Just shy of a soapbox

If you haven't already, stop by The Slow Cook and check out Ed's post on fish sustainabilty. Please don't take this as a preaching of politics, I'm in love with our differences, but I do appreciate being informed. I knew salmon and a few other species were on the "oh shit" list, but damn, there are a bunch more that need to stay off my plate. If you find what Ed has shared helpful, kick ass, if not... well, still kick ass. Cheers.

Shout out and fun with parenthesis

Skrubtudsen at In the Toad's Garden recently put up a really cool post about mobile community gardens (Ørestad Mobile Eco-gardens). I'm not sure what his affiliation is with the project (I guess I could ask), but he has shared a few posts this past year on the development of the movement (yes I just called it a movement). Rob at One Straw Revolution does something similar, but I don't believe the garden containers he makes are transportable once they've been filled with dirt (again, I guess I could ask). I just want to give a "Hell Yes!" to these guys and any one else out there who brings gardening to those who live in communities where backyards aren't in surplus. I hope some day to do the same for some of the neighborhoods in the Philly area.

Thanks guys, you make change inspirational.

All we are saying is give peas a chance.

The rain thwarted our pea planting plans so we stayed inside to read, get some work done, and listen to NPR. Given all the grim reports on the fifth anniversary of the war, that made for a fairly gloomy day.

The forecast is looking better for tomorrow, though, and it will be the first day of Spring, so perhaps we'll get to the peas then.

A School Lunch

We are political eaters. Now this doesn't mean we're perfect eaters—I can tear into a cheesesteak like an alligator eating a gazelle—but I don't think either of us has stepped into a a fast food joint (bathroom breaks included) in at least five years. I believe that the processed foods we buy at the market are officially nonexistent and just about every meal we eat requires some sort of preparation that can't be done in a microwave.

We don't eat like this to look kickass to everyone else; we do it because our bodies just respond well to it. There is also great pleasure to be had from food that is allowed the freedom to communicate its flavors in the simplest expressions. I think that everyone would have a healthier relationship with their food if they just gave it time. Unfortunately, time is probably the greatest reason why people feed themselves food not from their own kitchens.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my "long days." I leave to catch the train at 7:15 in the morning and get back around 4:00 in the afternoon. On Mondays and Wednesdays I'm usually back by 2:00 before I have to teach a 6-9. Yeah I know, my life is rough.

On my long days, I pack a lunch which usually consists of fruit, a PBJ, and some soup. There isn't a microwave for me to use, so if I want something hot I need to bring it in a food jar or start a fire. I figured that I would save the later for after I get tenure.

Before the semester started I bought a Stanley food jar and it has been the talk of the town/faculty lounge. To keep in line with our political appetite, I make my soup from scratch (broth excluded until next year). I chop up a bit of potatoes and veggies the night before and bring them to a boil in broth the following morning. By the time lunch rolls around, the potatoes are cooked through and the rest of the veggies have added a little boost to the broth. It's pretty simple and the fact that I only have to do it twice a week really helps keep it interesting.

Get Thee to a Polling Place

If your state is up on Super Tuesday, go seek out whatever church or elementary school basement they set up the voting machines in and vote! We're largely irrelevant here in Pennsylvania--though all the races are close enough that we might acually count for something by the time our primary rolls around--but if we lived in one of the states that vote today, we'd definitely be at the polls.

And that's why we don't eat at McDonalds

Mark Bittman, a food writer for The New York Times, has written a wonderful, unappetizing article about the miserable implications of industrial meat production. If you've got an extra fifteen minutes, check it out: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

Essentially, Bittman writes about the ways we disproportionately allocate resources to meat production, and he speculates on how it's all gonna catch up with us, and soon. The problem is worldwide but as with almost everything else I can think of, Westerners can take most of the blame since we insist on doing everything--including meat eating, apparently--to excess. Americans eat about four pounds of meat a week, though fifty years ago that average was three pounds. Furthermore, Bittman learned that

"...if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius."

So really, we're eating so much of the stuff that even cutting out a small amount--twenty percent isn't that much--would have a huge impact. And after charging through Michael Pollan's latest two books recently, it's pretty clear to me that the effects of a twenty percent reduction would be positive for the environment as well as for people's health. If everyone in America did that, we'd be eating twelve billion pounds less meat each year. Holy crap.

We could probably eat all the meat we wanted with minimal environmental impact if we made sure all of it was sustainably raised--though the problem there, of course, is that sustainable farms can't give us all we want if what we want is billions and billions of hamburgers and chicken wings. However, supporting small farmers will help them produce as much as they're able. If you haven't already done so, before oil prices drive the cost of industrial meat through the roof you might want to make friends with one of these farmers so you have a source of local, responsibly raised, and probably organic meat.

