuilding the sense of community in our town and are actively working to create a future for our village which is both economically and environmentally sustainable, and not only sustainable but bountiful without being damaging to our ecology. This year has also seen the conversation of sustainability and a post carbon future really making inroads in the mainstream media. While there are still many naysayers and not a few people who staunchly refuse to remove their blinders and see the coming storm, we have begun to see real evidence that people are beginning to awaken  to the real dangers of climate change.  There is so much more to be done!

This weekend Hubby and I have spent two days in contemplation and meditation on our property, on our planet, and on  our personal feelings and goals surrounding both. We spent a day being grateful for the achievements and blessings of the past year and letting go of anything that happened during the past year that we do not want to bring forward with us. We spent today looking forward to the challenges and promises of the coming year. 

This year I finished my permaculture design certification and I'm now saving up for the advanced class. Meanwhile our homestead continues to take shape and we begin to see the real beginnings of the permaculture demonstration sight that we would eventually like to have here. In the coming year we plan to install cold frames, expand the plantings in our fledgling food forest, erect a greenhouse and so much more. Stay tuned for an Indiegogo campaign announcement early in the calendar year. 

And One Earth Revolution? We've got plans for you too. We'll be better than ever with field trips, regular feature pieces on the permaculture ethics and principles, recipe share, farm hacks and so much more. We may even have a podcast in store for you. So stay tuned here and you'll be in the know about everything that's happening on the farm and with The (R)evolution. 

Saving the Environment Starts at Home - Tips for Beating the Take-out Habit

Image from Maple and Spice 

Happy Sunday readers. It's a cloudy October morning here in southern Maine and I'm thinking about breakfast. It's kind of a tradition in our family to have a nice breakfast on Sunday. In the past we have often gone to a favorite restaurant close by our home, and still do occasionally, but lately we've started making that Sunday breakfast at home more often and incorporating things from our own garden and from local farmers into our meal. There are two reasons for this: 1) insuring that we are using local ingredients and 2) reducing the size of our food budget. If you are wondering how these two things tie in to protecting the environment, it is quite simple and comes down to transportation. The more local our food is, the fewer miles it had to be transported using fossil fuel burning planes, boats, trains and trucks. The fewer dollars we spend on food and the more often we eat at home the more we save and the less we commute to earn the money to pay for it. We also save the trip to to restaurant. These reduced trips also reduce wear and tear on our vehicle, further reducing our impact on the planet. 

So as I sat here thinking about breakfast, it reminded me that I had promised you some tips and recipes for beating the eating out and particularly the stopping for takeout habit that is so easy to fall into. 

The first and particularly timely tip is making ahead. Quiet Sundays are a good opportunity to do a little extra cooking that will make meal prep later in the week quicker and easier, reducing the temptation to just pick something up on the way home or hitting the drive through on the way into the office because you rushed out the door without eating breakfast AGAIN. Here are a couple of things that I like to do that are surprisingly helpful. I scramble up a batch of eggs and vegetarian sausage and wrap it up with a bit of cheese in a half dozen burrito wraps and freeze them. A couple of minutes in the microwave in the morning and I have a hot hearty home made breakfast. You could also defrost in the fridge over night and warm it in a skillet if you are not a big fan of the microwave. 

Another thing I like to do on Sunday is making up a pot of rice and a pot of pasta. I divide each into two containers and refrigerate one of each and freeze the others. I then have a base carbohydrate that I can build a meal on with a quick zap in the microwave or two minutes in hot water. You can make mashed potatoes ahead as well, but they are more of a challenge to reheat for those who prefer not to microwave. This generally shaves 5 to 10  minutes off of meal prep which doesn't sound like a lot, but can make a big difference when its late and you are tired and hungry.

One of the most challenging things about making dinner after a long tiring day is deciding what to make. This question taken at the end of the work day can often lead to decisions that we regret later, like the habit of eating a lot of prepackaged frozen food from the super market. This is probably as bad for the environment as the takeout given the damage that industrial agriculture and meat production do.   One way to get around this is plan ahead. While your pasta and rice are cooking, spend a few minutes to jot down a menu for the weeks evening meals. This will save time and frustration later and will allow you to be prepared and be sure that you have all the ingredients you need on hand. 

None of these things are rocket science, and you've probably heard them all before in the context of time management, but perhaps thinking about how these tips can help save the environment is a more compelling argument to get us to start employing them, or employing them more often. 

