Keeping up correspondence

I've decided that one of my biweekly goals is to sit down and actually make an attempt to hand-write letters and cards. I have oodles of time during the day during which to respond to e-mails and I do a decent job of returning those in a fairly timely fashion. But, I haven't written a letter since who knows when. I always thought I would be the kind of person who would always remember birthdays and anniversaries and celebrate them with beautiful letterpress cards filled with heartfelt sentiments and posted with vintage stamps. I know how excited I get when there are little surprises in the mail for me and I like the idea of doing that for someone else. 

I was obsessed with having pen pals in high school (way back in those pre-e-mail days). I wrote to friends in Bangladesh, Austria, Zimbabwe, Iceland, and Russia. There are more that I'm forgetting. Going to the post office was a total thrill because I never knew what news I'd be getting from some far away land. All of those pen pals have fallen by the wayside, save one. I kept writing to my friend Susanne in the Netherlands even after we made the Great Shift to E-mail. She even came and stayed with me for a week while she was doing her Grand Tour of the United States. She invited me to stay with her in Amsterdam any time and I would totally feel comfortable taking her up on it, even though long periods of time have lapsed between our communications and we've only met in person once. There's just something about the time invested in writing to someone over such a long period of time that makes us feel that we know each other better than we probably do.

I like the slowness of written communication. The thought process behind it is so completely different from that of writing e-mails.  When I write electronically, I just let it all flow out, knowing that I can go back and edit to my heart's content. When writing something by hand, however, I spend a lot more time composing in my mind. Trying out sentences and discarding the ones that don't sound quite right. Searching for the word or phrase that best captures what I'm trying to say.  It's a far more internal process. And a more poetic one. I think that both of these manners of communication are valuable, but I think that one really is at risk of extinction and I would hate to see that happen. So, to do my part I am returning to my letter-writing roots! I picked up some awesome monogrammed note cards at the thrift store this past weekend for 50 cents and I think they're a great place to start.

Knitting Lessons

I finished my first real, perhaps useful, knitting project! I know that this is an incredibly simple pattern and I'm about at the knitting level of a six-year-old, but I'm happy about it none-the-less.  It's a very simple baby bib in garter stitch from this pattern, using Lily Sugar'n Cream Naturals in worsted weight. The color is "Sonoma Print."

It was super quick to finish (yay instant gratification!), coming together after only a couple hours, which were spread out over several nights. It has inspired me to do a series of bibs, each one introducing me to a new stitching pattern or skill.  A do-it-yourself tutorial, if you will.  Next up is a seed stitch with a cable.  I've always found cables very intimidating, but I think it's time to dive on in.  I just did a quick search on Ravelry and there are just a ton of free bib patterns. I'm very excited.

Weekend Review: Bringing it to the Table by Wendell Berry

Considering my interests, it's very surprising that it took me so long to read any of Wendell Berry's work, especially since he's written 50 books and is everywhere in the food politics scene.  You think I would have stumbled onto him at some point.  He is the son of farmers and he and his wife have farmed in Kentucky for over 40 years.  Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food is a collection of Berry's essays that muse on farms and farmers as well as snippets of his fiction work about food and eating. It's somewhat of a "greatest hits" collection on these topics and all were written between 1971 and 2006.  I was completely and totally blown away. Here is the simple but profound ideas about farming that I long to put into words myself, but somehow always fall a little bit short.  Michael Pollan, in his introduction, claims to pick up any work by Berry and read a passage at random when he has a bout of writer's block.  The smooth easy prose helps to refocus him and guide his own thoughts.  I believe him.  This is one of those books that I spent a lot of time nodding and "mmhmmming" to myself and one that I know I will come back to again and again.

