Author Archives: geek 1

Losing Our Balance and Recovering It Again

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Since we’re waiting for the seedlings to grow and the land to warm, before we can plant anything, I thought I’d survey some current stories floating around the world:

  • In the U.S., many traditional small farmers have been financially squeezed out of business by modern agricultural changes and artificially manipulated markets. (This trend is starting to be countered by the growth of organic and value-added farming techniques, providing a greater return to the grower.) This same process of small farm divestment is now happening in India, but with much more serious consequences. By fundamentally changing centuries of farming processes, poor farmers are enduring serious, needless suffering. Christiane Amanpour did a story on this and PBS created a documentary on the problem. Essentially, farmers are being told that their yields will be much higher with hybrid and genetically modified seed. What they aren’t realizing is that they must also have irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides to see such yields. These cost money, if they can get them at all. At the end of the year, after not making quite as much as they thought, they are having to buy seed for the next round of crops, going into serious debt. This debt accumulates until, in despair, farmers are committing suicide. The estimate is that over 250,000 farmers have died, leaving their families destitute and landless. In a land where farmers live on $2 a day, it doesn’t take much for them to lose everything.
  • In the state of Washington, organic farms are growing at a steady rate. Amazing!
  • My favorite new toy: The Altec Lansing Orbit iM207 has the best sound for my little Zune HD. It just works so well and sounds so good. I will need to wax poetic about the Zune here shortly. I’m just in love with the whole little package.

In the next entry, I should have an updated picture of all the seedlings. Can’t wait to get planting!

We All Need Heroes

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I’m going to say something I thought I’d never say…one of my heroes is a basketball player. (Hey, unless a sport involves a draft horse, I’m not paying any attention to it.) Will Allen has changed my mind about the potential a sports figure can have.

Inner cities have the worst access to good food. You can find lots of fast food and convenience stores there, but no fresh, organic food. Mr. Allen founded Growing Power,
which has created a revolution in urban agriculture. He’s shown that healthy, sustainable food can be successfully grown in very small urban spaces. He’s pioneered vertical and fully integrated growing systems, training people how to use them to transform their lives. The Milwaukee Headquarters is at the epicenter. In their own words:

“This historic two-acre farm is the last remaining farm and greenhouse operation in the City of Milwaukee. Since 1999, our Community Food Center has provided a wonderful space for hands-on activities, large-scale demonstration projects, and for growing a myriad of plants, vegetables, and herbs. In a space no larger than a small supermarket live some 20,000 plants and vegetables, thousands of fish, and a livestock inventory of chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, and bees.”

Growing Power now has multiple farms, training programs, farmers markets, youth outreach, and food policy initiatives. All of these aim to change the way food is grown and delivered to urban markets, providing better health for those who don’t have access and can’t usually afford fresh, organic foods.

Last year, Will Allen was awarded a McArthur fellowship to continue his vital work. This February, he visited Seattle and talked about the need for a multi-cultural, inter-generational approach to creating a new food growing paradigm. “All people should have access to food – and we’ve proven we can do it.”

Rural folk Intentions

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The one hesitation I had when I originally pondered a rural life was whether I would feel isolated so far out in the country. Well, I needn’t have been concerned. This is the most hopping place…

(Yes, that’s an Easter pun.)

Starting in April, there is at least one festival per weekend, and, usually several. Rural folk intentionally gather and celebrate all aspects of country life and they do it with such glee.
This weekend, we attended the Garden Faire and then traveled to the Fidalgo Island Quilters show. Yes, that’s a bit much for one day, but we soldiered through.

The Garden Faire is the summer’s introduction to the local gardening organizations and suppliers. Wild Song, the organic nursery across the street, sponsors this event. It’s so fun hanging out with all our friends there. The Harvest Jubilee, our autumn farm festival, was represented, (more on that in a later post), as was the Master Gardener’s group. The National Wildlife Federation had experts talking about their Wildlife Habitat program, which helps people create havens for wild animals within their own yards. They’ll be having garden tours later this year on Camano Island.

Of course, there were lots of local vendors, with some amazing, hand-crafted products: African baskets made on-site, painted glass, fudge (yum), metal garden art, music, plants, BBQ, jewelry, and, of course, espresso.

Sufficiently tanked up on coffee, I drove our little group to Anacortes and we spent the afternoon staring at textile art. In one of my earlier posts, I talked about the integration of diverse cultures into the art of quilting. This show highlighted that integration and then added a few new techniques. Many of the quilts took their inspirations from photography, using embroidery and appliqué to show depth and texture.

So, if you make a quilt, especially if it’s a small one, what do you do with it? (Hey, they can’t all be king-sized masterpieces. That would be a lot of yardage to quilt and it would make my arms tired.) Well, you can hang it on a wall, you can use it on a table, (see?), or you can use it as a throw. You can quilt a vest, a jacket, or a vestry garment.

In fact, the techniques used in quilting often translate into other areas of endeavor. It is, after all, a practice in spatial ability, which teaches the ideals of perspective, the basics of design, and how to work with color. The very best quilts engage you while keeping you warm.

