Blessing the Hands that Feed Us

by Vicki Robin

  Zone 1 is urban traded—salads, leafy greens, fruit—providing another 5 percent.

  Zone 2 is peri-urban (the suburbs) land, where field-scale produce, staples, and chickens might grow. They presume you can source 17.5 percent from there.

  Zone 3 is what they call the rural hinterland, a one-hundred-mile circle where another 35 percent of food is grown. There they presume livestock for eggs, milk, cheese, and meat are grown as well as substantial field crops. As you can see, they calculate, as do I, that it’s feasible to provide 50 percent within one hundred miles. Farther afield—for them the rest of the UK and out to the rest of Europe—you have livestock, orchards, and the plentiful foods that grow well in other regions. From the rest of the world you get your exotics.

  And beyond your nation is the rest of the world, where much of our food grows because economics and transportation make it so easy to use the land and labor of other regions to stock our shelves. Here you as an eater may have little direct influence, but you can vote with your dollars, and you can inform yourself about global food politics. Ask: Is it fair? Are people faring well? Why or why not? What are the stories of despair—and of hope? Once you care about relational eating, you pretty much care about everything and everyone.

  Finally, there is the natural world that hums with life and from which all food comes. It has no distance because it is everywhere! We call it “the environment” and it begins probably in our guts with intestinal bacteria and extends into the upper atmosphere, through forests and rivers, jungles and oceans, ponds and savannas. Billions upon billions of eaters live here, all kin. Protecting “nature” isn’t just a sweet afterthought, a virtue. Assuring enough for all species actually assures enough for humans. To paraphrase the famous Martin Niemuller quote about the Church’s inaction as the Nazis vilified and arrested first the Communists, then the unionists, then the Jews, and so Christians had “no one left to speak for them” when they were taken, we need to protect the whole system else our food systems fail us with no backups from the vast wealth of species. Climate becomes a food issue. The rights of nature is a food issue. Relational eating is a lens that brings into focus how our lives are woven into the whole web of life.

  You don’t need to think about this every day before breakfast. But you might!

  For every ring of your food system map—personal, community, region, and beyond—there are practices to engage in, projects to do, policies to advocate for. Because it is a system, not just a laundry list of good ideas or new right ways to do things, you know that your small acts are part of something intimate, yet—through networking—vast. You can eat a local rutabaga, you can start a food policy council, you can click a link to sign a petition, you can volunteer at the food bank, you can join a CSA, you can move your money to a credit union that lends to local businesses, you can order the local burger on the menu, you can plant a seed, you can invite a friend to dinner. Food is everywhere! Food is literally in your face many times a day. You can put yourself “in” food again. Be part of what is growing.

  This food map, from inner to global, is the context for all the following action steps.

  Now It’s Your Turn: Discovering the Hands That Feed You

  Get to Know Your Food Shed Better by Asking These Questions:

  • What are the boundaries of my version of “local”? A USDA four-hundred-mile circle might not be quite right. You might choose a bioregion, a state, a watershed, an island.

  • Is “here” where I want to be in ten years? Am I willing to inhabit “here” as a relational eater? If not, then where?

  • What grows well in my region, in nature, in farms, and in backyard gardens?

  • How many of the foods I commonly eat are available from my region? Who supplies each one of them?

  • How far do I need to go for the rest of my common foods? By what criteria will I choose each of these?

  • Who are my farmers? Find a dozen growers, large and small, in your region and acquaint yourself with them by reading or shopping or visiting.

  Once You’ve Discovered the Answers, Set Yourself Some Tasks:

  • Commit to what percent of your food you will source from your region (1 percent is okay—you can always go to 2 percent next year).

  • Make field trips—literally! Visit nearby farms.

  • Commit to one farmer. Buy her food as a matter of relationship. Learn about his life sufficiently to understand the joys and challenges of farming and how you might help—beyond buying—to have his family flourish. Hear about her challenges. If you “adopt” a regional farmer in this intimate way, you will find yourself in widening circles of community care.