It's difficult for me to pick a single passage to quote or analyze one argument that he makes.  Honestly, they all really speak to me.  But this passage is especially resonant: 

As the price of work has gone up, the value of it has gone down, until it is now so depressed that people simply do not want to do it anymore...People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement...One works not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it, but only to be able to quit--a condition that a saner time would regard as infernal, a condemnation.  This is explained, of course, by the dullness of the work, by the loss of responsibility for, or credit for, or knowledge of the thing made.  What can be the status of the working small farmer in a nation whose motto is a sigh of relief: "Thank God it's Friday'"?

This describes exactly how I feel (and have always felt) about the jobs that I've had and the work that I've done and why I feel such a passionate calling to do something more.  Something that's worthwhile.  I've written before about my frustration at the fact that I only spend 3 to 4 waking hours a day in the company of my husband, the one person I care most about in the entire world, while we spend the rest of our waking time with our co-workers.  And for what?  We both spend the rest of the time in our separate cubicles staring at our computers...so that we can make enough money to buy more things?  It all just seems so ridiculous, but the alternatives seem so impossible (even though I know they really aren't).

This leads me back to Sharon Astyk and her book Depletion and Abundance.  In it, she talks about gender and the changes in "work" over the past 100 years.  She advocates for low impact living, which usually necessitates at least one parent staying home to care for the children and the homestead.  When she is confronted with questions about the effects of this line of thought on feminism, she responds with "you're asking the wrong question."  It's not whether or not women should work outside the home; it's whether or not any of us should work outside the home.  This whole two-parents-commuting-to-an-office lifestyle we have going is a very new one.  Up until almost halfway through the last century a majority of people either worked at home (either on a farm or in small cottage industries) or worked within 3 miles of their home.  This means that both mom and dad could be home for lunch and dinner.  Little junior could help mom out at home and dad out at the store, spending quality time with both of them while learning all of life's lessons and learning how to work.  I really do think this is the model that we should return to and I don't think this means a "return to the dark ages" (which is the assumption that everyone jumps to).  As Internet connectivity goes up, it should only be easier for all of us to work remotely from home without giving up many elements of our "modern" way of life, while keeping two parents in the house which (in my opinion) is the ideal and (for me) means a return to small farming.

Finding balance

It's hard not to get impatient.  To have goals and dreams that you know are totally within your ability, but for which you struggle to find the time to prepare.  It's hard to focus on progress made, rather than to see how much still needs to be done.  In an effort to focus on the good instead of the negative, I'll list here some of my successes while I set my challenges aside to ponder over on another day.

It makes me happy that in the last year I...

• built a compost bin and use it daily.
• have not purchased a single trash bag (because I reuse our cat and dog food bags).
• have kept a well-paying, full-time job for 8 months; the longest in my adult life.
• made actual decisions instead of just staying the course.
• tried making my own vinegar.
• cooked many delicious meals.
• ate kale, swiss chard, eggplant, and brussels sprouts for the first time in my life. And loved them.
• completely (at least, to my knowledge) stopped eating factory farmed meat.
• made an effort to treat my husband with kindness and gentleness.
• made myself vulnerable instead of walling myself off.
• planted food.
• harvested food.
• for the first time, canned tomatoes, made apple butter, and fermented pickles.
• picked up knitting needles and allowed myself to fail as well as succeed.
• took ownership of my life and my actions.

There. That feels better.

Rediscovering the library

Get this...there's this place.  They have tons and tons of books and they'll let you borrow as many as you want for free! Crazy, right?

So, I was serious when I promised Steve that I would make an effort to curb my new book purchases. Just as the withdrawal was starting to make me shake, I realized that I hadn't been to the library for years. How shameful is that? So, I marched on in there, renewed my card and was just in awe of how many books I wanted to read that they had on hand. Making use of my local library is one of the greenest changes that I can make to my life, and it's ridiculous that it's taken me so long to fully embrace it. I checked out a stack of books about sewing, knitting, and embroidering in my quest to teach myself new and useful skills. I even went so far as to not buy several books at Goodwill last night, asking myself the question: "Do I need to own these books? Or would I be happy just checking them out, reading them, and saving the money?"

