More Deliberate Every Day

Wendell Berry Speech

Being a big Wendell Berry fan, and it being so rare that he is captured on film, I thought it would be a great way to start your day today if I shared this brief video from youtube, where Berry speaks to a gathering in Frankfort, Kentucky, the state's capital, on behalf of the I Love Mountains Day effort.

As a good friend would say, 'nuff said.

OK - I Get It. You Miss Me.

Ever-humbled by the number of emails I receive when my posts go on a hiatus, a feeling compounded by the inexplicable number of hits to the site over the last week-or-so via google searches related to topics of editorial explication, I post to let you know I am still kicking and screaming, albeit quietly and perhaps without much bodily motion.

Yes, I'm still here.  And no, I haven't forgotten about you, gentle readers, or the food crisis globally or the so-called Farm Bill or the Presidential election or any of the other stuff going on around us.

And I would like to say that I've been hard at work putting out the garden, that I've been busy installing solar panels on the roof, or even that I've been distracted by work on my new book, Propelled to the Local Market.  Unfortunately, none of that is even remotely true, with the only sliver of fact being that while my contributions have been almost nonexistent, we do have a garden growing, exclusively the result of Mrs. Deliberately's hard work.

No, nothing so important as that.  Just busy with many things, smaller things.  But things that will grow into items for the blog.  So in lieu of a punch-list of current affairs, short of an all-and-out tirade on the state of our society, a simple to-do list will give you a sense of what I've been up to:

1.  I'm learning to make wine.  Something I've always wanted to do, and a way of linking another part of our household consumption to the community.  With all the strawberries coming in right now I'm excited at the prospect of being able to bottle some of that spring essence and enjoy it later in the year.

2.  I'm supporting my local farmers market.  While we're fans of markets of all makes and models, we specifically support the Memphis Farmers Market as our primary weekly shopping-trip.  Not only that, but we partner financially to support the market's growth.  One change coming this year is the addition of monthly market-inspired restaurant dinners where local chefs create stunning meals from their Saturday visits.

3.  I'm reading.  Currently Mrs. Deliberately and I are going through Richard T. Wright's textbook Environmental Science together in an effort to better school ourselves on the bigger picture of the environmental picture on the globe today.  Like so many others we watched An Inconvenient Truth a couple of years back and were aghast that so much scientific fact was unfamiliar to us.  So we're going back and making sure we can not only espouse our beliefs, but argue them effectively.

4.  I'm reading more.  In parallel to the above, I'm also immersed in James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency.  His new novel, A World Made By Hand was a good, quick read, even granted the mixed reviews it's gotten on the sexual roles it envisions in a post-Peak Oil future.  But the book I'm reading now is not fiction, but rather the true story of a oil-drunk world and the likely demise of that position, and the book is absolutely fascinating (and terrifying).  Much like our approach to the Environmental Science text, this is one I will be spending more time with as I work to make sure I not only fully understand the argument, but can actually vocalize it myself.

5.  I'm disinvesting.  Like so many Americans, I grew up in an environment where success was defined, in many cases, by the amount of stuff acquired.  But now I've gotten to the point where success, for us, is about the quality and durability of the things we need to live a good, honest life.  So we're going through our stuff and disinvesting where it's not consistent with our goals.  And that means converting some of that stuff to more important items, like the supplies we need for our home canning adventure that begins later in the summer.

And there's more, of course, because I'm incorrigible.  But it does mean that I haven't been writing lately, for this blog or for future potential contributions to The Ethicurean or Edible Memphis Magazine.  The good news?  Pretty soon I'll wake up brutally early one morning and have a lot to say on these and other topics, and if you keep stopping by you'll get an earful!

In the meantime, check the archives, and if in doubt, click on "books" in the categories list and read a review.  Or go pick up any Wendell Berry book you haven't yet read, then read it.

