Earthworms, Rouge Carrots, and May Sarton

As a bibliophile, I've picked up the habit of reading several books at once.  Usually, this creates interesting juxtapositions and I naturally synthesize the ideas I'm reading into my life, into my writing.  This week I finished two books: May Sarton's memoir Plant Dreaming Deep and Amy Stewart's The Earth Moved.

In The Earth Moved, Stewart discusses how earthworms intersect with humanity, in nearly always a positive way.  She also imbues them with human-like characteristics when she writes:


“Worms are ruminators; they sift through whatever surround them, turn it over, explore it, move through it.  They are deliberate creatures, in no great hurry, but always in motion, twisting and burrowing, shrinking and contracting, and eating.  They spend their lives in a kind of active meditation, working through the detritus in which they live, the bits of leaves and grass and particles of soil.”

What strikes me most about this image is that worms work incrementally, slowly, getting a little bit done at a time.  Working with what they have--the messy detritus of a life.  As finals and the semester is crashing down around me, I can't get out in the garden for a long day of work. I can't even make my kitchen cupboards as tidy as I like. We suffered a grain moth invasion, when an unopened package of dried figs in the pantry proved to be a nesting ground, which was just another stressful thing to add to my list.  When the pressure of schoolwork builds up at the end of the semester, it feels like everything starts to fray around the edges.  At times like this, I must remind myself to have the patience of an earthworm.

It's been a rough spring so far.  As typical of Northwest Ohio, spring is fickle.  It's cold and wet and gray and it just won't cooperate with our wishes for warm, sunny weather.  4 of the last 5 days have been rainy. The thermometer stalls out at 50 degrees, never higher.  Yet, thinking of moving in small increments like the earthworm, I managed to get sugar snap peas, two kinds of radishes, bok choi, dill, and an assortment of lettuces and spinach in the ground.  Yesterday, after spending the whole afternoon grading research essays, I know that if I could just a small incremental little bit of gardening done, I would feel better.  It made all the difference in the world. 

Rouge Carrots (notice the naughty kitten paw in the upper left-hand corner.)

Because gardening is now deep in my bones like writing and reading, I can relate when Sarton writes in Plant Dreaming Deep, “Making a garden is not a gentle hobby for the elderly, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire.  It is a grand passion.  It seizes a person whole, and once it has done so he will have to accept that his life is going to be radically changed."  Gardening has seized me.  Now that I've gotten my fix--during the one dry day this week--I can stop trembling with anxiety.  I am hooked on vegetable gardening because I never quite know the joys or sorrows I will discover each time I step foot outside.  The garden is a constantly evolving, shape-shifting creature all its own.  

 Yesterday, when I was planting peas, I found these rogue carrots that had escaped harvest last fall.  To my surprise, they were still perfectly fine.  And, just to make sure, our new black and white kitten, Tessie made sure to do a thorough inspection while I shot photos.  Although, she did a better job of playing with the carrot top fronds.

I chopped the carrots, and ate them for dinner in a lovely chicken curry that surprisingly, has pureed pumpkin (made with frozen puree from last year's pie pumpkin harvest!) as a secret ingredient to give the sauce body, richness, and a wonderful mild sweetness.  I found the recipe at Eat the Cookie, a great gluten-free food blog, also based in Northwest Ohio.

So, I will continue to grade essays, read books, and work in the garden as I manage the detritus of my life.  And, hopefully like the earthworm, I can manage it with infinite patience so I can be open to the surprise of carrots in April!

Meet your Meat

Put a face to your food.  It’s important to know where your food comes from.  If Food Inc, taught me anything, it was that the industrial agricultural system cannot be trusted.  Sure, they’re fine if you want hormone and antibiotic laden meat that endangers the well-being of the animal before it was slaughtered, endangers the land and watershed where the animal lived, endangers the workers that took care of it and butchered it, and endangers the person that finally eats it. The only thing that meat like this has going for it is that it is cheap.  But even this cheapness is a lie.  Industrial meat only appears to be cheap because the true price of a pound of ground beef or of a pork chop is hidden from the consumer.  Tax dollars pay for the corn subsidies that allow the beef to get fat quickly and as cheaply as possible on grain, even though cows are ruminants and are not anatomically designed to eat anything but grass.  Also, factory farmers receive numerous tax cuts and other government help to increase their profits and to keep food prices artificially low.