I also promised you a recipe. Here is one that we found recently that we really enjoyed and was quite simple. Start with leftovers and a recipe of "Quick and easy Pizza Crust". Divide in half and roll into two circles about 7 inches across. On one half of each put some diced leftover veg from your fridge anything like broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, mushrooms, etc. works, add some diced tomatoes and Italian seasoning, and sprinkle on some shredded cheese. Now fold the other half of the dough over and pinch it closed. Bake per the dough instructions (you might be able to shave a few minutes off the cook time, so watch them carefully) and voila! you have two tasty filling calzones in just minutes. They are a meal by themselves or pair with a small salad. 

All this writing about food has made me hungry. I think I'll go get that breakfast I was thinking about. And there is the vegan sausage recipe that I'm wanting to try out....

Local food and Entertainment add Zest to Life

This past Saturday a trip to Wentworth Gardens in Dover, New Hampshire turned into a mini adventure. We went to see the greenhouse and pickup some local produce at the summer market that is held every Saturday from Mid-June to Mid-October. As anyone who regularly attends knows, a trip to the local farmer's market is more than just a grocery run. Our latest market excursion was an educational and entertaining experience.   We spent some time with Karen from Maine Herb Farm, learning about the various healing properties of herbs in her hand-crafted salves and lip balms. while enjoying a concert by Local artist James Gilmore,

Returning home we spent some time in our own garden reaping tomatoes and other tasty treats. A round of canning tomato sauce followed. As we have been harvesting our produce and fruits, putting them up for winter and experimenting with new vegetarian recipes, we have found that meal times are more enjoyable. The fare is more varied and wholesome and there is just a little something extra special about eating food that you grew and prepared yourself. The experience is so far beyond just opening cans or emptying boxes and warming something up. It really does add a bit of extra zest to life. 

Found Object Art - Bringing Recycling to a Whole New Level

Local artist Bob Farrell takes recycling to a whole new level with his one of a kind found art objects and creations. Bob has been known to make art from discarded wire, old cereal boxes and pieces of old tire, just to name a few things. He rarely let's anything go to waste. The drip paper or drop cloth used to protect his floor or table while making one piece will itself become an integral part of a later piece. Bob's art is imaginative and eclectic and ranges from the absurd to the sublime. I always find something I love when I visit one of Bob's shows and sometimes, when I've got a bit of cash to spare, I like to bring something home. I enjoy supporting Bob's work for two reasons; because he is a local artist and because, for his raw materials, he has elected to use that which other people often overlook or even throw away. Bob is an example of someone who is living his passion and making a difference for the better in our community. We could all learn a lesson from him.

We can localize more than just our food. If you've got to decorate your home why not make your decorating local too? A great way to start is by supporting local artists. Look up your local art association, check out the small independent galleries in your area and.....If you would like to see more of Bob's work, learn about his shows, and how to support local art, please visit Bob's FaceBook Page or check out what Bob and the other BAA artist are doing at the BAA Page. 

What I Did for Mother's Day - Hugel Happiness

My son could not believe his ears. He had to ask me again just to be sure. "You really don't want me to buy you anything for Mother's Day? You're sure?" I assured him that agreeing to help me build a hugelkultur bed was going to be more than enough for a Mother's Day gift. I'm not sure he really believed me until he spent 4 hours in the 70 Degree sun this passed Sunday building my beautiful hugelkultur bed. 

First the base of the bed. In the fall we had laid down cardboard and topped that with our corn and sunflower stalks. Then we added our yard clippings and dried leaves. Over the winter we added our kitchen scraps. On top of all this we laid a lot of wood from standing dead trees that we had to take down for safety. Then we began to cover it with a load of loam that we had brought in. 

We haven't been  working our land long enough yet to have developed a large pile of well composted material for making top soil. My guys were handy carting all that soil. And this is when my son realized just what he'd got himself into. We were about 3 hours into the project at this point. I was in there wielding the shovel and hauling logs too, but I did have to pause occasionally to take the photos.

My Guys! They worked so hard!

In this last photo we are about half done with burying the woody debris. It's not quite finished yet, but we made a lot of progress. It still needs some top dressing with additional soil, compost and a good layer of straw mulch. We are going to plant medium bush blueberries on top of this mound. On the south facing side we will have sun loving strawberries, and on the north facing side we will grow shade loving greens. I can't wait to see what kind of yields we get. This and the fledgling orchard that you may notice to the right of the hugelkultur bed in some of these photos are some of our first steps toward our permaculture perennial food forest and garden. 