Midsouth Alert: Downing Hollow Farm Online

Our friends at the Downing Hollow Farm, whom we know from the Memphis Farmers Market, reached out via email this week with the following announcement:

Thanks to everyone for their support last year. I wanted to take the time to invite you to look at some of the new things we have planned for this year.

 

We have a brand new website at www.downinghollowfarm.com 

 

There you will find info on our Memphis CSA and our Savannah CSA. Plus an invitation for chefs to contact us to be included on our route in Memphis. As always, you'll find us at the Memphis Farmers Market on Saturday mornings from 7am till 1 pm.

 

And our gate is always open here at the farm.....we look forward to hearing from you.

 

Lori and Alex Greene

We already responded to sign up for the CSA - what can you do to support your local farmers?  Now, off to the market to beat our well-meaning yet food-greedy friends to the strawberries!

Read This

I mean this.  I'm too aghast and dumbfounded by the avalanche of popular news about our food system to direct you to anything more exciting right now.  But the link is worth your time.

Food Crisis, Farm Bill, Yikes!

This isn't fun anymore.  I've been blogging for well over a year now about the connection between food and politics and the environment, but only recently do I see the three topics converging with such force on to the front page of every newspaper in the country.  This morning the New York Times reports "a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people."  The advent of mandated biofuels combined with rising oil prices are bleeding into food costs globally and resulting in riots in the streets of many countries.  A report on CNN yesterday noted that "riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention."  All of which underscores the importance of getting to know your local producer, understanding the source of your food, and building a more sustainable community for yourself and your family.

I'm so tired of the Farm Bill I could just *!#@*!.  In an environment where commodity prices are touching all time highs, you would think our elected officials in Washington would be less concerned about appeasing corporate lobbyists and open up to the idea of reform regarding crop subsidies in the Farm Bill.  It's not like farmers aren't earning a higher income with demand outpacing supply.  But no, instead we find a virtual stalemate in our nation's capital, with both parties refusing to give in on key points of division, and the White House continuing to threaten veto if it's agenda isn't met.  Dan Morgan reported yesterday at Farm Policy that ". . . energy, environmental and agriculture policy are merging, so that the agriculture committees alone no longer control the destiny of American farmers."  Maybe the long delay in the Farm Bill plays to our advantage:  as the global food situation spirals into crisis, Big Ag interests are losing control of the debate and we may see real reform come about after all.  Response from Washington?  "Over our collective dead body!"  Despite the many small steps in the right direction included in the new version of the farm bill (as detailed aptly yesterday by Amiee Witteman at Grist), at the end of the day it fails to live up to the need for real, significant reform.  So maybe it is good to miss the next deadline (this week), allow the legislation to lapse back into a previous state, and watch the food system unravel further before the legislation receives its well-deserved facelift.  At that point we might expect a facelift that will actually change for the better.

In case you don't understand why the Farm Bill is so important. . . Watch this.

Did I mention my lasting disdain for Ethanol?  OK, maybe I mentioned it.  But here's one more.  In a piece posted at Grist Sharon Astyk meditates on the impact of biofuels on farming in America, and warns against the likely bust that will follow the boom now being experienced:

What farmers need are stable food prices (probably slightly higher than they have been) and to receive a decent portion of the price of the food we grow. And that will only happen if we start cutting out the corporate middleman and working with farmers -- giving them incentives to sell directly to consumers (who have to start eating whole grains instead of processed crap) because they know that the consumers who buy from them will not stop eating when the ethanol plants have to close down.

This goes to my earlier point:  we need to make sure that farmers receive their fair share, that our food is local and sustainable, and that our food system is safe and secure.  Which all happens when we become co-producers of our food, engaging in the process, and building community with the people who raise our food.

And by the way, props to Sharon of Casaubon's Book for this exciting turn of events.  We always knew she'd go far!

