The Season's First CSA

This past Saturday Steve, Silas, and I headed to the Farmer's Market, as we usually do, but a special treat was there waiting for us: our first CSA cooler. I'm sure you already know, but CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and is an economic model in which the consumer pays a farmer up front for the upcoming season's harvest. This allows the farmer to be paid when they need it most (at the beginning of the season) and it allows the consumer to get a weekly box of produce of whatever is fresh and in season at that moment. Due to a cool and wet spring, our box was a little sparse this week, but did contain organic spring onions, organic red and green lettuce, organic honey, and a window box herb garden.

This is our third year having a CSA and we've subscribed with a different farmer every year. We didn't necessarily intend to be so unfaithful, but circumstance made it so that we were. We were a little late to the game this spring. Each farm has a limited number of shares and almost all of them were sold out. So, we ended up with this one by default, but I have a good feeling about them. The woman we met there this Saturday was incredibly sweet and I look forward to getting to know her better.

Allison over at Field Wonderful does a wonderful weekly menu of how she uses her CSA produce. I love to see all the yummy things that she makes! Three years ago when Steve and I first started, we were new to cooking at home and even newer to eating many veggies. There was kale and swiss chard in our box every single week and neither of us had ever eaten either of these greens before. I'll be honest and say that we got tired of them pretty quickly. It didn't feel like it then, but it really was just an adjustment period. We never thought a time would come when we would think, "hey, doesn't some sauteed swiss chard sound good?" but that day has, in fact, arrived and I'm actually looking forward to the fun challenge of building my menus around what's in the current week's box!

Memorial Day

Honoring this day of remembrance.

My Very First Give-Away

You may have heard that I have a slight weakness for books. I'm working on it, I swear. Whenever I have the urge to click over to Amazon or walk into the bookstore I calm my rapid breathing, mop my sweaty brow, and count to ten. No new books, I say. Mostly, this is sufficient. Mostly.

But now it's not enough to curb the flow of books coming into the house (so says Steve). No, now I must also "weed out" books that don't meet some pretty strict criteria. Apparently, assuming that every horizontal surface in our home is in actuality a bookshelf is not a proper way to decorate or to "keep house."

So, my loss is your gain. As a thank you to you for sticking with me and reading all my rambling thoughts, I'm hoping to send some good reading your way. The first to go? A lovely first edition copy of Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms by Nicolette Hahn Niman (baby not included). Read my original review of it here, then leave a comment on this post and one lucky winner will be randomly selected for this little prize. Comments will be closed on Friday, June 3 and the winner announced in next Saturday's Weekend Review.

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Congratulations to Junk Loving Girl!
"We are looking to only consume local foods, including family raised animals. This would be a great read!"

Send me a message at cpcable (at) gmail (dot) com with your address and I will drop it in the mail to you!

Weekend Review: Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne & Lisa M. Ross

The basic, if not obvious, message Kim John Payne shares with us in Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids (2009) is that the alphabet soup of diagnoses that our children are increasingly labeled with can often times be reined in, if not cured outright, by clearing our lives of unnecessary stuff, activities, and distraction. Children need boredom, Payne writes, as well as plenty of unstructured free time because these are the things that lead to creativity and the development of healthy well-rounded attitudes and behaviors. This is a message that I agree whole-heartedly with, but one that I (somewhat naively) thought that I didn't need. When I was pregnant with Silas we decided that we wanted to make a conscious decision to give him fewer, but higher quality, toys. I thought that because of this we would somehow avoid the supersize frenzy of children's products. How wrong I was. Wherever there is a market, it will be filled and the demand for "simple" toys is no different. This just goes to show that all of us, myself included, do need to take a step back, re-evaluate, and go forward with mindful intention when it comes to how we fill our children's lives, both in the material things we give to them and in how we fill their time.