I will continue to post photos as the food forest progresses. Until next time - Live Light!

Follow Me - Contest - Big Announcement

Pictured above is the cover of "Cool Cuisine; Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming" by Laura Stec. It is both cookbook and handbook in one. This book teaches about the science behind Global Warming and how our food choices impact our planet's health and well being. There are also a number of fun, fabulous, healthy and planet friendly recipes. A good read and great resource. The companion website http://www.globalwarmingdiet.org/ is also a great resource for information on climate change.

This post is a blatant attempt to increase readership, and why not, it's all for a good cause. I have a big announcement coming up and I want to be sure that the news gets out to as many people as possible. It's going to be brilliant, amazing, fabulous and fun!

So,  here is what I propose. I have 5 copies of this fabulous book to give away. If you would like to have your name in the drawing, please subscribe to this blog and please send me an email at awensdaughter@gmail.com to let me know that you are subcribing and would like to have your name in the drawing. Also, if you share this post with friends and they subscribe and email me letting me know that you shared the post with them I will put them in the drawing and also add your name in again for each time  someone says you recommended them. And if they invite friends who do the same I will do the same for them, and so on. So everyone who subscribes gets their name in and they get their name in again for every person who drops their name as the one who invited them. Winners will be selected by random drawing on the day of the big announcement. Email addresses will be used only for selecting and notifying winners. If you would like to be added to my mailing list for other notifications and announcements please put that into your message. Your information will never by sold or shared with anyone else. 

Please share this with as many people as possible. And, due to the nature of the announcement, please share with your friends oversees as well. Let's aim high. Stay tuned here for contest updates and for the big announcement. 

And remember:

 "Travel light, live light, share the light, be the light."

                                                                                       Yogi Bhajan

UPDATES!! Be sure to check the comments for updates on this post. Thanks!

Return of Surplus - First Fruits

Today I was going to do a post on movements moving together, and I'll come back to that, because I think it is important but this morning, while feeding the compost, I was inspired to share with you an experience I had a few years ago while picking blackberries.

One of the permaculture ethics is "fair share", also referred to as "return of surplus" both terms imply several things. They imply, take only what you need and, when you have more than you need, share it with others in your community. They also imply that we should give or leave a fair share for mother earth and that we should  share the knowledge of this practice with others. If we only take and take from mother earth and never give back or replenish the soil, eventually it will be unable to produce more food to sustain us. Think of industrial agriculture as strip mining of top soil...but again I digress, we are talking about return of surplus and first fruits (and we'll come to those blackberries by and by.)

For a time we had a small bowl on our dining room table. Before a meal each of us would place a small offering from our plates into the bowl. We would also pour a small amount of our water or juice into the bowl and we would mention one thing that we were feeling thankful for that day. After the meal we would be take it out and poured it on the earth as an offering and a thanks. I miss that bowl. I want to bring it back. It is a connection to our earth that we too easily forget and it is a good reminder of thankfulness practice, which is so important in our hectic day-to-day lives. It is also a reminder that we need to think about serving the earth BEFORE we think about serving ourselves. And this brings me back to those blackberries. 

Several years ago I was out picking blackberries. There were some amazing, large, delicious, juicy fruits. I wanted to eat them all. But then I got to thinking, if I eat all of the very best berries then it will be the small, bitter and pour producing plants that reproduce and after some years all that I would have on my land would be nasty little berries that no one would really want to eat unless they had to. Now blackberries being so prolific and birds being what they are, there isn't really a very great danger of that happening too quickly, but the principle still applies and more so with other more tender, less prolific plants. And this is when I had the Aha! moment. I realized that many scriptures and folk wisdom advocate giving back the first fruits. The first fruits would be early ripening, they would also likely be some of the best. It makes complete sense. If we are going to save seed, we choose the best fruits so that we propagate the best of the specimen that we want to preserve. So seed saving is also a way of giving fair share back to the earth. But the idea here is that we need to think of giving FIRST and that we may need to make some sacrifice, but that whatever small sacrifice we make will be more than paid back by the continued fertility and fecundity of the earth. 