Spring Garden, And How to Share Stress With Your Providers

Here we are on the 13th of April in the Midsouth, and according to the National Weather Service at Memphis,

TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO DROP INTO THE UPPER 20S AND LOWER 30S ACROSS MUCH OF THE MID-SOUTH TUESDAY MORNING WITH CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT WIND. FREEZING TEMPERATURES MAY OCCUR FOR SEVERAL HOURS WITH A WIDESPREAD FROST.

YOU SHOULD MAKE PREPARATIONS TO  PROTECT ANY TENDER PLANTS THAT HAVE  RECENTLY BLOOMED OR BEEN PLANTED.

A FREEZE WATCH MEANS SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE POSSIBLE. THESE CONDITIONS COULD KILL CROPS AND OTHER SENSITIVE VEGETATION.

. . . which sounds remarkably like a replay of last year.  For those of you following along at home, last year this same late frost resulted in none, meaning zero, of our normal supply of Memphis area peaches, and forced producers such as Jones Orchard to truck in Alabama peaches in order to meet the demand they were unable to supply from their own crop. 

We were planning on putting out our own garden beginning this weekend, but decided to wait one more week given the threat of cold weather tonight.  That said, Mrs. Deliberately has done a fantastic job this year getting a head start on the planting, using our guest bedroom as a make-shift greenhouse. 

Last year we didn't get the same head-start and found ourselves dependent upon the Memphis Farmers Market from day one.  And we also hadn't developed as deep an appreciation for seasonal produce as we have from following the rhythm of the entire season last year.  What does that mean?  It means that when the strawberries come in, which is several weeks away now, we will be eating a "gi-normous" quantity of strawberries, whether fresh from a bowl or married with any number of recipes.  It means we'll gorge ourselves on squash when it becomes available, and that we'll celebrate the fingerling potatoes when they're being offered by every purveyor at the market.  Once the season begins, we eat what's available, and we'll eat as much of it as is necessary to make sure we are satisfied without having to rely on the supermarket.

Of course, we'll have more of our own vegetables from the backyard this year, because we're committed to increasing the amount of our food we grow ourselves.  We'll put up more of what we need next winter, whether it be in the form of freezing or  our new effort for this summer, learning how to preserve our food through canning.  And we'll be looking for creative way to put up those root vegetables so that we don't find ourselves outside of the season without a steady supply of local foods.

Back to the threat of freeze:  we can avoid it because we haven't started yet.  But those farmers growing fruit trees and reliant on annually re-curring crops like strawberries don't have that choice -- there is no crop unless it is already planted in the prior season, and that means either covering up what you have (in the case of the strawberries) or hoping for the best.  You can't put an entire crop of peaches under cover of plastic to protect them, and the economic impact can be devastating when the crop is lost.  We have something of a fig crop ourselves in the backyard, and last year the freeze took out the top layer.  Peaches are so delicate they won't survive a solid freeze at all, leaving purveyors in a bind.

So, as you listen to more coverage on the threat of a freeze, remember it's not just an issue of having to potentially scrape your windshield clean one morning this week.  Be a co-producer and think of the farmer, think of the food that arrives to your table.  When you show up for the opening of your farmers market over the next few weeks, ask your providers how their season is shaping up, whether the late freeze impacted their crops, and how they cope with unpredictable weather conditions.  Get engaged, be involved, and become part of the solution.

As for us, we'll plant next weekend.

Food Prices and How the World Responds

I know prices are rising here, but what about the rest of the world?  Global prices on rice have risen fifty percent in the last two weeks and in poor parts of the world leaders are beginning to fear eruptions of violence as a result.  In an article posted Sunday at The Guardian by Peter Beaumont, he writes that while all prices are rising due to global inflation, it's the increases on rice that are most keenly felt:

Rice is the staple food for more than half the world's population. This is the second year running in which production - which increased in real terms last year - has failed to keep pace with population growth. The harvest has also been hit by drought, particularly in China and Australia, forcing producers to hoard their crops to satisfy local markets.

