Blessing the Hands that Feed Us
Page 34
That about covers all my hyperlocal suppliers and is a model for what I mean by “scale-appropriate regulation.”
And here I am, raising my eyes off the screen and the page to begin the long journey of accompanying this toddler book out into the world. I joked when I got the contract that it was a “late-in-life pregnancy.” I hadn’t expected to birth anything bigger than a local project (see above about the falling away of ambition), but I feel blessed to have this opportunity to do good world work again.
In fact, deepening into understanding all the dimensions of relational eating will take years. It’s a long journey from being disconnected from our sources of nourishment to experiencing ourselves as fully part of nature. Nature isn’t “out there”—someplace to go on a weekend. As food, nature is coursing through us. Our guts and the soils are intertwined, both alive with microorganisms doing the work of transforming organic matter into strong plants, trees, and bodies.
Likewise, it will take decades to deepen into understanding how I, a relational eater, can influence the future of food for this earth—or at least for my geographic and cultural food region. As I begin to develop knowledge of the food movements, I am heartened to see how my personal tale fits. At a 2013 conference on organic standards, I left the dinner table to get a dessert (a definitely not local chocolate confection). When I came back, I had a new tablemate, Laura Ridenour. We chatted and I discovered that she, like me, is interested in food systems and social change. Laura is a twenty-year food system activist, and she’s become my educator in chief, informing me how local relational eating is part of the broad engagement in “civic agriculture”—place-based eating—and how “food democracy”—empowers individuals and communities toward a place-based, participatory food system. I’ve discovered that there are many lenses for food activism—fair, safe, local, organic, healthy, real, nontoxic—but not all the lenses are necessarily aligned and focused on a shared goal. There’s a real ferment at the moment of strategies and ideas. They are old—echoing the Jeffersonian agrarian and populist appeals—and they are a new uprising against corporate-controlled agriculture and for restoring our connections with the hands and lands that feed us.
The more I learn, the happier I am that I get to be part of this for the rest of my life. It is my privilege to know a little more and care a lot more and so be willing to learn and act on behalf of the fertility of the soils, the vitality of the wild, and the health of our food systems.
How odd and grand to have followed a thin thread of interest only to find myself woven into the web of life.
Acknowledgments
I’ll be brief in offering my gratitudes because if I go beyond those materially involved in this book I’ll have to thank multitudes of people going back many years. First, I want to say thank you to Tricia Beckner, my “feeder” for the 10-mile diet. Little did you know, Tricia, that your casual idea would take root in me and grow this book and change my life. We never know what chance encounter will change our lives, do we? Beth Vesel, my agent, is another agent of change. She sought out Joe Dominguez and me nearly twenty-five years ago after reading a magazine article about us. Beth sold us on writing Your Money or Your Life, then sold the proposal to Viking. Ever since she has believed in me as a writer and thinker with more to say. Kathryn Court, my editor at Viking Penguin, has been a staunch supporter and has gently given me clues as to what works and what doesn’t.
Now I feel like I’m accepting an Oscar because I’m going to gush that I could not have developed the narrative of this book without Lynn Willeford, my local editor. While we share values we have polar opposite personalities—she cuts to the chase, I never met a metaphor I couldn’t jam into a sentence somewhere. In fact, she doesn’t much like me gushing over her. Nonetheless, it’s true that I often needed her skillful surgery; she gave me unvarnished feedback that improved this book immensely. My muse and champion was—and still is—Deborah Nedelman, my writing partner. We’ve kept a weekly writing date since the spring of 2010. We write in silence for several hours, read aloud, offer almost homeopathic feedback that pulls the essence of the piece out. The routine has kept us both going. It turned out that both her adult children are interested in sustainable food systems and in fact her daughter Eden met with me weekly via Skype when I first got the contract to help me babble into clarity about what I really wanted to say through my story. Thank you, Eden.
Here’s where other people thank their partners for patience, kindness, forbearance, editing, and taking care of the kids and dinner. I, however, live alone with my cat, and she’s offered none of that kind of support. I will say that many wonderful friends and neighbors here on Whidbey heard me out when I was piecing things together, and the local farmers and chefs in this book graciously responded to my questions and reviewed my stories. I could also single out Comedy Island, my improv troupe, that cheered me on and got me to fall on the floor laughing week in and week out. And Mel Watson’s weekly meditation class reminded me that I am not a writer, really, but a soul traversing lifetimes.
We call people like these godsends and I think that the divine has been sending me such guides, helpers, goads, and cheerleaders my whole life. I am profoundly grateful for the ones who showed up to help with this book and feel a shiver of anticipation as I think that more godsends are coming to send me on more holy adventures.
Notes
Introduction
1. J. C. Rickman, D. M. Barrett, and C. M. Bruhn, “Nutritional Comparison of Fresh, Frozen and Canned Fruits and Vegetables, Part I, Vitamins C and B and Phenolic Compounds,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 87 (2007): 930–44.