Transition- A Reprise

Totnes, Devon, England: a transition town

In a post in December I mentioned the US Transition Movement. I recently came across a couple of great videos done by the founders of the Transition movement, which I will share with you at the end of the post. But first, what is "Transition"? What's all the hype? and why is it important? Transition is a grass roots movement of people taking action toward affecting positive change in our communities and our environment surrounding the most plaguing problems addressing the world and our societies today. Problems such as access to good healthy food and quality healthcare. Issues such as community development and of course climate change, peak oil,  and economic sustainability. These initiatives have been mobilizing and unifying communities around the world for the passed 9 years. Transition groups are taking action where action is needed, at the local level, without waiting for government intervention or government funding. This is exactly the kind of action we need in order to achieve the change necessary to rebuild, reshape and reform our societies and our economies into functioning systems that will be stable and sustainable over the next century or more as we deal with the end of cheap fossil energy. 

I hope that you will enjoy and be inspired by these videos. And after you have seen them a challenge you to answer this question? Transition New England anyone? How about Mid-Coast, South East, Mid-West, South Central, North West, South West; or how about just the town, block or street where you live? Every movement starts somewhere. Why not right there, right now, wherever you are?

This first is Rob Hopkins, the founder of the transition movement, speaking about the Transition experience of his home town of Totnes, at TEDxExeter. If that gets  you excited about the Transition Towns Movement, please what "In Transition 2.0" a more lengthy, but very worthwhile video which goes more deeply into the movement and the "Transition" process.

Cheers.

Start Up Nights - A Smash Hit

This week Hubby and I attended an event put on by a terrific new local business Leaven Beer and Bread House and the group Seacoast Local; a group that encourages people to shift their shopping to products that are local, green and fair. The event was called Start Up Nights and, like the graphic above suggests, it is a competition of great local innovative ideas. Events like this are really bringing fun and creativity to the localization movement.

It all starts with the pitch. Everyone is given a "pitch plate". You write out your idea for a business and try to encapsulate what it will be, why it is important (what is its niche),  how it will be funded, how it will function and profit. You then have 30 seconds to pitch your idea and the three best ideas are selected by voice vote of the crowd. The winners of the initial pitch contest get to select teams to help them develop their idea into a down and dirty, back of the napkin business plan. There are a series of challenges designed to help you refine your idea and it all wraps up with the judges selecting the winners and awarding prizes(but that is secondary). The real prize is the collaboration and camaraderie that develop throughout the evening. 

What really impressed me was the number of pitches that centered around local food, and all of them had a strong element of giving back to the community. There was not a single pitch that was purely individualist or profit driven. This event seemed to be a great example of the types of community and awareness building events that are vital for launching a transition town movement in our local area. I hope to see more events like this cropping up (pun intended). 

We definitely plan to attend the next event April 17th at 7pm. Hope to see you there!

A Little Dose of Inspiration

Photo from the lexicon of sustainability

For those of us who have been struggling through a long and difficult winter, and I think that is most of us, a little dose of inspiration sounds pretty good. I came across a great video on YouTube this morning that I will share with you. I also got an email from Hubby with a link to a Mother Earth News article about urban community gardens. I know you've heard urban community garden before, but this one is different. For those of you who are actually living in an urban setting this article is definitely a good read, but those of you living in the burbs or in the country should not disdain to read it as well. I live in what might be termed burban country (lol, yes you read that correctly,) and what really impressed me about this article was how much stronger the community ties became as a result of this project and how much more content and secure the people involved felt. They were actually building community where there had been one in name only, but not in reality. 

Click here to read the Mother Earth News Article

In the video "Permaculture, a Quiet Revolution" we are taken on a journey to the 8th International Permaculture Convergence in Brazil, where over 200 permaculture design course graduates and their mentors from over 43 countries have gathered to learn and to share their experience in order to prepare for and mitigate the looming global crisis. Their goal, to create sustainability now through self reliance. The only way this goal succeeds is if we all join the (r)evolution and share the message with as many people as possible as often as possible. I hope that you will be inspired and that you will catch the permaculture bug and spread it wherever you go.

Live light! 

Waste Not Want Not - Made Pet Food Today

I said I was going to do it and I did. This evening in about a half an hour and with some leftover items that might otherwise have gone to waste I made enough pet food to feed these two little darlings for about a week. I had this half eaten duck that we had tossed in the freezer after Christmas dinner.  We figured we would do something with it before long. We had boiled the duck yesterday thinking we were going to make soup, but just weren't feeling like it last night and ended up making a simple vegetarian dinner. And then we had this casserole dish full of couscous that was a bit overcooked and mushy. So this evening I picked all the meat off the duck and pureed it in the food processor. I mixed this with the couscous and made a nice thick meat paste which I taste tested on both the cat and the dog. They lapped it up! Literally. So I figured it was a winner and proceeded to package it up in 1/4 cup servings using an ice cream scoop and some squares of wax paper. When I was all done I had about 32 patties in a gallon zip lock. 