The increase in rice prices - which some believe could increase by a further 40 per cent in coming months - has matched sharp inflation in other key food products. But with rice relied on by some eight billion people, the impact of a prolonged rice crisis for the world's poor - a large part of whose available income is spent on food - threatens to be devastating.

Reasons cited for the price increases include the noted droughts in Southeast Asia and Australia and a switch of agricultural focus toward grains used for ethanol production, most notably to supply the U.S.'s demand for that fuel which as yet is unproven as an alternative form of energy to reduce reliance on crude oil.  And that only goes to demonstrate again how lifestyle changes are what's called for here, not trying to squeeze more cheap energy out of the earth.

I know, we'll replace it with Soylent Green!  Not a joke about Charlton Heston, but rather a very real discussion that's going on in the corporate boardrooms of the food system in this country.  Last week Tom Philpott took uber-foodies Alice Waters and Michael Pollan to task at Grist for their stance that more expensive food prices could be good for our food system.  Their perspective is that inflation across grocery products would level the playing field for local, organic producers and thus make that food more readily available to the economically challenged (read:  poor) in our cities.  And while he backed off from this a bit (but not completely) in his post earlier this week, his key point is that if the crap food producers can absorb any of the commodity price increases flowing through the system and not pass those increases on to their customers it will make the worst food even more appealing.  And he points out that one of the ways to absorb those price increases is to reformulate the food itself, using cheaper inputs.  Pretty sure those replacements won't be sustainable, local, and organic.  Yuck!

How are the farmers responding to the current situation?  In an article in today's New York Times, David Streitfeld writes that with those same commodity prices rising, farmers are abandoning efforts previously focused on conservation in favor of growing crops more intensely, hoping to capitalize on higher profits 'while the gettings good'.  This of course leaves the land in worse shape and threatens its viability as food producing in the future:  the very definition of non-sustainable.  From the article:

Environmental and hunting groups are warning that years of progress could soon be lost, particularly with the native prairie in the Upper Midwest. But a broad coalition of baking, poultry, snack food, ethanol and livestock groups say bigger harvests are a more important priority than habitats for waterfowl and other wildlife. They want the government to ease restrictions on the preserved land, which would encourage many more farmers to think beyond conservation.

This kind of thinking gets us into trouble every single time.  Crisis arrives and we throw overboard every good and sustainable practice we have in order to respond to a short term impact to our day-to-day lives.  One of these days, it's going to come back to bite us.

As for my house, we're buying local and organic as often as possible, from people we know who raise the food themselves.  When does the farmers market open where you are?

I know I've been out of the mix for awhile, but at least I thought this would be done.  Despite the fact that I've been writing on this blog about the impending 2007, er, 2008 Farm Bill for over a year now, it appears the volume of commentary is not directly correlated to the completion of that effort.  As noted yesterday by Keith Good at Farm Policy, it appears more extensions of the 2002 legislation are in the works. Which is only slightly better than reverting back to the original legislation, which would put farmers nationwide back into the stone-ages of industrial agriculture.  No version, whether it be the original legislation from pre-1950's, the current version under discussion, or the 2002 version, really address payment limits, rural development, and conservation as they need to.  All while tainted, unhealthy food continues to feed America's children, and make them sick.  And still nary a word about food policy from any of our three presidential candidates. . . Your elected officials are not only not fixing the food system in this country, but it's hardly even on their radar as a problem.  And it's getting worse every day.

What kind of lifestyle changes?, you ask. . . Always one to get my attention by leading off a post with a quote by Thoreau, Sharon at Casaubon's Book offers an extended meditation on use and disuse of all those appliances in the house, up to and including some items we have become convinced we absolutely cannot live without.  An expert on how we might respond to the crisis in food and energy in our world, Sharon is reinventing the notion of living Deliberately, considering her actions individually and making changes.  On the subject of that refrigerator in your kitchen, for instance, she offers an alternative to the approach we're all currently taking:

. . . what we do is freeze several large jugs of water and ice packs, and simply rotate them in the fridge. I put the jugs in, and when they are wholly melted, take them out and replace them with other ones and put them back in the freezer.  This keep us with a functional refrigerator, maybe not quite as cold as a regular fridge, but cold enough that you can feel it if you open the door.  Keeps food just fine.  The other 5 months a year, we don’t bother with this because we have natural refrigeration outside.