Payne sees childhood as a sacred time that is worthy of protecting. His prescription for doing so is really quite simple, but he acknowledges that it may meet some resistance if your children are older. His four-pronged approach encourages parents to clear out unnecessary clutter from their children's environment, establish a predictable rhythm to the days, open up schedules to allow for that unstructured time of discovery, and filter out the adult world. The pace of childhood is (and should be) slow. Any parent who has tried to get somewhere on time can most likely commiserate, as the pace of a child is so often out of step with the pace of the world around us. But it is this very slowness that allows children to develop their own identity and to engage with people, things, and ideas with depth and complexity. It should be celebrated and honored, not forced into submission.

Reading this book now, while I have a newborn, I found that much of the advice wasn't immediately relevant to our current stage of development. It was useful, however, in that it helped me to think through these challenges so that when we do get to the "little league" years we can navigate them with a clear plan of action and with our values and goals already defined. Doing so will (hopefully!) help us to avoid some of the pitfalls (such as anxiety, controlling behavior, and battles over sleep and food) that he tries to remedy.

This Moment

Playing along with SouleMama today. In her words: {this moment} A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

My Eco Sins: Pet Food

Lately, I've been using this space to focus mostly on my journey as a new mother. It's been awhile since I've written much of substance about our goals for living a more sustainable life. But, they are never very far from my thoughts. As we slowly settle into new rhythms I am trying to resume those life changes that I made pre-baby in order to live more lightly on this earth. One change that we never really got around to addressing, though, was the environmental impact of our pets.

Steve and I share our home with three cats and a dog. All are rescue animals. There are those who would argue that companion animals have a larger carbon footprint than Hummers and that no one should have them. But unless those people are willing to euthanize all of the domesticated animals that are out there, my response is that their opinion is not very helpful. These animals exist and someone has to care for them. We love our animals dearly. They have been with us for many years and we really do believe that we did the right thing by taking them in. They are all spayed, so they will not be producing any more of their kind and they are all kept indoors, so they are not interfering with local ecosystems. The one thing we could do better on, but haven't yet tried to, is what we feed them.

We provide for them the standard bagged dry dog and cat food. The problem with this? The protein portions of these foods are made up of the waste products (organ meats, bones, etc.) of animals raised in factory farms. I've given up eating factory farmed meat myself and I would really rather not support that system at all. But the honest truth is that we really can't afford anything else. In my dream world, I'd feed my animals a real food diet that included ethically raised meat. This is not completely impossible, but in order for us to be able to afford it, I'd have to find a local ethical producer/butcher/slaughterhouse that would sell me those parts of their animals that they can't sell for human consumption. From it, I could make my own pet food. Or, I could raise my own animals. Just thinking about all of the coordination that would need to take place in either of these scenarios makes me tired. So, we maintain the status quo.

In my desire to find something better, I am reminded to be vigilant and to not be swayed by greenwashing and, now, local-washing as well. When I first saw these dog treats I got so excited. Made of real meat? And produced locally? Where do I sign up?

But just flipping the bag over reveals who the manufacturer is: Tyson. This is factory farmed chicken and is no better than any other treat that's out there, regardless of the premium price. This is one issue that I'll keep working over in my mind and trying to find small steps that we can take right now, with bigger goals for the future. For now, that will have to do.

Yarn Along

Yarning along again with Ginny today at Small Things. Silas' blanket is coming along. I try to do at least two rows every night after the little nipper falls asleep. At this rate, I should be done by fall, which would be just perfect. Why don't I knit during his naps you may ask? Well, my baby thinks naps are for wusses. Hence The No-Cry Nap Solution. I've read Pantley's No-Cry Sleep Solution already, but this title has some great suggestions that are unique to naps. And it really is a list of suggestions, none of which involve leaving your babe to cry it out. In all of the baby and childcare books that I've read--and there have been many--I'm very skeptical of the ones that claim one-size-fits-all solutions to problems. Books that claim that "all" babies should act in a certain way generally don't get a second glance from me. All babies are different. All families are different and what works for one may not work for another. Even the definition of what it means for something to "work" can be so variable. I like to keep my options open and try a variety of things and do what feels right for us.