Now I can just take a couple of patties out in the evening and put them in the refrigerator to defrost. They should be ready to go by the next morning. It will be a nice treat for the pets and will reduce my pet food bill while reducing my waste. I wouldn't give this to them every day, because I'm not sure that it would provide 100% balanced nutrition. I would recommend looking into well researched and recommended recipes on line or check with your vet, if you are planning to start providing all of your pet's food. 

This experiment just reminded me that when we use our creativity and think outside the box we can help to reduce waste and supply our own needs while saving money. I think I will probably try this again in the future with other leftovers.

Another great thing about this. Since we eat local meat and organic foods, I know that what I'm feeding my pets is just as healthy as what I'm eating myself, and that is something I can 't be assured of when I am feeding them pet food from the store or even from a local feed store for animals. 

One Man's Journey - Ben Falk TEDx Talk

Ben Falk's journey to a sustainable life takes an all too familiar route from growing up in the suburbs to some eye opening experiences in college and finally to a small farm in Vermont  were he is learning and teaching the use of  permaculture principles in creating a sustainable ecosystem on his 10 acre hillside lot. 

Ben's TEDx Talk takes you through those experiences and shares some of those eye openers. They are the reasons that we need to get in front of the movement for change and really start making some decisions in our daily lives that can have a positive impact on where things are going. It's not enough to just recycle a few things. It's not enough to car pool once or twice a week or take public transportation instead of driving. We need a radical cultural shift in the way we live and consume.

Please listen to Ben's talk and really let yourself hear the message. Don't take a jaded view or simply look away when he shows you pictures of the devastation wrought by factory farming and livestock feedlots. When you see pictures of tanks in the desert and when he talks about the desertification of the fertile crescent stop, really stop and think about what you are putting on your table. Think about your daily activities and about the things you buy. Think about the energy and resource demands that you as an individual make on the planet. I think many of us who are trying to be more environmentally conscious think "well at least I'm not as bad as that one. He's driving a huge SUV and lives in a 3000 square foot house." Well that may be true, but I would have to guess that the greater number of us could be doing way more than we are to make this a more just, healthy and equitable planet to live on. 

It's Time for a New Economy

So I have been thinking for some time now about doing a post on alternative exchange methods and a "New Economy." I  started to write something up about the need to return to more traditional methods of exchange. I'd even purchased a URL and taken other steps in order to start setting up Hour Exchange of the Berwicks.  In light of the recent data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus, the constant fear of identity theft and concerns over financial insecurity, the time for this article seemed more than ripe. And then I saw this graphic! It bares a startling resemblance to my own list. Which got me thinking the time must be even more ripe than I thought. So.... here it is....

Source - https://www.facebook.com/foodisfree

Let's take it from the top:

Grow your own food or support a local CSA. Growing your own food is a great way to reduce food cost and increase the healthiness of  your diet. It is also one more way of bringing the production of our needs closer to home and increasing our security and sustainability in an uncertain world.

Make it yourself. If we make it ourselves, be it clothing or food or whatever, we have taken a big step toward local sourcing. Local sourcing helps to balance costs, prices and wages and reduces the impacts of production and distribution on the environment. Making things ourselves from local materials and ingredients also helps to build the LOCAL economy.  There are those who will use the argument that you shouldn't stop buying clothes from Bangladesh or coffee from Africa (etc and so on), because after all the countries that export those goods depend on selling to you for their economy. This is a justification on the part of the corporations who make their money on importing these goods at cut rate prices and selling them at huge mark ups. One of the first ways that we can help improve income equality and fair distribution of wealth is to advocate for higher wages for people who work in these factories. And one way to do that is to refuse to buy the products until the workers are paid a fare wage. 

Swap it! Borrowing and sharing really go together. How many of us have tools and other things that we use only very rarely? How many of us buy something because we need it today and we might only need it once or twice a year and perhaps not even that often. If we will share those things, we could reduce the demand for them. (Now watch how this dominoes.)  Neighbors begin sharing shovels and snow blowers and other tools. Fewer shovels and snow blowers and other tools are needed, fewer are produced. Environmental impact decreases. More people are sharing. They purchase fewer things. They need less space. They move to smaller homes. They need less money.  They work fewer hours or work from home. They commute less, the environmental impact decreases and decreases again.... and so on.  