  • Commit to one food that grows well in your region and learn about it. Where does it like to grow? What family is it in? How many ways can you cook it? What are its beneficial properties—both nutritionally and medicinally? How did the native peoples prepare it?

  From these queries and commitments you will become ever more intimate with the hands and lands that feed you.

  No final recipe. Instead Jess Dowdell offered to share a seasonal menu she created for the Whidbey Island Farm Tour. I wanted you to see how a many-course local menu, prepared with love and skill by a relational chef, can be as elegant and flavorful as that of any five-star restaurant in the centers of haute cuisine.

  September 14, 2012

  WHIDBEY ISLAND FARM TOUR DINNER

  CHEF JESS DOWDELL, ROAMING RADISH

  FIRST COURSE

  Paired with Spoiled Dog Pinot Gris

  Pickled beet and carrot bruschetta, Whidbey Island herbed goat chèvre, and lavender crostini

  [Willowood Farm, Quail’s Run Farm, Little Brown Farm, Lavender Wind Farm]

  SECOND COURSE

  Paired with Spoiled Dog Estate Rose of Pinot Noir

  Fennel, apple, and arugula salad dressed with parsley pesto

  Organic red quinoa

  [Quail’s Run Farm, Willowood Farm]

  THIRD COURSE

  Paired with Spoiled Dog Pinot Noir

  Summer quinoa tabbouleh with cucumbers, tomato, mint, and shallots

  [Quail’s Run Farm]

  Roasted lamb shoulder

  [Glendale Shepherd]

  Polenta croutons

  [Quail’s Run Farm]

  Fire-roasted peppers, onions, and tomatoes

  [Quail’s Run Farm, Willowood Farm]

  Island Brebis raw sheep cheese

  [Glendale Shepherd]

  FOURTH COURSE

  Paired with Spoiled Dog Deception Red

  Chocolate decadence with blueberry reduction, made with loganberry liqueur

  Organic Sunspire chocolate

  [Huntersmoon Blueberries, Whidbey Island Distillery]

  EPILOGUE

  Continued Blessing

  It’s over two years since I was released from my 10-mile diet and liberated into toast, nuts, avocados, and more. Or thought I’d been set free, as if freedom were the willful ability to do as you please.

  These intervening years of researching and writing, listening and inquiring, eating emmer and potatoes, kale and barley, chicken and beef, milk and eggs, summer greens and winter roots—all from Whidbey—have heaped on me those other freedoms that come from rooting, from being nourished without effort because you belong. When you belong you are not confined, but rather confirmed by others as part of their lives. You have a home—and a home team.

  Surprising Side Benefit of the 10-Mile Diet

  The benefits of this belonging are far more than a secure supper or even a circle of friends. For me, the diet has led to solving a seemingly different set of problems—those that come from aging in a transient culture.

  In these two years since that Maxwelton Beach Fourth of July potluck, I’ve rounded the bend from age sixty-four to sixty-seven . . . going on seventy, going on
that late fall time in life when—like leaves falling from trees—things fall away from us: jowls sink off the chin line, and you lose height, teeth, and even ambition. Mind you, I don’t—yet—act my age, but I have had to consider what I need to do now to be sure the near-carcass I’ll be living in twenty years from now (should I get there) will be comfortable and cared for.

  The dancer Anna Halprin says, “Old age is enlightenment at gunpoint.” Perhaps it’s the ultimate extreme sport. I don’t intend to do it warehoused in a “facility” paid for by “long-term-care insurance.” If money is our safety net, in this economy that’s no safety at all. I used to say “I want to die with a dime in my pocket, but not a day later.”

  How, though, does one manage that? How much of my stored resource called money do I need to conserve now to conserve my stored resource called a body for an unknown number of years? Clever as I am, I had not been able to solve this puzzle—until the 10-mile diet. As I enact “belonging” and “community” day by day, week by week, I can be confident that on those days in the future when I need help, someone here will probably drive me to the doctor or bring by a meal. Wendell Berry talks of this freedom of community. The people and community in his novels, woven and polished by long association, have the feel of a bygone era: nostalgic, fragile, precious. What if relational eating—the local food movement—is a precursor of a new era of belonging, when once again homeland security will mean neighbors, not an increasing dependency on a militaristic state? What if turning our attention to “here-ing” through bringing our eating closer to home is not just a good way to eat but also a wise way to age? Perhaps a culture of permanence provides more true freedom than a culture of transience.