Chapter One: Localize Me?
1. “Diet (nutrition),” Wikipedia, last modified December 2, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_%28nutrition%29.
Chapter Three: Yes! But How?
1. Greg Lange, “Native Americans force settlers to leave Whidbey Island in August 1848,” HistoryLink.org Essay 5246, last modified February 19, 2003, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5246.
2. Andrew L. Stoll, The Omega-3 Connection: The Groundbreaking Anti-depression Diet and Brain Program (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
Chapter Four: Week One: Grounded
1. Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops, “Demographic Trends in the 20th Century,” Census 2000 Special Reports, November 2002, http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf.
2. Anuradha Mittal, “Giving Away the Farm: The 2002 Farm Bill,” Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, July 8, 2002, http://www.foodfirst.org/node/52.
3. The NPD Group, “Snacking in America 2008,” http://www.npd.com/lps/PDF_SpecialReports/NPD_Snacking_America_TOC.pdf.
4. Steve Martinez, “Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts, and Issues,” Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 2010, http://www/ers.usda.gov/media/122864/en97_reportsummary_1_.pdf, accessed December 5, 2012.
Chapter Five: Week Two: Getting the Hang of It
1. Kelly M. Adams, Karen C. Lindell, Martin Kohlmeier, and Steven H. Zeisel, “Status of Nutrition Education in Medical Schools, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 83, no. 4 (April 2006): 941S–944S, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430660/.
2. Barbara Bein, “Nutrition Education in U.S. Medical Schools ‘Precarious,’ Say Researchers,” American Academy of Family Physicians, October 20, 2010, http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/resident-student-focus/20101020nutritioneduc.html.
3. Dictionary.com, Columbia World of Quotations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), http://quotes.dictionary.com/The_recommended_daily_requirement_for_hugs_is_four. Here is another source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/virginiasa400866.html.
4. http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html#related-outbreaks.
Chapter Six: Week Three: The Week of My Discontent<
br />
1. USDA Economic Research Service, last modified August 6, 2012, http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/about.html.
2. Charles Fishman, “A Farming Fairy Tale,” Fast Company, May 2006, http://www.fastcompany.com/56671/farming-fairy-tale.
3. “2012 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics,” last modified December 4, 2011, http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm#Does_the_world_produce_enough_food_to_feed_everyone.
4. J. Putnam, J. Allshouse, and L. S. Kantor, “U.S. Per Capita Food Supply Trends,” http://foodfarmsjobs.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/US-per-Capita-Food-Supply-Trends-More-Calories-Carbs-and-Fat.pdf.
5. Annette Clauson, “Despite Higher Food Prices, Percent of U.S. Income Spent on Food Remains Constant,” Amber Waves, September 2008, http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us.aspx.
Chapter Seven: Revelations of the Final Week
1. Anna Stern, “Saying Grace Around the World,” February 13, 2009, Yes!, http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/saying-grace-around-the-world (illustrations by Nikki McClure not included).
Chapter Eight: Relational Eating
1. Thich Nhat Han, Plum Village Chanting and Recitation Book (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, June 2000).
2. Jonathan Bloom, American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Lifelong Books, August 2011).
3. Michael E. Webber, “How to Make the Food System More Energy Efficient,” Scientific American, December 29, 2011, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=more-food-less-energy.
4. “Food Facts,” Natural Resources Defense Council, September 2012, www.nrdc.org/living/eatingwell/files/foodwaste_2pgr.pdf.
5. Marian Nestle, quoted from an interview with Polly Hoppin of The Project on Science and Public Policy, accessed December 5, 2012, http://defendingscience.org/conversation-marion-nestle-phd.
6. Marine Conservation Society, Good Fish Guide: The Consumer Guide to Sustainable Seafood, accessed December 5, 2012, http://www.goodfishguide.co.uk.
7. Environmental Working Group, “2012 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce,” accessed December 5, 2012, http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/.
Chapter Nine: Bringing Our Eating Closer to Home
1. M. Fatih Citlak and Hüseyin Bingül, ed. Rumi and His Sufi Path of Love (Somerset, NJ: Tughra Books, 2007).
2. Community Food Security Coalition, Whole Measures for Community Food Systems: Values-Based Planning and Evaluation, 2009, http://foodsecurity.org/pub/WholeMeasuresCFS-web.pdf.
3. http://seattlefarmbillprinciples.org.
4. Steve Evans, King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, “How much land is needed to feed King County’s population?” 2009 Farms Report, Appendix F, http://your.kingcounty.gov/dnrp/library/water-and-land/agriculture/future-of-farming/appendices/f-land-needed-to-feed-kc-population.pdf.
5. Michael Pollan, “Farmer in Chief,” New York Times, October 9, 2008; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=all.
6. Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, State Poultry Processing Regulations, August 2, 2012, http://www.extension.org/pages/33350/poultry-processing-regulations-and-exemptions.