Lest we forget, the big Tulip Festival is going on all this month is the lovely Skagit Valley. Good scenery, good food, and, maybe, thousands of migratory birds for entertainment. Sounds like fun to me.

Seed Shopping for Geeks!

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We raise three things on this farm: produce, really big horses, and geeks. Geeks and greens, that’s our motto.

Sunday saw all of us in a seed buying frenzy. The sister had her fully annotated list of the current seed inventory, cross-indexed and certified. She and the neighbor had set up and filled all the pods in preparation for sprouting while the brother-in-law and I were luxuriating in ECCC10. (See the previous post.) We were ready. (I’m not sure the Country Store, our local feed and seed, was, though.)

Approaching the seed aisles, I decided to detour into puppy supply land. The dog would have been disappointed without certain pig accoutrements to temper his mope over not being invited to go to the store. That, and I needed to stand back while the sister and the neighbor went to work on the seed inventory. So, how many varieties of pumpkins this year? Atlantic Giant or Big Max? Pak Choi is always necessary. Do we need just the 4 varieties of green beans or do we want to plant a few more? Will the small garden accommodate a full set of Walla Walla Sweet onions? Can you have too many winter
squash? And what about beets?

Then we discovered that with 20 seed packets, you get free cultivation tools. Oooo, farming heaven!

We ran home and planted everything. (Okay, almost everything. Some plants must be sown directly into the soil. They don’t transplant well.)

The CollectiveMeanwhile, the brother-in-law broke out the hedge trimmers (mmm…power tools) and carved the box hedge into a perfect cube. We named it “The Collective”, and were well satisfied.

ECCC10 or How to Attend a Con Unprepared

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The first rule of attending a con is: if you’re completely unprepared, go anyway. It’s worth it. I attended the Emerald City ComiCon 2010 on Saturday, completely spontaneously. Usually, proper preparation is crucial to precision deployment of all forces on the Con floor. Here’s what I didn’t do:

  • Bring the big backpack, essential for swag.
  • Load up on cash. Comic artists aren’t known for their merchant credit card accounts.
  • Bring a camera. (See below.) ‘Nuff said
  • Study the exhibition floor plan before walking into the room.
  • Get there early for Wil Wheaton’s Awesome Hour.

Since the brother-in-law and I were headed south on a completely unrelated excursion, we decided to stop by the con and check it out. I’m glad we did. We went by the Scruffy Puppies table, chatted with Brent, and picked up volumes 1 and 2. He said there should eventually be 10 in the series.

We bought T-shirts, of course, wholly appropriate for the geeks that we are. Then I stopped by a booth called Geek Chic. It was not what I suspected it to be. It was full of fine, hardwood furniture for all your gaming and geekified needs. Being the ex-furniture designer that I am, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the workmanship of their pieces: dovetail joins on the full wood drawers, inlaid details, and, I could tell, layers of hand-sanded finishes. Since their shop is close by, I may have to visit.

And this is why you should always take a camera to a Con. How else could you capture the essence of such a monumentous moment, Superman on a Cell phone?

Yep, completely worth it.

Walking the Pasture

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As winter loosens its grip, the pastures start to drain of all the season’s rain. The grass is at its shortest height of the year. It is the best time to clear the ground of any detritus that has blown in from the surrounding area. As a group, everyone walks the pastures, back and forth, end to end and side to side. We search for anything that might injure the horses or the land.

It’s amazing what we find. So many plastic shopping bags float into the fields from passing cars and trucks, they end up all over the place. (That makes me even more dedicated to reusable bags for shopping.) We have to watch for even the smallest signs of them since many bags are buried just under the grass. Plastic is bad, but the thin bags used for shopping can really wreak havoc with a horse’s internal systems. You know, they’ll pick up anything that they find interesting.

We’ve found children’s toys, men’s shirts, plastic, glass, and aluminum containers, a grazing muzzle (lost last year), feed bags, cereal boxes, junk mail, and a number of things which used to be something, possibly, at one time. Once in awhile, there will be something wholly inappropriate and fairly unmentionable. Speculation immediately follows as to how said item ended up in the pasture when it should have been housed, discreetly, in someone’s bedroom endtable. We’ll never know.

The brother-in-law was hoping for a trebuchet. “The neighbors have one in their field. It flings pumpkins.”

Walking the pasture is a zen experience, much like meditation. Of course, we had to stop periodically to chat with a neighbor who drove by. That goes without saying. It’s what you do on a farm – walking meditation and chatting with the neighbors. Sometimes, they are exactly the same thing.

To veg or not to veg; that might not be the question…

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I might as well get this out of the way. It’s that age old argument against eating meat. Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is easier on the planet and, in many cases, better for our health. However, there are those of us who can’t. Yes, really. We can’t. Let me explain.