Also on the reading table is Deeply Rooted a profile of three unconventional modern farmers. I'm just starting, but so far they are very interesting characters.

SAHM

I've always assumed the question "what do stay at home moms do all day?" was a tad on the offensive side; implying that they don't really do anything. But, it's a question that I've been sincerely asking lately. So much of my time is taken up with caring for Silas, but on the rare days that he actually goes down for a nap or in the time that Steve is being a Daddy I find I just don't know what to do with myself. After I rush to complete the everyday stuff--dishes, laundry, feeding the animals, etc.--I find myself burning my time in front of the computer because I just don't know what else to do.

I've been a student for so long. Almost nine of my thirteen adult years actually. My "job" has always been to read and to write. I'm really good at those things; I can write an A+ essay in my sleep. But caring for a home? I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Having been a renter for most of my adult life, moving almost every year, meant that the shower and the oven got scrubbed once; on move-out day. Even though we've been in our house for three years now, I'm still not sure what goes into the daily/weekly/monthly care of a home. I mean, I know what goes into it. I know that there are plenty of things that I could/should be doing. But is my job as a SAHM really just a constant repetition of tidying and cleaning?

I suppose like anything, it is what you make of it. I'm pretty sure that I'm approaching this new role in much the same way as I've approached motherhood...with too much self-doubt. I need to instead focus on how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to stay home with my baby boy while he's little. And maybe I need to allow myself to revel in the fact that my days are my own. Maybe it's the fact that I report to no one that has me feeling so uncomfortable, that I lack a "boss" to tell me what to do. I need to take ownership of myself, my time, and how I spend it and trust that the choices I make are good ones. The only people to whom I have to offer any justifications are myself and my partner. That could, just maybe, be a wonderful thing. 

Visual Mobile Series: Octahedron

I confess that I'm way behind in the schedule of introducing the Montessori Visual Mobile Series. Silas should have had his Octahedron by Week Eight. Oops! He just loved the Munari so much, I hated to replace it with something else. I really had no excuse in how long it took me to make the Octahedron either. This was by far the easiest mobile to make. Just some cardstock, a dowel, and bam. Mobile.

Want to make one? You should! It's easy! I searched Google for an octahedron template and traced it onto some heavy scrapbooking cardstock in primary colors. Cut them out, folded them up, used a needle to attach the thread to the shapes and then tied them to a dowel. I used Sharpie markers to embellish the dowel and a length of string to suspend the mobile. And that's about it.

He's only had it for a couple of days, but so far he seems to be a pretty big fan. When I brought it out for the first time every muscle in his body froze and he just stared at it; a good sign, I think. It doesn't hold his interest for as long as the Munari, though, which has the advantage of more movement and that magical glass sphere that reflects light. Next up is the Gobi!

Weekend Review: Yarn Harlot by Stephanie Pearl McPhee

I'm not sure Steve knew quite how to process this book when he saw it sitting on the coffee table. "So, it's stories about knitting?" Well, yes, but not just knitting. In Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter (2005) Stephanie Pearl McPhee writes beautifully, poignantly, and hilariously about slipping stitches, but she also uses knitting as a point of entry to explore many facets of life. There are essays about things that only a fellow knitter will "get," such as a geologic description of her stash and the worth of the fourth double pointed needle. There are laugh-out-loud tales, such as her battle with a neighborhood squirrel who keeps stealing her wool and there are really touching stories about her experience as a mother, a wife, and a doula. This book is a peek into her life and its daily challenges and celebrations all stitched together with wool and two needles. For her, knitting is an expression of love and she tries to do it as often as possible and with an incredible amount of fervor and dedication. Appropriate to where I am in my life, my favorite story uses knitting (and the three blankets that she knit for her three daughters) as a metaphor for motherhood and how it changes with time and experience.