7. http://localfoodshift.com/.
8. Growing Communities, accessed December 5, 2012, http://www.growingcommunities.org.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
activism:
author’s changing attitude toward, 225, 250
many lenses of, 317–18
rebellion against industrial food system, 243, 244
by transformers, 294–96
agriculture:
civic, 317
industrial, 8, 52, 172, 175, 203, 236, 244, 247
preserving farmland, 247–48, 268–69
regional, 270
relational, 301
see also farmers
agro-ecological strategies, 280
Anderson, Anders and Bertine, 247
Anderson, Dorothy, 247–48
Anderson, Terra, 277–78
Anthes, Jacob, 92
anywhere eating, 17–18, 57–59, 223
apples, 116
Ashanti grace (Ghana), 219
Attwood, Maryon, 276–77, 315
autumn, reality of, 204–6
back-to-the-land movement, 28–32, 233
Bailey, Kimberly, 144, 145–46
beans, 72, 116
baked bean recipe, 221
cooking tips, 210
hummus recipe, 26
Beckner, Tricia:
cooking dinner for, 194–96
and CSA garden, 44
and 50 percent in 50 miles, 210, 261
food supplied by, 28, 56, 72, 75, 77, 88, 97, 101, 105, 106, 117, 122, 148–49, 156, 188, 189–90, 195, 224, 261
and Kent, 44, 194–95, 313
as market gardener, 44, 128–30, 213
and relational eating, 223
and 10-mile diet, 20–21, 47, 56, 66, 88–89, 128
beets, 116
Belinda and Koren, 140–41, 198
and chickens, 205, 261
and milk, 71, 94, 130–33, 223
and regulation, 131–32
belonging, 124, 226–27, 230
Berry, Wendell, 168, 312
big vs. small producers, see industrial food system
biodynamic farming, 244–45, 280
bioregions, 303–4
Bishop, Clark, 209
Bittman, Mark, 158, 160
blessings, 202, 218–20, 234–35, 312–13
Bloom, Jonathan, American Wasteland, 248
body, author’s changing relationship with, 224
Boin, Patrick, 52, 182, 184
Bradford, Jason, 251
Britt and Eric, see Conn, Britt and Eric
Brower, Claus, 67
Brown, Vicky, 313
dessert cheese recipe, 86–87
and Kickstarter, 251, 315
and Little Brown Farm, 211, 315
local cheese from, 101, 237–38
and regulations, 238
Brownlee, Michael, 303
Brussels sprouts, recipe, 259
Buddhist grace, 218
butter, 114
caffeine, 74, 75
Callenbach, Ernest “Chick,” 266–67
calories, 58, 178, 188, 189–90
Campbell, Colin, Forks Over Knives, 159
cancer:
author’s bout with, 12, 35, 199
author’s dream about, 263
and diet, 64–65
lessons learned from, 38–39
and letting go, 39–40
canning food, 205–6
Carlin, George, 205
Carron, Laurie, 44
Center for a New American Dream, 39
Center for Whole Communities, 274
Chautauqua, 11–12
cheese, 57, 211
goat (chèvre), 96–97
recipes, 86–87, 221–22
regulation of, 97, 237–38
Cherry, Lorna, 98–99
chicken, 160–61
canning, 205–6, 261
cost of, 156–58
recipe, 184–86
children, 249–50
cholesterol, 188
Christian children’s prayer, 219
“circle of we,” 98
civic agriculture, 317
Coe, Helen, 93
coffee, 72, 213
comfort foods, 58
community:
author’s changing relationship with, 224
belonging to, 226–27, 230
food bank in, 77, 172–73
food system for, 190, 274, 275, 303
and Food 2020, 272–86
freedom of, 312
giving back to, 232
and homecoming, 196–98, 224
home cooking in, 97–98
liberating, 201
organizations within, 228–31
and relational eating, 79, 227, 228–31, 240, 246, 270, 298
and Seattle Farm Bill, 287–88
spirit of, 227, 228
and 10-mile diet, 89, 105, 123, 124–30, 198, 199
Transition Towns, 49–50, 153–55
trust in, 130
volunteerism in, 228
community supported agriculture (CSA), 44, 103, 189, 282
becoming involved in, 166
and relational eating, 4, 224, 240
compost, 129–30, 176, 232, 280
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), 169
Conlin, Richard, 286, 289, 290
Conn, Britt and Eric, 94–96, 168, 198
family of, 314
farmland of, 46, 94, 314
income of, 213
and local food system, 278, 313, 314
permaculture method of, 94–95
and relocalization, 41
wedding of, 56, 66, 161, 223, 314
and wheat crackers, 161
conscience, 169
conscious eating, 178–82
convection oven, 112, 118
convenience, 58
Conversation Cafés, 38, 39
conviviality, 192–94, 196
cooking from scratch, 115–16, 142–43
author’s relationship with, 121, 225