I am constantly searching for a better way to feed myself, especially since I have Fibromyalgia. Better nutrition means less pain. (That’s also one reason I choose to grow my own food, but that’s for a whole new posting.) I tried being vegetarian for a year. In that time I was routinely getting sick and couldn’t quite shake the unrelenting fatigue. I finally went to my rheumatologist who tested me for food allergies. Apparently, I have quite a few. The big ones were pretty serious, as it turns out:

  • Vegetable proteins, including nuts, seeds, soy, all high protein veggies
  • Nightshade plants – potatoes, tomatoes, peppers (yes, all of them) and eggplants
  • Grains – almost every one
  • Tropical fruits
  • Dairy products

All of these were making me very ill. The weird fact was that the only proteins I wasn’t allergic to were meat, poultry, and fish. I have no choice. If I don’t want to be sick constantly, or die from lack of protein, I have to eat meat. What’s an animal lover to do?

I talked with my Tibetan friends, whose Buddhist beliefs teach them to revere all life as precious. They also have traditionally lived at or above 10,000 feet where not much grows. For thousands of years, they have lived off of meat and dairy as those were the only things available. To balance their resources with their beliefs, they have put practices into place, mitigating loss of life. One large animal feeds many people as opposed to smaller animals which can’t feed as many. This is why rivers in Tibet don’t get harvested for their shrimp or fish. It would take many lives to feed one person.

When they came to the U.S., many of them tried to become vegetarian. They became ill because their bodies weren’t used to that diet. They had to go back to meat and dairy. Even His Holiness, the Dalai Lama tried to be vegetarian once and had the same experience.

My Blackfoot friend, Bob, comes from a tradition of great reverence for the animals, bison mostly, who give of themselves so that people can live. His knowledge of the Northern Plains and his deep understanding of the natural world gives me a glimpse of what it means to regard animals not as other, but as us. It means that we must be thankful for every life-sustaining thing we receive from the world, not just once in awhile, but constantly.

I have conversations with my friend, Nancy, who is vegan and understands why I eat meat. We’ve really come to the conclusion that people must choose what’s best for them. I eat nutritiously and do what’s right for the environment, insofar as it’s possible. I make sure the meat I eat comes from producers I know. I know how they raise their animals. I don’t waste anything. I do my best.

Okay, that’s done. On to more farming talk…

Small Farms Conservancy

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Brought to you by the same fine folks who publish the Small Farmer’s Journal, the Small Farms Conservancy is leading the way to a better small farm future. Their mission is to educate, advocate, protect, sustain, and inspire small farming worldwide. Some of the immediate needs they plan to tackle include apprenticeship programs, farmland preservation, affordable insurance, legal aid, and a whole host of concerns unique to those who farm. They are looking towards the future by establishing an agrarian think tank, a micro-loan program, a retirement program, farm care-taking services, and many other services sorely needed by today’s small farmer.

It’s easy being green (especially if you hate spending money…)

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…or if you like being lazy about buying new stuff. Really. I’m a master at not buying things. (It’s almost embarrassing sometimes.) Here is my modus operandi:

  • We remodeled a kitchen using refurbished cabinets from Restore. It was cheap but the cabinets were solid wood. You can’t get those anymore. I’ve bought bath appliances there and, sometimes, furniture.
  • I own antiques (otherwise known as gently used) furnishings. I like the style and
    they’ve stood the test of time
  • I compost because it’s easy on a farm – just make a pile of green stuff and horse
    leavings, and mix it up once in awhile. It takes care of itself.
  • I recycle, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because I hate paying
    extra for garbage service.
  • I hate throwing out old tech and I refuse to do it. I still have my TI99 computer
    from 1978, and it still works. I can play a very slow game of Pong on it or write a program in Basic. (That is, if I can remember Basic…) I refurbish and give away or recycle any other used computers and their parts.
  • I give any unused cell phones to women’s shelters, veteran’s hospitals, or any other group who can use them.
  • Almost all of my kitchen appliances, such as the can opener, coffee grinder, coffee maker, etc. are hand operated, no electricity required.
  • I like CFLs. They give off a lower light than the energy-gobbling incandescent bulbs. Mood lighting is good for the soul.
  • I really like antiquarian books – the older, the better.
  • I keep cars until the wheels, or other major parts, fall off, usually 10 years. (That is, unless someone smacks into me while I’m stopped at a light, totaling my car, and then runs away. That, however, is an entirely different posting, which will be saved for when I’m in a snarky mood.)For me, it’s actually easier to reduce, reuse, or recycle than it is to buy new or toss things in the garbage.

Oh, and there’s this little thing I have against shopping…

The Year’s Best Film

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The best film I’ve seen all year is a little documentary called Good Food. It got amazing reviews and several awards. I really enjoyed its feeling of hope for our small farms and its reverence for the land. The movie just makes you feel good. Here’s a bit of a description:

“Something remarkable is happening in the fields and orchards of the Pacific Northwest. Small family farmers are making a comeback. They’re growing much healthier food, and lots more food per acre, while using less energy and water than factory farms.”

It will have a showing on September 19th and 20th, 1:30 p.m., at the Laurelhurst Theater in Portland, Oregon and on September 21st at the National Council of Churches in New York City (475 Riverside Dr – 3rd Floor Conference Room). It will be broadcast on November 12th on KCTS – Seattlen and KYVE – Yakima. (Check the local listings for the specific dates.)

Here’s the official website: Organic Consumers