  Am I becoming a fuddy-duddy? I don’t think so. I think I am simply getting the hang of living. God, it takes so long!

  Blessing Itself

  Like the 10-mile-diet caper itself, I picked the title Blessing the Hands That Feed Us on a whim. I thought it was just a clever play on “biting the hands that feed you”—a phrase that means ingratitude toward your benefactors.

  As I wrote, however, I realized how profound the act of blessing is, how far it goes. Now the “hands that feed me” include the organisms in the soil, the bees that spread pollen, the birds that spread seeds, and the forests where the mycelium of chanterelles grows in darkness until conditions are right for the mushrooms to appear.

  The “hands” now also means the miraculous dynamism of nature itself—how the sun warms the surface, driving cycles of wind and rain while bestowing the very energy green plants need to make chlorophyll. The hands are not just the farmer’s hands, but the truck driver’s and the grocer’s and the researchers and the teachers who pass on knowledge to young people so the whole growing cycles can continue.

  To bless doesn’t just mean “think good thoughts” or “be nice.” To bless is far more radical. It is to actually give life, to have one’s cup run over into the lives of others. To have one’s parents’ blessings is to have each of them send you off into life saying “I see you. I know you are good. I believe in you. I trust you. I am proud of you. May you be fruitful and multiply, whatever that means to you.” To bless is to speak from and for and to the divine, as a priest blesses a marriage or christens a baby. To bless is to respect the integrity and mystery of the life of another.

  And this holiness is what I sense through buying, cooking, and eating real food grown by real people in real places. My farmers.

  Where Are My Farmers and Friends Now?

  Last season Tricia and Kent launched a Friday Farmers’ Market in downtown Langley, a festive end-of-the-week opportunity to stroll among booths where Eric Conn and Vicky Brown and Tricia and Molly and John Peterson pile up their week’s produce. Sadly for me, though, they just sold their property to a young couple eager to make a sustainable farming life here. I had, of course, hoped they would be a permanent fixture in my eating life, but life going on means change. Maybe these new people will become as dear to me as Tricia and Kent. Life going on also means that new folks will arrive to fill your heart. And happily for me, life going on for Tricia and Kent was buying a fixer-upper half a mile from me as the crow flies.

  Pam will still be able to farm her half of Tricia and Kent’s production garden; that was part of the deal. She continues to be an amazing grower and saleswoman and now has a winter crop too: knitted caps and scarves.

  Britt and Eric now have a beautiful baby boy whom I adore as if he were my own. Their farm as well as family is expanding, a new plot of veggies planted where we’d planted our tables two years ago at the wedding.

  Georgie Smith is flourishing and I’m proud to have a small hand in that. In another search for a solution to a relocalization issue—local finance—I’d come across a model for local lending from Port Townsend, across the water from Whidbey. The Local Investing Opportunity Network formed several years ago for that very purpose. They researched the strict SEC laws, passed to protect investors from buying swampland in Florida, and came up with a model for connecting potential businesses with potential investors without being considered investment advisers or an investment club. I called it back then “speed dating for lending”—just a way to meet and mate (financially, that is). I heard that Georgie needed money to build a greenhouse, and we sat down for coffee in Coupeville so I could convince her that I was on the up-and-up about investing in her farm. We struck a deal: several thousand dollars for the greenhouse, paid back over three years, with the interest paid in vegetables rather than money. In weeks the greenhouse was up. I’ve enjoyed a year of Rockwell beans and specialty garlic, and the loan is almost repaid.

  Lynn Willeford, my superb local editor-cum-metaphor-pruner, got wind of that LION model at the same time I did, and in her superb low-key but effective community-organizing way she, her husband, Blake, and another couple got our Whidbey Island Local Lending (W.I.L.L.) going.