Don't get me wrong, my personal library is still incredibly valuable to me and I don't anticipate there will come a day when I will stop adding to it altogether. But, if I want to make frugality, community building, and low impact living a priority, this is a simple and effective change that I can make. In theory, I've always known this and been an avid supporter of libraries, but with the exception of checking out books to do research for school, I've never really taken full advantage. I blame this on the fact that I grew up in a tiny town whose library collection consisted solely of Danielle Steele and whatever was on Oprah's reading list. I remember going in there while I was living back at home for a short while after college. I realized that I had made it through 4 years of higher education without ever reading Hemingway, a situation which I decided to remedy. Except I couldn't because the library didn't have any Hemingway. At all. I had to drive a half hour to a neighboring town to find a copy of A Farewell to Arms. So, my default relationship with libraries was that of them not being very helpful. I need to keep reminding myself that this is completely and totally wrong.

Making menus

This is what's on the docket for tonight:

It has been a little over a year that I've been making weekly dinner menus and with only a few lapses, it's been a success. If I try to grocery shop without a list, I will walk out of the store with $30 of ice cream and nothing else (literally), so this practice has definitely helped keep me on budget. It has also helped us to expand our food repertoire. If I plan to make a side vegetable, I make a side vegetable, something that I wouldn't do in spontaneous food preparation. We waste less food, because I only get exactly what I need to make the meals that I've planned. We are healthier because there is no eating of junk food, as I just don't buy junk food. I plan for snacks. I also make far fewer trips to the grocery store, which is good in reducing my carbon footprint and increasing my level of sanity. All in all, it has been a very positive process.

In my fantasy world, I have 120 different and delicious recipes (30 for each season) that I rotate out yearly. Again, this is my fantasy, and not at all the reality. I only really discovered cooking recently, so I pressure myself to make all new meals all the time in an effort to make up for the many many years that I ate nothing but Ramen and Mac and Cheese. But, Steve is helping me to learn that you can't have comfort foods if you only ever make a dish once. Nor can you get really good at making something if you only make it once. We have about 30 meals that we rotate through now, which, although far short of my dream, is much better than the 5 that used to make up the entirety of our diet.

You know those last few days before you move out of a place and you don't want to buy groceries because, hey, you're moving, but you also don't have enough money to eat out? Oddly enough, those were some of my favorite days. I loved playing the game of "I have a trisket, ranch dressing, and a potato...what can I make?!" This might lead you to believe that I am adventurous in the kitchen. You would be wrong. I will eat almost anything, but I need written directions on how to do so.  I would like to be one of those people who has the confidence to just "throw things together" and have it turn out wonderfully. But, the truth is that I am a complete slave to recipes. I measure everything. I am wary of substitutions. I Google instructions on how to cut up vegetables properly.  I am hoping that the adventurousness will come and that right now I'm building my confidence and kitchen knowledge in order to be able to just "throw things together." I do think we're getting there, it's just slow going. Tonight, we're having an old standby: Beef Stroganoff. It is the only recipe that Steve will make completely on his own. I'm not even allowed in the kitchen. Which is awesome.

Goodies in the mail

Look at the lovelies that came in my mail the other day!

I bought them from The Black Apple on Etsy and I think I'm in love. The "Beekeeper" print in the back is the one that first caught my eye. I thought looking at it everyday would be a way to keep my beekeeping dreams alive until the day when I can actually...well...keep bees. And the rest of the prints were just so lovely, I couldn't help myself from adding two more to my cart. I've just finished framing them and they have found a home on my studio/office wall.

Making our house feel like a home has been challenging for me. We lived here for a full 6 months before I even put anything on the walls and now that another year has passed not much progress has been made beyond that. I think it's a combination of the space just being too big and my inability to get over the mental hurdle of not living in a rental anymore. Two years is the longest that I've ever lived in one place since I was in high school so I've never really settled in. I've always had to be careful and not make too many changes to ensure that I got my deposit back. I think it might be easier to let go of this feeling if I knew that we wanted to live in this house forever, but we don't. So I still have that lingering feeling of not wanting to make too many changes because I have resale value always in the back of my mind. But, slowly I'm trying to surround us with beautiful and meaningful things. Useful things. To some degree, it's working. I no longer feel uncomfortable in our house, but it's not quite cozy yet.

