Category — books, movies, articles

A couple of nights ago, my lovely roommate Sylvia emailed me late in the afternoon to ask if I was a fan of Project Runway. I haven’t watched much TV in the past few years (except for those days when I had food poisoning in Cambodia and I lay in my bed for 48 hours straight watching bootleg Sex & The City DVDs) but I have watched that show and it was very entertaining.

It gives me the shivers to watch people do what they’re really good at. People with intensity and real talent that’s been honed by hard work. When I was in Spain, I took an art history class from a crazy old Spanish man who tried to get his young American students to pose for him in the nude. He was a terrible teacher of history, and he was old and lecherous but when he got up to the board and started drawing these gorgeous chalk representations of famous artworks as if it were nothing… something in me reacted. My breath came heavy and I got a funny feeling in my stomach.

All this to say that this is how I feel sometimes when I watch a show like Project Runway where people are creating beautiful things under a deadline, sometimes out of what seems like nothing.

This episode didn’t disappoint.

First of all, it started on a farm.

Then, they made cocktail dresses out of potato sacks.

And to top it all off, one of the models on the show was a friend from high school. Sophia Lee. I hadn’t seen her in years and years. She doesn’t look too different.

At first, watching this show, I wondered if the farm shout-out was somehow testament to the ever-growing trendiness of all-things agriculture, but in fact I think it was a bit of the opposite. Despite mentions of farmcations in the New York Times and rising seed sales and the explosion of foodie films, it seems the mainstream image of farms still calls on the adjectives “old” and “dirty.” The designers wrinkle their noses as they run across (freshly tilled?) rows of dirt to reach their models. The urban still scorns the rural and needs to transform it into something different, more glamorous.

I’m looking for inspiration as I write these essays. I got some feedback to “think bigger” in parts of my essays. I’ve always had the most expansive (if not most coherent) thoughts when reading poetry. And Berry is particularly apropo.
One time, I’ll tell you all the story of how my grandparents met Mr. Berry back in Kentucky. But for now, a poem:

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”

Tomorrow my third column in our local city paper hits the news stands. The Fullerton Observer is a wonderful not-for-profit pub run basically as a one-woman show by a local Fullertonian, Sharon Kennedy.

I called Sharon up one day a week or so after I got back to the OC to ask if I could write a Good Food Happy Planet column. “Well a lot of people want to write columns,” she said. “What did you have in mind?” I explained about the whole farm bit and gave a little pitch. “I just think the people in Fullerton might be interested in reading about where their food comes from. It’s a timely issue, plus good food’s trendy,” I ventured. Sharon agreed, and the column was born.

Week one, I wrote about gleaning. Week two, the Fullerton Farmers Market. And this past time, I wrote about processing ten of our backyard chickens. I left out most of the more specific details — still not sure what level of information is TMI versus just right for the Fullerton audience.

I know it’s a small step, but it’s fun to be writing for a different sort of crowd — not necessarily just my friends and fellow foodies, but folks who just happened to pick up a copy in the local coffee shop or at Ralphs. It forces me to be accessible, and also not take anything for granted.

Sharon came to the potluck on Wednesday and while we were waiting in line for the spread, she told me that I received my first mini fan note for the column! Woohoo!

Here’s the article from this time ’round… or you can download the PDF for the full experience:

Chickens

Down the slope away from our house, underneath a couple of huge eucalyptus trees, sits my dad’s chicken coop. There’s a structure with nest boxes that opens our onto the pecking yard which is enclosed with chicken wire to keep our the coyotes and our little terrier Duncan. The coop houses a dozen or so proud hens: some black and white Barred Rock beauties, Araucanas that lay little turquoise eggs, the regal Polish Crested with their big fluffed white hairdos, and some unidentified buff-colored girls.