Read on for further insight into alternative uses for the dishwasher, microwave and my personal favorite, the clothes dryer.  And think about changes you can make, right now where you are.

He's At It Again

I've written here quite a bit about the importance of personal action in the effort to build a sustainable future.  Al Gore, who is much more knowledgeable than I on many of the threats that we face, believes that while personal action is important (as evidenced by his own), it's not enough.  He says we need a greater deal of urgency for legislated change, as discussed in this very recent video published by TED.  As we enter this spring season, it's time to make a commitment to change, global change.  Take the time to watch this presentation and hear what Gore has to say.

No, I haven't been "Disappeared"

Thanks to everyone who sent emails to ask about my current state of being, especially the one that questioned whether I had been "Disappeared."  I know it's been quiet around here, and that three of you are waiting on my final Wendell Berry post in the recent series.  To calm any concerns, I haven't seen any Suburbans with tinted windows following me around and all is well with the world.  What I have been doing, what we have been doing, is preparing for Spring.  The first plants are in the ground as of yesterday, Mrs. Deliberately spearheading the effort to make sure we are eating from our own soil this year.  And not only are we preparing our geography, but also our mentality, to harvest great new things from the new season.

So don't worry, I'll be back.  I've been working on some things that I think you'll enjoy.  And in the meantime, let me excite your appetite with the following email, received this week from Frieda Lansing at Windermere Farms with the subject line "CERTIFIED ORGANIC STRAWBERRIES COMING SOON":

As you can see from the attachment, we have been busy weeding and covering strawberries
getting ready for the delicious strawberries to get ripe.  The covers are now off, hoping that any late frost or freeze will not happen.

We will keep you informed, but just wanted to remind you that it is almost time.
Don't forget that strawberries are one of the fruits that retain more poisons than any other.

We'll advise you of the price etc. as they come in- we estimate about 3 weeks.

Can you say strawberries and cream?  And strawberry smoothies?  How about just a big bowl of fresh, succulent organic strawberries to snack on?  And strawberry pie with home-made pastry crust?  I'll be dreaming of strawberries!

Conversations with Wendell Berry, Post #3

Today we turn again to the book Conversations with Wendell Berry edited by Professor Morris Allen Grubbs of the University of Kentucky (whose basketball team, sadly, did not advance to the second round of the NCAA men's tournament yesterday).  For those of you not following along at home, I began this series with Post #1 and continued it with Post #2.

Reading interviews with Wendell Berry that span thirty-five years certain themes emerge, as I've mentioned before, which serve to define the thinker and give shape to his understanding of the world.  One of those key themes with Berry is the idea of marriage.  When I use the word here, I mean not only the marriage that exists between two consenting adults who choose to commit to each other for a lifetime, but also the marriage we have with the natural world around us.  It is the commitment element, as well as the mutual gratification, that is important to Berry.  He speaks to it pointedly in an interview conducted in 1991 by Vince Pennington for The Kentucky Review.  In the discussion, Berry points out that fail to solve many of our society's problems because of our insistence on dualistic definitions, not out of lack of knowledge with which to tackle them:

We tend to think -- the people in Washington, for instance, the people in state houses, in capitals -- that there can be a distinction between people and the air they breathe, for instance, or people and the food they eat, or people and the water they drink.  And obviously this is an absurd distinction:  there is no line that you can draw between people and the elements they depend on.  That's why the term "environment" is so bothersome to me.  "Environment" is based on that dualism, the idea that you can separate the human interests from the interests of everything else.  You cannot do it.  We eat the environment.  It passes through our bodies every day, it passes in and out of our bodies.  There is no distinction between ourselves and the so-called environment.  What we live in and from and with doesn't surround us -- it's part of us.  We're of it, and it's of us, and the relationship is unspeakably intimate.