A delicate snow started last night, just as I was getting on the bus to come home after work. It was beautiful and it made me very happy.

Weekend Review: Righteous Porkchop by Nicolette Hahn Niman

Following on yesterday's discussion of meat; my thoughts and opinions on the topic were definitely influenced by Nicolette Hahn Niman's book Righteous Pork Chop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. I picked this one up because, well, I live in Iowa. We're ground zero for hog confinements and I felt that I really didn't know that much about the issue. Hahn Niman approaches the topic from a unique standpoint. The first half of the book deals with her time working with Waterkeeper Alliance, an advocacy organization that is dedicated to protecting waterways from pollution. She's a lawyer and her job is to prepare cases against the most egregious polluters: hog confinements. She takes us into the nitty gritty investigative work that she has to do in order to build a case against these corporations. We are with her as she combs through government records, interviews those who have complaints against confinements, and visits waterways filled with dead fish. Along the way we meet farmers and small rural folk who tell heart-breaking stories about the reality of living in proximity to these confinements (not only smell, but also loss of small community, loss of traditional ways of farming, and increased health problems including deadly Staph infections). In the second half of the book, Hahn Niman quits her job and moves across the country to take up cattle ranching with Bill Niman, her new husband and renowned owner of the "natural" beef distributor "Niman Ranch" (which, because of growing confrontations with new management, the two no longer own).

There is a definite shift in tone between the two sections. Hahn Niman is equally impassioned in both, but her growing understanding of ranching and raising animals (that comes with actually doing so) is evident in the latter half. This doesn't change her opinion; it serves to underscore her point that there is still a way to raise animals that is humane as well as profitable. She goes out of her way time and time again to show that her fight is not with farmers or with people who eat meat. Her answer is not that we all give up eating meat and she acknowledges that animals are a crucial part of a successful small farm. Her fight is with the producers who are too big and too far removed from the daily workings of the confinements to care (or to even know) the effects that they're having on the land, the people, and the animals. All she's asking is that big producers abide by the same laws as everyone else and be held accountable for their actions.

One of the interesting questions that is posed is, "where have all the animals gone?" One used to be able to drive through the countryside and see small diversified farms with herds of cattle grazing on the hillside and pigs and chickens around the homestead, in addition to crop land. To drive through the country now, the absence of animals is noticeable. They're there. You just can't see them. They've all been moved indoors into centralized locations where they are packed in as tightly as possible. This is just one more way that we have all been distanced from the food that we eat, to our own detriment as well as the animals'. I'm not the first one to say this, but if hog confinement walls were made of glass and everyone who eats (that is...everyone) would be forced to have one that's visible from their house, you can believe that no one would stand for the way that these animals are treated.

So, what's the solution? Well, reading this book is a start; educating ourselves about where our food comes from. Giving our money to people whose methods of raising animals are in line with our core beliefs is the next step. The next? Navigating the legal channels to prevent any more confinements from being built and work on getting existing ones closed. There are 31 hog confinements in my county alone. There's a lot of work to be done.

Eating meat

The topic of eating meat--whether or not to eat it, if so in what quantities, and where to source it--has been a popular topic in the blogosphere this past week.  Sharon addressed it at Casaubon's Book on Monday, Erin posted on The Green Phone Booth on Tuesday and Kate talked about it on Thursday at The Simple Green Frugal Co-op.  So, I suppose I feel compelled to add my own two cents.  I agree with most, if not all, of what these women write.  At my house, we do eat meat, but in limited quantities and I'm very conscious of where it comes from.  It will be one year ago in February that my husband and I joined a grocery co-op and we started buying, what is starting to be described as, SOLE food--Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical--whenever we can.  These changes have extended to all our food, but the change in the meat that we eat has, by far, been the most important for me personally.