This summer on the farm, I learned a lot about chickens. We kept around 60 laying hens — all Rhode Island Reds — and around 120 Cornish Cross broiler chickens which we raised for meat. Prior to the farm, I hadn’t ever thought about the difference between laying hens and meat chickens, but it turns out they’re very different creatures. Broilers are bred to grow larger, faster and to have a greater breast-to-body ratio than other breeds. They only take about 12 weeks to grow to a marketable size. Layers on the other hand take about 6 months to start laying, and continue to lay eggs at a constant rate until they are around 2 years old.

On the farm, I learned all about feeding and taking care of hens, protecting them from predators, collecting, washing and packing eggs, and finally about processing the chickens for meat.

My mum with 10 of the chickens we processed last weekend.

Processing chickens is hard, smelly work. I’m not squeamish; I participated in every part of the process: the killing, dunking in hot water, plucking feathers, eviscerating and cleaning. I grew up eating meat and intend to keep eating meat, but now that I’ve participated in the full process, from chick to chicken enchilada, I have so much more appreciation for the energy and care it takes to bring meat to the table. It’s so easy to forget, when I’m buying a clean plastic-wrapped package of pre-cut chicken tenders, or picking up a chicken burrito at Chipotle, that this was once a living, breathing animal. It’s easy to take for granted the resources it took to hatch and feed and raise a chicken for my table.

This weekend, we processed ten of my dad’s hens in the backyard. They were getting older and were no longer laying, and we needed to make way for a new batch of chicks. Between me, my parents, my aunt and a friend, I was the only one who had done this before, so I organized the different stations and showed everyone the ropes. It didn’t take more than a few hours, but afterwards, I crashed on the couch in front of the TV for the rest of the day, totally drained.

Now, the chickens are curing in our refrigerator, and I’m contemplating what to cook. Needless to say, whatever it is, I will savor it to the last bite.

This book kicked off my current obsession with preserving foods — I think it’s such a fascinating part of all the food-related issues I’m interested in. Plus, where else can you read about Attila the Hun’s “gallop-cured” meat — preserved by the up-and-down motion of the rider, plus the salt from the horse’s sweat. Yum.

I’ve been reading all I can about the alternative models of agriculture and food business that have arisen as if in opposition of our current dominant industrial system: all kinds of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) structures, farmer distribution coops, artisanal & local cheese or bread or pickle operations, community food coops, canning coops, community kitchens.

Many of these businesses operate by adding “value” to food by cooking or packaging, and a lot of this “value” is in the preservation of food for consumption by the public.

With all the media and hype about local, small-scale food production, and my own new-found and deepening interest in sustainable agriculture and food production, it’s also wonderful to get a perspective on the history of food as we know it.

I knew, but I didn’t really realize how very new our concept of food is. The idea of eating fresh food, whenever, wherever we want is so foreign within our cultural history, and even still in most places in the world and yet many folks in the Western world would be offended if someone told us it might be more healthy and more sustainable and more “normal” to eat a different way.

On my new favorite podcast, Deconstructing Dinner, they recently aired an episode documenting the reactions and thoughts of members of a newly created CSA at the end of its first season. Here’s an apt thought from one member:

“The idea that the food dictates the menu, I think would be a helpful shift for all communities to begin to make. Given the amount of energy that is spent to bring food from afar because we want our menu to dictate what we’re going to buy. It would be a paradigm shift to say, okay, we’ve got some cabbage now and we’ve got some kale and we’ve got broccoli and okay, what are we going to do with that. [...] It would be nice to see larger communities, larger cities make that shift, not only in food, but in everything we consume.”

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews >>

In this entry, I started off on the similarities between a trend in the food industry toward smaller, alternative food & farm businesses and changes in the music industry that resulted in part from the growth of the internet.

I made a brief analogy between the effect of the internet on the music industry and the effect of new information and a shifting culture on the food industry and these comments drew the comparison out further.