All in a day's work for the laying hens.

Last week, I had the pleasure of food transparency. I learned where my chicken and pork chops come from.  I took a tour of Graham Farms the home of Omega Meats just outside of Grand Rapids, Ohio.  Lindsay Graham is the best kind of farmer: small and sustainable.  His farming methods are good for the animal, good for the land, air, and water, good for the workers that produce it, and especially good for the people that eat his meat.  Think chicken without dangerous bacteria (something you can’t find at the local Kroger).  Think grass-fed beef with a correct and heart-healthy ratio of omega 3 and omega 6.  Think rich, golden-yolked free-range eggs that have more vitamin A than their factory farmed counterparts and are free from salmonella.  This would be reason enough to support Lindsay’s farm, but the thing is this meat (and eggs) actually tastes better too.   

Approximately 5 week old meat chickens

This year, Graham farms will have 25 acres in production.  On this amount of land, Graham can more than comfortably raises 400 Golden Comet hens as layers. (These are the same breed as my backyard hens!)  And, throughout the spring, summer, and fall, he raises batches of 300 meat chickens at a time, which are a Cornish Cross.  These chickens are allowed to express their chicken-ness.  When I was saw them, they scratched in the soil and preened.  They were able to roam outside for bugs—to get fresh air and sunshine. And because they are housed in movable pens that Lindsay rotates to fresh pasture frequently, there was fresh grass for them to eat, along with their organic grains. 

The coyote decoy in the background scares off chicken hawks.

The pigs too, looked happy and healthy.  They had their curly tails, which is something you’ll never see in a factory farm.  Industrial farmers cut off the pigs' tails because the pigs are under so much stress confined to a concrete crate that they become cannibalistic and would gnaw each other’s tails off.  Lindsay’s pigs were down right playful.  They oinked and snorted in curiosity as I approached, and one even let me scratch its back.   

The cows too, have a good life at Graham farms.  Since we’ve had such cold weather this spring, the cows aren’t yet on pasture—the grass isn’t ready for them to eat--so they were still eating organic dried hay.  Even though the 10 cows—a mix of Herfords and Angus—the blocky, body type that Lindsay told me produces best on a grass-fed diet--were confined to a large corral around the barn, unlike feed-lot cattle, they weren’t standing knee deep in their own excrement.  At this scale, their manure can be safely composted and not turned into a manure lagoon or nitrate laden run off that poisons drinking water.  

This is the face that I put to my food.  Lindsay is a farmer that I trust to raise food responsibly, ethically, and safely.  This is where I want to put my money. And seeing how much this is all worth in terms of my health and the health of everyone and everything on this food chain, I’m willing to pay more for Omega Meats than in the grocery store.  When people tell me they’d love to eat local and organic food, but that it’s too expensive, I just want to shrug and say, “It’s where your priorities lay.”  My husband is a full time student, and on my teacher’s salary we manage to afford it because we don’t shop at the mall recreationally, we don’t eat out that often, and we grow some of our own food.  We might not be able to afford quite as much meat as we would if we were only buying industrial meat from the local Kroger or Walmart, but I'm okay with that.  In this case, quality really does win over quantity.  Also, I don't feel like I can put a price on my health.  Eating meat that won't make me sick or lead to chronic disease, is worth every penny. 

Another criticism I hear about eating local is this: “I’d eat locally if it wasn’t so time consuming and inconvenient.”  It’s true that Lindsay doesn’t sell his meat 24hrs a day like Walmart, but I’m excited that he’s starting a Meat Buyers’ Club in Bowling Green.  For a fifteen dollar annual membership fee and a small delivery charge, members get twice monthly meat and egg delivery to their front door!  Orders can be placed quickly and easily online.  And, I can leave a cooler on my porch and don’t even have to worry about being home at delivery time.  So, if you live in Bowling Green, and you care about where your food comes from, support your local farmer and feel good about where your food comes from.  You can sign up here.  