I had never really thought about it before.  I just knew that once a week you were supposed to go to the grocery store and there you would buy enough food to last you another week.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  I had absolutely no idea where my food actually came from and I didn't know that not knowing was a problem.  If I had to ask my then-self where my pork chop came from, I would probably naively answer, "a farm."  But once the reality of factory farmed meat became clear to me, there was really no way that I could close my eyes to it.

I do think that we are "supposed" to eat meat.  I believe that it provides essential nutrients to our bodies.  I believe that we evolved to be omnivores.  We wouldn't have canine teeth and eyes on the front of our heads if we weren't supposed to eat other animals in addition to plants.  But I also believe that for an animal to die so that I can live, is an amazing and precious gift.  Those animals deserve my respect, my caring, and my mercy.  Packing 5,000 hogs into a building where they have no room to lie down and never see the sun is not respect.  Keeping laying hens in cages so small that they can't even turn around or stretch their wings is not caring.  And having a killing line that tries to process more cattle than is possible with the result of cows often being skinned alive is not mercy.  Knowing the conditions that these animals suffer in (as well as the workers--I know this is a human's rights issue as well) makes it impossible for me to eat them.  How could I?  So, I spend the extra $2 a pound for ground beef that comes from local cows that live on small farms and are allowed to graze on pasture for part of the year and I just eat less of it to make that choice financially possible.  I don't think animals need to be coddled.  But they should be allowed to live according to their nature.  That means they should be able to be outside, to breathe fresh air, feel the sunshine, and to live a life free from pain and suffering.

The irony, for me, is that in coming to this epiphany about the lives of the animals that I eat, I desire more and more to be closer to their deaths.  It's the only way, I feel, that I can be absolutely certain of their treatment and that I'm not being sold a marketing strategy.  I don't think this means that I have to kill the animals I eat with my own hands.  In all honesty, I couldn't.  I just couldn't do it, at least not now.  But, at some point in the not-so-distant future I would like to keep, at the very least, chickens and goats and that will not be without bloodshed.  Even if I'm just raising chickens for eggs, I will inevitably end up with some roosters and something needs to be done with them.  Even if I'm just keeping goats for milk, inevitably one will get injured or sick and putting it down is the most humane thing to do.

In short, whether each of us eats meat or not, I think that the distance between the consumer and the producer of food--all food--is a really big problem.  So few people are really aware of where their food comes from, how it gets to them and, increasingly, how to prepare it, if it doesn't come in a box or a can.

My books, oh, my books

To say that I have a lot of books might be an understatement.  They overflow two enormous bookshelves and cover every other horizontal surface in my home.  I've made many, many promises over the years about curbing my addiction and I'm fairly certain that I owe my brother my first born child in repayment for the many, many times that he has helped me move them from one apartment to another.  But, to be honest, I don't see the flow slowing any time soon. I mean, sure, I can consent to putting a temporary moratorium on buying new books.  That just makes sense.  But when you live in a college town, Goodwill ends up having a wonderful selection that ranges from the painfully academic to the whimsical and beautiful and they can all be mine for the low low price of 88 cents apiece.  To me, books fall under that category of things-one-must-gather-save-and-then-pass-on.  You can never have enough of them.  I dream of my children someday running their hands along the spines and discovering the things that I love and then learning to love them too.

The pleasure is also aesthetic.  They give me an incredible sense of order and comfort, of all being right with the world, everything in its place.  They calm me.  They're not necessarily in order alphabetically or by subject.  They are arranged so that my presence is necessary as a guide.  Each shelf is of a specific period of my life and as I take each title in my hands I remember where I was when I read it, who I was with, where I was working, what the drama was of that moment.  There's Uta and Meisner.  Volume after volume on translation studies (even though English is my only language).  Five copies of the same novel because each one is slightly different and I loved it so incredibly much that I couldn't fathom not having it in all of its iterations.  Millay and Wakoski (Oh, what lips my lips have kissed!), Acconci and Man Ray.  Fiction, poetry, theatre, film, sexuality, gender, photography, art, book studies, cookbooks, children's books, crafts, politics, history, biography, short stories. How could I possibly let any of these go?  Which would I cut? Rare, signed, first editions nuzzle closely with pulpy paperbacks.  They all have their place.  In my personal history as well as on these shelves.