I like this comparison. In both cases, there are some seriously established players (“new oligopoly” perhaps?): the major labels and and the major food corporations — who currently control a large part of the market and have a stake in seeing that things as they are don’t change. And in both cases, as a result of a new technology and new information and a changing ethos, consumers demand a new way of doing things.

In the case of the music industry, the game changed when internet technology made it possible to upload and download files. When industry decided to ignore this game-changing innovation and stick to business-as-usual, pirates moved in to fill the gap; eventually some legitimate businesses followed (Apple & iTunes). There were lawsuits, there was upheaval. I’m not sure if the major labels actually lost marketshare, though overall rate-of-growth in the industry supposedly slowed. But in general, it seems to me that consumers and small artists ended up much better off since we now we have all sorts of new and legitimate ways to find out about new music (LastFM, Pandora, cheap iTunes singles available for download) and they now have more avenues to get noticed.

In the food industry, there aren’t really “pirates” yet, since generally food isn’t considered intellectual property** but certainly the big players (and there really are only a few, just like worry that profits will be dispersed as modes of distribution become more varied and specialized, as consumers become more informed and their preferences change and the advantage of scale becomes less important.

In the case of music, large scale players might be frightened by the idea that the internet allows people to find out about an artist online rather than only in a record store. As Janis Ian argues in this article in 2002, music downloads may hurt huge artists and labels, but help almost everyone else, consumers who wouldn’t be exposed to so many new artists and new and small artists, for whom exposure is everything.

In the case of food, large scale players might lose part of their advantage when individuals or policies calculate the true costs of food production (social, environmental) and impose penalties for negative externalities, when sustainable farming and food processing and distribution becomes more efficient with time**, and when society pays attention to other elements of value (taste, nutrition, uniqueness or variety, etc) and not just cost.

So what are some things we could learn?

1. Big companies who are making a lot of money don’t want that to change.
2. Change that may hurt large companies may benefit individual consumers and smaller players, not necessarily financially (lower costs, increased profits), but also in other measures of value — more access to a broader range of music, better access to healthier food that’s better for the planet.
3. Consumer knowledge and behavior can force a change to totally new types of business models.
4. Anything else?

* Monsanto’s patents on certain seeds are a notable exception!
** Some would argue that efficiency isn’t important in the world of organic farming, but I think that’s a romantic and backwards notion. Yes, efficiency isn’t everything, and a quest to produce more, more cheaply can’t completely sacrifice taste, nutritional quality, and the social good, but few would argue with the benefit of finding new appropriate technologies to help make healthy food affordable and accessible to more people.

Borrowed this documentary from the San Juan Island Library and watched it this morning while boiling eggs for Easter deviled eggs and trying a new muffin recipe.

The history of Farmer John’s Illinois farm kind of mirrors the history of Synergy Farm where I am working — from a traditional dairy farm, to a commune, through a period of non-farming (Synergy was a bed-and-breakfast, Farmer John’s land was simply unused), and eventually years later, to an organic and biodynamic farm, serving the local community.

I imagine folks who have been believers since the 60s and before are excited and more than a little smug. But they must also be pretty wary as “organic” filters into popular culture, as it is taken up as a marketing strategy by large corporations and loses much of the richness of its original meaning.

I want to do more study on the history of the idea and the phrase “organic” back through the writings of old Sir Albert Howard, through J.I. Rodale’s How to Grow Fruits and Vegetables by the Organic Method all the way to the trendiness of the O-word today and its connection to the larger (also very en vogue) green movement.

The philosophical question of “what is organic” comes to bear so much on policy and business, and it would be so interesting to understand more about the history of the term and the movement it signifies.

1) Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2) Avoid foods containing ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3) Dont eat anything that won’t eventually rot. [Tootsie rolls! The shame...]
4) Avoid food products that carry health claims.
5) Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
6) Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmer’s market or CSA.
7) Pay more, eat less.
Eat food a wide diversity of species.
9) Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10) Cook and, if you can, grow some of your own food.
11) Eat meals and eat them only at tables.
12) Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.