Stop Wasting Abandoned Property

On my train ride to and from work I pass through Philadelphia's unfortunate ring of garbage. I've begun to mentally catalogue the trash, deciphering what could be recycled and reused. Quite often the reuse qualities are garden related. Meg and I try to reuse before we buy new and this often involves creative scavenging*.

Along with the ring of trash there are also the overwhelming number of abandoned factory and apartment buildings. As the title of the post suggests, I think something should be done to utilize (recycle and reuse) all of this unused space. In my early teens I went with my church to Yonkers, New York on a two week mission trip to help reclaim abandoned homes and turn them into affordable housing. The program was called S.W.A.P. (Stop Wasting Abandoned Property) and it was created and run by a local Presbyterian pastor. What little funding they had came from donations. They were able to stretch that funding with recycled and reused materials. After experiencing what can be done with a little pride and inventiveness, I have to ask myself why we're building new (suburban sprawl) when we could be rebuilding.

Granted, a good deal of these abandoned properties are in low income, high crime areas that most suburbanites try to avoid (I'm sure we could all hypothisize why there is this divide). I believe that when cultural and ethnic diversity is embraced, it makes the community stronger. When I volunteered for SWAP, even as a teenager, I noticed how much a neighborhood could come to life when the people who live there have pride and purpose invested in where they live. So what if instead of building homes, an organization was developed to build gardens. I think it would be cool if each of these neighborhoods were to reclaim one of these buildings and turn it into a community garden. I'm sure this has already been done**, but what would it take to provide this opportunity to all communities?

Imagine if a community were to receive a grant to purchase a building, have is torn down, and turned into a community garden to replenish their local food cupboard (let's not forget that poor nutrition is also an issue in lower income neighborhoods). Many of these buildings are made of brick. The bricks could be used to make rows between the beds and stacked to make the actual raised beds. Then there is the ring of garbage to be utilized to make trellises, tomato cages, curing tables, work benches, bird baths, rain harvesters, and all kinds of other stuff.

There is no way Meg and I could run a project like this on our own, nor would we want to, but we are curious to know how we could get it started. If any of you have ever seen anything like this done and have some suggestions, please share. Thanks.

*Check out Patrick's post on the environmental benefits and hazards of the materials we choose to use or reuse in the garden. His post specifically targets PVC.

**I've actually been tossing this post draft around for a little while now and in the meantime read two posts that touch a bit on this subject. The first was from In the Toad's Garden and it talks about a mobile community garden. The second post is from Fast Grow the Weeds, which doesn't really talk about community reclamation (it's about saying enough to petty excuses and getting out there and doing something), but Ali from Henbogle (you've got to see her reclaimed sink) had a comment to the post that does point to some of the potential hazards of such a project.

Local vs. Organic

There is an interesting conversation going on at Garden Punks that is addressing the argument of "What is Organic?" I dig the spirit of the post, but what has caught my attention is what was said in the comments left by Patrick and Life and Lawns.

The question I think that is being addressed, is what makes something organic and is it REALLY organic. Quite honestly, Meg and I feel the whole "Certified Organic" thing is a load of bullshit, specifically for reasons Patrick had brought to light. Certified Organic is a USDA regulated tag and I'm sure it's pretty safe to say that they're readily influenced by some shady lobbyists.

Meg and I are very organic-minded in our lives and in our garden (if you could separate the two), but as consumers we find the organic/green tag to be nothing more than just a tag. What the hell am I getting at? Try this on: if you have to make the choice, is it better to buy organic, or local? Personally I would have to go with local. Although I like the taste and politics of an organic avocado from Trader Joe's, the fact that it was shipped in from Peru doesn't help the environment a damn bit (Meg's words).

Tiny Farm Blog put up a post today that I think brings together the best of both worlds. I dig his dedication to sustainability and earth friendly practices. Side note: he is Certified Organic, but he's growing in Canada so I'm not entirely familiar with their regulations. After reading his blog for the past six months or so, I'm guessing certified organic there means you're pretty kick ass.

To bring this back into Garden Punks's original post about organic beer, I would have to say I would prefer to go local. Fortunately we have a kick ass brewery right down the road (it's seriously like only three miles, max). If you ever run across a bar that serves Victory, I highly recommend a hearty sampling. Warning: If the Victory beer you're drinking is Golden Monkey or Old Horizontal, please don't drive. I swear the stuff will make you hallucinate.