What I get from Berry here is this:  we speak of the environment in the abstract because it has been so disregarded in the economic decisions that have impacted it, but in reality that abstraction is an error in our thinking.  To be apologists for the economic decisions by referring to the environment as something separate from us is to play the game as the abusers would have us play it -- separated so that it can be managed and manipulated into serving our will.  In reality, our relationship with the world around us is interdependent and transcends the relationship we have with the economic interests that would destroy it.  Recognizing the right-ness of this approach we realize what needs to be managed and manipulated are the economic interests.  And that they should be handled from the perspective of the needs of nature, human and non-human equally.

This recognition of the relationship between us and our world, Berry suggests, represents a marriage more profound than that we share with a partner:  it is a commitment to be wisely interdependent come what may.  It parallels traditional thinking about marriage in that it is not conditional:  once we agree to the bond, once we recognize it, our lives are forever changed.

Love is not just a feeling; it's a practice, something you practice whether you feel like it or not.  If you have a relationship with anybody -- a friend, a family member, a spouse -- you have to understand by the terms of that relationship to do things for those people, and you do them whether you feel like it or not.  If you don't, it's useless.  You're not always going to feel like it.  This is what you learn as soon as you become a farmer, for instance.  Once you get into a relationship with even so much as a vegetable garden, you realize that you have to do the work whether you want to or not.  You may have got into it because of love, but there are going to be days when you are sick and you're going to have to do your work anyhow.  With animals, the work is even more inescapable.  There's no way out if you have a milk cow, no reprieve.  A cow doesn't know that you're sick.  She doesn't say, "Well, since you're sick I just won't make any milk."  She makes the milk, and you've got to get it.

So we commit to the land and to each other, and we expect economic interests to respect that commitment as a primary motivation.  Why hasn't this worked in the past?  Because government has evolved, at least in the United States, to represent the interests of economics above the interests of people and the land.  And that role has resulted in a ravaging of our natural resources to produce profit at any cost.  This is not the role government should be playing, in Berry's thought.  From a 2003 interview with Jim Minick at Appalachian Journal:

The government ought to prevent people from destroying things outright.  It's so obviously a question that the government needs to ask:  what right does a mere person have to destroy forever a mountain or a watershed?  And the government isn't asking that question.  What right do we have to burn up all the oil and all the coal in, really, a very short time?  Wes Jackson is saying that this is the "prodigal" era of our history.  He means it's the era when we squander our birthright, the era in which we use up most of the fossil fuel and most of the soil.

Sound familiar?  Pay attention to the headlines and it will.  Berry espouses the principle of making decisions that will influence our children to the seventh generation.  And when you live by that approach, using up all the oil or burning all the coal isn't a reasonable action, since it will leave your ancestors in a situation of extreme need.  Instead, we should be making decisions that are closed-loop, fully conscious, deliberate.  We should be taking from the earth only what we can replenish, even if not immediately.

There's such a thing as a principle of return.  That you're a living creature implies that you have a right to take from the world what you need to maintain yourself, to live and go on.  The compensating principle is the principle of return.  You must take but you also must give back, so that the cycle completes itself over and over again.  The Wheel of Life -- of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay -- must turn, and it must turn in place.

A marriage worthy of a lifetime commitment.  In the final post on this worthy book I'll turn the discussion toward the mutual gratification element of the marriage commitment.  How does this response to the natural world lead to joy?  How do we reconcile a more physical commitment to our land with the need to celebrate?  Berry has answers and we'll explore them.

Photo courtesy of Mathieu Struck at flickr and is shared under a creative commons license