  Speaking of lending, Jess Dowdell, formerly of the Ca’buni café at Mukilteo Coffee Roasters, has opened the Roaming Radish, a deli and catering establishment plus cooking school, featuring her same stable of local growers and foods. She organized the chefs on the island to provide the recipes at the end of each chapter. I only love her more—for her spunk and drive and high standards for the ingredients she uses.

  Vicky Brown, the goat cheese maven, sought a different kind of funding for a cheese cave where she can age cheese for a harder, sharper product. She used Kickstarter, an online tool for raising money for projects, which resulted in 270 backers, $22,678 funded—well over goal. In an interview on the Marcella the Cheesemonger site she says: “With 5 days left (53 days from the start of the project) we weren’t even 60% to our goal. The interesting thing about Kickstarter is you only fund your project if you hit your goal. It wasn’t looking good. Then there was . . . neighbors and friends forwarding links like crazy through social media. Suddenly we hit our goal with 26 hours to spare! . . . Before the last week, I had already started to recognize the true value of our campaign. Although the funding was awesome and spectacular, that wasn’t the largest benefit. The real benefit was feeling the community (from neighbors to cheese lovers in Denmark) support in a concrete and tangible way.”

  Are Vicky and I bosom buddies? Given that we are both of “traditional build,” as Alexander McCall Smith labeled his heroine in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, we could be such buddies, but we are mostly cheerfully supportive of each other, echoing “Hi Vicki/y” several times each time we see each other.

  Quiet, dedicated innovator Maryon Attwood has moved on from Greenbank Farm but not from her passion for integrating the food system on Whidbey. She convened a group to discuss buying a grain mill for Whidbey to support existing grain growers and hopefully attract others to growing grains. The idea has not yet ripened, but the seed is sown. Not one to be idle, Maryon is now working with her partner, Robbie Lobell, in another part of the food system: they make clay ovenware.
The company is called Cooked on Clay, and if we imagine Whidbey Island being more self-sufficient it’s good to know we can make our own pots and pans.

  Speaking of Greenbank Farm and the New Farmer Training Program, two graduates—Annie Jesperson and Nathaniel Talbot—graduated but stayed put. She is a social worker by training, he’s a musician, but their desire and destiny is to farm together. They established a winter vegetable CSA, which inspired Cary Peterson of the Good Cheer Food Bank Garden to create a program, Fresh Food for the Table, so that people in need can have veggies all winter. A yearly fund-raiser brought in enough money to pay them for a season.

  Then Annie and Nathaniel sent a message over the local tom-toms (a unique daily list of South Whidbey opportunities for work, play, and swapping) that they wanted to rent or lease or simply have access to a farm. Meanwhile, Molly and John Peterson’s daughter, Anna, decided to go to Sebhory in Guinea and now Annie and Nathaniel are farming part of Molly and John’s land and cathedral-sized greenhouses.

  The teacher who enlightened me about soil fertility is biodynamic farmer Chris Korrow, who, with his wife, Christy, have moved in down the hill from me and become a real anchor for my sense of home and community. They came from Kentucky a year ago, sad to leave their ninety-acre farm but glad to be among people who share their values. Chris is an author, filmmaker, and philosopher as well as a farmer, and we often talk through the fence between the community garden where I have a plot and his fields where he raises winter vegetables. He has “that something” that makes the green world want to grow. I joke about his crisp plate-sized spinach leaves, saying that if they were an animal they would bite me. Same with the squash, green beans, broccoli. I feel fortunate that a few minutes away I can have fresh-picked nutritious vegetables every day thanks to his efforts and skill.

  The undercover milkers—goat and cow—are still unfortunately undercover. A bill is ambling through the Washington state legislature. Senator Kevin Ranker is sponsoring Senate Bill 5648, which adds a section to the law regulating direct sales of milk, which stipulates that if the milk is not advertised for sale and produced on a small-scale farm where there are no more than two producing dairy cows, nine producing sheep, or nine producing goats, it can be sold directly to customers.