This is really one of my first forays into reading "knit lit," so I don't have too much with which to compare this book, but it was a joy to read. Pearl McPhee strikes you as someone you know who's a little eccentric maybe, but in a way that makes you love her all the more. Her writing flows like a good conversation and she left me wanting to read all of her books (there are seven) and visit her blog to see what else she has to say. I don't think I've ever had a singularity of passion that Pearl McPhee has for knitting, but reading her musings on it makes me wish that I did.

This Moment

Playing along with SouleMama today. In her words: {this moment}A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

More Benefits of Lazy Gardening

A year ago last November we planted our first garlic crop. I don't think I wrote much about it here, but it was the most satisfying gardening experience that I've had. We planted 50 little cloves and over the cover of winter they turned into 50 bulbs of beautiful garlic. For anyone with just a little bit of space and just a smidge of a desire to grow their own food, garlic is such an excellent choice. It's so incredibly easy to grow, after being properly dried it keeps for a long time, and it's an easy way to lower your carbon footprint (unless marked otherwise, all supermarket garlic is grown in China and shipped here).

Well, I must have missed harvesting a couple of bulbs because this spring we had some shoots of green appear where the garlic used to be. So, without even trying we have yummy spring garlic!

Yarn Along

Yarning along with Ginny today over at Small Things. I'm still working on Silas' blanket. Now that I have a couple of inches done the pattern is starting to emerge and it is becoming quite clear that I've lost count of my stitches a couple of times. The prospect of ripping back is just really too much to bear, so these little errors will become part of who this blanket is. They will be reminders of exactly what was distracting me in that moment and pushing stitch numbers out of my head: my baby boy.

The yarn pictured is some that I frogged from a diaper soaker whose pattern I didn't like enough to finish. My plans are to use it to make a yarn mobile inspired by this one created by Sara at Making Life. He needs a little something new to look at. I've just finished Creative Play for Your Baby and now have a couple more lovely Waldorf-inspired projects to make for the little one. I really liked how most of the projects use things around the house and transform them into developmental toys for baby. Right up my alley. And I'm almost finished with Simplicity Parenting, a title that I started a year ago when I was first pregnant, but put down when I gave up reading during my first trimester.

Surprise Lettuce

One of the benefits, I've discovered, of abandoning my garden last year and letting everything go to seed is that, well, everything went to seed and now we're getting little surprises in our raised beds. Like these little leaf lettuces. I didn't get to try any of our lettuce last year before it bolted so I'm actually quite excited about harvesting these little guys and having a salad or two. The downside to this "gardening in arrears" is that there are all sorts of little seedlings coming up and it's hard to tell what is edible and what are weeds. I guess I'll just have to maintain my wait-and-see approach.

Butterfly Mobile

Awhile ago I replaced the whale mobile over the changing table with a newspaper butterfly one. Silas is a big fan. He especially loves it when the windows are open and the butterflies dance gently in the breeze. We've also found that in fussy moments we can blow on it to get it moving and it pretty much blows his mind.

There are similar mobiles on Etsy, but I decided to make my own out of newspaper, cardboard, string, and some seed beads that I've been carrying around in my "craft box" since I was about 12. It was a fairly easy project, but a bit of a fussy one with the threading of the beads and butterflies on a needle and thread.

One word of caution if you decide to make something similar for your little one: remove the obituary section from the newspaper (if there is one) before you start cutting. I just happily cut away and didn't notice until the thing was finished and hanging up that the words "death notice" were displayed loud and proud on one of the butterflies. Not exactly in keeping with the Zen-like vibe that I was going for.

I had several more mobiles in mind that I wanted to make, but I think I'm losing steam. Especially now that it's spring and the outdoors are calling, even if just for walks around the yard.