Exchanging time for time (hour for hour) is one way of reducing income inequality and working toward a new economy.  Isn't it true that all of us are equally valuable and that all of our labor is equally valuable? But the monetary system that we have established leads people to feel that their worth is based on their income. Hogwash! Exchanging time for time allows us all to be on a level playing field, builds confidence and self worth, and eliminates roadblocks to success and improvement.

Reduce, Reuse, Repair, and Recycle I've already covered these here and here, and I will reiterate here that one of the primary and most important of these is reduce. Reduce, Simplify, Right-Size, work toward sustainability. 

What it all boils down to though is that we all need to learn a little something from the folks who have learned to do with less and not just 'make do' but live abundantly and be truly happy, happier perhaps than many of those who think they can only be happy if they have wealth, possessions and power.

Remember life is not in things but in experiences. So experience it and live light. 

Time for Tiny Houses

The Bodega from Tumbleweed Tiny Houses

My whole adventure in sustainability began with an article on tiny houses. Pictured first was one of the earliest and smallest of the tiny houses built by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Given that I might not have been here today writing this blog, if it had not been for that article, it seems appropriate that I should touch on the subject of tiny houses. In fact, it seems like I should have touched on it a lot sooner. 

For those of you who are curious, that article lead me to do a search on tiny houses and then I found "We the Tiny House People" a documentary about tiny homes and sustainable living. From there it just snowballed. About the same time I read "Midnights with the Mystic" by Cheryl Simone and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. Somehow the synergy of these two experiences close together launched me into my research on sustainability and permaculture.  But I digress. On to the tiny houses!

As we face a world that has less and less to offer in the way of resources to more and more people, we are all going to have to reevaluate the line between wants and needs. One of the major areas of discrepancy between want and need is in our choices of shelter. Here in the US, most of us live in homes that are far larger than what we need. And these homes contain far more stuff than can strictly (or perhaps even loosely) be described as needs. When we begin to really look at the energy that we put into purchasing and maintaining our homes we start to see that many of us have become wage slaves in order to maintain a standard of living that is far above what is necessary or sustainable. In so doing we have also shackled ourselves to a way of living that is neither ecologically friendly nor truly fulfilling for we have traded a life rich in experience for one that is full of crap (you thought I was going to say rich in stuff didn't you? Well, I'm just calling it like it is folks). 

I have personally embarked on a path toward what I call right-sizing. For many folks, particularly here in the US this will likely involve some down-sizing. While it is not just about the size of the home, (there is also: the amount and type of clothing we wear, the amount and type of food we eat, the number of hours we work and the distance we commute, just for starters) the size of the home is greatly impacted and does greatly impact many of the other aspects of our lives. With this in mind I thought it appropriate to share with you several links to resources on tiny houses and tiny living. I hope you will find them as inspirational and motivational as I have. 

Mortgage Free Tiny House
Honey I Shrunk the House
The Tiny House Blog
Review of Tiny Homes Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
An article on tiny house bathrooms
Two articles from "The Tiny Life" one on tiny houses and sustainability here and another on the tiny house movement.
And finally one on "The Tiny House Film" in which you get to meet the characters that are featured in the film.

There are so many more great links that I could share with you, but I just have to leave it with these for now. 

Enjoy my friends and live small. Because living small is Living Large!

CSA #3 and the Wonders of Refrigeration and Heating

Our latest CSA arrived on Friday and wonder of wonders there were blueberries! Thanks to the wonders of modern refrigeration, I was able to make these fabulous blueberry scones with real local Maine blueberries in the dead of winter. Do I wish that these blueberries were refrigerated using renewable energy? Yes I do. Does this make me want to advocate for my utility company to divest from fossil fuels? Yes it does. It also encourages me to research and advocate for more solar and other alternative energy sources that we and other local food producers can use on our own properties to make our farms more sustainable.  

This same feeling applies to the fresh local tomatoes which I purchased today from the local market to go on my veggie burger. I know that the tomatoes are local and were grown in a greenhouse not more than 50 miles from my home, but I don't know where the energy came from that heated the greenhouse. I don't think I'm going to stop buying my fresh locally greenhouse grown tomatoes in February (unless I find that they are very far from sustainable). But I do think it makes sense for us all to keep in mind the total inputs of energy that go into producing, transporting, marketing and storing our food. Armed with this information we can begin to make informed food choices. Making those informed choices is how we are going to make the changes that we need to make in order to heal this planet and keep it going for the next generation and the next.... and the next. 

It's getting late and I want to post this so....stay tuned for the scone recipe (special bonus post tomorrow).