Letting go

To my surprise, and Steve's delight, I accomplished both things that I set out to do this past weekend.  The first was making the chicken stock that I talked about yesterday and the second was putting some no longer wanted/needed items up for sale on ebay.  Steve and I often battle about how much "stuff" is allowed to come into our house.  He gives me a hard time about all of it, but I maintain that there are different kinds of "stuff" and they don't all carry the same weight.  For example, for me, a box full of cheap plastic crap is "stuff" that can and should be gotten rid of.  A box of linens and dishes is "stuff" that is useful, that has a history, and that should be saved and then passed on.  Having too much of the former makes my chest tighten and keeps me from feeling at ease, while I will never refuse to give space to the latter.

I've listed my childhood collection of She-Ra dolls and the thought of parting with them is harder than I had anticipated, given my opinions on cheap plastic crap.  I don't want them.  I don't want to display them or play with them and I don't see anything to be gained by keeping them in a box for another twenty years.  I don't want to pass them down to my children someday, either.  Not only will my kids have no idea who "She-Ra" is, these are exactly the little plastic toys that I'm hoping to keep out of their lives.  But, when I look at them, they're just so pretty.  And I mean that.  They're shiny and brightly colored and they have long pretty hair and they sparkle.  When I look at them, I think of being a child and of playing with them.  I don't have any specific crystal-clear memories associated with these specific dolls, but they do remind me of a specific feeling: that of being young and solitary and full of imagination.

It often surprises me how little I remember about my childhood, and maybe that has something to do with my current difficulty in letting go.  That in letting go of these toys, maybe, I'm also somehow letting go of the few memories that I do have.  But, I take a deep breath and I remind myself (yet again) that my memories are not contained in these objects.  They're in me and in the people that I love.  I don't need things like these around to remember, and that's a very freeing feeling indeed.

The last of my garden

I sent Steve out to the garden with a flashlight, a trowel, and a bucket one cold night back in November, so that he could dig up the last of our carrots before the impending hard frost.  I used some of them right away and the rest I left, unwashed, in a plastic bag in the back of the 'fridge.  They finally got put to use last night.  I desperately needed to clean out the freezer and had two chicken carcasses taking up space.  So they joined the carrots along with some past-prime celery and onion to make some yummy chicken stock.  Everything just went together into a big pot, which I then filled with cold water until all was submerged. I put it over low heat (just high enough so you see a bubble come up every now and again--I'm told that if you let if actually come to a boil you'll end up with cloudy stock) and let 'er go for five or so hours.  Then I strained out all the solids.  The veggies went into the compost and the chicken carcasses I picked clean, coming away with enough shredded chicken to make enchilladas for two.  This is what I ended up with:

Twenty-seven cups of chicken stock that just went into my freezer.  I divided it into four, two, and one cup portions, since those are the incriments in which I usually need it.  Before dividing, you can skim off the fat if that's something that you worry about, but I don't bother.  And I could have (and probably should have) heated it longer and reduced it down further so that it would take up less room in my freezer.  All in all, it would cost me about $18 to buy this much organic free-range chicken stock in the store. I made it with stuff that would have either been composted or thrown away otherwise. A total win-win.

A note about the carrots. They're a little stumpy, aren't they?  They're Danvers and they're supposed to be on the short side, but I think this is a little excessive.  I have horrible soil.  My garden last summer consisted of about two inches of compost that I put over the clay that was already there.  I put down 3 tons of compost last summer and barely made a dent.  There's a long ways to go!