Weekend Review: The Seasons on Henry's Farm by Terra Brockman

Like many farmers, I'm sure, my grandmother made daily notations on her calendar about the weather, events on the farm, and any visitors that she may have received. The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm(2009) by Terra Brockman is a little bit like that. There are 52 chapters, one per week, each focused on a particular crop of the Brockman family's diversified farm in central Illinois. Very practical information, such as exactly how a crop is planted or harvested in a sustainable manner, is discussed, but there is also room for beautiful musings on a host of topics. As an example, she draws a very eloquent parallel between roses and farming methods. The industrial agricultural complex didn't exist until just over 50 years ago, just as there was no such thing as a red rose until they were hybridized in 1950. Yet both of these things have come to define the standard of their respective categories in our cultural minds, showing just how limited our hindsight is. She writes about the history of her little piece of earth as well as the history of farming in America in general, weaving in fascinating facts about crops and tradition, and sharing recipes that celebrate each food in its season.

As in most farm memoirs that I've read one thing is made perfectly clear: this is hard work. We see in detail exactly how many man-hours are necessary to run a sustainable farm, but we also explore why this is a more desirable method than the quick-fix of enormous mono-cropped farms. It takes the Brockmans many hands working from sunup to sundown (and often beyond) every single day to bring food to market, but there is so much to love about this life. They work out-of-doors in the fresh air and sunshine, rather than in an office cubicle; all generations of the family are working together, creating strong family bonds with grandparents teaching children and grandchildren, instead of each going their separate ways; and they do honest work of which they can be proud.

For anyone who is interested in the how-to of organic farming, this is a must-read and for anyone curious about the agrarian life it is incredibly interesting and well-written.

This Moment

Playing along with SouleMama today. In her words: {this moment}A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Yarn Along

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things today. I'm still working on Silas' blanket (expect this to become a common refrain), but have made more progress in the last day than in the last two weeks. I kept forgetting to grab a cable needle before I sat down to nurse. Appropriately, I'm reading Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. It's possible that I'm the last knitter in the world to discover her writing, but am laughing out loud now that I have.

This Moment

Playing along with SouleMama today. In her words: {this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Three Years in the Making

Last night Steve and I enjoyed a three-year-delayed gratification: homegrown asparagus. A grad school professor and friend of mine gave us several Purple Passion crowns three years ago. Even though we planted them immediately, one must wait for them to get established before harvesting. We shared four spears last night and asparagus has never tasted sweeter.

Weekend Review: Farm City by Novella Carpenter

Novella Carpenter has a personality that I envy. She's the type of woman who will see a group of kids shooting dice, stop her bike, and ask them how to play. She feels just as comfortable chatting with a group of Black Panthers as she does with a group of new age farmers and she's able to convince a top notch chef to apprentice her in the making of artisanal cured pork after he catches her dumpster diving behind his restaurant. This openness has allowed her access to a great number of really amazing experiences one of which, her urban farm, she chronicles in her memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (2009). Living in "GhostTown," a ghetto of Oakland, she and her boyfriend Bill are surrounded by a renegade cast of characters. She adds her own eccentricities to the mix when she squats the abandoned lot next door with an ever-growing community vegetable garden, which at various times also includes bees, chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, rabbits, and pigs.

Her story is funny and well told, but Carpenter also casually addresses a host of larger topics surrounding her activities. Issues of poverty, gentrification, food deserts, food security, and eating animals are all explored. There are hilarious stories about the exploits of her various livestock, but also gentle musings on the weight of what it is that she's doing. She doesn't claim to be a revolutionary, but does point out how odd it is that raising one's own food (especially within city limits and without permission to do so) has become a revolutionary act.

My only complaint is that Carpenter seems to have a small beef with writers, such as Wendell Berry, who privilege the rural over the urban. She loves living in the city and is proud to do so, which may make her a tad quick to defend it. To a certain extent, she does have a point. As resources become increasingly scarce people will increasingly need the community interdependence that comes with living in a city. However, I think there's room for both ideals in the future. We need people in rural areas producing food, but we also need city dwellers to be farmers as well and Carpenter provides a wonderful example of how to do so.