The Cupboard was Bare

"Groceries:

I do not like when our house is jam-packed full of new groceries.  There is simply too much good food on hand, too many options.  When we consume some of it, I feel better, as if we’ve done a worthwhile, necessary thing.  The elimination feels satisfying, not so much in the pleasure of the eating, but in the minimization of what’s available.”--Amy Rosenthal Encyclopedia of an Ordniary Life.

Last week I read Amy Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life.  The book is a memoir written in the format of an encyclopedia complete with cross-references.  Although some entries were the type of random musing that one might find scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin--tainted with slightly drunken hubris--many entries rang with clarity and recognition.  For instance, I, too, feel like eating foods from the pantry is a worthwhile, necessary thing.   I also find that in the frantic mess of everyday life pulling my thoughts in every direction the "minimization of what's available" is a welcome form of simplicity.

Yet, paradoxically, there is great comfort in having a house full of food.  A feeling of security.  The comfortable notion that if there's a blizzard or if I get  sudden-onset agoraphobia then I can survive quite happily with a pantry full of sun-dried tomatoes, capers, olives, big bags of rice and beans, a gallon of good olive oil.  Must of my food buying habits have centered around this premise: You do NOT want to go without a good meal if you are trapped in the house for months at a time.  Perhaps part of this comes from my increasing hatred of grocery shopping.  Theoretically, if I'm that well stocked, then I shouldn't have to go to the grocery store Every. Single. Week.

Kent went to the grocery store with me the other day, and after I lost him in the produce aisle, I continued on with my shopping.  When he finally found me 23 minutes later, I had gathered a whole cart's full of groceries.  "You walk so fast.  I can't keep up.  This is not a sprint, Sarah," he said, angrily tossing the half a dozen cans of garbanzo and pinto beans I asked him to get--which he had lugged across the whole store trying to keep up with me.  I've taken to the position that the faster I get in and out of the grocery store the better.  Do not get in my way.  Last week I put off grocery shopping for almost as long as I could bear it.  Until my fridge looked like this:

A raw chicken defrosting for supper that night, a few eggs from the 'girls,' but that was about it.  Now the other benefit of letting food stuffs run so low, besides the mental clarity, is the fact that it imposed a forced creativity.  That day for lunch I made this rather odd meal:

Leftover roast, lettuces from the cold frame, and the last small bunch of asparagus.  I would have never purposely designed this meal unless there were no other options.  Yet, it was still good and satisfying in its own strange way.  It felt good to be so resourceful.  The thing that pulled these rag-tag ingredients together was my favorite and simplest homemade dressing: hazelnut-lemon vinaigrette.

I was turned onto hazelnut oil by Molly Wizenberg's recipe for Celery Root and Apple Salad with Hazelnut Vinaigrette. This salad is lovely in its own way, but the complicated vinaigrette with lemon, vinegar, Dijon mustard, and more, just isn't necessary.  I found that all the other ingredients muddied the wonderful (and expensive) flavor of the hazelnut oil.  So, I just started making a lemon juice and hazelnut oil dressing that is one of the easiest and flavor dressings I know of.  It is worth keeping a bottle of hazelnut oil in the back of your fridge for emergencies just like this.

Lemon-Hazelnut 'Vinaigrette'
Hazelnut oil can be hard to find.  Whole Foods seems to be the only place that I can locate it, but I'm also sure you can find it for sale online at Amazon.  I've been very happy with La Tourangelle brand roasted hazelnut oil.  They also make good truffle oils.  It's almost embarrassing writing out a recipe this simple, but here you go:

5 Tablespoons hazelnut oil
3 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
pinch of sea salt

Whisk all ingredients together.  Taste and adjust for seasoning.